Kennedy found out what Charlie had meant by 'blue frosting' when he arrived at her apartment the following evening. When she heard the knock on her door, she eagerly pulled it open. Her smile froze briefly on her face and then she was overcome with a fit of giggles.

"Does this mean you really like it, or really don't?" Charlie asked. He ran his hand backwards through his hair, which had a brand-new, bright blue streak jetting back from his forehead.

"When did that happen?" Kennedy squeaked between giggles.

"Day before yesterday. I was hanging out with a friend and he asked me to help him dye his hair. He was doing this complicated multi-colored thing and needed a hand, literally. There was dye left over, so I asked if I could use a little. Et voila," he said, tipping his head down for Kennedy to get a closer look.

Kennedy didn't know if she liked it or not. It was a shock rather than an aesthetic thing. With his dark good looks and gypsy-flavored clothing, Charlie was already going to turn heads when she brought him to her math lecture. Would her thesis advisers be at the lecture? Would they think her less serious if she showed up with a guy with blue hair?

She put both hands in his hair, running them backwards through it, like he had. The blue hair felt different than the dark brown; coarser than his silky brown locks, but less wavy. Whatever else he'd put in his hair today smelled crisp and clean. She found herself moving closer to him until she was resting her forehead against his.

"I think blue is your color," she said.

Anyone who thought less of him for the color of his hair, or who thought less of her for walking in with someone with blue hair was not someone worth concerning herself with. And if her thesis panel judges were biased, they were bound to find bias somewhere else, like in the fact that Kennedy was a petite, soft-spoken blonde woman. Better to find out who she was dealing with sooner rather than later.

Charlie wrapped an arm around her waist and nuzzled her exposed neck. "The blue made me think of your eyes."

Kennedy tingled at his thoughtfulness, though she didn't think her eyes were nearly as bright as his hair dye.

She angled her mouth to his and kissed him lightly. "You are impossibly sweet."

He smiled his best carnal smile. "Yes, I am." He kissed her again, so light it was almost a pantomime of a kiss. "But only for you," he whispered.

Kennedy squeezed him hard, then released him. "You keep saying stuff like that and I'm going to make us miss the lecture."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

He patted her butt when she turned to get her jacket and bag, and she shot him a warning glance over her shoulder. She carried an actual purse in lieu of her usual backpack. Even if their plans had changed, it was still officially a date night. She had snuck a notebook and pen into her purse, though, just in case inspiration struck during the lecture.

Kennedy vibrated with excitement in the car on the way to the lecture hall, which was only a couple of minutes from her apartment. The combination of her proximity to Charlie and the prospect of the upcoming lecture had her in a place of happiness that a month ago she would only have found when she was elbow deep in quadratic variance functions of generalized linear models.

When they reached the lecture hall, they found the spacious room was packed to the aisles. Kennedy spotted Stacy, the friend who had told her about Mandelbrot's lecture, and waved at her as she and Charlie made their way to the back of the room, searching for seats. Stacy gave Kennedy a welcoming wave in return, and raised her eyebrows appreciatively when she spotted Charlie on Kennedy's heels.

At the back of the lecture hall, they saw one or two individual seats, but no two seats together.

"We should have come earlier, it looks like," said Kennedy.

Charlie took off his jacket, folded it in half and lay it across the last wide stair at the back of the lecture hall. He sat on one half of the jacket and patted the other half in invitation. Kennedy sat beside him. The stairs were so wide that, sitting side by side against the wall, there was still room for people to get in and out of the last row of seats. A couple of women Kennedy had seen around the math department came up the stairs and gave her envious looks when they saw Charlie sitting snug against her hip. The women split up and took separate seats just before the lecture hall exploded with applause.

An elderly man in a dark suit approached the podium, then smiled and waived politely as he waited for the applause to diminish. It took several minutes before he could even speak.

"You weren't kidding when you said this guy was a major star in your field," Charlie hollered into her ear.

