- XVIII -

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         Jina's not sure how a party can be considered still in full swing and yet at the same time be winding down. She's sitting on the couch now, the cushions seeming damp with what she hopes is merely sweat, leaning back as if in to surrender to something that none of them could ever hope to fight. The press of time is pushing down on all of them, and even those who aren't carrying watches know what the time is, know that the time is creeping up, ready to kick them all out back to their homes, to beds, to jobs, push them out stumbling and blinking into meager daylight. Wondering how it's possible that only a few hours could have passed, when it seems they've lived their entire lives in dark space rank with sodden air.
         Jina crosses her legs and tries to settle deeper back into the couch. Inside she's still churning, even though her limbs and legs and hands have a delicate weariness to them, like she's tried to balance on one foot for too long. But the fire is still there, merely an ember now but ready to spark back at any second and Jina can't say she's ready to go home yet. There's too much to do still, too much to make yourself think you did. Jina's convinced that half the things they did in high school never really happened, they just swapped the same stories over and over until after a while everyone just assumed it was true. Just something they told themselves to pretend that life was far better back then. But none of it could have really happened. The recklessness, the audacity, it seems unreal to think of it now, watching other lives through a glass lens, unable to find the focus button to adjust and see things clearer. Still, maybe in the end just the pretense is enough, that as long as you all agree on the lie and share in it, that might just be all you need. It's not like anyone ever goes back and checks, right?
         ". . . so you think you're so clever, never in doubt, but I've seen you two together fooling about . . ."
         Shoving those thoughts out of her head, Jina realizes she's been shifting into a slouch on the seat, staring fixedly at the shadowed space where the wall meets the ceiling for no good reason other than it's in her line of vision. The party itself crawls into a distant thing, voices cascading to her like pennies thrown down a well, tumbling in space, leaving only echoes in their wake. Faces don't become blurred so much as her vision drops filters over everything, people becoming lighter shadows smeared against a darker background, motion dictated by a beat that she can feel vibrating into her legs more than hear. It's like sinking into a warm ocean, the water fills your ears and phases out all the sounds and sights that aren't important. And nothing is really all that important.
         Jina abruptly sits up straighter, pushing herself back into the couch so that her legs are meeting the floor at a forty five degree angle as opposed to the right angles of before. The edge of the cushion bites gently into the back of her legs just below her knees, reminding her again that she's not all that tall. She blinks and manages to suppress the sudden desire to shake her head to clear out any cobwebs. Going to fall asleep at this rate, if she makes herself any more comfortable. Jina's a little drunk, but not really. Her parents probably would have called it drunk but these days there are degrees of drunkenness apparently and as far as Jina can tell on the scale of inebriation she's achieved the prized level of buzzed. Which suits her just fine, she didn't come here looking to get herself smashed, though there are some who she thinks it was their express purpose. Two others are on the couch with her, sitting far enough away that she can ignore them and make believe they don't exist. Even so, Jina wedges herself into the corner just a little more, feeling the faintest whisper of a draft on her bare arm from the small overworked air conditioner set into the wall near the floor. It's grinding attempts to cool the room down becomes just another component of the intricate whirlwind of sounds spinning above her head.
         The world's gotten just a few seconds slower and it's a sensation Jina enjoys, the one that she's been waiting for all night, really, even if she hasn't realized it yet. Like this, she can still savor the party, her senses are dulled and yet strangely heightened at the same time. Perhaps in all the wrong ways, Jina has caught herself laughing hilariously at jokes that really aren't all that funny, taking a step and having the sudden narrowing feeling that someone just stuck a cliff a million miles deep right where she was about to put her foot, carrying on a animated conversation and thinking about it five minutes later and not really being sure what the hell she was actually talking about. But at the same time everything that's worth feeling seems to penetrate deeper into her brain. It's an illusion, the rational part of knows that and she tells herself that every time, but it's a hallucination she can live with. Besides, she's still conscious, which is more than she can say for some people. The two folks on the couch with her are in various stages of passing out, one she thinks is snoring, head slumped down, breathing raggedly even, while the other one's head is just lolling around, eyes half closed, a bridge caught in a strong wind and only able to hold out for so much longer. And then there are others she can see walking around that she can only assume are sleepwalking. Even Brian, she was talking to him before and all he kept doing was nodding, his eyes glazing over and then coming back into focus, generally to tell her how good she looked tonight, as if every time it was the first time she had come over to talk to him. After a while that got annoying and so she came to sit down and catch her breath a minute. Now she wonders if she can get up, her body has settled into a casual tiredness, bone weary you might be able to call it. Her mind is totally willing to get up and move around, maybe even dance some more before she goes home but her body doesn't seem to be in agreement. But she just needs to sit a minute and collect her thoughts. When she wants to, she knows she can get up. She hopes.
         This quiet time, about as much privacy as one can get at a party like this, gives her time to rummage through her scattered thoughts and put together an attempt at observing what's going on around her. But focusing on one thing is impossible here, there aren't any constants, something catches her attention and by the time she gets herself together enough to center her thoughts on whatever it was, the event is gone, blended back into the seemingly endless parade of faces streaming past her, dancing, laughing, their voices streaking through her head like some demented Doppler effect. Jina hasn't counted how many people are here, she really doesn't care that much, but it seems like enough to populate a small country where there one available to fill. The absurd thought of everyone standing side by side, cheek to cheek in some distant empty country with merely a stereo and a bar in the center and people just dancing from day until night makes her giggle a little. Which just reminds her how out of synch her thoughts are. Again. If there was one good thing about getting completely drunk, it's that there wasn't some small part of your brain constantly reporting on your mildly drunken state. Like it's tattling to God or something.
         The world is still mired in thick soup and Jina rubs her arms a little in an attempt to rouse herself just a little bit more. A little more alertness wouldn't hurt actually, it's not something she would really mind. Anybody looking at her would probably think she was cold and wonder how the hell she could be cold. Jina wonders too, she hadn't noticed it before but after being outside for a while and then coming back in she realizes just how goddamn hot it is in here. Immediately when she came back in the heat wrapped itself over her body like a dog's wet tongue, or one of those fire blankets you use to douse someone when they've burst into flames. Sitting down it's almost stifling, until the sheer moisture in the air is almost a physical thing, like she expects any moment for a rainstorm to suddenly develop in the apartment. Nature's idea of a cold shower, she thinks and giggles again. God, she must look nuts to anyone watching her, if anyone is. Part of her hopes that no one is paying any attention to her and part of her figures that someone has to notice, it's the part of her brain that actually spent time picking out a decent dress to wear and matching shoes and making sure her hair was good and all that. As opposed to the part of her that just throws on some sweatpants and a sweatshirt during the weekends and flops down on the couch to watch television. She may not be dressed like that now, but it's certainly how she's starting to feel.
         Someone to talk to. That's what she needs to keep her awake, some stimulating conversation. Jina looks around, the room not seeming to slide in time with the turning of her head and the shifting of her vision, but she really doesn't see anyone she even remotely recognizes. It might be the curved effect of the alcohol but the faces seem to be getting more and more unfamiliar as the night wears on, like one of those weird movies where everyone in a town gets replaced by pod people or something. Brian made her watch one of those movies one time and it bored her silly, if people weren't horribly overacting or doing ridiculous looking simultaneously expressions of fright on cue, the story just didn't make any sense. But Brian loved every minute of it and by the Jina had to admit that it wasn't all that bad. For a two dollar rental. Even funnier, at the end, Brian turned to her and said with that grin of his that was the first thing she had ever noticed about him, you ever wonder about stuff like that? Like, if one of us got switched for one of those pod people. You think anyone would ever notice?
         Jina laughs a little internally, remembering telling Lena about it later and Lena making some sort of arch comment that it would probably be an improvement in his case. It had been pretty funny, Jina notes with a sudden stabbing shriek of sobriety breaking free, until it actually happened. The sight of Tristian's face twisted into something that was still his face but undeniably alien at the same time was a sight that she doesn't think she'll ever really forget. Even thinking about it now makes her want to swallow hard, to jump up and try to lose herself in the knotted maze of loose party and strong drink, reducing the entire world to a haze she can't easily escape from. It's like spending your entire life in a cave and then coming out to discover that someone forgot to cover the world, you squint against blue air and white clouds and the sheer expansiveness makes it one of the most exhilarating and one of the most terror inducing experiences in your life. Your chest constricts while part of your mind is just going wow.
         But then the world closes over her again and Jina feels herself relax, like her body just released some stored alcohol for just such a situation. Still, she has to admit she's getting better at, you know, dealing with what happened. Used to be that she couldn't even look at it edgeways in her head, Jina had relegated it to dreams and nightmares and all the other half truths that filter into our heads while we sleep. Now things are better, as she knew they'd become eventually. Even the worse tragedy heals with time, whether you want it to or not, really. The problem was that they never really talked about it, not in groups or with each other or anything, just in snide, oblique sideways comments, marbles sent skittering into the center to strike the others, sometimes shifting the balance but in the end never really doing anything at all. They confronted Tristian and he told them the truth and they all figured that it would solve everything, to just have it explained. But it didn't erase the event. So they tried to do it themselves, not deliberately but definitely collectively and Jina has to admit it didn't do a damn thing. It just made things worse, like trying to clean up a spill by wiping your hand across it. Your hand gets wet and the spill just gets smeared across your floor. That's about all the good it did.
         Talking to Joe for some reason has made her feel better about all of it than she has in months. It's probably a combination of being happy to see him for the first time in five years and the party itself. Two different massages working two different angles, each relaxing her in areas that she hadn't known she had been keeping tense all this time. That's the problem with prolonging something for far too long, you start to accept it as normal. It's been damn good seeing Joe again though, Jina has to admit that and even thinking about it now brings a small involuntary smile to her face. He's just as she remembers him, but in a lot of ways he's changed, he's grown up, military life must give him a sense of responsibility. Just standing with him she felt safe out there in the cold, like nothing would dare touch either of them. He seemed to understand, too, that made her the happiest, talking about all of it with Brian had always been useless because he had been there and the last thing he had wanted to do was relive it. And some days she honestly couldn't blame him. But Joe hadn't been there and yet she got the feeling that he had understood and known what she was talking about, all the small things she had never said, about feeling helpless, lost and violated, adrift for those few pained days right after it had happened, feeling like someone had reached inside of her and torn out something vital only to hold it in front of her, still dripping and sizzling. There's a sense of release about her now, and Jina wants to take some credit for it but Joe was the catalyst, in the end. There's no way really around it. Joe had looked at her with with his mirrored eyes but now Jina thinks she was mistaken, it wasn't so much a reflection as a window.
