Sunglasses 9: Car Karaoke (Patreon)

Despite its recurring rattle, the roadster’s heater turned out to be good at its job. My feet were still chilly, but otherwise I was heading towards “comfy.” I silently thanked the car for stopping my slow slide into a hypothermic coma.

That earlier conversation with Mel had brought heat of a different kind. Listening to her open up about her past had been like playing with fire. I’d been nervous at the start, afraid we'd both get burned if I said the wrong thing. But in the end she’d pushed through her reluctance…and her words had warmed me better than any heater.

We were past a major barrier—even if I wasn't exactly sure what it was. I felt like an explorer on a dangerous expedition who had dodged multiple disasters. Somehow, together, Mel and I had found the lost city and earned a break.

With a sense of relief, I watched her turn on the radio. She rotated the knob past a dozen country songs to find the one classic rock station clinging to 107.5. I settled back into my seat, happy to let the music melt the miles.

Twenty minutes later, it was hard keeping a huge smile off my face.

Mel clearly wanted to sing. She was trying to hide it, but not doing a great job. With each new song, she would start tapping the wheel and swaying in her seat. Then she hummed, and finally a few words would escape before she muted herself, shooting me a quick glance. So when the iconic drums of “It’s Raining Rock” started, I decided to help unleash the beast. 

“I see the black clooouds gather,” I belted, “and that thunder ain't soundin’ right!”—thank God for “sing talking,” because I couldn’t carry a tune for shit.

Startled, Mel swiveled to look. “What are you doing?”

“Singing. Is that okay?”

“Uh, sure,” she said quickly. “I don't mind.”

“Then join me. Come on, storm chaser, you have to know this part!” Another frenetic drum fill crashed into the first chorus.

“I feel rain!” Mel suddenly shouted. “I hear rock! And the whole damn world’s on a roll!” Her mouth opened into a feral grin. 

We both started singing and dancing in our seats, and since I wasn't driving I worked in some enthusiastic air drumming. The motion, plus our laughter, raised the temperature a couple more degrees. When the next song started, she didn't need any encouragement.

I hadn't spent enough time in cars to know if Mel’s enthusiasm was typical, but I loved watching her tilt her shoulders and get into the performance. Not only could she hit the notes, but the faint huskiness of her normal voice was amped into smoky perfection. It was sexy as hell. She was a roadster rock star.

My own singing fell off as her voice and twisting body cast an arousing spell. God, the way she moved was hypnotic. I wanted to see her on her feet, dancing. I wanted my hands on her slim hips as they rolled in time to my jagged pulse. I almost told her that, but dumb luck—in the form of a comically bad line read—distracted me.

“What was that?” I abruptly asked.

“What was what?” Mel said, weaving her torso and tapping in time on the steering wheel.

“You mangled that line,” I told her. It had been so hilariously off that I'd noticed even through my haze of lust. “The song goes, ‘to mates we suit.’ ”

She frowned. “That’s what I said.”

“You said, ‘tomato soup.’ ”

“Did not,” she replied too quickly. Was she blushing? I wasn't sure in the dim light.

“You don't know the lyrics.” A good-natured argument would slow the rush of blood to all points south, right? Worth a shot.

Mel gave me an affronted look. “I know every word.”

“You knew the chorus. The rest was either wrong or…” I searched for a descriptive phrase. “Mumble-humming.”

“Mumble-humming?” She scoffed. “The audacity.”

I held up my hands. “All right. Prove me wrong. If you can make it from chorus to chorus on the next song, I’ll feed you snacks as an apology. If you recognize it,” I amended.

“I drive thousands of miles every season,” she replied. “I know every song this station is going to play. Get ready to be my car butler.”

“We’ll see.”

We waited over the fading notes of the current track. In the silence that followed, both of us leaned towards the radio in anticipation. A powerful guitar riff wailed out of the speakers and melded into the driving notes of a synth keyboard. She smirked. “Hell yeah. Franky’s Monstyr. ‘Ride Me.’ ”

When the first verse started, Mel matched the female vocalist word-for-word. She made a show of half turning to sing the lyrics to me, showing off. Oh shit. I was in trouble. Not only did she do a credible impression of a rock goddess, but she had the sensual delivery down. I watched, helplessly enthralled by her pouting lips and yearning expression.

