You leave the house.  You’re in your car.  You don’t have your wits, your charms, your veneers of personality, elegance, happiness.  What is going on right now?  You wonder how it is possible that what is happening, is happening.  You are freaking out.

Then it dawns on you:  Why do you care so much?  Ironically, this is the same question you asked about him only 20 minutes earlier.  Really though, why do you care so much?  You think to yourself that it is as if, with that kiss, he transfused into you his younger self.  You had to leave the party because you… simply… couldn’t… adjust.  Whenever someone inside looked at you with their smiles wide, they saw looking back at them a half-grin of anxiousness and uncertainty.  It was gut-wrenching.  When they quickly turned from your uncalibrated expression, you felt yourself go deeper into your panic, your quiet frenzy, your fear.  “What is happening to me,” you say out loud, your hands at 10 and 2 on your steering wheel.  You are wringing your hands in unison, back, and then forward again, taking the hard rubber wheel with you in each direction.  Your knuckles whiten, and stretch, whiten, and stretch.  You are in some sort of angry trance.   

How much time has gone by?  You see them, your cousin and that man, leaving the house you half grew up in.  They are unbelievably casual and irritatingly care-free.  He has his arm hanging gently around her shoulder, and she is leaning into him, you think, just the way you do into the guys you like.  You are jealous.  A blue, plastic cup is in his other hand, and before he takes what would have been his last sip, you find yourself right before the two of them– between them, and your cousin’s Civic.

You say, “I hope she’s driving, you seemed pretty drunk in there.”  They both look up at you, both surprised, both uncertain of your meaning.

He says, “This is punch.”  They have both stopped walking.

You say, “Liz, with all the commotion before, I never caught your boyfriend’s name.”

Liz says, “It’s Brian.  Brian, I thought you said you knew each other?”

Brian says, “I guess it was more like I knew of her.”

You say, “You definitely reminded me of someone, but I was sure I was mistaken.”

Brian says, “Maybe you were,” and the tone of the conversation officially steps from strange and unnecessary to suspicious, guarded, and a little nasty.

You say, “Maybe,” and for some reason it stings when you do.  “I don’t know though,” and you feel stupid.

Brian says, “Well, have a good night Jessica, we gotta run,” and drags your cousin passed you.  You stand there, bumfuzzled.  You hear your cousin actually say, “Was there ever anything between you two?” in a muffled tone, to which he responds, “Yeah, a lot of empty space…” and you can’t quite catch the end of it, but hear your cousin laugh.

The rest of the party was a bore.  While you’re on your way home, street lights passing over you one, after the other, after the other, you think the 405 has never been so empty.  You hear your cousin’s laugh echo in your mind, and your knuckles whiten, and stretch, whiten, and stretch, whiten and stretch.  When you get into your apartment, you throw your keys on the small stand in the hallway and turn on the light.  You catch sight of your palm, and see some kind of dirt all over it.  You look at both your palms under the light, and see peels, shreds of your steering wheel all over each of them.