         ". . . it seems strange to have to lie about a world so bright and tell instead a made up story from the world of night . . ."
         Right now Jina is bored though. Bored and tired. She really needs to talk to someone, or else she's going to flop right down on this couch and pass out and someone will have to carry her to the car or something mildly embarrassing like that. The problem is that nobody is going to want to talk now, nothing coherent at any rate, hell Jina can't even vouch for her own uninterrupted stream of thoughts, it's like she can't stop leaping from topic to topic in her head like some toddler running on a burst of sugar. Brian is probably no doubt drunk right now, or taking his last few stumbling steps there. He's not fun when drunk, he can't dance, it makes him a sloppy kisser and he seems to keep finding some new weird way to inject sex into the conversation, like it's some kind of game he's playing with himself, with all the guys, everyone keeping score. So Jina figures she'll avoid him when she can for the rest of the night, he'll be so smashed that he won't even notice. But there has to be someone else. Tristian, even. He'd certainly be more fun than someone like Jack, who's probably off bothering Lena somewhere. At least she's fairly sure that Tristian won't be anywhere near drunk, if Jina's thoughts are a muddy swirl of water in a rainstorm puddle, Tristian's are probably pristine and crystal clear, a lake where you can see right to the bottom. But he's been scarce all night, like he's trying to avoid everyone. Which is probably closer to the truth than her mind will let her admit.
         Jina lifts herself up a little, squinting into the murk of bodies teeming in front of her like constantly spawning fish. Like when she used to go to the aquarium as a kid and she'd press her nose up against the cool glass and stare into the water and see all the marine life gliding so gracefully, the schools keeping in tight formation and she had wondered how they never hit each other. All that space and they were so close together and none of them ever collided. Peering into that world, it looked so free, like you'd go into it and be totally weightless, all your burdens and cares floating right into the surface and through, bubbling up like noxious gas, dissipating and going away. Just like that. Like it was that easy. Jina wants to think that it is, everything in life is just some obstacle to be overcome. There are hoops to leap through but if you miss you just pick yourself up and try it again. Eventually it has to work, right? If you try anything long enough you're bound to have to get good at it in time. The problem was that someone set those hoops on fire and everyone skidded to a halt and balked at the jump, feeling the heat washing over their faces like some encroaching flaming tide, and nobody wanted to move. No one wanted to get past it because they were afraid of what was on the other side. If it's this bad now, they asked, what about later? What else can life throw at us?
         She has to resist the urge to stand up on the couch. In a minute she's going to have to start moving around, she can't stay here the rest of the night. Maybe find Lena, they can touch base and find out what the other has been doing all night. Probably have to tear Jack off of her, if he's had time to get drunk yet then he'll probably be chasing after her, and Jina highly doubts Lena would enjoy that at all. Jina feels oddly protective toward Lena some days, and she's not sure why because Lena can more than easily take care of herself. Something about the last few months, all the events that transpired, all of that did something to her. On the inside, it collected and collected until it started to show, stretching her until her skin was near transparent, showing everyone how vulnerable she really was. Even as Lena denies it each and every time. Jina's always joked with her friend about her cynicism but lately it's been starting to feel true, her perceptions are losing color, turning a bleak shade of grey and Lena smiles at the jokes and goes out to the parties and dances and has a hell of a time, but inside it's all different. There's crumpled fragments of glass inside, raking at her organs, causing those little winces of pain that Jina can see everytime a couple walks by holding hands, every time the phone rings and it's Brian and while Jina sits there laughing with him, Lena's in the other room watching television and pretending not to listen. Or trying her best not to listen. She's bleeding inside, and swallowing hard so as not to cough it all up and alert the world but there's only so much pressure you can take. Only so much help Jina can give, she's always seen herself as an optimistic person but there's only so much she can do. A sunny disposition feels like patronizing after a while more often than not and Jina cares about her friend too much to be all smiles constantly, thinking that will be enough. That if you smile the entire world will smile with you. Most of the time as soon as you turn away they all start crying.
         But of course Lena's not around. Neither is Jack. Or Brian. Or Tristian. Or Joe or even Will. Just lots of floating, wavery faces that she doesn't know and Jina realizes that she has to come to some sort of decision soon. Because in a few minutes she won't care either way and she'll just sit back and the next thing you know she'll want to rest her eyes for just a second. And blink and she'll be waking up blearily in a car humming down the highway, feeling stiff and having a throbbing headache. Probably should just get up and dance, she might run into Brian out there and at least caught out in the nomansland of the dance floor he won't seem as drunk. Surrounding yourself with people of a like bent is the best way to feel better about your situation. That's the theory at least. But she has to make something happen soon, or it'll just be stagnation. And Jina's not about stagnation, she has to keep moving forward, even when you're looking back you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
         Her one foot is firmly on the floor and the other leg is resting on the couch ready to join her other foot on the ground when a hand seemingly snakes out of the crushed blackness to grasp her lightly on the shoulder. The unexpected pressure causes Jina to lose her balance in her haste to turn without breaking her ankle and she falls back into the couch, her leg tucked under her ass in what she hopes appears to be a graceful landing. Someone passing in front of her leaps back at her sudden motion, grins and gives her a warbling thumbs up for no apparent reason before melting back into a crowd that looks more and more like a swaying, blankly smiling toothy face.
         "Now, now, you can't escape me that easily," a voice muffled as if speaking under the weight of a heavy snowfall settles on her and she pivots on her cushion to see Joe perched on the arm of the couch, looking all the world like he just dropped from the ceiling to sit there and visit with her. He's grinning at her and once again she's amazed at how clear his eyes are, like he hasn't taken a drink at all tonight even though Jina knows that's not the case. His glass rarely seemed empty when they were talking at the bar before, either he was pouring it down the sink when they weren't looking or he really knows how to hold his liquor. She'll have to get him to tell her his secret some day.
         "Oh hey," she exclaims, then gives him a mockingly peevish look, even though she's actually fairly happy to see him. Did outside really happen, she wonders. "Where the hell have you been? I didn't see you come back in."
         His eyes hold no clue to any sort of past history whatsoever, even though she can quite clearly still taste the flavor of his kiss. She really does keep trying to feel bad about that, really she does. But it's just not happening. That little twinge threatens to erupt inside of her head again and Jina has to roughly shove down the wish that she could erase the last five years, grind it back down to ground zero and see what would have happened if things had taken their natural course. And maybe they wouldn't have stayed together but might have become good friends and seeing him here at this party would be an old familiar sensation instead of the sheer wonderment that he's still even alive. There are so many things that she's sure he's hiding from her, that he's not telling her and she wants desperately to pull them out of him one by one, hold them up to the stark daylight and show him that they aren't worth concealing, whatever they are. It just isn't worth it. But she has to respect his privacy, if that's what he wants. Five years changes everyone, you sit there and don't feel the changes raining down on your gradually, soaking you right through to the bone until someone reminds you of drier times and then it strikes you with a zeal almost maniacal. Like life takes perverse pleasure in revealing such things.
         "That's the military skill for you right there, my dear," he tells her, and flashes that grin again. That hasn't changed a bit. In a blinding second it reminds her of Brian's and she has to forcefully remind herself that they're two different people. She's not like that. It's been five years. You can get over anything in five years. He shifts his weight on the coucharm, until his knee is draped across it, jutting out into the air and hovering inches from her shoulder. "You'll thank us for that skill when we're out there protecting the country." The music screams, threatening to overwhelm his voice, scratching to obscure the details and Jina could have sworn that she caught a finely wrought sense of irony in his words.
         ". . . cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good . . ."
         Her mind must still be a fumbling wreck of a thing because even as she's trying to fully process his words and formulate something resembling a response, he's already moved onto another topic, sitting up completely straight, his head swivelling around in such a fashion that she could easily imagine him as some sort of scout. On an impulse she starts to imagine him in uniform and then stops herself before her head runs away with her. Her and Lena always used to laugh at those girls who mooned over the men in their uniforms, like putting on another pair of clothes made you a different person. A bastard was still a bastard, even if he was serving his country. But Jina needs to start taking her own advice apparently.
         "Damn, don't any of these people ever sleep?" Brown comments, the corners of his mouth turning down a little. He makes a vague gesture in the direction of the music, "I swear some of those people out there nodded off a while ago and nobody's realized it yet, people just keep passing them along like hot potatoes . . ." the music blares something indecipherable and Brown winces, holding a hand to the ear closest to the music, "Not that I can see how you can fall asleep with that on," he notes.
         The mention of sleep brings to Jina's attention the needle prickling sensation in her foot. Absentmindedly she shifts her position a little to allow some blood to get over there. She's still going to pay for that when she stands up though, her foot will see to that. In an attempt to get her mind off of it, she looks up at Brown, saying, "Face it, Joe, these are what the parties are like. We party till we drop," only really half kidding when she says that. She taps him on the knee with her finger, distantly wishing the contact were longer. What is wrong with her tonight? Her head is all hazy, almost giddy, like she's taken someone else's medication. "It's what you've been missing all these years."
         He gives her a sly smile in response, like all the world is tangled up in that glance. "That so?" he asks, raising an eyebrow a little. "Then I guess I'll have to work harder to play catchup, it seems," his voice drawls and he casts his gaze out at the rest of the party again. "You'd think it'd be winding down now though, I mean . . . I think there's more people here than two hours ago." His voice, as far as she can tell, sounds honestly surprised. "When I came back in I half expected to see people just laid out on the floor, snoring and out cold."
         "A lot of people will probably be staying over tonight," Jina tells him, stating the obvious and not even in a clever fashion. Her brain just isn't working right, she keeps looking at him and all she sees is his face, he could be spitting out inane gibberish and it wouldn't matter. She has to keep wrenching herself back into the conversation and all she can think of to say are lame rejoinders, bits and pieces of sentences loosely sticking together in her head, not making any sense together, useless when pulled apart.
