Red Lights

There’s a lot of things I hate about L.A.

I’ve lived here my whole life, only ever living in Culver City and for some time in two other suburbs when I was much, much younger. In all that time, I’ve spent a lot of time learning a lot of things about this city and almost every single one of them is about driving.

It’s a fucking ridiculous concept, driving in Los Angeles, whether it’s the highway, main roads or the neighborhoods. First of all, no one knows how to drive, which makes not being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic almost as equally horrific and terrifying as actually moving. But the thing about traffic is that it is everywhere. It’s rush hour every hour of every day, somewhere, anywhere and everywhere in the fucking city. There’s no escaping the madness. The madness is Los Angeles. It probably wouldn’t be the same city if it wasn’t full of shitty, confusing meters, parking and traffic laws. However, it also wouldn’t kill anyone to tone down the all hours of the day traffic, the inconsiderate drivers and the time it takes to drive only a few miles.

The ride home was, for that reason, longer than I expected or originally wanted it to be. However, it wasn’t bad, necessarily. I liked it, in a way, sitting in the dark cab next to him. I spent the whole time staring out the slightly rolled down, fingertip smudged window to my right. The boy to my left was quiet, but there was no doubt he was there - his hands fidgeting, his leg moving every few minutes. We spent a lot of time sitting, unmoving, in the cab – I was thankful for the silence.

When we finally pulled up to my house, I was almost tired. The night had caught up with me, from work and “fun” with Dylan. I was seriously ready to crawl up the sidewalk and into the doorway. I pushed the door open and went to step out.

“Hold on,” he said from behind me and I turned my head, glancing back into the barely lit cab. He scooted toward me, turning his head to also tell the cab driver to “hold on.” I moved out into the yard, then the end of the driveway.

I looked back to Dylan bumping the door closed with his hip, shoving his hands in his pockets and walking toward me. I didn’t know what he was getting at with this. I was tired. We’d had our fun. It was time for me to sleep. Just leave me the fuck alone, once and for all.

“So, uh,” he started as he came closer, his focus on his feet. “Thanks for coming with me tonight.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, wrapping my arms around my middle as I stood, cocking a leg out to hold me balanced. I tried to be nice, although at this point I did want to just go inside, close the door, forever. “It wasn’t that bad, after all.”

He smiled, something different from the grimace from before, but definitely far from the natural, wide, happy smile that showed his full teeth. “Well, damn. Don’t give anyone any credit, Olivia. It’s okay to have fun.”

I chuckled, looking back at the waiting car, idle at the curb.

“I guess you should have taken me to a bar, then. Got me shit-faced. Now that’s fun.” I couldn’t bite back the dull, flat tone of my voice. I honestly didn’t want to.

I was surprised by the laugh that bubbled up his throat, moving out of his mouth like a bullet from a gun. “Next time, then?”

I about jumped out of my skin when he reached forward, surprising me as his hand moved close to my hip. A weight left my front pocket and then his face lit up in the dark. I then realized he was holding my phone in his hand, tapping away at the screen.

I stepped forward, reaching for it, but my arm was only caught in his grasp. He turned away from me as I reached with my other hand, not letting go of my wrist. His skin was incredibly warm, long fingers overlapping over my skin. I was just thinking about jumping, quite literally, or maybe knocking him with my shoulder as I tried to grab it from him – if I could only get away from this hand on my wrist.

It wasn’t necessary, however, as his skin left mine and he turned, grinning, phone extended to me. I snatched it from him, silver painted fingernails raking over warm palm.

“Bye,” I grumbled, turning on my heel and heading up the drive toward the house. Dan’s car was in the driveway, where we had left it when we all piled into John’s to head to work that afternoon. John’s pickup was backed in behind my small Honda. I accidently clipped my driver’s side mirror with my elbow on my way to the door.

“Bye! Whenever you want to go get shit faced, I’m here for you.”

I laughed, loudly, louder than I expected, swinging the front door, which was thankfully unlocked, open and walked inside, shutting it behind me.