“I gave you the chain,” Mel sang, “you hold the key…do you got the guts to ignite me?”

I shifted in my seat. This single, sung by Mel, was mercilessly erotic. She lashed my body with every line. By the end of the first chorus I was hard as a rock and ready to roll. The last few blood cells in my brain, right before turning out the lights, offered me one final chance to save myself.

“Wait,” I croaked. “You mumble-hummed after ‘rev me’! I heard it.”

“No I didn't!”

“Repeat the line. Show your work.” My voice was strained and breathless. Sweat had broken out on my forehead. I needed time to escape the “I’m so horny I’ll say something stupid” zone. 

Mel murmured the lyrics back to herself without—thank God—performing them. “Ride me to the dive bar, drive me to your home…” She frowned. “Rev me…thmmhihum me, before you fill me up…”

“What was that? After ‘rev me’?”

“It was, um…” Mel suddenly chuckled, a throaty and generous sound like auditory honey. “…mumble-humming,” she admitted. Her laughter increased until a little snort escaped, then her face turned stricken. “Shit.” 

Her embarrassment made me laugh, and then we were both giggling like kids at a sleepover. As my body reluctantly climbed off its sex fiend perch, I realized that even my toes were toasty. Everything was warm—except a few items I suddenly remembered. Reaching into the back seat, I grabbed our snack bag. The cans inside remained nice and cold.

“Want to take a break?” I asked, holding them up.

“Goddess, yes.”

“We have off-brand cola and off-brand grape,” I said. “Lady gets to pick.”

“Grape.”

I cracked it and passed it over. While Mel drank, I opened my own can and took a satisfying sip that tasted like Coke and Pepsi’s gene-spliced offspring. I glanced down on either side of my legs and my brow furrowed. “No cup holders?”

“Cups hadn't been invented in the eighties,” Mel joked. “Just put it between your legs.”

Good. Another plausible opportunity to chill out my dick. But the chance was ruined when my brain conjured up an image of Mel sliding down in her seat and widening her legs to teasingly brush the can against the juncture of her thighs.

Fuck! Give me a break, hormones, I mentally begged. This is like a first date!

“I was promised snacks,” Mel said, who had already placed the can between her legs like a sane person, and not a sexual fantasy. “Feed me.”

Releasing my pervy imagination from the armbar I had it in, I issued a dire mental warning I knew it would ignore. “Snacks I can do, but mumble-hummers have to serve themselves.”

“I was ninety-nine percent accurate,” she argued.

Grumbling, I opened the bag and pulled out a single chip. “You get one for effort. Is salt and vinegar okay?”

Mel opened wide and pointed impatiently. 

Smirking, I lifted it to her lips. Her tongue darted out, curling to catch the underside of the chip. The fact that she wasn’t trying to be sexy gave it an informal intimacy that made it hotter. She pulled it into her mouth while I tried to figure out the mechanics of an urgently-needed pants adjustment.

Damn it, brain. We had a deal!

I quickly passed the bag, which she wedged into the hole of the door rest like a seasoned pro. That gave me an opening to shift my hard-on and rest my drink. 

We ate slowly, listening to music and watching the asphalt blur beneath the car. I savored the salty bite of every chip, but I found myself enjoying our easy silence even more. Around us, the black flatness of the plains didn’t seem to alter at all. The rain had stopped a while ago, but the clouds overhead were still thick; I could make out faint orange smudges where the glow of isolated towns lit their undersides. The color made me think of Mel’s glasses.

“Hey, Mel?”

“Mm?”

“Would you still be wearing your glasses if I wasn’t here?”

Staring out the side window, I took a sip to give her thinking room. My words had been deliberately nonchalant, but it wasn’t all an act. Things felt more casual now, as if our…situation had stabilized. But was this new dynamic—I refused to limit it to “friendship”—far enough along? Were Mel’s glasses a safe subject…or was my desperate need to see her eyes making me reckless?