         "God I hope so . . ." Brown comments, ducking back a little as someone stumbles past him, waving his arms in the air in what might seem to be in time with the music but just looks like an attempt to swim and fly at the same time. "When I came in I went to hit the bathroom and some guy on the stairs gave me a hug and told me . . ." Brown makes such a face at the memory that Jina barely can suppress a laugh. His next words emerge from a slack, dopey face, the voice dulled and blunted, "That like, he loved me, man and that did he ever tell me how, like, lucky we all are to be, like, travelling on this big planet all full of love, man and he, like, wished he could thank every person in the world . . ." Brown trails off and makes another face, brushing what appears to be imaginary lint off his shoulder.
         "And who was he?" Jina feels like she's setting herself up for somebody's punchline.
         Brown just shrugs. "No clue. Never seen him before in my life. But he loved me, man," he drones in the mocking voice again, arching his back a little and stretching, the effort making him grunt his words out in spurts. "And isn't that all that matters?" he asks in a blandly optimistic voice. "I can go to sleep happy now."
         The second mention of sleep for some reason causes Jina to yawn, one of the kind that nearly makes your jaw hurt, that seems to drain every bit of energy from you. When her vision clears Brown is staring at her with a half smile crossing his face. "Someone needs to take a nap, it seems."
         Jina grins back and rubs the back of her head. "Someone's getting too comfortable, that's the problem." She lifts herself up a little and plants her other foot back on the floor, stomping it a little to force some feeling back into it. The sudden tingling surge into her foot doesn't wake her as much as she'd like. "I think I need to move around a bit," Jina notes to Brown, pressing her hands into the cushion in readiness to get up.
         Brown's hand on her shoulder gently stops her. "Now," he says to her, "you're just going to fall asleep standing up. That's going to solve nothing." He takes his hand from her shoulder, even as she has to resist the urge to grab it. But she does notice the expression on his face, like he had to fight to keep from resting it there longer. It's a struggle for both of them. Makes you wonder why they bother. Brown masks whatever emotions are grappling with him with a jokingly intimate tone of voice, "Back at the base, when we'd go out to bars late, you know weekend leave and stuff . . . we'd want to stay out as long as we could, right, because leave doesn't come round too often . . . so we'd have the bartender mix this drink up . . ." the snap of his fingers fights the music for a split second before the song takes the snap and bodyslams it to the floor, leaving nothing more than the feigned impression of a noise, "and just like that we'd be alert."
         Jina crosses her arms over her chest, giving Brown a wearily indulgent expression. Just seeing him so animated wakes her up just a little bit, reminds her that his feelings are still there, just locked away, the same as hers. And they can take those feelings out once in a while and look at them but for the most part they're just photographs slipped behind plastic in somebody's scrap book, rendered immobile and frozen, seconds caught as statues, set forever in memory but with the price of never being able to progress forwards or backwards again.
         "And what is this magical drink?"
         "Oh, that I can't tell you," Brown grins at her, "but in my brief tenure as bartender I can tell that all the stuff I need for it is back there . . ." he gives the milling crowd of random motion a sternly exaggerated disapproving glance, "and unless these human sponges sucked it all down, it should all still be there." He reaches down and pats her gently on the hand. "So you just wait right there and try not to conk out on me and I'll be right back . . ." and then he's gone, a wraith falling in and out of her life, not so much stepping into the crowd as sliding back into it, a ghost who's touch she can still feel on her hand. The jaded darkness of the room just swallows him up like he's striding into a bulbous mouth, the soundtrack of the room thudding behind him like one of those scenes in the old movies where the hero goes valiantly to make his last stand. Jina can't even say she watches him leave, because he's gone so fast. Like he's made of liquid. And maybe it's the effect of a few drinks and the long night and a creeping exhaustion but there's this sharp pressure inside of her to get up and follow him, like he'll step into the crowd and never come out again. Not just five years gone, but forever. And Jina knows that it's irrational, she knows that he'll be back but she can't help herself anyway. And even as she tries to forcibly cram her mind into other pursuits, tapping her foot to a song that she can only sense the bare bones of, a tiny corner of herself wonders if he's going to jump sideways, turn and vanish again this time. And even with the irrational thought running its course and fading like water evaporating on a hot day, somewhere deep inside Jina makes a silent promise to make sure he stays behind this time.
         Distantly playing with one of the silver rings on her fingers, mind and body not really connecting to each other, Jina decides that Brown definitely owes her for doing this to her tonight. Here she expected to take a dive into a simple party, and now he's making her turn it into a near examination of her wayward youth. Jina's used to introspection, to staring into the rushing river of your thoughts, snapping your hand in to pick out one of the more brightly colored ones, staring at it, weighing it and deciding if it's good enough to consider pondering. The whole process isn't something she's a stranger to, up until a few years ago she kept a diary almost religiously, not every night but at least once a week, maybe more. It used to be a fun game actually, like talking to yourself in a way that people wouldn't stare at you like you were crazy. And she'd come home and page through it until a blank page and maybe bite on the end of the pen to get her thoughts going and write it all down. Dates, parties, nights out on the town, she used to tell herself that she was keeping a record of events that she would love to read when she was older, maybe even show to her kids, show them what a nutty person Mom was when she was younger.
         She's not sure why she stopped, it was a gradual thing, like clinging to a rope dangling off the side of a cliff, even if you do hang on for dear life, your strength will fail you eventually and the slide will be inevitable. Like closing your eyes and trying to stand on one leg, when you start your leg is high in the air, almost level with your knee and you think the entire time that it's in the same place. Until you open your eyes. And you see that it's hovering maybe an inch off the ground. It was just like that. Jina found she had more fun reading the older entries than writing new ones, it wasn't that life had gotten more boring but that she had forgotten how to describe it properly anymore. Once in a while she tried again but the results always read like newspaper articles, just facts and observations, and those efforts always frustrated her. Even though she was the only person who ever read the damn thing, she wanted to look at her words and see flowing poetry, effortless grace. Jina's secret dream was that maybe when she was getting near the end of her life, a time so distant that it was almost impossible to fathom now, or morbidly, perhaps even after her death, someone would find her diary and publish it and everyone would read her words and marvel at the stark prose elegantly and eloquently detailing a life that wasn't special but mundane, nothing rife with celebrities or bold disclosures or titillating passages of frank sexuality. Just life, the kind of stuff every person sees when they look in their mirrors or step out their doors every single day. It was that elevation of the ordinary she wanted to do, where the events themselves weren't as important as the way they were transcribed. Science fiction never interested her, nor fantasy, not even biographies, all she ever wanted to read was something that took a functional ordinary sentence and polished it into something pristine and different. A whole book of sentences like that would have trapped her in her house for a week, as she sat there and poured over each sentence, almost rolling the words over her tongue like a fine fermented drink, reveling in the simple magic of description.
         Why she's thinking about all of this now, Jina doesn't understand. She's too tired to get up and dance but not tired enough where her mind can't continue whirling like a kite in the wind, wrenched from one idea to the other, tail whipping in the breeze even as onlookers squint up into the blazing sun and point, not sure what they're even trying to see. For some reason, Jina has the utterly crazy desire to get this entire night down on paper as soon as she gets home, to plop herself down in a chair, grab a pen or pencil or anything and just empty her mind of events and images like a bird regurgitating a meal for its young, somewhere along the way converting those fragmented half ideas into solid words, slapping them down on paper, a cook frying burgers in a dirty diner, throwing the patties down and squeezing them free of all the grease and fat, until all you have left is what you want to see, to read. When you eliminate the unnecessary what you have left has to be important. Or it shouldn't be there at all. Jina stares out into the foaming crowd and every face is a story, every point of view an epic, focus the spotlight on one and you're casting a hundred more into dense shadows. A smile keeps trying to burst free from her lips, it's a mad feeling she's experiencing right now but at the same time she forgot how great it felt. Like an addict waking up from a coma and realizing just how great something as patently sublime as the sun can feel streaming down onto your face. You don't have to do anything to sense it, you just have to want it.
         And it's been a long time. Jina once toyed with the notion of trying to write some version of events down after the incident at the restaurant, Lena even suggested it to her as a way of getting through it. And Jina had counted herself lucky that she liked writing, because in her mind it gave her a way to get through any problem, any situation. Whatever happened to her, no matter how horrible, she figured simply getting it down on paper would make it more real, would help her come to grips with it and ground it in something palpable. But when she finally sat herself down, when she finally felt herself ready to write about it, when Jina felt she could face it head-on without sensing a tremor in her hands, for the first time in her life she discovered what writer's block was. It wasn't that she couldn't remember any of it, the images were firmly ensnared in her head, all the distance of time had done was pull back the camera of her memory until it was like she was sitting in the audience watching some perverse play, getting that tightening sense of anticipation in her stomach that you get during the horror movies when the music creaks and you know the killer is going to jump out of the darkest corner when you least expect it. Blink. There goes the first one. Blink. There they all go. Blink. Blink. Blink. And the words and the facts and the images and the memories just didn't make any sense, every time she'd write a few words down she'd stop and stare at them before angrily scribbling it out with her pen, until her entire paper appeared to be a homage to the graffiti artists of the highway bridges and the subway stations. The words wouldn't fit, she had felt like one of those monkeys trying to fit the pegs in the holes, and she'd find a circular one to go in the circular space but when she went to jam it in she found it was the wrong size. Or the corners didn't meet in the right places. No words felt right, eventually it felt like she was just performing some exercise where you brainstorm all the words and phrases that have a meaning close to your target, without actually saying what the target was. And eventually, after about a week of gritting her teeth and flinging crumpled up paper across the room at the garbage can in her best impression of those writers in the old black and white noir movies, Jina abandoned the project. There seemed to be no way to describe what had happened, Jina had conceded to Lena one night after she had nearly snapped a pencil in half, it was all in her head but the best she come up with were only shadows and shades, not the real thing. So she had let it go, secretly relieved that she wouldn't be torturing herself in that fashion anymore, but she did keep one chewed up paper, with so many eraser marks that in some places she had worn holes in it, just to remind herself that she had tried. And maybe if she kept moving forward, glancing back every once in a while to see the event, maybe one day it would be far away where she could see it all clearly and know what to say. Right now she was too close and it was all still blurred. Time seems to be the only thing where events become sharper the farther you move away from them.
