“Where do you stay?” She asked.  I sat comfortably in the leather seats of her blue convertible Saab.

I know!  A convertible?  Hell yeah!  She’s just been amped up from cool to effin’ awesome in a matter of minutes.

I give her directions to my place.  She tells me that I’m practically on her way home.  She turns down the volume on the radio.

“How do you like L.A. so far, Tina?” She asks the question softly and then looks in my direction as we pull up to a stoplight.

“Uh, I like it a lot more now that I know at least one person.” She smiles at my response, “It’s nice.”

“I bet you miss your friends, right?”

“Yeah, I do.”

I watch as the palm trees pass by us, lining the streets like they guard the houses.  We’re getting closer to my neighborhood by the time she speaks again.

“Did you have a boyfriend back in Atlanta?”

I don’t know why, but I don’t want to answer that, or at least I don’t want to give her the whole truth.

“Uh, yeah, I did.  I mean, I do.  I do have a boyfriend.  His name is Eric and he’s back in Atlanta.”

I see a slight bit of disappointment in her eyes.

“What about you, Bette?  Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No, I do not.” She smiles in this smug, knowing way.  Like she knows something I don’t.

“C’mon!  YOU don’t have a boyfriend!”

“What do you mean by that?”

We pull up to my house and she parks on the street.

“It’s just that you’re really pretty.  I find it hard to believe that you can’t get a guy.”

“It’s not that I can’t, Tina.  It’s that I don’t want a guy.” She says it plainly, almost harshly.  I hope I haven’t angered her, “I believe this is your stop.”

“It is.”

“Do you want a ride tomorrow morning too?”

“If you’re offering, sure.”

“Well, I am offering.”

And the next thing that happened shocked us both.

I kissed her cheek.

“Thanks, Bette.”