Alex Espinoza earned his MFA from UC Irvine and is the author of the novels Still Water Saints (Random House) and The Five Acts of Diego León (Random House). His most recent book is Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime (Unnamed Press). He’s written for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, and NPR’s All Things Considered. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony, as well as an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, he is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at UC Riverside. This story is drawn from a new novel, tentatively titled The Moment We Touch Ground.