“For only three days?” Cal asked.
“Don’t tease,” I said, but loving it. Calvin’s attention was like real life Instagram.
I traced my fingers up the curve of my neck, down to my collarbone. His eyes followed, but only for a second. Maybe he has a girlfriend, I thought.
“We have a lot of clothes, you know. It’s a fashion shoot. I’ll wear, easily, between ten and twelve different outfits a day. Most of them completely seethrough. Get used to seeing me basically naked every day,” I deadpanned.
He didn’t laugh this time, but held my gaze. And for the briefest of moments—the briefest—I caught a flicker.
Lust.
My cheeks burned—even though I never blushed—but I re-crossed my legs, regaining the power.
“Well, I’ve officially died and gone to heaven,” Josie called out, laughing with Taylor and Ray. I liked seeing her laugh—she needed that after the year she’d had.
“You love it?” I asked.
“I adore it,” she said, glancing back as Ray reached us. He glanced out at the horizon where the storm clouds were growing darker by the second.
Ray pointed, looking at Calvin. “Bad weather supposed to come through later?” he asked.
“I think so,” Cal said. “Big Sur can have some pretty dramatic weather, but you should be fine. Just a thunderstorm, I think. And if you get rained out, any number of Big Sur businesses would probably let you do a photo shoot there.”
He nodded, making a note on his phone. “It would make for a pretty epic shot though, right? Lucia and Taylor in the rain, overlooking some cliff?”
I rolled my eyes. Easy to say when you weren’t the person holding some twisty pose and a gorgeous face as hail beat down on your head.
“Sounds rad,” Taylor said and Josie made a face at me.
“So which cabin can I have?” Josie asked.
“Lucia’s already called the last one,” Calvin spoke up. I mouthed a thank you his way.
He shrugged it away, then nodded back towards the bookstore. “We should probably get back,” he said. “Get you all unpacked and set up before the sun sets. Which is beautiful from here.”
“Which I can’t even post a photo of online so it’s like…what’s the point?” Taylor mused, without a touch of irony.
I grimaced, biting my tongue, since I’d almost said the same thing.
◊
CALVIN
The first month I lived in Big Sur I’d missed sitting in traffic. I mean, I’d missed a lot of things. I missed my apartment, even though it was dark and small and dingy—all white walls, tiny dishwasher, windows that looked out into the back of a parking lot. I missed my gym, where I went at least four nights a week. I missed my job as a software developer—there was nothing I loved more than sitting down in front of a computer, earbuds in, and coding for 10 hours a day.
There were some days when I didn’t talk to a single human being—just woke up to my alarm (always set to the dulcet tones of the local NPR reporters); sat in traffic for 45 minutes, zoned out in front of a screen at work, sat in traffic on the way home, ran on a treadmill until I was exhausted and went home.
I had inherited my mother’s innate sense of order—and strong dislike of chaos. I liked routine. Numbers made sense to me. Traffic patterns were soothing.
I had done everything right. Went to Stanford for computer science. Made friends with the other nerds in my program, spending weekends watching Star Wars and bickering about Harry Potter characters. Barely had sex…and I mean barely. Which was exciting, since I spent high school never having sex—no surprise, really, since I was essentially a walking stereotype.
After graduating with honors, my friends and I all landed jobs immediately, continuing to nerd out on the weekends. And I wound up in a three-year relationship with Claire, whose initial sense of order and routine complemented my own.
My family and I always thought of my grandfather as a lovable weirdo. Even me, and I’d spent most of my summers with him, growing closer and closer, ultimately seeing past the one-dimensional view my extended family had: the old hippie, living in the woods and off the grid.
He was so much more than that, obviously. But deep down, I still thought it was weird. A life I wasn’t cut out for.
A year before my grandfather died I’d driven up to Big Sur with Claire (who would end up breaking up with me a month later) for a long overdue visit.
