They don't call her Kissy for no reason at all.

Rory parked his big truck outside Armand’s house amid the expensive homes near the west edge of Los Feliz. The sunset lit up a few clouds in the western sky with red and gold. An onshore flow had already begun, ruffling the leaves of the tall California palms lining the street.

I sat and waited for Rory to run around the truck and help me out. We got a couple more kisses out of the deal. “They don’t call me Kissy, for no reason at all,” I told him. He laughed as he dashed back around the truck to retrieve the sodas we had bought.

I waited on the sidewalk for him. I hadn’t been to Armand’s house since he ran a game on New Year’s day when he was home from college for winter break. He was attending CalPoly in Pomona and living in the dorms there when school was in session, except I think he might have graduated a week or two ago. But he’d most likely be going back for a post-grad degree unless he transferred to Stanford or something.

Armand’s place, or his parent’s place, was a two-story craftsman revival dressed in pink stucco and white trim with three gables facing the street, one of them over the two-car garage. That’s where Armand’s old room had been and probably where he slept now that he was back home. But the game action would be in the add-on family room in back.

My dress wasn’t stopping the breeze from the miles-away ocean, and I shivered a bit. First I’m hot then I’m cold. My patterned hose weren’t thick enough to make up for a skirt that ended six inches or so above my knees and I had nothing but very short sleeves on my arms. Even late June isn’t quite summer in LA. Stupid to be fashionable and freezing, I told myself, next time wear a jacket or sweater.

Rory returned with the two cases of sodas perched on his shoulder and steadied with one big hand, but when he saw me with my arms wrapped around myself, he put the cases down and stripped off his baseball shirt. “I didn’t know you were cold,” he apologized. “Put this on.”

He held it for me as I slipped my arms inside, it fit me like a tent but it was already warm from him wearing it. And the smell of him on the thick cotton fabric made me a bit weak in the knees. I had to switch my purse from one shoulder to the other and ended up a bit off balance.

“Whoa!” Rory grabbed me as I almost tumbled off my heels. “You okay?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Thanks. But won’t you be cold?”

He laughed. “It’s only forty feet to the front door and it ain’t that cold to me. You’re so thin the wind goes right through you.” He glanced down at the soda. “I’ll come back for those, let’s get you inside.” He took my arm and we started up the walk. The short sleeves of his shirt came down to lay in folds at my elbows.

“You make me feel tiny,” I said to him.

He laughed. “My mom says the same thing and she’s taller than you.”

“Moose,” I said as we reached Armand’s door.

“Chicklet,” he said as he knocked with one hand and squeezed mine with the other.

Armand’s sister Jenny opened the door and I gave a fakey moan, “Another tall person.” Which made Rory laugh.

Jenny looked down at me curiously and blinked. “Hi?” she said. Armand’s size ran in his family and Jenny was at least 5’10” with lots of curves and dark brown hair almost to her waist. “Oh, hey, Rory! Long time no see.” She looked back to me.

“We’re here for the par-tay,” said Rory and he pronounced it that way, like a cartoon character. “This is my date, Kissy Parker.”

“Hi,” I said, getting inside as soon as Jenny moved out of the way..

“Hi—uh, Kissy? Do I know you?” She hadn’t seen me in more than a year, having been elsewhere at New Years. Jenny was, in fact, a year older than Rory. They had likely known each other in high school. Not being a soo-ooper genius like her wily brother, she was still a junior at UCLA I thought.

“I have to get the sodas,” said Rory. He gave me a quick kiss on the forehead and ran back to where we had left the cases on the sidewalk.

Jenny watched him go as I took the baseball shirt off. “Wow,” she said. “He’s better looking than ever.” She eyed me with speculation. “Does he treat a girlfriend nice or is he an asshole?”

I considered that. “All of the above,” I said and she laughed.

“You said party? What party? Are you guys here for the game?” she asked as Rory returned with the soda balanced on his shoulder. “When did you turn into a gamer?” addressed to him.

“Baseball’s a game,” he said as he took his shirt from me and tossed it over the other shoulder. “So’s football.”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “They’re in the back.” Then to me, “You look familiar.”

“Your brother thinks I look like that actress on a soap opera,” I said, using a little misdirection. I really didn’t want to get into who I was with Jenny.

She snapped her fingers. “That’s it, Heather Bock, plays Samantha on ‘Days of Our World’. She was in that band with her brothers when she was a kid. You related?”

“Not that I know of.” I needed to find a picture of this Heather if I resembled her that much. I hadn’t seen much of ‘Days of Our World’ because it was on at the same time as Ellen.

I took Rory’s hand as we went through the living room and the short wide hall to the family room. My stomach turned flip flops. Why had I wanted to do this? I gripped Rory’s hand tight and he squeezed back.

“You’re okay,” he said softly.

