She watched me with sideways glances as she drove. “I like your hat,” she said with dimples. “It suits you. Not many guys would have the nerve to wear it.”

Part 1 - Melrose

Chapter 2 - Traffic

Her car pulled up so quietly that I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been watching. Not a sound. Does Mercedes make an electric convertible? Not even in my world of speculation—I literally had no idea.

She smiled at me from the driver’s seat. “Get in, Kissy,” she said, laughing at me. “Do you like salads?”

I hopped up from where I sat on the grass and opened the passenger door. “Sure, I guess,” I said. Closer to the car, I could hear a bit of engine noise, so it wasn’t an electric, just—just an incredibly expensive car with a quiet motor.

Awestruck, I slipped into the seat and she motioned I should buckle up. I did so before closing the door. The leather interior was as soft as a well-worn cliché and there were real wood accents in the panels of the dashboard.

“You look like you eat salads,” she remarked as we pulled away from the curb.

I blinked. No reply even occurred to me.

She watched me with sideways glances as she drove. “I like your hat,” she said with dimples. “Not many guys would have the nerve to wear it.”

The stupid hat. I’d almost forgotten about it. “Ah, it’s my Mom’s hat. I needed something to wear… to keep… the sun… off.” I sort of trailed off there, realizing that I was threatening to reach a depth of stupidity I had seldom managed before.

“Because you’re a vampire?” she asked with a straight face.

I probably spluttered and she laughed.

“You’re a redhead,” she let me off the hook. “My mom’s a ginger, too. Can’t stand the sun. Starts peeling in like, ten minutes.” She took three turns, accelerating, and we were on Los Feliz going about five miles an hour over the speed limit.

She held her right arm out to me. “I burn too if I’m not careful. But I got this great lotion when I was in Norway.” Her skin was the color of dulce de leche, soft caramel, almost butterscotch. “I can get a tan now, it’s great. I don’t know what the stuff is made of, reindeer schmaltz maybe.”

She laughed so I laughed too. “We’ll get you some and maybe you can enjoy more sun, huh?”

“Huh?” I said. She spoke to me as if we had known each other for a long time, as if we were buds. It confused me.

She took the left onto Western at speed, the car didn’t lean a millimeter, and we sped past the lane that led back toward Mom’s apartment. I didn’t even glance that way, keeping my eyes on this fascinating woman.

“Something I haven’t asked yet,” she mentioned. “How old are you, Kissy?”

Apparently, I had a new nickname. It wasn’t the first time I had heard it, but on her lips, I kind of liked it. “Huh?” I answered her question with all the intelligence I could manage.

“Your age,” she laughed. “You said you're out of high school, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m eighteen, well….” I hesitated. “That is, I will be on July seventeenth.”

“Eighteen on the seventeenth,” she said. “I’ll remember that,” she promised, showing her dimples again.

If I got much harder, I thought, I’d never be able to get out of the car.

“With your cute face, I suddenly realized you might be younger than I thought,” she admitted.

I had a cute face? Well, I had gotten mistaken for a middle schooler as recently as the week before I graduated.

I wasn’t keeping up my end of the conversation but she didn’t seem to mind. I couldn’t ask her how old she was but maybe something that gave a hint. “Are you in college?” I ventured.

“Not now,” she said. “Got my degree and I’m just coasting.”

College graduate, okay. She’s at least twenty-one. “What’s, uh, what’s your degree in?”

“Psychology,” she said. “I got my M.A. But I’ve no desire to do anything with it. I sure don’t want to go to the hassle of getting a doctorate.”

I boggled quietly. Her age estimate went up at least two more years.

“Do you have any hobbies?” she asked.

I waggled a hand. “Gaming. Reading. Nothing strenuous.”

She laughed. “Video games? SciFi?”

I shrugged. “Video games, sure, but I do a lot of tabletop RPGs, uh, role-playing?” She nodded. “And I’ll read anything. Cereal boxes, government brochures, manwa which are like Korean comic books.”

She gave me a careful look. “You read Korean?”

“No, just look at the pictures and write my own story in my head.”