"I sure wasn't," she replied, beaming.

"As long as you don't try to toss your panties on stage."

Kennedy elbowed Charlie gently in the ribs, but smiled. She shushed him when Mandelbrot approached the microphone. After thanking the crowd for the warm welcome, Benoit Mandelbrot, speaking a French accent softened by many years Stateside, started his speech by describing the broad strokes of how he'd started his mathematical career.

He had the crowd eating out of his hand. Kennedy had already known most of what he spoke about, but hearing it all condensed into a single, forty-five minute lecture was intensely inspiring, like seeing a perfectly done movie version of her favorite book. She glanced over at Charlie regularly, and was pleased to see that, while he wasn't in such raptures over the lecture as she was, he seemed to be getting caught up in the magic of it.

Far too quickly, Mandelbrot was giving his concluding remarks and saying his farewells. The applause during the standing ovation was deafening. Charlie surprised Kennedy by sticking his fingers in his mouth and whistling enthusiastically. When the noise finally diminished, they hung around for a few minutes to see if Mandelbrot would take questions, but he left the stage and did not return.

Kennedy walked to Charlie's car in a kind of trance, her mind bursting with new thoughts as old ideas formed new connections. Charlie, thankfully, was happy to walk along in silence while her brain was full of noise and light.

They reached the restaurant, a cozy mom-and-pop place just down from Charlie's store where he was greeted by name. Kennedy could barely read the menu, she was still so deeply focused on algorithms and geometries.

The waitress arrived to take their order and Kennedy had no idea what she wanted to eat.

"Can you recommend anything?" she asked, directing her question both to the waitress and to Charlie.

The waitress, an unnatural redhead a little younger than Kennedy, was the first to answer. "Well, Charlie always orders a cheeseburger, extra pickles, but we've got a nice five-cheese lasagna dish tonight."

The waitress rested her hand on the back of Charlie's chair as she spoke. Kennedy tasted the same sourness in her mouth that she had the night Chandra had been flirty-friendly with Charlie at her door and it instantly cleared her head. She didn't care for the taste at all. Kennedy squashed the unwelcome feeling and sweetened her mouth with a smile. "The lasagna sounds wonderful, please."

The waitress took their menus, and with a cheerful bounce, promised to return with their drinks shortly.

When she'd left, Charlie said, "I can see why Mandelbrot is such a big deal in your circles. I didn't understand at least half of what he said and I was still blown away."

"I'm glad to hear you say that. I was hoping you would like it at least as much as Moneyball on DVD."

"I'd still like to come over and see it one day."

"I still can't believe you don't own a television."

"I've got my computer. It's got Netflix. That's more than enough for me."

Charlie reached across the table and Kennedy took his hand.

"What did you like about the lecture?"

He caressed the back of her hand with his thumb as he thought about it. "I'd say the bit about digital clouds and mountains. How fractal geometry gave computer animators such a simple formula to make such complicated-looking shapes. It makes you wonder where in our lives we are paralyzed with a sense of complexity when, really, what's going on is very simple."

He squeezed her hand and pinned her to her chair with his intense gaze. Kennedy felt like there was something he wasn't saying, but she couldn't catch it. Her attention was still split in several different directions just now.

She focused on the feeling of his hand over hers, warm and solid. Charlie. Here, now. Food smells, fake wood table, red vinyl booth. She reached out her foot under the table until she made contact with Charlie's shin, then slid her foot down until it rested on his. She wished she were taller. His knee was inches from her own. She could reach it if she slouched, but she'd be so low down, she'd draw attention to herself.

Kennedy sat up straight in her seat when the waitress arrived with two glasses, promising that their dinners wouldn't be long.

"So," Kennedy said, waggling her eyebrows, "Come here often?"

"Sometimes. It gets boring cooking for one. There's interesting people to talk to here, too?"