The family room had been a covered patio before being closed in and made part of the house decades ago. About fourteen-foot-wide and twenty-foot-long, it had huge windows facing west on the backyard side.

One of the old house windows had been turned into a pass-thru into the kitchen and another became an arch into the dining room. Light from the setting sun painted the curtains gold and purple, competing with lamps and ceiling lights in the room itself. Couches, chairs and a huge television lined the walls.

In the middle of the room, a full-size pool table had been converted for table-top gaming with a wooden cover to protect the felt. At one end, Armand stood, his big face unemotional as he stared at us. Four other members of the Army sat on stools with their gaming stuff in front of them, all dressed, more or less, in nerd chic: jeans, sneaks and hoodies.

I had a sudden image in my head of my own gaming supplies in their cloth bag sitting beside the door in my bedroom back home. “Doh!”

Everyone looked at me.

“Hey, big guy,” said Rory. “I brought the sodas. This is Kissy Parker, my date to adventure.” He laughed. “She needed a ride to the game and I came along. Where do you want the drinks?”

The corners of Armand’s eyes twitched but kept looking at mine.“‘Fridge,” he pointed back toward the pass-thru where a restaurant-size refrigerator sat against the end wall. Super-nerd wore the same mustache and beard I had seen him with on Melrose—which was what had delayed me from recognizing him in an instant there.

Rory let go of my hand and carried the sodas back as indicated. The guys didn’t notice, they were still looking at me.

Sitting around the table clockwise from Armand’s position, Miguel San Salvador, nicknamed Melvin, was first. A skinny kid, Mel played wizards or blasters and had been a junior at school last year. Next to him, his pimply-faced classmate, Norris, was our rogue or other sneaky type as needed. First or last name, Norris the Nobody they called him at school and his characters were often named Noman or Nemo or something like.

On this side of the table, two more gamers twisted around to look at me. Dan Tenhouten, known as Hoot in our group, was an anomaly. A good-looking blond kid, Hoot had been vice-president of the sophomore class last year and played barbarians or other close-in fighter types. The last kid, Bob, almost fell off his stool trying to turn around. Bob was overweight and not much taller than me, playing paladins and doing party heals.

Marty, our other GM, wasn’t at the table but he often had to work Friday nights and showed up late.

“Hey, guys,” I said. “I forgot my dice and binders and stuff.” Norris and Mel were standing up now and leaning forward, to get a better look at my legs, I guess. I did the finger wave thing, then noticed the layout on the table. It looked like the usual beginning for a superhero game: a bank job in progress. “I’m sorry I’m late. Have you already started?”

“No,” said Armand. “We’re just doing a run-through on the movement and combat rules since this is a homebrew. But it’s similar to other d20 systems. Except, having a sticky zone-of-control is a feat you have to take, and movement is in pulses.” He started to list the differences. Basically, a lot of it was adapted from the old City of Heroes online game.

I felt my attention wander. I never had been that big on knowing the mechanics of any game, I just liked playing my characters. All of whom had been female. I suppressed a giggle. Now I know why?

Rory came back from putting sodas in the fridge. “Hey, big guy,” he said to Bob. “Can you sit at the end so I can sit by my girlfriend?”

I know I was blushing.

“Sure, sure,” Bob agreed and he and Rory moved things around to make room and provide a stool for me. I stared at it, how was I supposed to get onto a tall stool in a short skirt and heels? I guess women did it all the time in bars, but I had never practiced such a move. I tried to think of a movie where I had seen the maneuver done.

Armand watched me, his expression slowly changing to a tiny smile. “I knew it was you on Melrose,” he said. “I thought cosplaying a soap character was brilliant.”

I did giggle then. Only Super-nerd would have thought of that explanation for what he saw.

Norris was the one who came out and asked. “It’s Davey, right?”

“She goes by Kissy now,” Rory answered for me. “C’mon, does she look like someone named Davey?”

At the end of the table, Armand asked, “Are you going to be playing, too, Beeson? We’ve got room at the table and Marty won’t make it, he’s working Friday nights till midnight these days.”

“McJob,” Norris explained.

Rory shook his head. “I guess not. You guys play every Friday? I’m usually playing ball.” He gestured at his baseball shirt. “It was a day game today so I was free to bring Kissy. We had a date she canceled to be with you guys.” He grinned, the liar.

We had not had a date. But probably only because he hadn’t asked.

Norris again, asking me. “Are you transitioning or something? Like someone on TV?”

I blinked. It occurred to me that not one of these guys had ever been in a P.E. locker room with me. “Well, sort of,” I said. “I just decided to stop pretending to be a boy.” I smiled at them and they all smiled back. That was actually true and not a lie, just a bit of misdirection.

Rory helped me onto the stool on the corner, near Armand, just holding out a hand to steady me, and it was as natural as anything. I turned my face up and we kissed. I looked at the guys again, five open mouths. “Besides,” I said. “Being a girl is way more fun.”