CaptainRow

Hey, so this girl I've been interested in for almost a year now invited me to a party at her house. We've been talking a lot but I had a girlfriend from last August until last month so I'd really not gone out with her or anything, apart from seeing a movie right after I broke up with my girlfriend.
She told me I could bring a friend so I did, and when the both of us got to her house and went down to the basement, we were met by the roughest looking kids I've ever seen.

I'm from a fairly affluent neighborhood and I went to a private school so I'm used to dealing with popped collars and plaid shorts. Not that I'm preppy myself, those are just the kind of people I've been in contact most of my life and therefore I'm the most comfortable around them.
My crush, however, is from a
not-as-outrageously-affluent town a stone's throw away. Not that it really matters, when we first met at a college orientation last summer we immediately hit it off.

The problem here is that I'm a confident person but going down with my friend to that party and seeing all these different people frightened me. I had no idea what I was in for. I'm a very moderate person so I find it easy to slip into practically any social group. But being faced with these twelve or so kids, all of whom know each other quite closely, and being from quite a different social group then they really messed me up.
And I probably would have been able to deal with it had there just been a bunch of girls there. But the guys intimidated me.

I'm athletic: I've won state and national championships with my team. I can bench press my body weight and then some. I'm not to shabby looking. I'm comfortable with my body and other people... I don't want to keep rambling on with pointless stuff, but the thing is I have a great sense of self-worth (without being too cocky) and I'm confident.
But I could not, for my life, get comfortable at the party.

My friend and I both went upstairs, schemed about the best way to leave unnoticed, and then told my crush that he had to get something in my car and then just never came back.
I plan on telling her when she asks (and my friend suggested I say this) that my friend's girlfriend went crazy when she heard I had taken him to a party and drove him home so he could calm her down. And seeing how he lived 30 minutes away from me, by the time I got back I just wanted to sleep and that's why I didn't come back.

So with that whole exposition done, I have two questions:
1) Is there any hope for me to redeem myself in her eyes? How would I go about doing that?
2) (maybe more importantly) How can I overcome my fear of not fitting in with the other guys? I felt pretty much ostracized the second I came down the stairs. What can I do?

Thanks in advance for any tips or advice
-CR