Digging in the Deep

   I was waxing a car at the DX when I heard footsteps close in, in the distance. It was still a few hours before Steve was supposed to show up, so I spun around, surprised to see Angela approaching me.
     "Hey, how's it going?" I asked.
     "Oh ya know, it's going." She said, plopping down on the chair sitting at the entrance of the garage. "I've heard you've been quite the ladies man lately." I continued waxing the hood of the '67 Buick.
     "Something like that."
     "How come?" she seemed surprised.
     I shrugged. "I don't know, something different I guess." Since the break-up, I had hooked up with about a dozen girls. At the bar, the DX, their house, my house, the back of a car. My sudden change of ways was no secret to the gang, and they were no doubt skeptical.
     "You're really one to talk." I flashed a playful smile in her direction. Angela Shepard was nothing short of in-experienced, and everybody knew it.
     She laughed. "Well I've always been this way, but you haven't. It's just not like Sodapop Curtis."
     "People change." I said, feeling that the conversation was taking an awkward turn. There was about three minutes of dead silence. I was just about to look over my shoulder and see if she was still there when she spoke up again.
     "I think it's a mask." She said.
My hand stopped dead in the middle of my 'wax on, wax off' rotation.
     "A what?" I asked, even though I knew exactly what she meant.
     "You're trying to hide a deeper issue." She stared at me intently.
I set the rang on the hood of the car, then turned around and leaned against it, my arms folded across my chest.
     "If you don't get close to someone, you can't get hurt." I said, staring down at my chucks. She didn't say anything, so I continued. "I can't take that again Angela, I mean...was I not enough for them?" I asked, finally embracing the feelings I tried so hard to bury.
     " I don't think it had as much to do with you Soda, people make mistakes. I can't vouch for Sandy, but if you were in Jelly's situation, how would you feel?"
I pondered her question for a moment, tossing it about in my thoughts.
     "Like it was an accident...a mistake." I sighed.
Angela took a swig on her coke before standing to her feet.
     "You've always been one of the good ones Soda...I'd hate to see you lose that." Then she turned and left. I sat there, lost in my own thoughts for what felt like half an hour, till my thought process was interrupted when Darry pulled up, yelling that we had to get to the high school, there had been a shooting.