ms_magdalena

She walks in with a good friend, a new friend, and a friend with which she's settled a score. She's hoping for a good time in a place which should feel comfortable. Drinks are had, and people get drunk, though tippy cup and beer pong always make that a given.

She sinks a ball, and another, and another, and feels accomplished. This is the first time she's played, after all. She'd had the rules explained to her minutes before the first game, but after that first match, everyone is clammering to be on her team. She's revelling in delight, after winning two rounds in a row.

But as more people stop by, and more people say hello, she's feeling lost in the chaos. Everyone else has had more to drink, and everyone else has more friends there than she does. Moments like these make her feel uncomfortable, and awkward, and alone. She takes her beer in one hand, cigarettes in the other, and with matches in her back pocket she makes her way to the empty patio.

From her cold plastic chair she can hear the noise from the garage, and because of that, she still feels connected. She's distanced, but close, all at the same time. She's always lived her life in that same ambiguous plane, without ever falling too far into one thing or another.

It's only when that boy stops by that she starts to feel alive. Everyone else has choked her with their drunken stupor, and brought her down in a waterfall of loud music and erratic movement. Loud voices and spontanious dance. Normally she loves to dance, but this is entirely different. This is crazy drunk people stumbling, and she's grown impatient.

When that boy stepped out of his car, she felt saved.

It was his car, after all, that she had spent many a night in the back seat of. In the front seat of. In the trunk of. Depending on the circumstance, that car had fulfilled any venue of human contact that she could have ever wanted. She'd had her best conversations in that car, and the most passionate fuck of her life. That car's owner didn't mess around. He knew exactly what sort of contact she needed. And when. And where. And how.

There in the garage they stood and talked, before moving to the driveway.

"So really, what's new? Anything besides the Chicago trip?" He asks.

"Um. . . . . " she's thinking, turning her head to the side and making her "thinking" face.

"You still do it, huh?" He laughs.

"What?"

"The "Jeanie" nose. That little nose thing you do."

He'd loved her "I Dream of Jeanie" nose wiggle, and she'd forgotten that until now. She couldn't keep her beaming smile in anymore.

"Haha," she giggled, "always. I always do." And she always does, really.

"Good. Don't ever lose that." She could have melted in those words.

Unfortunately for the girl, Meg had taken a liking to him. Unbeknownst to her, Meg had invited him to the party for a reason. Meg apparently knew him, very well. Meg also happened to be one of her best friends.

As the rest of them stand in the driveway, she sits in the Cadillac's trunk, firmly planted between that boy and a boy named Tim. That boy had invited her to that spot, after a pull from a bottle of Jameson. Jameson always reminded her of him, actually, after having drank from a bottle of the same stuff so many times before. So many times in that same exact trunk.

He fucks around with his keys, and starts his engine remotely. Meg opens the drivers' side door, and sits inside. She giggles obcenely.

"How do you turn it off?" Meg yells, from within the car. Meg knows damn well that the boy is the only one with the keys, and therefor the only one to make the engine stop.

Meg sits sideways, with her legs hanging outside the car, and lies back into the passenger seat. The same seat that our girl has spent so much time in. Our girl, however, is still sitting on the bumper, back against the open trunk. It's only when the boy gets up and walks to the drivers' side that she starts paying attention.

She's talking with Brad, and she's talking with Tim, and she's talking with the strange neighbor that had come over ealier. She's talking, and she isn't thinking. She isn't thinking about anything, really, until she looks back and through the gap between the trunk and the rear windshield of the car. That's when her heart stops.

She's choked mid-swallow by the sight of lips locked, and her heart is crushed.

He's exactly where he should be, on his set mark. Unfortunately for her, she's not on her mark this time around. She's in the trunk. She's in the audience. Meg is in her place, and our girl feels like gagging herself to death. The only thing she is thankful for is the tension her jaw is keeping, as to keep her from choking herself on her own tongue. And he gets up, out of the car. And Meg follows him out, only dropping his hand once she knows our girl is in view.

"Hey, grab your purse. I'm driving you home," Meg says. "But we're all going in his car."

And the girl grabs her purse. And she lights a cigarette. And she gets in the back seat, as she sees his hand gently find its way to the back of Meg's neck. And she smokes. And she smokes. And she chains her cigarettes until she gets home.

Luckily for her, that boy didn't notice her stuff his bottle of Jameson into her purse before they left.