by Amy Craig
He grinned at her. “It burned to the ground in 1904.”
“That’s not so strange.” She shifted her weight and eyed the restroom building. “Whatever happened, it seems like a perfectly lovely park. I’m glad people like you and I get to enjoy it.”
The musician jerked his head toward the weathered white statue. “You ought to know what you’re enjoying. I figure that statue’s a ward against evil spirits. If you spend enough time in this park, you’ll realize that when the wind drops, the hairs on your arms are still standing on end.”
Wylie rubbed her arms.
“The only ‘Oneness’ these folks believe in is their property values. If I were you, I’d move your car out of the residential zone.”
Wylie kept her arms crossed over the athletic gear she had donned under the cover of darkness. The Social Club’s borrowed black top sat on the back seat of her car and she wondered how she would return it. The musician strummed his guitar and she lingered for a moment to listen to the haunting music. Then she found herself staring at the bright line where his T-shirt dipped and revealed pale white skin. How much time does he spend in this park?
The man ended his song and looked up.
“How do you know I’m not a local?” she asked.
He shaded his eyes. “I recognize the locals,” he said as his smile widened. “You ought to stick around and get to know us.”
Biting her lip, she wondered if the invitation hovered between flirtatiousness and hospitality. Like I would know the difference. She focused on the things she could understand, like the pressure of Nolan’s lips against hers. His taste lingered in her memories like a sweet worth unwrapping when she found time to savor it. “Thanks, but I have somewhere to go.”
The man nodded and looked at the strings of his guitar, tuning the frets to summon the chord he wanted to hear. “Lucky you,” he said without looking at her.
Wylie left the park and her strides lengthened as she passed an outpost of a ubiquitous café and rental business anchoring the county’s public beaches. Instead of being annoyed with the chain’s red-and-white awnings, she normally appreciated their presence and used them as a signpost to guide patrons to her class location.
This morning, the rich, buttery smells emanating from the café teased her senses with memories of hot coffee and morning croissants. Those savory breakfasts cost me ten bucks. To ground her senses, she focused on the ocean and ignored the peanut butter and jelly sandwich sitting in her stomach like a lump of modeling clay. Screw the croissants.
She put down her mat, dumped an armload of foam blocks on the sand and stacked a pile of extra beach towels near the lifeguard stand. The extra gear lived in the back of her trunk and allowed her to advertise drop-in classes with an open motto, “Come as you are!”
Then she eyed her regular short-term parking lot on Barnard Way and wondered how long it would be until she could afford little luxuries like hot food and paid parking. It doesn’t matter, she told herself as she began to stretch. The walk did me good. This is just a minor setback.
She moved into a second pose and the sand beneath her toes felt refreshingly cool. As an approved commercial fitness trainer, she had the right to conduct classes on the sand near Palisades Park, but it was up to her to recruit the customers. In exchange for the privilege, she paid tribute to the city of Santa Monica and stuck to a fixed schedule so anyone with an itch for yoga could find her.
The men and women came to her through social media posts and friendly referrals, but she treated them all the same. For twenty-five dollars a class, they could stretch, strengthen their muscles and follow her lead as they breathed in the fresh salt air.
Today, twelve people showed up at class time and unfurled their beach towels or coordinated yoga mats. They waved their phones in the air to acknowledge a transfer of funds and greeted each other like old friends. Wylie made a point of greeting each of them by name, bowing her head as the wind captured her greeting. “Namaste.”
For the next hour and a half, the group of twelve navigated their beach towels and worked up a sweat as they followed her through a series of poses. She tried not to grin when one of her favorite patrons fell over. Price Ross grinned as he brushed the sand from the side of his face and scrambled to his feet.
“Don’t worry.” She went up to the man and offered him her hand. “You can rinse off the sand at the showers or take a dip in the ocean.”
He laughed, shook his head and grasped her hand. “I should have known better than to come out here after hitting the town.”
Tell me about it. The stress and exhaustion of the last two days made it difficult for her not to smile at Price’s self-conscious reparations.
He jerked his head toward a man standing beyond the group. “I think you have another admirer.”
She followed his gesture, prepared to redirect a ‘shadow’ participant who thought they could mimic her class from a distance and evade her fees. Instead of a freeloader, she locked eyes with Nolan, shirtless and barefoot as he stood in the sand in a pair of black running shorts.
Her mind jumped to the previous night and the look of surprise that had flashed in his green eyes as she had claimed his lips. The taste of citrus and spice had faded from her memory as the evening progressed, but she had found herself scanning the crowded bar, somehow hoping the food truck vendor had braved Rusty’s wrath and dared to come back.
“He’s just a friend.” She hastily looked away and focused on correcting Price’s sand-strewn posture. “Maybe we got our times mixed up for a breakfast date. Don’t worry about him.”
The man nodded and lowered himself back into the high lunge of the Salutation pose. He smiled as he used his arms to maintain his balance. “Your date looks delicious.”
Wylie blushed and told the man to focus on his practice.
He winked at her.