I heard a car door close and pull away from the curb.

---

I spent the next three days holed up in our house, steering clear of my brother, John and most importantly my grandmother. Overnight I had come down with this awful cold, including vomiting, shaking and a fever for the first 12 hours, followed by a sore throat, no appetite and a head cold. That was the Sunday following the MTV event, which meant I wasn’t needed at an event for another few days, since the weekdays were generally kind of boring and slow, although I did need to go into the office for a few things. Only a fraction of the job was actually working events; the rest was doing paperwork, filing, keeping the office clean, along with the company vehicles and following up with venues and customers to make sure that everyone was happy.

The morning after I had initially became sick, puking for hours on end and too shaky to sleep, I didn’t wake up until ten. I woke up to find the waste basket next to my bed – grossly enough, full – and a note tucked under my phone on my bed stand. I snuck a hand out of my cocoon, reaching for the paper, but the blankets around me were too tight. I vaguely remember opening my eyes sometime after my 3AM shower, curled into a ball in the middle of my bed, a figure standing over me.

I had jumped slightly, starting so that I was propped up on one elbow. My damp hair touched my face, cold against my hot, burning skin. It was then that I realized that I was freezing and shaking, sweating and burning, all at once. That was also when I realized that the body standing above mine belonged to Dan, who was making “shhh” noises and gently pushing my shoulder down until my head hit the mattress again. I fell asleep as he spread one of my grandmother’s quilts over my body, tucking it in around me.

The note was written in my brother’s blocky handwriting, the one he used for office notes, so that we could understand what he was trying to write, in compared to his usual scratched letters.

“Liv,
It’s 7:30 now and I’m going to work. If you need anything, call me. Everyone should be out of the house by 9, since J has class and grandma is probably coming by the office. I pulled out some cans of chicken noodle and the cough syrup for you and put it on the counter. I’ll tell dad you’re sick, so don’t worry about calling in.
Take it easy today, kiddo. Sleep and watch some tv. I’ll check up on you after lunch.
Dan”

My pillow felt cool under my cheek, my head falling against it. I could barely hold my head up; I wasn’t sure I could even get up to move to the bathroom. Every deep breath felt like swallowing a single, extra fluffy feather. I was always half a second away from a coughing, choking fit. Still my mouth was dry and I couldn’t remember the last time I peed, so it needed to be done.

My stomach felt rather comfortable, so as I pulled myself up and out of bed, I grabbed the wastebasket next to my feet to empty in the bathroom. The room was a doorway and half a hallway away, but it honestly felt like a mile. I had to brace myself against the door jam of my room, suddenly feeling dizzy and slightly nauseous – the slight smell wafting from the basket I was holding wasn’t helping. I hurriedly emptied it and flushed it away as soon as I got to the bathroom, dropping it under the faucet in the bathtub and letting the water run.

I wasn’t pleased, to say the least, when I caught my reflection in the mirror. My hair had dried into a wavy mess, the hair at my scalp not laying flat. My face was pale, my cheeks flushed. I made sure to rinse my mouth with mouthwash, splash my face with water and pull my hair up into a slightly more presentable and manageable bun before returning to my bed.

The television in my room isn’t very big. I’ve had it for years and before that it was Dan’s. Honestly, I’m surprised it still works based on all of the shit he put it through. It’s probably due to how little I ask of it as I rarely watch television. With work and the like (the like being my usual solitude and definitely not my wonderful social life), I usually watch movies on my laptop instead.

Despite this, I still had the full range of cable channels. Everyone else in the house is a television nut, from my grandmother and her soaps, to Dan and John with the ridiculous amounts of games they watch. I couldn’t even remember the last time I turned my TV on, which I struggled to do now after finally finding the remote under some papers in my bedside drawer.

I cringed as I was immediately met with a soap opera, which played on the same station as the news, my default, go-to channel. Stretching under the blankets, I hunched down into my pillows until I could just barely see the screen over the hem of one of my puffy comforters. I scanned the channels, searching for anything without a lot of politics, infomercials or talk show written all over it. I didn’t know what I ended up on really, as I didn’t recognize the show, only that it didn’t matter twenty minutes later – it was turned down low, filling my room with just enough background noise to lull me into an hour and a half of dozing in and out of sleep.

