| CAPE MAY |

HOME

The first thing I see is a DO/AC ad plastered on the wall outside the parking garage. Bitch, I've done AC.

It feels strange being here, the same but different. The air tastes the same. It's got that East Coast Traffic City Smog Ocean type of air. I wait ten minutes too long for my ride to show up. I watch the car drive away in the wrong direction on my app map. No time for this.  I have an hour to get home, meet my mother for a late lunch–early dinner before meeting Trix.

Of course I'll need to listen to my mother go on and on about how many guys she wants me to meet. How many of her friends' sons, nephews, and ex fitness coaches would just be great for me. Don't get me wrong; she never berates me for my singlehood either, unlike most millennials' mothers. She just never gives up hope.

Then there's Trix. Damn, why did I agree to the bonfire? I don't even know what I'm walking into! She tells me it's some type of summer reunion BS for our year and the year above us. Who knows how many people will be there. How many of them I haven't even talked to let alone seen in the better half of the last decade.

I don't want to misguide you on this spirit journey into a heaping pit of nostalgia. I did not hate my high school experience. Quite the opposite in fact. I loved it. Truly, they were the good old glory days. In this kind of small shore town where everyone knows everyone it's hard to hide. In the open, it's easy to find where you belong. My group of solid friends –not exactly the popular clique. We weren't all jocks and cheerleaders on the Homecoming Court. Well, not all of us.

Course we weren't chemistry club or chess club nerds either (though I openly admit I throw down at chess). Never too late to learn strategic planning and thinking five steps ahead. Never know when you'll need to be a master manipulator.

No, we were us. We were the group of friends who were all weirdly attractive. We all weirdly made-out with each other at least once or twice. That is until senior year when the coupling up started. Trix Barr and Travis Scott. Meg Andrews and Nate Johnson. Emmy Rhodes and Jay Brooks.

The Coupling: An indie horror film coming to a theater near you/circa 2009

It was the sunset of our high school years. You know, about to go dark. About to step out into the world of self-discovery. Well, the attempt at self-discovery anyway. But there were some few hours of daylight left. And senior year was golden. It's what you watch in those ridiculous 90s rom-com movies. TV shows too. Major One Tree Hill going on. It's all those corny and cheesy romance novels with lusty covers tucked on the YA shelf. You know like what you secretly want to be your life but it never really is. Except it was. It was my high school experience.

And then the sun set.

Now I'm sitting in the back of my ride share thinking about how different everything's going to be in the town I've been avoiding for years. Because the same town that gave me everything I ever wanted also took it back.

Granted the majority of my graduating class doesn't share in this sentiment. In fact, most of them have never left. Maybe four of us total moved farther west than PA. Most stayed east coast. For the smog probably. They never left. They see each other all the time.

So yea, reunion my tight ass. Like I said, I'm not fooled. I see through the veil of false nostalgia. I see it for what it really is –an excuse to sip on cheap ass liquor to try and temporarily deceive ourselves into a drunken state of satisfaction. The beer is cheap and so are our dreams. Our integrity. Our sense of self.

It all costs approximately one beer. Sign me up.

"Emmy! My baby doll of a daughter. Look at you!" My mother squeals on the front lawn.

"Hi, mom." I laugh her off me. She always over hugs. Her hands fall to my shoulders but she still holds me in front of her.

"Look how long your hair is! It's growing like a weed. You're just too beautiful." She goes on.

"I look the same, mom. You saw me at Christmas!" I remind her, still laughing. She's almost near hysterics.

"You're right. That's only seven whole months ago!"

"Excellent math," I smile.

"Oh come on," she laughs me off. "Here let's get your bag inside and off to lunch. I called ahead so they have a table ready. No, no, I got your bag. It rolls. I'm not that old!"

I stand in the yard as she drags my very easy to roll bag onto the porch and through the front door. The screen door slams shut behind her. I'm aware I'm alone in the yard of my childhood home for the first time in years. Another moment that feels like it's from a dramatic movie. Fair. I take it all in, take in the feeling it invokes. The whitewashed house with gray blue shutters and a closed-in sun porch. A year-round beach house with a pebbled garden and brightly colored potted plants. The feeling is something else, something different.

Home.

A smell. The power of a smell. How fucking wild.

My house smells the exact same way I remember it. Like no time has passed at all. Like years have not come and gone and changed the smell of the house.

This strange phenomenon stretches to my own bedroom. The entire path to my bedroom really –up the stairs, down the hall, on the left –the entire way smells the same. I can tell my mother has been regularly cleaning (anal that she is). New sheets, new pillows, new everything but the Fray and AAR posters hanging on my walls. They're not new.

Old perfumes, headbands, and my high school baseball cap litter my dresser top. The purple flower lei from my senior year luau is still wrapped around the lamp on my nightstand. I leave my bag at the door and sink into my new comforter.

My mind is still drowning in its own thoughts. Thoughts I forgot about. Feelings I forgot existed. Nerves too.

My phone loses it with buzzing.

I jerk awake. It takes a minute for the room to come into focus before my mind catches up and remembers where I am. My room. At home.  In New Jersey.

OMG EM BACK IN NJ

C u  2nite!!!

I CANNOT WAIT 2 SEE U :)

Trix. Meg. Trix.

They don't help my nerves. I toss my phone across my bed and decide it's time to jump my next hurdle. What to wear when seeing an ex: a seminar for the obsessive and pathetic. Join me, won't you?

ONE. HOUR. LATER.

Not ashamed to admit I tried 17 different outfit combos.  Boyfriend jeans, cropped T-shirt and Toms for a basic I'm not trying but I'm definitely trying, I just don't want you to think I'm trying look. Denim shorts with an oversized T-shirt and flops. It says "I'm cute and basic in a girl next door way" right? Yoga pants and sports bra? Too much? Messy bun. Curls? Make up? Bare-face?  The possibilities are endless and they fucking matter. The look sets the mood. The entire tone. The look screams what your mouth is too puss to say. Y'all feel me, I know you do.

HEY LOOK AT ME. REMEMBER ME? LOOK WHAT YOU COULD HAVE HAD/BEEN HAVING THIS WHOLE TIME YOU IDIOT.

Sometimes, I really hate us women. I'm allowed to say that, because I am one.

I'm not carrying a torch for him or anything, but I have ran through this day *moment* in my mind more times than I care to admit. Seeing him again. And now, thanks to Trix, I have a heads up. I know I'll be seeing him. I've struck gold in the mine of running-into-your-ex scenarios. 

I settled on outfit #18. Washed denim shorts, not exactly daisy dukes but short enough, with my bikini top that looks more like a sporty bra, and a low scoop neck tank.  Hair down with my aviator shades. The best marriage of Trying and I Stepped off the Plane Like This.

If I don't stop staring in the mirror, I'm likely to change again. Not only am I out of options to form outfit #19, but I'm also out of time.