I don’t have the luxury of admiring Nolan’s abs. She ignored Price’s wink and focused on the rest of her class, extolling the virtues of their beachside practice. “Choosing to do your poses near water can be incredibly soothing. Let your bodies connect with the lulling sounds of nature, the rhythm of the waves. As we transition into our next pose, shelve your to-do list and gaze at the ocean. Consider where your practice can take you.”
Price laughed. “I hope yours is taking you to crepes and hot coffee.”
Wylie smiled but ignored Nolan’s presence as she led the remainder of the class. Nolan’s just a friend—a friend who tastes like cardamom, a friend who found me on the beach and doesn’t know how to move on without making this awkward.
Five minutes later, she risked a glance and found him standing with his back to the sun. She could not see the expression on his face, but she had no problem sneaking a peek at his shirtless body. He must spend a lot of time loading supplies and wrestling with the hardware. Who am I kidding? I could definitely eat him for breakfast.
When the class ended, she chatted with the twelve participants as they folded up their towels and promised to return in two days. She watched the last one leave and reminded herself to view them as people instead of dollar signs.
Nolan came to stand beside her on the sand. “Looks like a good crew. How much did you make?”
“About three hundred bucks,” she said as she looked up at him and attempted to keep her eyes off his ripped abdominal muscles. The memory of his chest pressed against hers suddenly seemed more interesting than the taste of his lips. The only thing better than the feel of his kiss would be the feel of him naked. She cleared her throat. “Not that’s any of your business.”
“What happened to our partnership? I shared my truck’s profit margins with you. That’s deep.”
She snorted and slipped on a lightweight jacket. “I’m lucky you didn’t scare off my customers. What are you doing out here? Stalk much?”
Nolan laughed and braced his hands on his hips. She tried not to follow the line of his biceps and wondered what kind of heavy lifting came from working at a foo
d truck. Loading supplies? Troubleshooting the truck’s diesel generator? The shirtlessness still distracted her sleep-deprived mind until he interrupted her thoughts.
“I looked you up and figured I’d go for a run and check out your class,” he said.
The morning sun picked out the beads of sweat running down his pecs. Wylie looked away and focused on the apartments, bungalows and houses climbing the hills to claim the highest ground. The high rent of her former apartment had felt like a business expense, but she knew Nolan’s food truck moved all over the city. She recalled the lentils and sweet potato fries that had been her last taste of flavor. I can’t subsist on room temperature groceries for two weeks. How long before I cave and blow twenty dollars for a hot food fix? Hoping to distract her stomach, she focused on the barefoot man standing in front of her. “You live nearby?”
He nodded and offered to hold the stack of extra towels none of her participants had needed. “I share a house with a couple of friends. Plus, I wanted to know how much traffic your little business gets. That ten percent coupon could hit my bottom line.”
“I doubt it.” She glanced at his chest and wondered if skin-to-skin contact would do more to take her mind off other cravings. The thought of taking Nolan back to her SUV for a quickie made her laugh and she shook her head as she turned toward Ocean Avenue and starting walking.
He fell into step beside her and matched her stride. “So, do you want to get lunch? I have a few things to talk about—like, mainly that kiss.”
“I was just trying to keep your mouth shut before you said something stupid and gave Rusty a reason to deck you.”
“Mission accomplished,” he admitted. “But what about the second one? Let’s get food and do it again.”
“Or not.” She kept walking and hid her smile. Doesn’t he need shoes?
“You don’t like hanging out with me?”
She stopped and turned to face him, scanning his chest and the shadows of dried sweat on his suntanned shoulders. “It’s not that.” She swallowed and decided not to string him along. “Things are just complicated right now.”
He considered her for a moment and shifted the weight of the towels in his arms. “I’m good at solving problems.”
She shook her head and reached for the load he had offered to carry. “This is my problem to solve. Come back in a few weeks. By then, I’ll either have gotten it together or splurged for a one-way ticket to see my parents in Oregon.”
He surrendered the towels and braced his hands on his hips. “So you’re telling me that there’s a chance you’ll just be gone?” When Wylie nodded, he shook his head like she might have spent too much time in the sun. “I’m not looking for a hookup. I’m asking you out on a date.”
“I get it,” she assured him, “but it’s not a good time for me right now. Between the beach sessions and Rusty’s bar, I’m emotionally maxed out.”
Nolan shook his head. “That guy’s a tool.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a tool who’s offering me a paying job.”
He scanned her branded athletic gear and raised his eyebrow.
Looks can be deceiving. She held her tongue, grateful he withheld his opinion of her financial priorities. Would he have given up so easily if I still wore the stripper’s top?
“At least let me help you carry this stuff back to your car. You can barely see where you’re going with all that stuff in your arms,” he said.
She held on to the burden. “It’s not that bad.”
“Please? It’ll keep people from staring at my chest.”
She laughed and handed over the towels. “Fine. I won’t keep turning down the help if it’ll get you out of my hair. I’m just parked up near the park.”
They fell in step and she thought about the last protestors who had left the Social Club, arm in arm as they traded good-natured jibes with their new neighborhood friends. “Did you think that crew would make Rusty change his dress code?”
