When the unnamed narrator of first meets the choreographer at an artists' residency in Maine, it's not a match. She finds him loud, conceited, domineering. But when he reappears in her life in Boston and invites her to his dance company's performance, their interaction at the show sets off a summer of expanding her own body's boundaries. Her body learns to obediently follow his, and his desires quickly become inextricable from her pleasure. This must be happiness, right? But what does it mean for a queer young woman to partner with an older man, for a fledgling artist to partner with an established one? Does falling in love mean eviscerating yourself? Combining the sticky sexual politics of with the dizzying, perceptive intimacy of , is a wholly new kind of coming-of-age story about lust, punishment, artistic drive, and desires that defy the hard-won boundaries of the self.