Sea Lion Shores Sister’s in the drive in movies, brother’s at the old high school.

Before the last syllable leaves his mouth he already knows he's kicked a hornet's nest.

She gathers herself up like a swarm of them. Her searing eyes like wasp venom, alkaline -- he cringes under the onslaught, her humped and fur-splayed outrage. 

He's tempted to say but I wasn't suggesting anything -- he knows full well his subtext, the soft and evasive underbelly of his every word. Right now he feels too cowed, too ashamed to play pedant. But when he finally decides on saying I just wanted to know what happened, I guess, he can't help but let some defensive heat rise up into his voice, the sort of masculine refusal to self-efface that Raleska probably had seen enough of to last several lifetimes.

However experienced he was, however easy he found it to camouflage himself in a socialite herd or to find the tantalizing ridge of trapezius muscle which when twisted, would cause immense pain, all of that, 

it still took a great deal of effort to follow up with God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come off that way.