I didn’t have an answer.

“No,” Mel said. “I don't usually wear them when I'm alone.” Her reply was guarded, but not icy. A mixed signal.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “That’s probably not making driving easier.”

Without letting go of the wheel, Mel’s arms gave a restless shift—a loose approximation of a shrug. “Isn't too bad.”

I ate a few more chips and washed them down with fizzy faux cola. My need to know her eye color asserted itself again, like a second heartbeat. I pressed into dangerous territory, my throat dry despite the drink. “So…that’s because your eyes sometimes change? When the, uh, ‘prime self’ does its thing?”

“Primal self,” she corrected after a moment, but didn’t elaborate.

“Right. I was reading about that earlier.” My pulse was thock-thock-thocking in my ears. “How it happens when shifters are dealing with intense emotion, or, um, strong feelings. And that a lot of shifters are uncomfortable because—”

“I don’t talk about it,” Mel said, cutting me off.

My mouth worked…but she’d severed the conversation like a bridge tossed into a gorge, leaving me no way to cross. I slowly pressed my lips together. If I’d been a shifter, I think my own eyes would have changed right then. 

Had I fucked up? Maybe…or maybe we were still figuring each other out. What would I do if she never showed me her eyes? It was a depressing thought. I tried to wash it down with my drink, but the bitter taste didn't pair well, so I chased it with the burn of more salt-and-vinegar. 

A few minutes later, after we’d both finished eating, I held out my hand. “I can take the bag.”

Mel balled it up. The packaging made a loud crackling sound before she offered it wordlessly. We both took care to avoid touching in the hand-off. I put the trash and empty cans back into the grocery bag and set them on the rear floorboard.

“If you’re doing okay,” I said quietly, “I think I’m going to close my eyes for a bit.”

“Sounds good. There’s a lever on the side of the seat.”

I found it and reclined back. Reaching behind me, I retrieved my jacket for a makeshift blanket and settled it over my chest. After a few adjustments it wasn’t too bad. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the grinding of my thoughts against each other.

Tomorrow will go better, I told myself. Then I told myself again, trying to make it stick.

With no warning, Mel spoke my name.

“Hm?”

“I…just wanted to know if you were warm enough. I can turn up the heat.”

Surprised, it took me a second to answer. “No, it's perfect. I’m nice and cozy now.”

“I still feel bad about turning you into a Cal-cicle. I’m sorry.”

Some of the tension across my chest loosened. “It’s okay. You just didn’t realize.”

“That’s no excuse,” she said. “Before any of us, you know, go through our first change, we’re basically ordinary humans. I remember what it’s like to freeze my ass off.” 

“I didn’t know that.” A worrying new thought intruded. “Wait, does this feel super hot to you?”

She gave a huff of laughter. “No. I’m pretty much fine with anything above freezing or below a hundred. One of the perks of being a shifter—goddess knows I deserve a few.”

I turned my head on the seatback and cracked my eyes. From this angle I could see the cascade of Mel’s wild brown hair across her shoulders. As usual, her pony tail was losing the war to hold together. Closer to me and higher, the feather charm hanging from the mirror waggled gently, like the world’s laziest hypnotist was swinging it.

“What do you mean, ‘you deserve a few’?” I asked after a moment. 

“Nothing. I don’t know. Self-pitying bullshit.” Pause. “The point I'm trying to make is that I…I’m not in the habit of spending time with non-shifters.” Seeming to realize how that sounded, she quickly added, “Not for any asshole reason! I mean, not because I don’t like regular humans. I’m just…” She trailed off for so long I wondered if that was it. Then she murmured, “I have quirks.”

The headlights of a passing car briefly illuminated Mel’s arms and the halo of fuzz around the pink-purple feathers rocking above me.

“Quirks?” I repeated, bracing myself to be shut down.

Instead, Mel’s answer was instant, like she was rushing. “You know that not all shifters are the same, right?”