My grandfather had teased me about the tie I was wearing, about looking stern in my button-up. We were sitting on the back patio, glasses of whiskey in our hands.
“I have something for you,” he’d said, pulling out a stack of books. Asimov. A slew of Vonnegut. An old collection of trash sci-fi he’d found at a pawn shop. He pressed them into my hands.
I remember inhaling that smell—that smell of used books, a combination of sun and dust and whatever happens to paper pages as they age. The kid in me wanted to squeeze them to my chest. The adult in me sighed.
“I wish I had time to read these,” I’d said, cracking a smile. “Work is so busy, you know? I never have the time anymore.”
My grandfather laughed. “You sound like a robot. And not the good kind.”
“You mean the kind that will one day take over our planet?”
“Of course,” he said. “You’re not the kind of robot overlord I’d want in charge. Too boring.”
I laughed. I’d missed his odd sense of humor (which I’d inherited from him).
“Well,” I continued, “I mean, I’m too tired at the end of the night to read. And on the weekends…” I trailed off.
“On the weekends, what?” he asked. But when I opened my mouth to answer I found I didn’t really have an excuse. I just didn’t read anymore.
“Too busy laying the groundwork for the robot revolution, you know? You can’t overthrow the human race in a day,” I finally said and his laughter rang out on the patio. I laughed too, glancing down at the books in my hand.
My grandfather read every genre voraciously, but knew I had a passion for science fiction. As a kid, when I’d show up prattling on about the latest Harry Potter, or the old episodes of The X-Files my parents showed me, he’d smile, nod, and then come back with a stack of science fiction classics almost never suited for my age.
“Here. Start from the beginning,” he’d say gently, and I’d usually devour them in a single sitting.
“What about a vacation? Go anywhere beautiful lately? It’s a great time to read books,” he’d asked, sipping from his drink.
I caught Claire’s eye. We had just been having this conversation, about the last time either one of us had taken a legitimate break from work—more than just a long weekend here or there. It had been years for both of us.
“You know how it is, Grandpa,” I said. “I’ve got so much work to do, I basically have to kill myself to get ready for the vacation.”
“And then when you get back,” Claire cut in, “it’s even worse. It’s like, why even go? Just makes work harder.”
My grandfather just smiled, giving me a look I remembered well from childhood. I shifted in my chair, changed the subject. But I could feel his disappointment.
Later, after Claire had gone to bed, he convinced me to go on a walk with him. His walks were famous in Big Sur, and he was known to show up at people’s houses for unexpected conversation, sometimes bringing Max. Sometimes bringing food. Sometimes just bringing a couple glasses and a good bottle of wine. My grandfather believed in spontaneous socializing, building community instantly with just about anyone he made eye contact with.
This walk though was through the woods, lit brightly by a full moon. We were heading out towards the cabins. I’d been feeling something all day, some feeling I couldn’t put my finger on, a discomfort. Itchy. I’d torn off my tie, undid the first few buttons on my shirt, but the feeling didn’t fade.
“I’m sorry if I seemed a little judgmental back there,” he finally said, after we’d walked in silence for a w
hile.
“I doubt Claire noticed,” I said. “Only a few people recognize you’re I’m secretly judging you smile. Most people just think you’re really nice.”
“I am nice,” he said, elbowing me. “But I don’t want you to think I’m sitting up here in Big Sur, the King of Bohemia, and looking down on you in judgment.”
I laughed. “You think I’m wasting my life, don’t you?” I wasn’t offended, not really. We had a close relationship, and I’d heard him argue with my parents enough about this topic to know he only said it out of love.
“Not at all, Calvin. Not at all,” he said. “Life is beautiful. We live our lives differently, which is one of the best things about living. I’ve lived long enough on this earth to know that to be true. I just…I want to know if you’re happy.”
“Of course,” I said. “I got my dream job. I go to as many science fiction conventions as I want. I’ve got Claire. We’ve got an apartment in the city. I have a car.” I shrugged. “I’m not sure what else I need.”
