“It’s not awkward,” I said, remembering a time when I was younger, sitting in the same back seat of this same red minivan, and feeling awkward around Paul, his older sister driving fifty when the speed limit was twenty-five. He was only three years older than me, which felt like nothing now that we were both in our twenties; still, I felt giddy to be having sex with the cooler older guy from my youth, who listened to bands like the Mars Volta. If only my closeted, sex-deprived self from high school could see me now, I sometimes thought, before realizing, yet again, how dumb it was to think
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