Niko straightens the red bandana around his neck like a cowboy sauntering out of a saloon. He’s wearing denim on denim, a thrifted jean jacket from which he ripped an American flag patch to stitch on a Puerto Rican flag in its place. A Boricua Springsteen on the Fourth of July. It is, in fact, the Fourth of July.

“So what exactly is Christmas in July?” August asks, tugging at the hideous Valentine’s Day T-shirt she picked up from Goodwill. It has a picture of Garfield surrounded by cartoon hearts and says I’LL BE YOUR LASAGNA. It took two tries to explain it to Jane. “And why is it Niko’s birthday tradition?”

“Christmas in July,” Myla says grandly, with a broad gesture that knocks Wes’s phone back to the floor, “is an annual Fourth of July tradition at Delilah’s in which we celebrate the birthday of this great nation”—she does a jerk-off gesture and Niko boos—“with themed beverages and an all-star lineup of drag royalty doing holiday-themed performances.”

“It’s not just Christmas, though,” Niko notes.

“Right,” Myla adds. “They still call it Christmas in July, but it’s evolved to include all holidays. Last year, Isaiah did a Thanksgiving dessert burlesque number to ‘My Goodies’ and wore sweet potato titty tassels and an apple pie g-string. It was amazing. Wes just, like, walked out of the building and sprinted ten blocks.”

“That is not what happened,” Wes says. “I went out for a smoke.”

“Sure.”

“It’s also how Myla and I met,” Niko adds.

“Really?” Jane asks.

“You never mentioned that,” August says.

“Yeah, I used go to Delilah’s all the time when I was still living with my parents,” Niko says. “Everyone there has always been really cool about whatever you are or want to be or think you might be. Good energy.”

“And I was dating one of the bartenders,” Myla finishes.

“Whoa, wait.” August turns to Myla. “You were with someone else when y’all met?”

“Yep,” Myla says, cheerfully adjusting her sweater, a hideous Hanukkah relic from Wes’s childhood. “I don’t want to say I dumped the guy on the spot when I saw Niko, but … I mean, we did have to wait for him to quit bartending before we could show our faces there again.”

“The path of the universe,” Niko says sagely.

“The path of my boner,” Myla echoes.

“Yeah, I’m gonna tuck and roll,” Wes says, maneuvering for the emergency exit.

“That’s so nuts,” Jane says, deftly catching him by the collar of his shirt. “I can’t picture either of you with anyone else.”

“I don’t think we ever really were with anyone else,” Niko says. “Not all the way. I don’t think we could have been.”

“Let go of me. I deserve to be free,” Wes says to Jane, who boops him on the nose.

“Anyway,” Myla says. “We met on Niko’s birthday, at Christmas in July. And we met Isaiah a couple of Christmas in Julys later, and he helped us get the apartment. And so, it’s the birthday tradition.”

“And what a tradition it is,” Niko says.

“God,” Jane says, her smile going soft around the edges. “I wish I could go.”

August touches the back of her hand. “Me too.”

They pull up to their stop and elbow their way toward the doors, and when August is stepping off, she hears Jane say, “Hey, Landry. Forgot something.”

August turns, and Jane’s standing there under the fluorescents with her jacket falling off one shoulder and her eyes bright, looking like something August made up, like a long night and sore legs in the morning. She leans out of the car, just barely, just enough to piss off the universe, and she hauls August in by the front of her idiot T-shirt and kisses her so hard that, for a second, she feels sparks down her spine.

“Have fun,” she says.

The doors shut, and Myla lets out a low whistle. “Goddamn, August.”

“Shut up,” August says, cheeks burning, but she floats up the stairs like she’s on the moon.

Like Slinky’s, Delilah’s is underground, but where Slinky’s has only a grease-stained C from the health department marking the entrance, Delilah’s is all neon, radiant cursive. A flashing pink arrow points down, and the bouncer looks like Jason Momoa with Easter bunny ears. He waves them toward the beaded curtain, and the world explodes into Technicolor.

Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, Delilah’s is decked out in rainbows of Christmas lights, shining Valentine’s hearts, shimmering streamers in red, white, and blue, rows of enormous jack-o’-lanterns stuffed with green and purple string lights, blazing Eid lanterns along the rafters. There’s an oversized menorah on the bar, star-shaped pinatas dangling over the tables, and—startling a loud laugh out of August—Mardi Gras beads flung on nearly every available surface. And not the dollar-store plastic ones, the good ones, the ones you’d shoulder check a child on Canal Street for.

But it’s not the decor that has the room lit up with life. It’s the people. August can see what Niko meant: it has good energy.

You could throw an eggnog—one of the festive shots being passed around on trays—in any direction and hit a different kind of person. Butches, femmes, six-foot beefcakes, Pratt students with terrible haircuts, the type of petite tattooed twenty-somethings Wes refers to as “Bushwick twinks,” women with Adam’s apples, men without them. People who don’t fit into any category but look as happy and wanted here as anyone else, bobbing their heads to the house music and gripping drinks with painted nails. It smells like sweat, like spilled whiskey, like a million sweet perfumes applied in tight three-bedroom apartments like August’s in giddy anticipation of being here, somewhere people love you.

Jane would love this, August thinks.

The bar staff apparently has no grudge against Myla, because one of them nearly vaults the bar when they see her, reindeer onesie and all. Within seconds, there are four glasses of a suspiciously piss-colored concoction on the bar.

“Apple cider margaritas,” the bartender says cheerfully. They spin around and produce four shots like some kind of liquor magician. “And a round of our world famous Oh Shit shot, on the house, for my favorite babes.”

“Thanks, Luz,” Myla coos. “This is our new kid. August. We adopted her in January.”

“Welcome to the family,” Luz tells her, and a drink and a shot are in her hands, and she’s whisked away toward a booth just vacated by a herd of surly goths in perfunctory Halloween headwear.

“To Niko,” Myla says, raising her shot. “Born on the Fourth of July with both fingers in the air, pissing middle America off by living their dream: looks great in jeans and has a hot girlfriend.”

“To family,” Niko says. “And viva Puerto Rico libre.”

“To alcohol,” Wes adds.

“To Hanukkah sweaters,” August finishes, and they all throw it back.

The shot is awful, but the drink, it turns out, isn’t half bad, and the company is great. Niko is in rare form, long limbs stretched out and head cocked, exuding honey-smooth blue-collar boyishness. Molten moonshine. He looks like he could jumpstart a jet engine with his heart.