         ". . . this is the slow sick sucking part of me . . ."
         Solid shadows are capering in her vision, looking down at the floor the edges of the world are curved into a fishbowl, taking familiar faces and warping them. Somewhere a single strobe light keeps blinking on and off with near fanatical determination, not in time with the music or anything, just following it's own beat, rendering the entire room like some stop motion animation cartoon, everyone freezing after every moment waiting to be moved a fraction of an inch, waiting in the space between moments to live again. For some reason she wishes she could recognize the song that's playing, because it might be important, sometimes she thinks Will puts these songs on for a purpose, like he's encoding his thoughts into the lyrics and trying to tell them things. Which is a silly thought, since she knows Will has either two categories of songs, ones that he likes and ones that he thinks are good fast, party songs. All the other ones people make him put on, just before she was standing near the bar and someone came running up to him waving some CD, begging him to let them put it on. And like some indulgent parent he just rolled his eyes and nodded and the next thing they knew some godawful refugee from the eighties was blaring out at them. It barely lasted to the first chorus before someone did the sensible thing and cut it off.
         They're still on the same song so it can't have been too long since Brown left to head to the bar. Jina's wondering for what she hopes is no more than the second time where he is when someone plops themselves down next to her the couch, bouncing a little as they hit the cushion. Jina instinctively shifts her weight, bouncing a little herself in the process. Her head snaps up, even as the person across from her wavers into focus. Even so it takes a few eyeblinks before the pictures resolves itself into something coherent. Is she that bad? God, she hopes not.
"Fancy meeting you here," Lena says to her, and even though her voice has been buried under layers of ambient sound, the kidding tone cuts through to her.
         "Yeah, imagine that," Jina grins back to her friend. "You think we knew each other or something," which is a feeble joke but it's pretty standard that you have to always use the same stock jokes with your friends. It's like tradition.
         The other tradition of course is that you have to find the same stock jokes just as funny as they were the first time you told them and Lena complies marvelously, giving a silent sort of laugh even as she leans back onto the couch, her head gently resting on the back cushion. Lena's eyes are half closed but Jina can tell that her friend is very much alert, her eyes are bright but at the same time she seems oddly drained. Like getting your second wind only to find that you've already used it up. Still you go through the motions anyway.
         "You'd think," Lena admits, crossing her arms over her chest, crossing her feet at the ankles and lifting them into the air just a little bit, as if she's inspecting them to make sure they're both attached. Like they might get up and leave if she's not paying attention. After a second of staring at the ceiling, Lena turns her head to face Jina and says, "Worn out already? I figured this would be the last place I'd find you."
         Jina sits up straight her hands working the air, "Geez, can't a girl sit down to catch her breath a minute, or do you all expect me to party until I drop dead?"
         "Well you are the standard we strive to uphold," Lena notes without looking directly at her. A smile is struggling not to form on her face, but she's failing miserably. "If you can't manage tonight, what hope is there for the rest of us?"
         "Oh be quiet," Jina says with mock peevishness. "Now you sound like Joe."
         There's the barest twinkle in Lena's eyes. "And here I was thinking I sounded more like Brian. Must be just the type of man you go for. Or is it the sarcasm that turns you on?"
         "Shut up you," Jina darts back with little real animosity.
         "Oh I see," Lena retorts, in a tone of forced exasperation, "when they do it, it's something attractive and sexy but when I do it, it's just annoying. Is that how it goes?" There's a challenging charm to her voice that Jina can't quite isolate.
         "Well, you know," Jina replies, playing along, "as a young woman I have certain needs, needs which are impossible, for you as a fellow young woman to fulfill for me . . ."
         "I think it's just a double standard," Lena sniffs, crossing her arms and sitting up straight on the couch, looming over Jina a little bit in her height. "And I'm disappointed that you would go along with it. I really am."
         Jina can't hold it in anymore and she bends forward to expel the laughter that's been building up in her chest. She's always hated holding something like that back and her friends have always known there. Many times Brian would whisper something funny during just before an utterly quiet portion of the serious dramatic movie they'd be watching and she'd have to bite her lip and sometimes hold her side, as if she might explode just from the sheer forces at work inside. She didn't always succeed either, as the many looks she got from people in the surroundings audience, both in the movie and afterwards informed her. Still laughter like that is the closest anyone will ever come to a pleasant seizure, you shake and quiver and sometimes feel tired and out of breath at the end, but the final result is that you feel good about it.
         "God, who the hell wound you up tonight?" Jina asks her friend, resting her head on her palm and staring up at Lena. She peers at her with a cockeyed sort of squint. "You've been drinking, haven't you?"
         "What?" Lena eyes go wide. "No, I haven't . . ." and when Jina just continues to stare at her with the same gaze, "I swear to God I haven't," she laughs.
         "And why should I believe you?" Jina replies in her best interrogation voice, in what she thinks sounds like the way the police talk on all those television shows. Of course the way her hearing and mind are working at this moment, she could do a perfect impersonation of just about anything.
         "Well unless they stuck a bar outside, I haven't had anything," Lena counters and there's the first hint of this conversation being serious, even if it's only a brief glimpse of someone shiny glinting in her voice. All in the angles, they say. That's the trick to really knowing someone, when you can hear what they're saying but analyzing the soft spaces in between their sentences. Anyone can understand a phrase taken a face value but to look deeper requires you to sometimes see things that people will claim just aren't there. Jina's getting that feeling now, but with the way her mind is moving, she's not sure how much she can trust those instincts.
         "Oh so that's where you were," Jina observes, steering the conversation back into the more jocular form of before. "I had been wondering where the hell you went all of a sudden."
         "Liar," Lena retorts. "You were just happy to have the whole room to yourself, admit it." Seemingly absentmindedly she rubs her upper arms, like a draft just flitted through their path and came to rest right on top of her.
         On an impulse that Jina couldn't explain even if she wanted to, she darts her hand out and rests it on Lena's arm. She can feel the Braille pattern of goosebumps right under her tentative fingertips. As well as the chill. "Damn," she exclaims even as she's drawing her hand back at Lena's sharp surprised glance, "you're freezing. How the hell long were you out there?"
         "Long enough apparently," Lena notes a bit evasively. For Jina this is something that doesn't sit right with her, a factor is missing her that she's not seeing. Unfortunately Jina's no scientist and no detective, turning facts around and trying to figure out which ways they can stick together isn't her forte. It's not that she's blind to the obvious, but she's bad at guessing. Her ideas of the plausible tend not to jibe with actual reality, for what that's worth.
         The one good thing is that it gives her a chance to be blunt, since she can always claim that she's a bit dense and get away with it. Most of the time. "You weren't out there alone the entire time, weren't you?" she finds herself asking, injecting her voice with just the right amount of vapidity to make it more palatable to the listener.
         "Hm, what . . ." for a second Lena seems someplace very far away. Then she rouses herself from whatever distant daze she was sinking into and focuses on Jina. "No. No I wasn't." She pauses then and Jina decides she'll a moment to see if Lena is going to be forthcoming with more details before she starts to ask more questions. All in the name of friendship of course, it has nothing to do with her being nosy at all. Not one bit. "Tristian was out there too," and she says it in a quiet sort of way, like she hopes that maybe for that one second Jina won't be listening and that will end the discussion right there.
         It doesn't of course. But that's the risk you take when you admit such things. The mention of the name sets off bells in Jina's head, not alarm bells but definitely alerting that something might have just happened here. But honestly Jina really doesn't know what to think, Lena's being so cagey that she has no choice but to suspect something. Why should she suspect anything though. And what would she even suspect. Alcohol is turning her brain into a soft cotton carpet, any time she tries to take a step toward a thought, her feet just sink right down into it and she can't move. It's comfortable but stifling at the same time.
         "Oh . . . Tristian," Jina notes, her voice stretching the words out just a little. Lena gives her a look but says nothing else, her lips set in such a way that says she's not going to volunteer anymore information. "You two must have been out there a while."
         "Maybe," Lena says slowly. "I don't know, I wasn't looking at my watch." Instantly she realizes the possible implications of what she just said and matches Jina's sly smile with an irritated glare. "Hey, stop looking at me like that . . ."
         "Like what?" Jina asks, the epitome of innocence, while continuing to stare at Lena in the exact same fashion. "Why, am I making you nervous?"
         "Nervous? No, you're not making me nervous, you're just . . ." she stops and glares at Jina again, narrowing her eyes a little and meeting her stare for a few seconds before glancing away and laughing. "Stop that. Listen, nothing happened out there, okay?"
         "Who said anything happened out there. I didn't say anything happened," Jina shrugs, flopping back onto the back of the couch. "You're the one telling me nothing happened."
         "Well, nothing happened so whatever picture you've got in your head, just get rid of it, okay?"
         "Whatever you say, Lena," comes the almost bored reply.
         "I'm serious," Lena states, her hands moving in time with her words for added emphasis. Like that makes any difference to Jina. "We just talked for a while and then I came in. That was it."
         "You've getting awfully excited about a whole lot of nothing, my friend," Jina murmurs demurely, her hands folded neatly across her stomach. "Maybe you really do need a drink."
         "Oh sure, you'd like that," Lena responds. "Get Lena drunk and then she'll just spill everything, right?"
         "Why should I want you to spill anything," Jina notes calmly, a pleasantly light feeling coming over her, like the one cool patch of air in the room came to suddenly rest on her. "Like you said, nothing happened. There shouldn't be anything for you to spill. Right?"
         "That's right," Lena agrees too quickly. But her eyes are looking all around the room, Jina can tell that much even without directly looking at her. Just be seeing which way her head is facing, Jina knows where she's looking.
         "You can stop watching the door, he hasn't come back in yet," Jina says without looking up. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Lena glance at her and then shake her head in a frustrated motion.
