Nothing ever changes.

It was just like it used to be. He picked me up, denying me the romanticism of coming to the door, not that it would have been necessary.

I purchased our movie tickets, which he found unsettling. Saw V, in case you were curious.

We sat in the dark amongst teenagers armed with smuggled Mountain Dew.

I told him that I might pee my pants and scream like a girl, but not necessarily in that order. It had been a long time since I'd seen a scary movie.

He didn't try to hold my hand, thank god because I didn't know how he was taking this.

The movie wasn't even scary,well apart from the unsavory displays of various mutilated body parts that resembled Italian food, thus eliminating any potential impulse to bury my head in his protective embrace.

In the car he held my hand and he took me to the classiest bar in the southern suburbs where I preceded to consume three gin and tonics in record time, the effects of which were multiplied by an empty stomach. We rehashed the random intersections of our separate lives. I confessed to him the realities of my most recent relationship at the risk of proving myself pathetic.

He tried to compensate for his inadequacies by indulging me with clearly fabricated stories, all of which I let go into the brisk October air. None of it really mattered. I was slightly drunk standing in the parking lot of a half empty strip center newly built on the edge of the saccharine suburb where we grew to know each other.

And then he took me home.