But even as I said it, something was stirring. I didn’t know what it was.
“I’m not sure either, Cal. And I’m not saying you need any more than what you have. What you have is amazing and a real privilege. But…” he trailed off.
“I’m not like you,” I said hastily, sensing where he might be going. “I don’t want to go against the grain all the time. I don’t want to always have to explain my different life choices to people. I like my routine. I like that Mondays we always do pizza. And Wednesdays I play Dungeons and Dragons. And Fridays we go to the movies. I like all of that.”
He sighed deeply, stopping for a second to identify a constellation for me. The stars up here were brighter than in the city. I couldn’t star gaze there, the universe looking milky and pale against an onslaught of lights. In Big Sur, the stars demanded your attention.
We stood in silence for a moment and I suddenly felt tiny and insignificant.
“Staring at the stars up here can get you in trouble,” my grandfather finally said. He knew me too well.
“I feel…” I struggled to finish the sentence, awash in the Milky Way, shivering slightly under a canopy of trees, the pounding of ocean waves steps away. All of nature, crashing down around me.
“I feel like living in Big Sur is like living on another planet,” I finally said. “It’s isolating.”
“I felt that way too, when your grandmother and I were first up here. We were really going against the grain then, although back then we could barely go a day without having young kids—younger, even, then you—showing up at our doorstep, looking for a place to crash.”
“Running away?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Sure. Or just exploring. Going on a grand adventure. Didn’t always turn out well back then, but the spirit was there. I’d felt the same way then, staring society in the face and saying why? Scoffing at the career ladder, at a culture that seemed obsessed with buying things. At that time, we had so many writers coming through—some famous, some not—and they’d sit in the Big Room and have these long, drawn-out conversations for hours on end just…questioning.”
We neared the cabins—they looked spooky in the moonlight. I shivered.
“But then I’d have to go into the city to buy books, or meet with my accountant, and I’d be startled. Just…shaken up. By the busyness. How quickly people seemed to move through their lives, never seeming to be fully present in the moment. In comparison, yeah…I bet my accountant thought of me as an alien,” he continued.
“And not the good kind,” I said, grinning. “Not the kind I’d want to be my future overlord.”
My grandfather laughed. “Exactly. I had long hair and only wore sandals and he probably thought I was stoned out of my mind. I wasn’t, I was just used to a slower pace of life.”
We were silent for a second before he said, “I can be a bit dogmatic in my beliefs, Calvin.”
We perched on one of the cabin porches, our feet swinging in the darkness. “I know that. I know that I’ve pushed family members away, burned some bridges.”
I nodded. My grandfather had never done any real damage (he was too kind) but I’d spent plenty of holiday dinners attempting to mediate an argument between my grandfather and some uncle. Or my parents.
“And the last thing I ever want is to appear judgmental. People need to live the lives they want—I guess, at the end of the day, that’s what I’m dogmatic about. It’s not how you’re living it, Cal. You could be an investment banker and own six houses and if you were happy—truly joyful—I’d congratulate you. Since finding comfort and peace in how we live our lives is not easy to do. Believe me.” He turned to me, and now I wondered if he knew he’d be dead in a year.
He couldn’t have—it wasn’t like he had an illness, or even an inkling, that an aneurysm lay dormant in his brain. But he seemed desperate to get through to me.
“I know you,” he said. I felt that shift again, something awakening. “I think we’re more alike than you realize. When you used to come up here, I’d see such joy on your face. An excitement for the world around you.” He paused, and I knew what was coming next. “Do you feel like you still have that?”
I don’t remember exactly what I said, probably some assurance. And I’m not even sure I was lying to him at the time. I might have been a little confused, but it wasn’t hard for me to tell him something like, “Of course I do.”
We switched subjects after that, moving on to his recent favorite books. A poem he’d found the other day he couldn’t wait to show me.