         "I wasn't watching the door," Lena protests, but even as she's saying that there's no conviction in her voice. Whatever happened out there is still burning freshly in her mind, a branded series of embers sputtering and flaring. And she wants to see Tristian and see if the same embers are there in his eyes, because then she'll know that whatever happened out there, the thing she keeps denying to Jina, that it really did happen and it wasn't that she fell asleep in the cold and had some weird dream. It was real. Lena just wants some confirmation. Jina can sympathize with that, she's been there before. Maybe she's even been there tonight. Only time and distance will tell her that one for sure.
         The two of them sit there for a moment, not saying anything and then almost like they're synchronized, both of them turn their heads to look right at the other, and Jina can see in her friend's eyes that something is pushing against the surface of her brain, the eyes don't lie. Like a dam wanting to burst, she's holding it in but she really wants to tell someone, to talk to someone. And maybe this is the wrong place for it and maybe right now Jina really isn't the best confidante but either way it'll come out eventually. Probably take some time though, Lena is far more stubborn than she'll ever be. She's always has been, but then she's had more reason to be in her life.
         Jina gives Lena her sweetest smile. "If you promise to tell me later then I won't bug you again."
         She doesn't actually expect that to work, honestly she expects Lena to point that they had decided just moments ago that nothing had happened. And for a brief second it appears that the conversation is going to go that way, which doesn't bother Jina at all really, she's only playing around. She pretty much can guess anyway, but that's not the point. Screwing with Lena's privacy isn't the point, she would have been able to tell if Lena really didn't want to tell her, they've been down that road before and there's a certain tone in her voice, a hardening, a steely glint in her eyes, a set stance in her words. None of those are here right now.
         In fact, Lena just looks down briefly at her entwined hands in her lap and then back up again. A smile twitches at the corner of her mouth and her lips barely seem to move as she says, "I'll tell you later."
         "Oh! Now we're getting somewhere," Jina exclaims, clapping her hands a little. "I knew it!"
         "No, hey, let's not go and get carried away," Lena replies, running a hand through her hair and tucking it back behind her ear, looking away and down until her voice is almost muffled by the dense swirling madness of the room. "I mean, it really . . ." and her face is scrunched up, almost confused, like someone just took her memories and substituted a strange gasping sort of hole, "I really don't know what . . ."
         "You know I've had better luck getting across a goddamn mindfield?" Brown's voice suddenly barks out, somehow overriding the soup of sound around them, landing on them like a bucket of water thrown in their faces. Lena's eyes, which were starting to face Jina, snap around and her mouth closes like someone sewed magnets into her lips. Inwardly, Jina fumes a bit, cursing Brown's sense of timing, perhaps for the first time tonight feeling that she'd rather not have him around. Still, her reaction surprises her, Lena will no doubt tell her what she was going to say right now after the party, but Jina felt she was on the front of something big and important for her friend. And as weird as it seems, she's frustrated because she can't share in it.
         Ah well, she figures. No point blaming everybody for it, she could just as easily blame Lena for being so damn specious about it while at the same time blaming herself for giving her friend a rather unnecessary third degree. Jina's not sure what came over her with that, it was all in good fun but at the same time she does feel a smidgen of guilt festering inside her chest. Like she was prying into something still new and raw, something that Lena hasn't even been able to assimilate yet. And here she is dragging it all up and making her try to explain something that maybe she doesn't even understand yet. Jina mentally kicks herself for being so impetuous. She's not sure why Lena puts up with her sometimes but she silently vows to show a little more patience, or at the very least understanding. But for now there's nothing she can do about any of it. Might as well get philosophical about the whole situation.
         ". . . but anyone who ever had a heart, they wouldn't turn around and break out and anyone who ever played a part, they wouldn't turn around and hate it . . ."
         Brown almost stalks toward the two of them, but his face is reasonably triumphant, like he's just managed to score a harsh victory against an implacable foe. A glass in his hand catches the light around the rim, a moody reflection of the dark liquid sloshing around within. He crosses the last few steps to her and says, "I hope you appreciate all the effort I go through for you. I almost had to physically pick people up and move them to get over to the goddamn bar."
         "Hey, wait a minute, you were the one who insisted on getting one for me," Jina points out, laughing as she does so.
         Brown blinks as if that fact has just occurred to him. "Dammit," he whispers to himself "she's right." Then after a moment's intense reflection, or so it seems, he just shrugs and murmurs, "Oh well." Holding the glass out toward her, he presents it with a deep bow, his head pointing towards the carpeting. "Point taken, my lady. I hope this shall go a ways toward redeeming myself in your eyes."
         She's taking it from him, her fingers brushing against the collected coolness of his hand, her skin nearly burning in comparison, when Brown starts to stand back up and his eyes flicker over to her right.
         "Oh," he says, standing up straight suddenly and taking a step over to his left. "Hey there, Lena, God I'm sorry I didn't even see you sitting there."
         "No problem," Lena replies, giving him a benevolent smile apparently to show no hard feelings at the social gaffe. She's tucked her legs underneath herself on the couch, which Jina would do herself if there was room. People keep dodging around her feet, with Brown standing there now it's not so bad, but she keeps getting this weird idea that some drunken party-goer will stagger past, trip over her legs and break their neck. But getting her legs out of the way isn't really what she wants to do, she's getting tired of sitting on the couch now and she's feeling cramped. She needs to get up and move around a bit.
         "No . . . no, it's not okay," Brown states, waving his hands like an overexcited schoolkid. Jina can't tell how much of that stuff he does naturally and how much simply for effect. "Here I acting as Jina's errand boy . . ."
         "Wait a minute, you went for-" Jina starts to say, but even before Brown waves a hand to cut her off, she knows it's a losing battle. Lena gives her a knowing glance, shaking her head a little.
         ". . . and yet I've got nothing for you. We have to fix that right now," Brown says, crossing his arms over his chest. Then his arms uncross like they were made of some slippery liquid and his hands dig into his pockets. "So . . . want anything?"
         "Ah, well . . ." Lena seems hesitant for a second, running a hand over the top of her hair, smoothening down the few strands that keep trying to stand erect. A bit nervously, she glances at Jina. "Did you want to leave any time soon?"
         "Soon?" Jina ponders. "No, I guess not," she answers after a moment, chewing her lip in thought.
         "Because I won't have anything if we're leaving soon," Lena responds, her sentence coming on the heels of Jina's words, Lena's speaking much faster than she normally does. Jina almost expects to see her friend's hands shaking. "You know, because I'm driving and everything."
         "Hell, go right ahead, worst comes to worst we wind up staying over here until we're all sobered up," Jina replies, the words sliding across her tongue like something slick and wet. She's not sure how garbled her speech is sounding, everything you say always sounds right until you hear a tape of it and realize just how screwed up your voice is. Makes you wonder how much you can trust what you hear.
         Brown's been watching the back and forth conversation like it was a tennis match that would decide the fate of the world. His eyes are bright and he seems poised on the balls of his feet, ready to leap into action. "Keep in mind I could always drive if you both don't feel up to it . . . I'm just fine," he offers, and then crouches down closer to them, his face turning deadly serious and his voice falling down into a whisper, "and honestly, I'd rather not go in the car with Madman Tristian again . . ." he look at both of them, eyes travelling from one to the other, lingering for perhaps a few seconds on Jina, "don't let his staid outward personality fool you, girls, when he gets behind the wheel, he's a demon on the road." Jina sees Lena out of the corner of her eye almost flush and a wispy smile coats her face, as if she has some idea of what Brown is talking about. Curiosity is really burning into Jina now, it's going to take every bit of effort she has to avoid bringing up the subject before Lena does. She hopes Lena is feeling talkative on the way home. Maybe a drink will help ease her into it. Though Jina thinks that it's a pretty conniving way to get into your friend's head. Get her drunk, oh yeah, that's the appropriate response.
         "So," Brown finishes, slapping his hands on his thighs and straightening back up into a standing position, "are you in?"
         Lena looks down, considering her options for a second. Finally she glances back over at Jina. "We really aren't leaving for a while?"
         She gently pats her friend on the arm, "Like Joe said, we can figure something out if you don't feel up to it. Don't box yourself into a corner for my sake."
         Brown sniffs and jokingly rubs his eye. "That . . . that was so touching . . . I'm moved. I really am."
         "Shut up you," Jina laughs, flashing him a look that generally drives most guys to silence. Brown just bottles the look and sends it right back to her warped and refracted, cut from the same glass as a funhouse mirror, all impossible angles and views. The original picture is familiar to you but the end result is still utterly unrecognizable. Despite herself, she finds herself grinning at him. And she was afraid what happened outside would screw up any chance for a friendship between them. Inwardly, she's glad that Brown is such a great guy, even as she feels the same pangs from before. Five years gone, she reminds herself, resisting the urge to cross her arms and slump back onto the couch in some strange form of protest.
         "I think I'm going to go for it," Lena breaks in, folding her hands between her knees and leaning forward. Her eyes seem to be shining in the fractured brightness of the crowded room. Her skin seems to be glowing a little, reminding Jina of just how damn hot it's been getting all the while. "Because I really need a drink," and the bells go off in Jina's head yet again. Barely, she stops herself from saying something about it. Brown, to his credit, says nothing, just raises an eyebrow briefly. Jina deliberately doesn't meet his gaze, knowing that there would be question there and not wanting to have to risk inadvertently answering it.
         Jina's head feels too big for her body and the need to just babble away keeps bubbling up inside of her. She really has to go take a walk or something or it'll be a race to see if she embarrasses herself or someone she knows first. Well, there's one easy way to fix that, she notes silently, tensing her hands on the cushions and arranging her feet on the floor.
         "Sounds good to me," Brown is saying cheerfully, "and what might I be getting-"
         "I'll get it," Jina announces suddenly, almost leaping to her feet in her haste to cut off Brown. She knows she has to work fast, or Brown'll fast talk his way back to getting the drink for Lena, his words are painless barbs that you don't know are inside you until you realize how much sense even his most pointless statements are making. That's his gift, Jina remembers that from high school, Brown's big trick was to say totally random things and keep changing the subject so fast that after a few minutes you didn't know if you were coming or going conversationally, and from there it was almost too easy to steer things the way he wanted them to go. It's not something she wants to happen to her, Jina's sure of that.