She laughed again. “I used to be into cosplay myself. I went to Con as Beetlejuice, like ten years ago.”

By Con I took her to mean Comic-Con International in San Diego. Even if I could afford to go, scoring tickets was kind of a lottery prize, so I had never been. Cosplay was ike role-play and I imagined her in the striped suit and white face paint. “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice,” I said. She liked that.

We waited at a light and two morons in a classic GTO pulled alongside. The driver revved his muscle car, looking down at me and mouthing something. I deciphered his meaning over the engine noise. “Do you girls want to get some pizza?” he was asking.

I moved my hat between him and my face. “Talk to the hat,” Marjorie said, laughing. I kind of laughed too. When the light changed, the Mercedes left the Pontiac behind effortlessly and I put the hat back on my head. Despite it being an open car and our speed, there was almost no wind and we could talk to each other without shouting.

“Was he flirting with you?” she asked.

“I guess he was trying,” I admitted.

“He thought you were a girl?”

“Um.”

She laughed again. “It’s the hat,” she said. “I did too when I first saw you but then I noticed your pants and shoes. But it was the hat that got my attention.”

“Huh?”

More dimples. “I wanted to meet the boy who could wear a hat like that.”

I shook my head, appalled for many reasons, not the least of which was that now the damned hat had done me a favor.

“It suits you,” she said.

“No, it doesn’t,” I protested.

“Well, I like to see you wearing it.”

“It’s my Mom’s hat.”

“Maybe we’ll get you something similar of your own.”

“Ack,” I said quietly.

The GTO caught up with us at another light but Marjorie made a right turn on red which the moron in the muscle car couldn’t do because of being in the wrong lane.

I recognized where we were, Melrose Avenue, the premier shopping district for downtown LA.

“We’re in the right place to find both a hat and a salad,” said Marjorie, sounding satisfied.

It’s hard to cringe while buckled into a bucket seat but I think I managed.

Traffic does not move on Melrose, it saunters. We were down to less than twelve miles an hour as an average with lots of stops and starts. I wondered if she were watching for a parking space but she seemed unconcerned.

“Do you have anywhere you have to be?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I was going to go over to a friend’s house to game but I canceled. Mom won’t expect me home till late.”

She smiled. “So we have all afternoon to get acquainted. Evening, too.” Her voice rang with anticipation… and promise.

Oh-em-gee.

She helped calm me down by asking, “So you live with your folks?”

“Just my mom,” I said. “My dad has a newer wife in the Philippines.” I paused, thinking. “I’ve got half-sisters and step-sisters I’ve never met.”

“Oh,” she said. “My parents are divorced too. I’ve lived with my dad and his girlfriend—girlfriends—since I started college. Mom is down in La Jolla with her favorite intern.”

“Intern?”

“You know? Medical doctor with training wheels?”

Okay. Maybe cougar-ocity ran in the family.

“That’s annoying,” she said with emphasis.

“What—what?” I glanced around for a traffic problem.

“Sylvio Frescanotti. Dr. Frescanotti. He looks like a young Alan Alda and Mom can’t keep her hands off him.” She looked sideways at me again. “Of course, I’ve got my own weakness for pretty...boys.”

Pretty? No one had ever called me pretty except as an insult. I blushed as only a redhead can.

Suddenly, Marjorie pulled into a space beside a white-painted curb. Valet parking I realized, seeing the lollipop-shaped sign. She hit the button to close the top as two guys stepped up to open our doors.

The guy on my side offered a hand to help me out and he stood so close I had to take it to have room to stand. I kept my head down to hide my face. “Thank, you,” I said quietly.

“No problem, miss,” he said.

Marjorie grabbed my right hand in her left when she caught up to me on the sidewalk. She laughed. “Kissy, you should see your face.”

“It’s embarrassing,” I complained.

“Wait, wait,” she said pulling me to a halt. She tilted the hat out of the way then bent her face the two or three inches necessary and kissed me on the lips.

Soft, sweet, velvety lips on mine. I couldn’t breathe.

She pulled back and looked down into my eyes. “You’re the one who has been kissed. Feel better?” she asked.