Starve a cold, feed a fever

It was one of those days where the temperature took a header into an empty swimming pool, the weather outside practically screaming at summer to fuck off for nine months. We were at a party in one of those shabby old outskirts homes, a warm kind of sixth or seventh owner place that had a history that didn’t need to be known to be felt, sitting slouched on a slouching couch, both of us bored and looking over the filled bookshelves to see if the host was really worth talking to, which from the looks of it she was, and I suddenly said we missed out on getting the last snow cone of summer.

She said yeah, but it was an animatronic answer. The party around us was clumped into groups the way a party does until about four or five drinks. We weren’t sad exactly. We weren’t left out exactly, either. People would peal off and talk to us for a bit here and there. What it was, it was, it was, was we were a blank.

Which it’s the between moments that are hardest to articulate, I guess. Nothing was wrong save a poorness in the quality of the air that we breathed. The atmosphere stood in the middle of us is what. If either of us were to say it aloud it would be met with a hand on the shoulder and half-felt reassurance. Besides, you don’t give things a chance to collapse at a party. It’s bad etiquette.