My stomach woke me up.

The last full meal I had had was breakfast the day before, just an egg and toast – nothing else lasted long, I knew, as it all came back up for revenge. It was only eleven, according to my phone, which had a new text from each of my brothers – meaning Dan and John (Sean, who was five years older than Dan, had moved away to Phoenix with his wife years ago) – and my dad, but that didn’t matter. I made my way to the kitchen, feeling a lot steadier than an hour before. While the chicken noodle soup was heating on the stove, I leaned against the counter, answering Dan, John and my father’s messages with a very standard reply of “I’m feeling a little better. Taking it easy and having soup. Work hard for me.”

When the soup was done, I grabbed a dish towel from the drawer next to the stove, a Tupperware container from the cabinet and a spoon. I poured the whole pot of soup into the plastic container – very classy, I know – and grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator before trekking back to my room.

I watched TV while I ate, spending too much time burning my tongue and scalding my throat with hot soup, letting it warm me from the inside out. I had never seen the show playing before, something about a teenage girl who was supposed to be rather ordinary and boring, but was really pretty (in my opinion) and was being fought over by two popular boys. I couldn’t get into it; I was just about to change the channel, searching under the blankets with my hand, blind to where the remote lay, when the episode ended. A commercial came on, loud, and the transition into the next show started – I realized then from the sponsored commercial that it was MTV that I was watching, that the show I didn’t like was called Awkward. and that Teen Wolf was coming on next.

I about spilled the rest of my steaming chicken broth on myself when Dylan’s face filled the screen, spilling the spoonful of hot liquid that had been poised in front of my mouth onto my tank top and skin, the soup burning and sliding down from where it landed just below my collarbone, rolling into my cleavage.

“FUHHHHHHH,” was about the only thing I could get out of my mouth as I moved, quicker than I thought I could, honestly, in my current state. I pushed the hot container onto my dresser, knocking my phone onto the ground. I about fell out of bed, unable to get the blankets and sheets away from my body fast enough. I stumbled into the bathroom, simultaneously trying to use my tank top to soak up the liquid rolling hot across my skin and pull it over my head.

It didn’t work well, to say the least. My hands finally caught up with my brain and they moved the way they should have to begin with, quickly, evenly, surely as they got the collar, then hem of the tank top over my head. I turned the faucet on, reaching for the soft cloth I used to wash my face and wet it before raising it to my bare chest, the cold water soothing my red, irritated skin.

This didn’t go as well as it did in my head, either. The soaked cloth, which, in my haste, I didn’t wring out, sent water droplets rolling over my waist and stomach to the waistband of my shorts, which quickly accumulated enough water to make the whole front side of the elastic waistband damp. I reached for a dry towel, patting my skin dry enough, ignoring my shorts, so that I could apply Neosporin to my burns, which were now only pink. They weren’t bad, I knew – nothing worse than a sunburn, but they still deserved a little TLC despite my stupidity.

I went back to my room, shutting my door behind me. I needed a new shirt and shorts, to get rid of the rest of my soup and to change the god damn channel on the TV.

The TV set sits above my tallest set of dresser drawers, the base of it just below my eye level. I sorted through my top drawer for a soft shirt and a change of shorts, glancing up just as a commercial changed back to the episode.

Glancing up just as Dylan O’Brien’s character appeared, followed by another, darker skinned boy with dark hair.

I immediately became increasingly aware of my lack of clothing. I struggled to pull one of my brother’s old high school track team shirts over my head.

It sounds very juvenile, yes, but it is weird to see people I have met in person on television or in movies. Even if it was just in passing. This isn’t the first time this has happened. We once worked security for Robert Downing Jr.’s son’s birthday parties, years ago, before I was even on the payroll. He shook my hand after the party. I never said a word to him, but I found myself unable to finish watching Iron Man a few weeks later after I realized I was changing into my pajamas in front of RDJ. Sure, he couldn’t see me. But it was still the fact that I could see him as I changed from a pair of jean shorts to pajama bottoms.