         ". . . and there's nothing to hold onto when gravity betrays you, when every kiss enslaves you . . ."
         Without hesitating, she grabs Brown by the arms and gently guides him past her, toward the couch. "You're been on your feet all night . . . let me get something for you guys . . . here hold this for me," she asks him sweetly, pressing her untouched glass into his unresisting hand and giving him a little shove that sends him plopping down onto the couch. He lands on the cushion with an effortless grace like it was what he meant to do, smartly crossing one leg over the other with the momentum he's already garnered, ending with his elbow braced on the arm of the couch.
         "You were saying?" he asks after a moment, giving her a quizzical look, blinking a little. He and Lena exchange what the hell is she doing glances but Jina doesn't much care. The blood flowing back down into her legs is one of the more exquisite sensation she's felt in her entire life, even if the blood rushing back into her head renders the room as part of some insane carousel, like when you ride the spinning horses and tip your head back to stare at the sky and it all just whirls in a lopsided fashion. To some degree, it's utterly exhilarating, on the other hand it makes her want to reach for the aspirin.
         "You kids just sit right there, I'll be right back," Jina cautions, showing them her palms like she's lining them up for a family portrait. Then, before they can think of some reason to protest further, she's spinning on her heel and heading toward the party, slipping easy between people who probably think she's part of this really weird dream they're having, where they're stuck at this looming, endless party, where the ceiling has nearly become stars and a vault as large as the sky itself, where it's not just the world but the entire Universe peeking in through the windows, tapping gently to be let in but nobody hears the murmurs over the stifling roar of life itself. Caught in a box as big as the earth, you start to feel the cramping of your muscles and the desire to see everything, not just experience life within your small square foot. Even as you know that one day isn't enough, one night, one lifetime.
         Jina's thinking about her friend. Lena's face hovers in the back of her head, a disembodied sign straight from the Tower of London, even as Jina navigates her way like one of the old explorers trying to figure out how to get to the Orient by going the longest way possible. Oops, who put that darn continent there? She slips around a land mass of her own, making a face at the unwashed stench of the moderately large person she has to maneuver around, all drooping jowls and wrinkled clothing. They might be singing the words to the song screaming at them from the stereo or debating the relative merits of a free trade agreement with neighboring foreign countries, all the sound reaches her ears as the same sludgy morass, thick fog condensing around her head, stinking of sweat and salt and hormones. Still, even as it repulses her, she can feel her pulse quickening. Distantly she wonders what happened to Brian but she knows she'll run into him sooner or later and chances are his one track mind will still be right where she left it.
         For some reason she's vaguely happy for Lena and not really sure why. Something happened out there with Tristian, Jina is as sure of that as she's sure of anything else. But she can't imagine what transpired, the fact that Tristian and Lena were even talking to each other for any extended length of time amazes her even as she starts to see it as part of an inevitable progression of events, perhaps delayed a few months bey events under no one's control but inevitable nevertheless. But something in Lena's face keeps hinting at her that it was something good, Lena has a vaguely excited look in her eyes, and a coiled tension that's nearly heartwarming. And yet she seems so confused, deeply puzzled, caught pondering the implications of an event that hasn't fully finished with her yet. The burning desire to know is one of those factors that drove Jina to enter into this self imposed mission, she was just going to keep bugging Lena until one of them got mad at the other and that's not how she wants to remember this night. Better to keep herself distracted than provoke hard feelings for really no good reason.
         And yet Jina is tentatively excited for Lena. She's always felt guilty that she's had much better luck with men than Lena has had. The time with Rich back in high school was really the last time someone had treated her less than decent, she's had flings and actual boyfriends and friends who fell somewhere in between but all of them were fairly good guys to some degree or another. Lena's never had that kind of luck though, ever since Jina's known her she's been through several attempted relationships, most of which went well for a while and then always seemed to fall apart, for various reasons that had no common thread. Unfortunately Lena had this habit of throwing her heart into such matters and the aftermath would inevitably leave her heart bruised and battered, Lena would always do her best not to mope around and feel sorry for herself but she always tended to blame herself, Jina could always tell. It was in the way she stared at herself in the mirror, the seemingly innocent verbal jabs she took at herself, the way her voice got distant when discussing certain subjects.
         Tristian though. Tristian had looked so promising back then, Jina had never liked playing matchmaker but she told herself that introducing two of your mutual friends to each other didn't count as matchmaking, right? It had seemed perfect on paper, Jina wouldn't go as far to say that the two of them were made for each other, but they had a hell of a lot more in common than anybody but her had really considered and she had a feeling that at the very least the two of them would hit it off and become friends. That was the plan at least. Jina had been all ready to pat herself on the back and take all the credit, but as it turned out, it never quite worked out that way. Tristian disappearing suddenly hadn't helped any. It had been one of the strangest days in her life, like some kind of dream when everyone in the world vanishes but you. Nobody knew where the hell he had gone. And Jina spent a week or so in a quietly frantic search for him, when just as suddenly as he had disappeared, he reappeared. Jina visited him a few times after he had come back and was stuck by the subtle and oddly profound differences in his manner. He had seemed more pensive than ever, occasionally fidgeting with his hands like he should have been holding something, constantly glancing out at the window as if he was expecting more company to come in through that way. And then there was the odd flashlight-type object that was an almost constant fixture at his belt. None of them could have ever guessed the reasons behind it. Saving the Universe from an invasion, he told them later, when it had all come down and fragmented into pieces, shattered glass sparkling on a dark carpet, waiting for someone to come and sweep it up. Just the memory made Jina's mind want to quiver and shrink away from the foreign thought like was a leper colony. Just cordon it off and never go near it.
         Eventually they had banded together and gotten him to come out with them. For his own good they had told him, in no uncertain terms. Jina remembers watching him get up from his chair to go with them and how stiff his movements had been, like he had grown old overnight. The day before, he had been shot in three places, they had discovered later. But he had gone anyway, because they had wanted him to go. And Jina had held her breath, not expecting anything resembling showers of sparks, but hoping that Tristian would act more like his old self, the man that could waver from odd eccentricities, like a body falling out of orbit, to passive seriousness. The man who had been increasingly become a shared memory, ghostly, beckoning for help silently while trapped halfway in a wall, unable to move in either direction.
         He hadn't made any miraculous transformation, but he was polite enough, mostly keeping to himself and occasionally joining in spirited conversation, showing that he could still trade conversation blows with the best of them, when his heart was in it. Which it wasn't often. His eyes kept flickering back to Lena though, maybe because she was the least familiar person there or maybe for some other reason. But Jina had noticed it, and she had to hide a small grin everytime she caught Tristian staring at Lena and then flicking his gaze away before she looked back at him. How adults play hide and seek. And on the way home when Lena had casually asked her who the newcomer was, you know, just out of curiosity, Jina had felt a small squeezing sensation of triumph.
         It all went to pot of course, eventually. Jina could tell that Tristian was interested but for some reason he could never formulate the desire to take it any further than that, which had been endlessly frustrating for her. His manner was so distant that she assumed if anybody was honestly flirting with him, he'd probably just stare at them like they were trying to teach him a new sort of dance that you could only do if you had six arms and ten legs. And Jina had suspected that Lena was somewhat interested as well, even though she was less obvious than Tristian was and always denied it for some reason whenever Jina brought the subject up. Some nights, though, some nights Jina was almost sure that they both were flirting with each other and she felt a tiny drop of hope flutter through her, a bird beating against the bars of her ribcage, its singing the pulse of blood in her veins. It all meant a lot to her for some reason and for months Jina wondered why she was so adamant about the whole situation. They were both good people who deserved better, she decided eventually, after spending an inordinate amount of time debating it in her head. Both of them were her friends and no matter how tangled their lives were, Jina felt that there had to be some place where they might connect and knot together. And it might not be tight or very functional and you might have to constantly adjust it, but it was something. That's what counted most to Jina. She hated seeing people alone. Especially people who didn't want to be alone. And neither of them, regardless of whatever feeble protests they might engender, wanted it to be that way. As much as they sometimes tried to shelter themselves apart, blending into shadowed corners and patterned furniture, the two of them needed people. Their protests were nothing more than soaked paper laying heavily on parched skin, blocking out the world and leaving them stiff and uncomfortable. The facade being even worse than the truth.
         Eventually Lena had gotten tired of Tristian's lack of response and convinced herself that he just wasn't interested, even though all the evidence suggested exactly the opposite. But Tristian just couldn't seem to rouse himself from whatever partial coma life had stuck him into and that was disappointing to Jina. But she was disappointed in herself as well, Tristian had been there for her so many times, she had hoped that she could repay him just a little bit. But, no, as usual he refused to play along, even when the end result would have worked in his favor. He just kept running down the same treadmill, until the night when Lena had joined them with her boyfriend, looking for all the world like she had discovered something magical and wonderful. Jina could almost hear the slamming of doors in Tristian's mind that night, sealing off those emotions and feelings that had to do with the whole situation. The Tristian that had left them later was little more than a walking robot, skin stretched tightly over a metal torso, body held rigid and starched, each word chosen carefully so to not reveal anything at all going on within the positronic head. A face of contrived blandness designed to hide what the voice wouldn't reveal. Outwardly Tristian had tried to suppress his feelings, and eventually managed to do it inwardly as well. And Jina had stood there and watched him crumpling like a used up piece of paper. Her heart had gone out to him then, but in the end he refused to help himself and there was nothing she could do for him. It made her feel useless and if there was any feeling she hated in the world more than anything else, it was that helplessly impotent sensation. Watching the piano crash down on someone's head from across the street, with not even any time to scream a warning. Just that second of endlessly frozen slow time, where the inevitable perches on your shoulder and cackles madly in your ear, reminding you that some things you'll never have control over.