I didn’t tell him I hadn’t fully read a book in over a year—I read Facebook articles and scrolled through Reddit. Talking to him that night I felt that feverish desire I’d had as a child, to consume as many words and worlds as possible.
The next morning, I woke early and sat in front of the old fireplace, reading the Isaac Asimov novel my grandfather had given me cover to cover. Because it was good, and because I needed to—needed to remember the simple pursuits of my childhood, a world outside the magnetic pull of the internet and its myriad of distractions.
My grandfather joined me after a while and we spent the morning like that, quietly reading. Max at our feet, the fire burning down to embers.
◊
I ran hard this morning with a smile on my face, remembering my longing for traffic that first month in Big Sur. My new routine was different, and as I ran up Highway 1, the ocean to my left, I relished in the burn of my calf muscles, the fog clinging to my skin.
Big Sur fog was my new favorite weather condition to run in—thick as a shroud, and pressed so close I could only hear my breath, my footsteps, the waves. So different from the manufactured brightness of the gym.
I stopped at the Big Sur Bakery for coffee and flipped idly through our local paper, liking the combined hum of locals and tourists. Laughing at the small-town crimes written about in the back. Guzzling a glass of water and then running home, fog just beginning to burn away. The storm clouds stayed, though, low and threatening in the distance.
I felt closest to my grandfather when I opened the store every morning—a new routine I didn’t expect to love so much when I first moved here. I expected to feel emotionally divorced from the daily acts of bookstore business—because it didn’t matter, not really. I’d be closing up at the end of October. And yet, every day the enjoyment I got from the multitude of small tasks grew, until I actively looked forward to it.
Again, so different from my life before. And something I was beginning to feel comfortable enough to admit I was going to miss: the gentle act of dusting the piles of books, straightening spines and pages. Tucking wayward poems back into their place—pinned on the ceiling, or framed on the wall. Lighting three fireplaces.
I read voraciously now, keeping a long list by the register of what I’d read and what was next; my recommendations, even though some days not a single customer came in. But my grandfather had done it and he would have wanted it to continue.
; Flipping the sign from the ‘closed’ side (“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep rolling under the stars”) to the ‘open’ side (“Be groovy or leave, man”), I propped open the door. Pulled out my stool, and waited for customers.
During my first month, I’d had no idea what to do with the types of people who wandered into the store: tourists, locals, hippies making the pilgrimage to a Bohemian touchstone. I didn’t know how to have small talk with people, my old high-school insecurities rearing back up.
My grandfather was warm and chatty and loved meeting strangers. In comparison, I was the wallflower at the school dance, stuck in my head and easily embarrassed.
On one of my first days running the store on my own, a group of women came in, pulling up in an old VW van—daffodil yellow with printed curtains inside.
They were young, about my age, and awash in self-confidence. Airy dresses and long hair, limbs jangling with bracelets. They wanted to know all the stories about my grandfather: Beat poets and the hippie Summer of Love days, anti-war demonstrations and famous authors scrawling masterpieces on index cards.
They grew quickly tired of my nervous rambling, their disinterest evident. I felt gawky and too tall, and wished at least one of them was wearing glasses, even ironically.
Except for Claire, and a handful of awkward hook-ups, my experience with women was severely limited. I’d been single for more than a year at that point and was constantly wondering if I’d ever meet a woman like Claire again—not that I was pining for her. She’d been too serious, too moody, too quick to judge. But some part of her had been okay with the fact that I was just an awkward nerd, stumbling through human interactions like a bull in a china shop.
But nothing—absolutely nothing—in my life thus far could prepare me for the next-level-awkwardness of having a supermodel suddenly strut into your store with an entourage of people and cameras following in her wake.
I knew the general shooting schedule—knew that I’d have an open store with a photo shoot happening at the same time—but they still caught me completely off-guard. I had been thumbing through Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke, sipping my fifth cup of coffee and idly looking out the window.
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