This, however, was so much different. I was not fifteen anymore. I was also completely topless, standing six inches away from a TV screen covered with the face of a cute boy I had spent roughly six hours with just days before. We weren’t exactly friends, although we were more than acquaintances – which only added to my uneasiness. The thought of him anywhere near me like this made my skin prickle.

Turning my back to the screen, I changed my clothes, rinsed my dishes and left them in the sink in the kitchen and returned to bed again. The screen in front of me flashed with different scenes I didn’t understand. There was some kind of monster killing people, the dude on screen with Dylan a lot of the time, who I figured was named Scott – and Dylan’s character was Stiles? Like what kind of name even – was a werewolf or something and so was this other guy, Derek. I was confused, completely, just about ready to get up to see if we had what we needed to make tea, when my phone rang.

I reached for it on my bed side table, only to find my reach empty and that it had fallen in my soup-burning-skin frenzy. I gazed over the side of my bed, searching, but couldn’t see it. I leaned farther, catching its glow just under my bed. I stuck my arm down, grabbing it. I didn’t have time to look at the screen after six rings, just swiped it to answer the call.

“Hello?” I said, more grunted as I tried to push my body up. I had leaned so far over trying to retrieve my phone, my body was unbalanced on my mattress and I was slipping, holding myself up by one arm on the floor. I could barely hear the other person on the line. “Oh, hold on,” I said, before tossing my phone next to me, using my now free hand to get a hold of my blankets and pull myself up.

I sighed, pressing the phone to my face again just as I coughed, my chest heaving as I tried to stop the noise over my already heavy breathing from getting back into bed.

“Are you okay?” was the first thing I heard.

“Not really,” I said, covering my mouth and falling back against the pillows. “But I’ll survive. Wait, who is this?”

I pulled my phone away from my ear as I said this, examining the name and number just as his voice called out, sounding tiny coming from my speakers. “It’s Dylan.”

I was surprised, to say the least. But I quickly swallowed over that – and the scratchiness of my sore throat.

“So, tell me, why are you and this hairy guy getting so friendly in the pool? I don’t really understand. Actually, I don’t understand any of it. Also, why are you calling me?”

There was a chuckle, all throaty and low in my ear. “Are you watching Teen Wolf? My god. Um, and because I wanted to?” It sounded more like a question than a statement. “Did you lose your filter? You sound awful.”

“I have no filter, dick shit. And seriously, help me understand this. If you’re gonna call and bother me, which I’m assuming is the only reason you would, you should probably answer all of my questions. Like, how did Scott become a werewolf? Is Tiles a werewolf? Like, what is going on?”

“Stiles is not a werewolf. He’s human, his life sucks, the end. Scott was bitten. Wait, are you just watching some random episode?”

“I’m sick and sleepy and it was what came on, so yes, I am watching some random episode. Is it always this confusing or is it just because I’ve had a lot of Nyquil?”

“What, you have a cold? Who gets sick in California? And who takes Nyquil in the middle of the day?”

I sighed, grumbling into the receiver. “Me, you idiot. Now explain or I’m changing the channel from this god awful excuse for a television show.”

You would think I had somehow teleported and kicked the guy in his privates from the noise that filled my ear.

“Rude, Olivia! You’re in the middle of the season, you can’t judge it!”

“Oh, whatever. I’m changing the channel. There’s no chance that I’ll understand anything at this point.”

“Don’t give up on it! It’s not even that bad. Fine, guess what. I’m coming over.”

I hesitated, trying to digest what he just said. “What?”

“I’m coming over. You’re not giving up on it like this. I refuse to let you.”

“You are not coming to my house,” I said, sitting up a little more in bed. “Dylan, you are not.”