         Jina doesn't so much force her way through the crowd as find the small gaps and spaces that always seem to exist whenever that many people cluster together. Like pockets of air trapped underwater. For some reason she thinks she can even feel a slight temperature change in those spaces, for the briefest of moments, like they're heating the air just by their presence, keeping it from freezing solid. Her perceptions are still a bit lopsided, and sometimes the room doesn't quite move with her when she takes a step, but definitely isn't the first time she's experienced this and she knows to handle it. Just stop and wait and catch your breath when it gets too bad. It'll pass eventually. Maybe that's the trick to facing everything life throws at you, maybe the right thing to do isn't to push on forward all the time, head down into the blizzard, figuring safety will lie in the next step, when sometimes it's the crevice you don't see coming and once you've passed that moment of insidious gravity, your foot spreading empty air and nowhere to go but down, there's nothing you can do to reverse it. Sometimes you might just have to hunker down in the snow, burying yourself and praying that it'll all go away soon, that the air will clear.
         Perhaps that was their mistake with Tristian. They were so eager to search for some kind of rational explanation, never suspecting that the answer would be of a kind of rationality they weren't prepared for, that in the end maybe they pushed too hard and everyone wound up getting hurt.
         The bar's in sight now, far more crowded than when they were there chatting. That period is a lifetime ago, in another party, it seems. The dynamics of everything shift so quickly, you blink and the entire world runs rings and refocuses, even as you try and find the center. People are consuming what they can now, for opposing reasons. Some are trying to stay awake, to push the end forward just a few more hours, even at the cost of not remembering those few extra hours. Inside they'll know they experienced them and for the moment that's all that matters. Just the slurred timelessness of the moment. But the other half is trying to bring it all to a close, drugging themselves into stupor, trying to stave off the inevitable hangover of the next morning. Jina's heard that if you wake up still drunk it's not so bad, you just sober up and move on. She's not sure she agrees with that, to get to that point would require an amount of alcohol that's almost scary. For a person like that, the only hangover they would ever get would be death. Which is a silly thought and it does give her an involuntary giggle. That's how she knows how late it is, for some reason when you pass a certain number of hours of continuous wakefulness, just about everything becomes funny in one way or another.
         Squeezing her way with an inaudible "excuse me" past two people who barely even register her existence, Jina nearly fall right into the bar, putting her hands out at the last second to brace herself. The wood is oddly warm and rough under her palms, but the abrasive sensation makes her a little more alert. Voices babble around her like leaves making their final autumn descent from the trees, fragments landing on her ears enough that she knows that someone is speaking but what they might be discussing she hasn't the faintest idea. People are nearly two deep, down the line of the bar, the inner layer holding the coveted stools, while the other layer plays the mingling game, talking and laughing even as they're eyeing the chairs for someone foolish enough to give up their seat. It's a fun little game to watch. Too bad she doesn't have time for more.
         Jina's fortunately not a big person so she easily can fit in between two stools stuffed on either side with oblivious drinkers. No doubt she could probably take their wallets if she was so inclined, since neither is facing her. The sickly sweet odor of liquor and sweat wraps itself around her face and she forces herself to take shallow breaths. There was a reason she never normally hung around the bar area at these parties. She looks around for someone that can get her something, but the only person she notices is all the way down on the far end, a distance that might as well be the length of the Titanic for all the good it does her. And that person, who she can't even recognize because the lighting down there is so bad, has their hands utterly full with the sheer amount of people bunched around him. Or her. The darkness might as well be the costume in a masquerade ball, obscuring all but the broadest features.
         While she's looking that way, out of the corner of her eye the totally sober part of her brain registers a movement behind the bar, someone popping up like a rabbit out of its hole. But the sober part isn't talking to the rest of her brain and a second or so later when the rest of her makes the connection of movement and actual person, it's a dulled surprise to her mind, and she has the unique sensation of part of her brain going "ah!" while the other part just chuckles condescendingly, saying, "Told ya so."
         "So what I can get . . . oh . . ." the person across from her stops in midsentence and Jina is wondering why during the entire time it takes for her to shift her vision right and refocus. Then she realizes why and has to fight off a wave of bristling irritation.
         "Um," Carl says again, apparently losing his ability to speech clearly. His hands are on the bar, fidgeting a little in a casually nervous fashion, but immediately after he puts them both in his pockets. "Ah, hello again."
         "Hello," Jina says with a bit of obtuse coldness to her voice. The one thing she never liked about drinking was the way it made all of your emotions skip that subconscious step in your brain where you consider what you want to say and see whether it's a good idea to actually say such a thing or not. It takes a vacation at times like this and generally that leads to Jina saying a lot of things that even she would consider blunt. Even when she's trying to tightly control herself, it's a herd of cattle straining against a rotted fence, eventually some are going to burst free, no matter how fast you run up and down with a hammer and nails, fixing as you go. "So this is where you ended up."
         For a second a cross between fear and outright anxiety filters through Carl's eyes, only to be replaced by the same oddly low key confidence she remembers from before. "That's right," he replies, leaning one elbow on the bar like he's in some movie. "Someone had to do it," he shrugs, as if dismissing efforts that really weren't anything special to begin with.
         "That's just lovely, I'm happy for you," Jina responds, choosing her tone carefully, coating it with a transparent sincerity so as not to mask the core of sarcasm lurking beneath. Part of her wants Carl to be very uncomfortable in this conversation but he's not going along with it at all. Except for that brief burst right at the beginning, it's as if this is the first time he's run into her.
         "So what can I get you?" he asks her, bending down and moving his hands. Jina hears the deadened clink of glass on glass. "We've got all sorts of stuff still down here, Will must have taken a loan out to get all this."
         "Well it works out for him," Jina notes, not knowing even why she's bothering to say anything, "since him and his roommates get to enjoy this for the next few weeks after the party."
         "Hey," and his head pops up from behind the bar, a flash of wonderment there, "you're right." A sly smile, almost conspiratorial, crosses his face. "I'll have to remember to stop by here a couple times soon. You know, just to say hi."
         "You do that," Jina responds neutrally. Fortunately the crying thud of the music eliminates any nuances from a voice, both jubilance and rancor. A nice level playing field.
         "Ah, yeah," Carl says after a moment's silence. Then he's disappearing down below again. "I imagine you want to make this as short as possible," his voice floats up to her, the spirit of the party itself, "so let me know how to speed this along."
         Jina wants to tell him exactly where he can go, but prudence and a supreme effort of will keep her from voicing those thoughts. So she thinks of a drink that she's pretty sure Lena would like and tells him, hoping he hears it right. After a second's thought, she leans over a bit and yells down, "Make that two," figuring that Joe might want something as well. He hasn't shown much preference tonight as to what he's drinking.
         "Sure thing," Carl replies and after a moment comes back up with the two drinks, one in each hand. He places them down on the bar first and then slides them over to her. As Jina is going to take them, she feels a little resistance and realizes he hasn't let go of either glass yet.
         ". . . so this is where he came to hide, when he ran from you, in a private detective overcoat and dirty dead man shoes . . ."
         "I just wanted to say," and Jina braces herself to hit him in the face, ". . . I wanted to apologize for my behavior before." He gives a sheepishly guilty grin. "That really was wrong of me, I should have been more tactful, you know? Because he is your friend and I've talked to him a while and he's really a good guy. It wasn't right of me to judge him for something he didn't have much control over."
         Jina's a bit shocked by this, as unexpected as it was that she barely feels him give up the glasses, allowing her to slide them back over to her. "Well, that's what you get for judging without knowing all the facts," she replies lamely.
         "Yeah, I know," Carl shrugs. "I was wrong. I just wanted to say that."
         Jina's not sure how to really respond and so just nods, gathering her two glasses up and wondering how she's going to fight her way back without spilling anything. He's filled them up fairly high, maybe this is his way of a peace offering. Or the idea of her drunk is something that amuses him. He's hard to figure out, before she was ready to kick his balls up into his brain anything he opened his mouth to her, but his apology did seem sincere. Maybe he was just talking too much out there, she can almost sympathize with that, sometimes you take a thought and start chattering on about it and before you know it you're said far more than ever wanted to say on that subject. She shouldn't judge someone just on one awkward moment.
         But as she goes to turn around and mentally work out a path back through the teeming crowd, she hears a "Hey!" and turns back a bit to see Carl staring at her with a grin on his face.
         "No tip?" he asks, raising his eyebrows, both his palms flat on the bar and arms forming two sides of a triangle with the rest of his body.
         It takes a second for this to sink into her brain but when it does, she shoots him what she hopes is the dirtiest possible look and notes dryly, "My hands are kind of full," raising the two glasses for added, if unnecessary effect.
         Carl just laughs and shakes his head, as if the two of them are sharing some old joke. "I was just kidding," he tells her. "Enjoy."
         He's still laughing as she walks away. So much for altering her opinion of him.
         Holding the glasses close to her chest to the point where she can feel the cold seeping through her dress, a mildly uncomfortable feeling to say the least. She tries to ward it off by thinking of other things, letting her body run on autopilot as she weaves her way through a distance that seemed a lot shorter before. Seeing Carl reminds her of what he had been babbling about outside, all that crap about Tristian and the things he's done to them. It takes Jina's mind back to the night of the restaurant, the night she swore that any chance of anything ever happening between Lena and Tristian was totally demolished. It had certainly looked like that, though going in she had been toying with the idea of trying to get them reintroduced, of a sort. Lena's relationship was starting to show signs of cracking, and Jina was bracing herself for when the breakup was going to happen, not wanting to see Lena go through all that again, but at the same time the calculating part of her was entertaining other ideas. In time, it might be a second chance, she figured. Not immediately of course, but get them reacquainted and it might go somewhere this time. In hindsight, Jina realizes that she was almost rooting for Lena's relationship to fall apart, which scares her a little now to think of it because there had been nothing inherently wrong with it in the first place. But Jina will readily admit that sometimes she gets a thought into her head and that's where it stays.
         Things didn't work out in any way, shape or form that she could have predicted. The restaurant scattered everyone like a sore loser clearing a chess board and when they all had gotten their bearings again, it was all different. Lena wouldn't mention Tristian for months afterwards and even when Jina mentioned his name, she either ignored it or Jina got a cold stare in response. Only recently were they able to start joking about it, which may have been a combination of Lena finally getting over her breakup and not being able to sustain her anger toward Tristian. Ironically, the restaurant wound up bringing Lena closer to her boyfriend at the time, he hadn't been there that night but was quick to console her over the psychic trauma, and Lena, feeling wretched and suffering from the feelings of helplessness that night had brought on, was quick to accept the offers. In the end though, it probably was the only thing that had kept them together and soon enough the facade was worn away and they broke up. Jina was mentally ecstatic, glad to see that her friend might finally have some piece of mind. The last month or so had been a roller coaster of Lena coming home some nights almost blissfully happy and other nights gritting her teeth and swearing she was going to kill him. Something had to give, and when the time came, with almost palpable relief, Lena let it give and let go.