Nolan nodded. “Money has a way of talking. I bet his take was higher than opening night.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“He’s gambling on that old PG&E building. The lease is dirt-cheap for the first year, but he’ll have to make a profit if he wants to recover his sunk costs.”
Wylie glanced at him and wondered why he didn’t have a T-shirt tucked in the back of his running shorts like everybody else who jogged on the beach and required backup layers to buffer their exposure. The intimacy of their walk grew as they got farther and farther from the rhythmic allure of the water. She adjusted the bag on her shoulder and looked at the anonymity of the milling crowds. I should have just given him my number and ignored him until I got my act together. He’s going to figure out what’s going on and judge me.
Eager to deflect the conversation from Rusty’s business acumen, she glanced at Nolan and raised her eyebrows. “You seem to know a lot about commercial property development for a guy who mans a food truck.”
He made a noncommittal noise and shrugged. “It interests me.”
“I bet.” She turned the corner and looked for her vehicle in the shadows of Hotchkiss Park. She thought she had left it on Hollister, but turned toward Strand in case the stress of the last twenty-four hours had left her mistaken. The green-roofed houses and apartment building stood where she had left it, but she admitted reality. The SUV was gone.
“Seventy-two hours,” she said, thinking of her conversation with Penny Lane. “She told me I could leave my car on the street for seventy-tour hours.”
Nolan gestured to a blue and white sign for Tommy Tee’s Tow Service. “Some of these agencies can be aggressive about enforcing their contracts.”
Wylie focused on the dingy sign and read the metal proclamation. Red text swirled with warnings about unauthorized vehicles and the penalties associated with blocking access. “But I wasn’t blocking access. They can’t just tow me for no good reason, can they?”
Nolan brushed a hand through the longer hair on top of his head. “How close did you park to the opening of that driveway? Residents get territorial about their access if they have boats, RVs or stuff they need to get out. Trust me. The food truck has skated through more than one sloped driveway.”
The thought of owning a boat or RV made Wylie choke on her laughter. She dropped her bag of yoga props and braced her hands on her knees. “This is surreal. What am I going to do now? That little SUV was everything to me.”
“I’ll give you a ride to the tow yard,” Nolan said. “My house isn’t that far away. Just hang out here while I go get my car.”
“No, I’m not a damsel in distress. It’s bad enough I let you carry my stuff. Just leave it there. I’ll figure it out.” She avoided Nolan’s gaze and looked at the guitar player passed out beneath a large shade tree. He tried to warn me. How long does it take to look at the world with a new perspective? How long does it take to identify new dangers?
“Wylie?”
She shook head and scrambled to recalculate her finances. Retrieving her vehicle from the tow yard would probably cost her upward of three hundred bucks. There go the proceeds from this morning’s class. She cursed her stupidity. “I should have just slept in this morning.”
Nolan cupped her elbow and captured her attention. “Hiding from life never solves anything. Let’s just go spring your car. You can thank me by agreeing to lunch.”
The warmth of his touch heated her skin and made her aware of goosebumps raised by the ocean wind. She shook her head and pulled her arm free. “You don’t have to do that. I should have known better.”
“Are you this hard on your clients?”
Wylie looked at him.
“Do you expect them to get everything right the first time?”
She shook her head. “No, but I’m not paying you for life advice.”
Nolan laughed and swung an arm over her shoulder. The casual gesture surprised Wylie, but she relaxed into his warmth and stopped inventing new ways to curse Tommy Tee and his tow service.
“C’mon. I’ll even bring you to your house first so you can drop this stuff off.”
She froze and slipped away from his warmth. “Nolan, I have it.”
His gaze narrowed and he stared at her.
Raising her chin, she hoped her wind-tousled hair and athletic gear disguised two days of sleeping in her SUV.
“Where do you live?”
Wylie swallowed and considered lying to the man, but pride and perjury seemed like two very different outcomes. A few weeks of stress might make her stronger, but ‘domestically challenged’ and ‘urban camper’ sounded like cute euphemisms for her homeless state. They discredited Penny Lane and the musician who had done his best to help her. She replayed kissing Nolan at the bar and casting herself as the savior, but the reality of her predicament made her feel weak. She raised her chin. “I’m between apartments at the moment,” she said, hoping to acknowledge her reality without accepting it as her fate.
Nolan nodded as the pieces fell into place. “What happened?”
“Why did something have to happen?”
He shifted his weight. “Are you into drugs or something illicit?”
She reached for the stack of towels and pulled them tight to her chest. The smell of salt and sand anchored her senses and buried her tears of frustration. “No, it’s not like that. My roommate kicked me out, and I’ve been living in my vehicle for a few days to save money. Anyone would do it.”
“Most people have friends with couches.”
“Well, my friends are out of town.” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and tried not to feel like the confession reflected on her self-worth.
“All of them?”
She took a deep breath. “I don’t seem to have friends as much as I have business relationships. A few weeks in my car isn’t going to kill me, but losing my yoga clientele would be borderline tragic.”
He shook his head and scanned the tree-lined street. “You don’t know what you’re up against, Mini Mako.” He reached for the towels and pulled them from her arms. “Let’s go get your car.”