“I am,” he said, and there was no chuckle in his voice. “You can’t stop me. Do you need anything? Some coffee, or tea? Orange juice? I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Dylan, you are NOT coming to my house!” I said firmly into the phone, but it didn’t matter. He’d hung up with a laugh. I was left with a beeping, empty line and a weird, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

---

I almost didn’t answer the door twenty-five minutes later when the knocking started. I looked like death, I felt like death – hell, I might as well change my name to Olivia Death Hunter. I’d been standing in the living room for the past ten, walking back and forth, nursing a bottle of water. I’d pulled an old sweatshirt from a vacation my family took years ago to cover up the fact that I still wasn’t wearing a bra, along with brushing my teeth to hide all the hideous events of the last 36 hours and even splashed my face with water. I had just sat myself down on the couch when the knocking started. Frozen, I watched the door, wishing that I was hearing things. I wasn’t, I was assured, as a voice was heard vaguely through the walls and the top of his head peaked at the window at the top of the door.

“Olivia, lemme in! I brought goodies.”

I sighed and moved to the door, placing a hand on the doorknob. I waited, then pressed my ear to the door, calling out. “What kind of goodies?”

“Like, sickness healing goodies. Open the door.”

I did. The tall boy on the other side of the door stepped back as I did, smiling as the door swung open completely. I offered a close lipped smile, moving from his toothy smile, across his shoulders and down to the bag in his hand. He noticed and held it up, offering it to me.

“There’s tea and chocolate chip cookies and cough lozenges. Um, it all came out of our pantry and I’m pretty sure the tea belongs to Tyler’s girlfriend, but I’m hoping she won’t miss it.” He chuckled, running a hand over the top of his head. His arms fell back to his sides as he waited, watching me.

“Oh, oh! Um, come in. Sorry.” I was completely thrown by the contents of the bag. It was so much more than I expected, even though it was so little. I had thought he was joking. I walked straight into the kitchen, spilling the contents of the shopper’s bag onto the tabletop.

“Thanks for this, really. I honestly thought you were joking, but tea sounds wonderful right now and – ” I paused, reaching for and picking up the three cases that had also fallen out of the bag. That was something I really hadn’t been expecting. “You own the discs for the seasons of your television show? Seriously?” I turned to look at him.

He appeared next to my left elbow, resting his hands on the wooden chair pushed into the table there. He nodded, lips pressing together. A faint pink was spreading across his cheeks. He spoke quietly after a moment, his lips barely moving. “I know a lot of the times it’s really fun on set and everything, but I’m really proud of it. Not just me, but all the people I work with, too. It’s the first thing I ever did in acting and it’s honestly turned into this amazing thing.”

Great, I thought. Way to be a bitch. I silently blamed the Nyquil. We didn’t have anything else, so I’d been taking it even in the daytime, taking about half of the dosage for the correct time increments so to not knock myself out for the rest of eternity.

I started the water for my tea while Dylan went to set up the DVD player in the living room, since I didn’t have one in my room. If I was watching a movie alone, I would usually just run it on my laptop. I figured this was an occasion for the big screen and surround sound (all John’s, but he was nice enough to set it up for everyone in the house to use) since Dylan was so proud of it. That, and I really didn’t want to have to explain him being here to my brothers in a few hours… let alone if we were in my bedroom.

The screen was up and ready when I came back with my steaming mug of Earl Grey. Dylan was sitting on the couch, his long legs extended out in front of him. I went to the end where his feet lay and he retracted them, pulling his jean-clad legs closer to his chest. I shook my head and reached my hand out, grabbing for the blanket that was tossed across the back of the couch. Juggling it until it lay over my arm I turned around, balancing my hot cup and the blanket and headed for the loveseat.

When I finally got situated, blanket pulled up to my waistband, warm cup pressed between my palms, Dylan pressed play on the remote for the first episode. As it started, he turned to me and said, “If you have any questions, just ask. I don’t mind. Also, don’t judge the first season too harshly. It’s… just take into consideration that it was just the beginning.”

I nodded, taking a sip. And then the first episode of the first season of Teen Wolf began.

