**Summer 2024.** **Mexico City.** --- It's 2am, and my night is only just starting. The heat of the club is subsiding and the breeze and eyes and clear and open. I shake and jolt and jump and the music fills my bones and oozes out of my ears. The world is spinning, and I with it. The rubber underneath my boots screech and burn and I drag and twist my feet and around the dance floor. Erin is there: our synchronized steps dissipate across the floor and sync our energy with a god-like glow. The fills of the music quieten and close the gap between mine and hers. Smaller. Quieter. Smaller. Quieter. Until there's nothing left. We’re _one_ now. Dance, dance, dance, dance, release ourselves to the music and forget the pretense-of-strangers, fluorescent flashings, and the couple making out close-by. The stage is now ours – streaked with booze-carrying attendants, ants, and on-watching trios and quartet. On edge of my visual periphery, a drink-swindler from earlier in the night peeked, caught, then swiveled in shame. _This was the last time I was free, and I was in Mexico City._