Let me get back to that burning bush- the one that’s way up in the mountain, after you’ve run away from your troubles. Somewhere you think you might be safe from having to confront what’s eating you. You find a burning bush when you have nowhere else to go, and when you have nothing better to do. At least, that’s how I always imagined Moses, when I used to go to Sunday School. He was running away from Egypt, wasn’t he? Maybe also from his father-in-law. Point is, he was in the wilderness, just him and his sheep, and then bam! He sees that crazy miracle.

I can’t really think about Jessica without thinking about the burning bush story. It’s not because I was running away, necessarily, but because everything that I had known previously had been upended by what should have been a big ol’ nothing burger. Okay, bad analogy to Moses, maybe. I mean, he did kill somebody. But for me, it was just an honest statement, taken a bit too personally, then taken out of context, to the point where it became a raging fire that burned down everything.

Jessica has a brother named Chris. Artist type. He draws cars and girls, mostly. He’s always trying to make zines. He’d be good at it if he could tell a story better. He just needs some refinement. Or he needs to illustrate somebody else’s ideas. Either way, I liked Chris well enough. A bit shy, a bit immature. But I wasn’t interested in him at all. Not like that. He was chasing after somebody else anyway, although, from what Jessica told me, she wasn’t too interested in getting caught. None of this part actually matters to what happened between me and Jessica, except for the fact that Chris is overly sensitive about everything- his art, his dating habits, his hair, his sister, his reputation. No criticism is taken well, even if you mean for it to be helpful. I knew this about Chris, and I should have just kept my mouth shut.

Jessica and I were at her place one afternoon, putting away her groceries and getting ready to order take out (because what else do you do after you get a load of groceries, right?) when Chris popped by. He had some new pages he wanted to show us of the zine he was endlessly drawing. Jessica and I flipped through the pages. The art was fine. Mostly. Some was mediocre. Some was really good, but only the pieces which I knew he’d done before, drawing the same scenes over and over again until he got them just right. So there we were, flipping through the pages, when one of the drawings really caught my eye, and I frowned at it. Chris saw me frown at it.

“What?” he asked.

This drawing… it was all wrong. The girl he’d drawn was sitting on the hood of some muscle car. She was in a tight tank and cut offs, just like all the other girls in the art. Imagine a 50s pin up mashed up with a 90s comic strip. She had this really pouty face, and her breasts were too big. Then I looked closer, and the face he’d drawn just reminded me too much of me, and the tank top his comic girl was wearing was definitely a riff on a t-shirt I wore all the time. So I looked up from the page, and stared at him, and said, “Didn’t know you were gonna put me in here.”

“What are you talking about?” he said, getting defensive. He took the page away from me, studying the drawing. “You think that’s you?”

“Looks like me,” I said. I shrugged. It really wasn’t worth getting him riled up, but I could tell that it was probably too late. “It’s fine. I don’t care.”

“Then why’d you frown?” he asked.

Now I rolled my eyes. Jessica had stopped looking through his other drawings, and was gesturing for him to show her the picture of me. He held it out without looking at her, and she took it, studied it, studied my face, and then said, “Stop. It doesn’t look anything like you.”

“She’s wearing my shirt!” I said. I wasn’t angry, I just didn’t understand why either of them were making such a huge deal of me pointing out that Chris had clearly drawn me with huge boobs and cut off shorts. But when neither of them made a reply, I attempted to cool off the room by making a joke. “Maybe you’re right. He could draw me better if he was actually trying.”

It was the wrong thing to say. I knew it as soon as it came out of my mouth. Chris gathered up the drawings silently, left the kitchen, and then left the apartment without saying goodbye. Jessica crossed her arms, staring at me in a way she had never looked at me before. I didn’t like that look. Again, we’d never fought about anything, remember? First time for everything.

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

“Do what? Be honest with him?”

“Make him feel bad,” she said, icily.

“God forbid a man ever feel bad about anything,” I said.

She folded up the last of the empty paper sacks that had held the groceries. When she finished she said, “I think you should probably go home.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, completely confused by her reaction.

“I said, I want you to leave!” she snapped.

So I picked up my bag, found my keys where they had sunk to the bottom, and left without saying goodbye. I fumed as I drove, wondering what had happened so suddenly that had made her go cold towards me. It was just drawings. It was Chris’ stupid drawings. Why did she care so much?

I never got an answer. She never spoke to me again.