---

“You look super young with that buzz cut, Stilinski. It’s kinda cute, though,” I spoke quietly from my hunkered position on the two-person sofa. “You look better with it grown out like it is now, though.”

There was a slight chuckle from where I knew he lay on the couch, face pressed to his arm which was pressed to the couch cushion, legs extended, filling the whole length of the couch. I didn’t look at him. Again, I blamed the Nyquil (okay, so maybe I wasn’t taking the dosage exactly as directed.) I was definitely drowsy, my mind slightly foggy as I watched werewolves run across my screen and young, horny love run its course between Allison and Scott. I swear, if I didn’t know what I was watching I would probably think I was having seriously hallucinatory side effects from the shots of cough and cold syrup I had taken.

“Is it weird watching yourself act?”

His voice was gravely when he answered, probably from the lack of conversation between us. I tried to not ask questions, just observe and try to figure everything out on my own. I was mainly talking so that I wouldn’t fall asleep, which my droopy eyes were threatening to help me do.

“Ehhh, not too much. It used to be really exciting, made me all jittery and nervous but also this wicked adrenaline rush. Not so much now. Like, I guess I obviously know it’s me but I ignore it so that I can enjoy whatever I’m watching… and so I don’t get down on myself or compare my acting to anyone else’s.” He ended this with a slight, shaky chuckle.

“I think you’re pretty good. You’ve got me totally convinced that you’re a gangly teenager, definitely.” I yawned through the end of this statement, pulling the blanket up to just under my chin and rolling onto my side. On screen, a bunch of kids are freaking out over something running around outside of the school.

That was the last bit of the episode I saw.

I woke up to a weight on my shoulders, my eyes springing open. I jumped back as they focused on the person above me, a tall boy in a plaid button-up, a pair of keys resting in his right hand.

“I’m gonna go, but I’ll leave the seasons for you – you just fell asleep right before the fifth episode ended. I’ll get them from you some other time. I hope you enjoy them a-and feel better, Liv. I’ll let myself out.”

I nodded, humming in response. I didn’t even watch him go, just shut my eyes and pulled my blanket tighter to my chin.

I forced my eyes open almost a minute later, glancing up. I hadn’t heard the door open or shut, or even footsteps in the entryway. I let my eyes flutter shut quickly as he bent down, eyes closed as his lips met my hot cheek. I kept them closed as he whispered above my head, breath moving my hair and tickling my skin, and as he moved across the floor and out the door, jiggling the lock on his way out.

---

That night, I took a Benadryl and more Nyquil, chasing it all with the hot tea Dylan had left for me. With a pat on the head from each of my brothers and a kiss to my forehead from my grandmother, I retreated back to my bedroom in hopes that I would quite literally fall the fuck out and not wake up until I was better.

Having had so much Nyquil throughout the day, the Benadryl had really just been a precaution – to ensure I actually fall asleep, instead of becoming hyped on my fourth shot of cough syrup. It worked, almost, the combination. I was buried under piles of blankets, my skin warm under cover as a small fan I had set up on my bedside table blew across my face, keeping my body just comfortable enough. I was drowsy and achy and I could feel myself edging toward sleep, the same way cars inch forward in moderate traffic. But like traffic, there was always that hold keeping you from getting where you needed to be.

My hold, at this moment, was the thought of Dylan’s mouth pressing to my cheek.

His lips were so warm against my skin, the kiss slightly breathy as he gently touched me. I had no clue where the kiss had come from. The whisper that followed, blowing against my cheekbone in the same place as his warm, soft lips, was also unwarranted.

“Feel better.”

Like the kiss, which felt so unpredictable, so out of the blue in whatever the hell this friendship, acquaintance, or relationship (I cringed) happened to entail. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I literally met him not even a week ago, and he was going around bringing me hot tea, making me laugh and kissing my cheek.

I sunk into my blankets, rolling onto my side and setting my face directly in the cool fan’s path. I couldn’t deal with all this friendly, warm things – no matter what they really meant – not now and probably not later. For now, I needed rest.