"Like the staff?" Kennedy asked, feeling her mouth tighten around her words. She took a sip of her drink, putting her pucker to good use.

"The customers, too."

"You meet up with friends here?"

"I make friends here."

"What, you just walk up to strangers and start talking to them?"

"That's generally how the making friends thing works. I don't follow them to their tables or anything. I sit up at the counter when it's just me. People don't mind talking there."

"Still. Trying to strike up a conversation with someone you've never met." She shuddered a little.

"I got good at it growing up."

"How come?"

Charlie looked at her for a moment. "I've never told you this, have I?"

He had her full attention now. It was interrupted briefly by the waitress bringing two steaming plates of food. She made a small fuss over them when she put the plates in their places, but, to Kennedy's relief, didn't try to stay and chat.

Charlie took a bite of his burger, then made huffing noises and took a gulp of his drink. Kennedy looked at the steam coming from her own meal and decided to wait a minute before tasting hers.

"So the tarot shop used to be my mother's," Charlie said.

"Really? You got into the family business, then?"

"I didn't mean to. We moved here when I was in my last year of high school. I swore it would be the last move I made with her. Once I graduated, I was going wherever I wanted."

"But you ended up staying?" Kennedy asked.

"My mother always claimed to have itchy feet, never wanting to stay in one place for too long. Fortunately, her business was often a novelty when she came to town, so the first couple of years were usually good ones. If business slowed, it was a good excuse to move along."

He paused to take a bite of his burger. Kennedy dipped a fork into her lasagna. It was fantastic: creamy sauce, perfectly cooked pasta and just the right amount of garlic.

"Not long after we got here, she started to get sick. She was hiding it at first, but I ended up doing more and more at the shop. I'd always worked there part-time, but by the summer after graduation, I was practically running the place. It was either keep the business running, or go find a job that would support us both. And since the business was the only skill I had, that was the only choice that made sense."

"Was it cancer?" Kennedy asked in a small voice. Her father had had a cancer scare not long ago, though he, fortunately, had gotten a clean bill of health.

"Depression. Just as destructive, and just as hard to cure, but without the sympathy casseroles from the neighbors."

"Oh, I'm sorry. That must have been so difficult, you being so young at the time."

He shrugged. "There's never a good age. She did get better after a while, though she was pissed that it was modern medicine that was the most help. She'd really been hoping that she'd find relief from, well, anything else but."

"Not my business, but if you don't mind talking about it, what did she try?"

"She tried reiki, yoga, color therapy, guided imagery, anything she thought might help."

Kennedy stifled a snort. "She hoped color therapy would cure a chemical imbalance of the brain? She must have been desperate."

Charlie's voice was cool. "She *was* desperate. She was in a dark place, and was mildly paranoid about men in white coats."

"I'm sorry. I don't have any experience helping someone through something like that. I can't imagine what it would be like to watch someone you care about suffer."

He nodded. "But it ended, eventually. She got better, but decided that part of the problem was the 'heavy energy' of the shop, and decided to move on to the next town about four years ago. But by then, I realized that I like what I do and I like putting down roots in a community. And, I learned some more about how to deal with the business side of things, like selling books and necklaces, so I could keep it going."

"I'm glad that your Mom is doing better. I'm not surprised that you looked after her like that. You're a good guy, Charlie. You're clever and you've got a good heart."

He opened his mouth like he was going to speak, but instead bit his plump lower lip, then leaned forward and grabbed Kennedy's knee under the table, slid his hand up to her thigh and kneaded her soft flesh.

When he spoke, his voice alone sent exquisite shivers down Kennedy's spine. "Not all good."

A/N Hi folks! A big thank-you to those of you who have been reading along on this quick and dirty (ha!) writing adventure this month. I hope you are enjoying Charlie and Kennedy's story so far. 30,000 words down, 20,000 more to go!

If you have any thoughts about how the story has gone up till now, I'd love to hear them!