across town to my grandma’s, but promptly dismissed it. Where to next, guys? When I climbed into the backseat, though, the nonsexual tension was thicker than the Tranzilla’s thighs, which is to say impossible to ignore.

Me playing dead wasn’t working. Through the white noise of passive-aggressive mumbling from the passenger’s side (a spot already molded to my cheek specifications, but whatevs), it was clear that Bilal was pissy about something. Were we back on the tranny thing? Come on guys, give it a rest. I thought it best to decrease my surface area and disappear into the leather. While I spent the next couple of lights dissecting deserted sidewalks, attending the beat-up skin around my thumbnails, and knuckle-ironing my club jeans, the game of chicken happening in front reached critical mass.

“Drop me off, then.” His fingers already gripping the trigger.

“Whatever.” Her nerves already shot.

“I’m serious.”

Now, I’ve been accused by lesser beings of being a touch narcissistic, but this was actually about me. Boiled down to the basics, Bilal didn’t want Gina driving me home, presumably because she was drunk, but probably because he wanted her naked at his house posthaste. He actually suggested I take a cab. She suggested he shut the hell up.

Then he was all, Drop me off. And she was all, Sure. And he was all, No, really. And she was all, Fine, Bilal. The whole scene was ripped from the pages of our ninth-grade yearbook—the one where Gina wrote, “KIT this summer and don’t let these dudes get you down. Keep ya head up ” They were still one-upping each other when Bilal took whatever the opposite of a chill pill was and, hopped up on misguided courage, flung open the car door. While. The Explorer. Was still. In motion.

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

“Let me out,” he yelled, pretty pointless, since technically some of him was already out.

Gina busted a U-ie across four lanes of traffic and screeched up to the nearest stretch of curb. Then Bilal, open car door still in hand, leaped out without saying a word. The silence woke me up.

“Dude, what the—”

“Fuck it,” she said, staring straight ahead like a woman possessed, or one pissed the hell off.

To describe this new turn of events as awkward would not be understatement. It would be criminally negligent. First off, now I’m being chauffeured around like an overscheduled six-year-old on her way to yet another play date, while Gina—now cast as the overextended BlackBerry mom—barrels down Wilshire Boulevard, daydreaming about how different her life might be without the brat in the back. The weightlessness would take some getting used to, but at least she’d be free. More than a cock blocker, I was a relationship millstone. And it only took me a few hours.

We headed in the opposite direction of wherever it was Bilal dared himself out of the car. He was behind us somewhere, getting swallowed up by the L.A. night or propositioned by its employees. Four morphed into five morphed into six on the radio minute hand before either of us said anything.

“Dude, what the—” I felt that that needed some repeating.

“Dude, I can’t.” What she couldn’t didn’t need repeating.

“We can’t just leave him back there.” Note here the casual usage of the royal “we,” most often bandied about by those packing a nondriver ID. “How’s he getting home?” Equally disingenuous, the nondriver always worries about how others are getting home even though she can do absolutely nothing useful in the situation seeing as how she, in title and definition, is a useless member of society. Even more applicable, the manless best friend always fucks shit up and then wonders aloud how to fix it.

“He said drop him off, so I dropped his ass off.”

“Jesus.”

Staring her down, I compelled her into turning around before we’d driven so far away it’d be a waste to go back—he’d either be murdered or too mad. We pulled up near the corner and parked where Bilal went all Evel Knievel on us. He was at the bus stop now, lounging on a bench like he belonged there, wanted to be there.

“Go get him,” said Gina to the Helena reflection.

“Fuck!” replied Helena back to the car mirror.

I should also mention that at this moment in time I’d known Bilal for maybe eight hours, give or take however many times we’d exchanged cell phone “hi’s” to the other in the background. Now it was my job to convince a known daredevil that although getting back in the car