         But now . . . Jina can see Lena and Brown talking with each other on the couch, Brown with his arm draped on the back of the couch, so his body is twisted toward her. For some reason, guys love to sit that way, especially if they get to stick their arms behind a girl. It always mystified her and the best answer Brian could give her was that it "felt natural." Okay. Jina wonders what they've been talking about the entire time she was gone, probably a combination of her and typical party small talk. Ha, look what that guy did? Oh and did you see those two? That's going to hurt in the morning. And gee, is he in for a rude awakening soon. Stuff like that.
         "Hey, I'm back!" Jina announces unnecessarily, since both of them are looking at her when she steps through the beaded curtain of a crowd, parting the last two with her body, almost feeling like a football player lunging at the endzone with every last bit of desperate strength.
         "Thanks," Lena says politely, her eyes sparkling a little as she takes the glass from Jina. Almost immediately she downs half of it, blinking in a briefly teary eyed fashion as it slides down and hits her stomach, cupping the glass in her lap and watching the liquid slosh around, refracting the combination dawn light and moonlight filtering in through the window behind her shoulders.
         "I hope you're planning on giving that other glass to me," Brown breaks in, leaning forward, his forearms on his knees. The glass she gave him to hold is still there, untouched as far as she can tell. "Because I didn't go through all that trouble to get you this so you can go get yourself something else." There's pointed smile on his face as he says it, he is serious but in a joking fashion. If she really insisted on finishing the glass in her hand instead, he probably wouldn't protest. Though she would be hearing about it the rest of the night.
         "Fine, fine, you win," she tells him, laughing, letting him settle the argument before it even starts. Their hands brush again as they switch glasses, and she trades the coolness of her first glass for the relative warmth of the glass that he's been cradling in his hand.
         "That's what I thought," Brown retorts, giving her a pointed look that falls apart before she has any chance of taking it seriously. After a second's pause, he comments, "Lena here has been filling me in on what you've been doing with your life in the years I've been out of the loop." He takes his first sip of his drink under a single raised eyebrow. "I missed a lot, it seems."
         "What did you tell him?" Jina asks, spinning on Lena, whose eyes go wide even as she seems to try to sink further into the couch.
         "Nothing! I swear! I didn't tell him anything!" she nearly yells back, laughing a little, waving her free hand as an attempt to scatter the accusations. She turns to Brown, giving him a mock glare. "Jina was right, you are bad."
         "Ha," Brown snorts, "you girls haven't seen anything tonight, this is me on my best behavior."
         "I'm starting to believe that," Lena comments, shifting her knee up onto the couch to face the two of them. Jina attempts to make eye contact with her friend but Lena isn't playing along. Not that she knows what information might be stored in that glance anyway, but it's worth a shot. The desire to know really is burning a hole in her, isn't it? She hasn't been curious about anything like this in a long, long time. Part of her is relishing the feeling of not knowing, of trying to dig stuff out.
         Brown flashes Lena one of those grins that always used to make her heart speed up just a bit. Even caught in the periphery of the glance, it still has the same effect on her. Funny how time never seems to diminish anything. Funny how something as abstract and patently meaningless as a gesture can nestle inside the center of your brain and spread out in waves, like melting ice cream on a summer sidewalk. And it's funny how you waste time thinking about such things when it's the last thing you should be doing.
         "Oh, I'll make a believer out of all of you before this night is over," Brown vows, swirling his drink around in his glass a little as if to increase the flavor and then knocks it back in a motion that Jina has seen him do many times tonight already. He twists his body and reaches across his chest to place the glass on the endtable near the couch, setting it down with a satisfying clank. "Well I'm refreshed," he announces, rubbing his hands together and interlocking his fingers like he's trying to force sensation back into them.
         "You know, you've got a hell out of a lot of excess energy," Jina notes, laughing a little. His eyes are darting around like he's been taken to the world's largest candy store, like his perceptions just aren't big enough to take it all in. It might just make your brain explode, the intensity of the true beauty of the world, set on levels you can never comprehend, ranging into colors beyond your spectrum, sounds fluttering unnoticed into your head, sensations that burst along your numbed skin like flowers in those sped up films celebrating the coming of spring. In each second there's a million years. In each moment, a thousand paths beckon. To call the party a microcosm is missing the point entirely, it's a fractal representation, each person mimicking the movements of the entire planet, the scale blown out so large that the Universe becomes a dot, the bluntest of maneuvers somehow managing to acquire a poetry of its own. For a brief fragmented moment, Jina thinks Brown looks at the world and sees it all, or that he wants to do so very badly.
         And then Brown leaps up and ruins all her very serious thoughts. Even with the room already warm beyond belief, she can still sense the heat from his body coming at her in waves.
         "Oh, really?" Brown asks, cocking an eyebrow at her. "Well perhaps maybe you can help me get rid of some of it, hm?" The look in his eyes is the same as it has ever been, even when they gave into the feelings she sees reflected there the shimmer in his eyes was the same. It's not that he's been hiding his feelings all night, but that he's been keeping them under tight control, not wanting to screw the night up with a false move.
         Jina feels the same way and knows it's the way it has to be, even if she's not totally sure why. Still, in a time like now, when the faceless horde capering around them presents a kind of privacy you rarely find these days, she wishes that her control were not so good. Or that his control might falter again, to give her some kind of excuse. But it won't. It can't. The two of them know better, in the end. It's all you can do.
         ". . . just touch my cheek before you leave me, darling . . ."
         Brown cocks his head to the side, eyes narrowing as he tries to focus on the music and then he straightens his head out with a jerk that Jina is sure should give him whiplash. The grin erupts over his face again as he gently touches her arm and says, "Listen! They're playing our song."
         Jina just has to laugh at the overly earnest expression on his face. "Don't you ever stop? Joe, we never had a song!"
         Brown's face falls, someone kicking the wall down and if Jina didn't know that he was completely putting an act on, she'd feel almost bad for him. "Oh," he murmurs, looking down at his feet, arms hanging limply at his sides. "You . . . don't remember, do you?" His voice is that of a man lost and falling. "I mean, it's okay, if . . . if you don't, I just thought . . ." he looks up at her, somehow managing to keep his expression endlessly sad even as Jina is holding her side and trying not to spill her drink while laughing. Biting her lip, she lets him finish. ". . . thought, I mean, you said it was special. That it meant so . . ." he gives a choked sob and hides his face behind his hand. "I . . . I'm sorry. I'll stop embarrassing you. It's just this is so . . ."
         "Pathetic?" Lena calls out. Jina had forgotten that she was back there actually. She's laughing too, watching Brown stumble through his ham acting, no doubt.
         "Yeah," Brown admits frankly, picking his head to face Jina again and shrugging his shoulders. All trace of the forlorn lad from before is completely gone. "It is." He points to her still mostly full glass, "So you want to finish that so I can sweep you off your feet one last time before the night is over, or what?"
         Brown's apparently deliberate inability to stay on one subject for more than thirty seconds still sets her head spinning. Grinning at Brown, she just nods her head and takes a sip of the drink. It's strong whatever it is, the taste goes in two directions, to her stomach and head, giving her a lightheaded feeling that immediately trickles down into a faint buzzing. Her body feels oddly tingly, like someone just plugged her into a wall socket and recharged her. It's all illusion of course, but she'll make the most of it while she can.
         "This isn't bad," she tells Brown, who briefly looks like a proud parent. The room swirls for a second as the fumes from the drink dance near her face. Holding it out a little, she takes a step toward the table and sets it down. "But I'd better finish it a little later or you'll be dragging me across the dance floor." She risks giving him a glance, trying to keep her voice serious, "That's okay with you, right?"
         "Oh, I guess," Brown replies, ending his sentence with a grin to show that he really doesn't care either way. "I really just wanted you to try it, I don't want you to pass out or anything."
         "I'm sure," Jina smiles at Brown. Taking his arm, she prepares to let him drag her out there into the storm one more time. "You coming, Lena?" she asks her friend, turning back to the other girl.
         Lena waves her hand. "I think I'm going to sit here and relax for a minute . . . it's been a long night," and she doesn't elaborate on that comment, "I'll join you guys in a bit, okay?"
         "We'll save a spot for you," Brown tells her and Lena just grins. Jina's not even sure if she's going to bother getting up, she looks highly comfortable there on the couch. It reminds Jina of the times she's come home late some nights to find Lena had fallen asleep watching television, sprawled on the cushions like the sandman had sprung out of the screen and struck before she could move away. She might wind up taking Brown up on his offer to drive after all, if the two of them are tired enough. Her comment to Brown before was all too true, he's got energy to spare it seems. Some of it must be leaking into her because caught by his hand and flung by momentum into a salt and sweat ocean of sound, the weariness that's been slowly creeping into her slides off, a can of paint splattered against a wall, unable to sustain its own friction.
         "You think Brian is jealous of me yet?" Brown whispers teasingly in her ear, the sound strangely loud and isolated in this hurricane of crushed words strafing her.
         Jina moves with Brown, pulling apart from him a little to better gauge her space. To answer his question she just shakes her head. "Nah, he's pretty good like that."
         ". . . let me be your one light and if you'd like a true heart . . ."
         Brown pauses a second, as if taking that fact into consideration. Then he takes her and spins her around, leaving her nearly breathless and while she's facing the other way, she can hear his voice sift into her ear again, bodiless, like it's all that's left of him, "Well, then, I guess I'm just not trying hard enough, am I now?"
         And then, before she can even begin to craft a reply to that, Brown's got her again and the world melts and blends as her vision runs together, until it's just her and the world and Brown and everyone else are just small but vital components of it all.
         Jina, unable to contain her laughter, not even sure if it's hers, knows that in this moment, it's exactly how she wants things to be.