“OKAY,” HE says as the long melancholic tango comes to an end. “That’s probably enough for tonight.” It’s only now that I realize that the hour slated for my lesson with Gianluca has long since passed. Ordinarily, he plays a bit of a song and then stops the music to break down what we’ve just done, go over additional technicalities, and such. But tonight, at some point, he’d just let the music play and we kept dancing. I feel drugged from dancing with him, high off the elemental relief I get from it.

There was a feeling I lived for during races, a brief few moments when my mind and body felt perfectly fused, when my body was working as hard as it possibly could and my mind was fully engaged—taking in the terrain, calculating where I needed to be on the next turn, preparing for the jump I knew was coming at the end of the course. There was no space for anything other than the moment I was in. I never expected to find that feeling again, and, impossibly, I’ve found an echo of it here. When G steps away from me for a moment, I feel the jarring sense of leaving it.

“Okay,” I say. I feel the effects of the dance leeching from my veins too quickly. G smiles at me and turns back toward the office. For a moment, I stand there, uncertain about what I’m meant to do now. Everyone else has long since left; our lesson started late to begin with, at nine o’clock. Because G is working these lessons into an already full schedule, we squeeze them in when we can, as frequently as we can—I’d be here every day if I could, running through my savings like a junkie. I like the idea that he is making room for me, though for all I know, he needs the cash. How much does Edward put in to keep this place afloat? What does their mysterious bargain entail?

“Come on,” he says without turning around. My feet take me along like we’re still dancing and I’m simply following. Tango, it seems, is a wonder drug: a way of being close to someone without the messiness of sex or love, a potent but temporary hit of both. A place you can go with a stranger but leave unscathed by shame and heartache.