3:04 AM "I guess we'd better be going." Howie says; he's been hanging with another of my friends, Vicki, whom we met up with at the club. "Oh, yeah, I suppose." A.J. answers, sort of reluctantly. "What about Liz and Kevin?" Vicki asks. Right on cue they appear... I don't know where they've been, nor do I really care since I'm pretty busy with A.J. But, Liz would never really cheat on Eric, and Kevin strikes me as the gentleman type. "We're leaving?" Kevin asks. "So, do you girls dorm or live nearby or what?" Vicki answers that she lives on-campus and Liz lives a bit uptown. I, however, have to go back to Queens... to Forest Hills, actually, way out in Queens. "Oh, I'm sorry. I wouldn't have kept you out so long if I knew you lived so far." A.J. tells me. I assure him that it's no big deal, and if I had wanted to go home earlier I would have. "You can't crash with one of them?" Howie asks. But I really do have to be home. "I'll go with you, then." A.J. says. "I mean, we can call up the limo to pick us up here and drop you all off, then I'll stay with you until he drops you home." "Are you sure that's OK?" I ask. Apparently it is.

3:41 AM We drop Liz off first and then head back downtown to Vicki's dorm and the guys' hotel. I give the driver directions to my house and we put up the partition between the driver's seat and the back seat. A.J. and I keep talking along the way and he eventually leans over and kisses me again (damn, he's good at that). This one's different from the last one, too. It's almost like one of those kisses that inevitably lead to something more. It doesn't, though. Our lips meet and he runs his fingers through my hair; I do the same. He moved his hand to my leg and kisses my neck. It's not just his doing, though, as I start to unbutton his shirt. But I stop the both of us soon after though; and he stops himself and apologizes. He doesn't have to, really, he didn't do anything wrong. And it's not like I'm turning him down or anything, believe me, part of me would have been content to keep going. But my conscience told me I shouldn't... damn conscience. We go back to talking as we reach my apartment building, not awkwardly, like you'd expect, but like we'd be talking before.