Everything was a goddamn mess. I stared at numbers until my eyes blurred. I should have been used to this, since I’d spent my entire adult life staring at numbers on a computer screen. But this—this was my grandfather’s livelihood. Slipping away, month after month, as his expenses outpaced his revenue.
I wasn’t sure what I wished for more: that he was aware of how deeply he was in debt, or that he wasn’t. If he was aware, I marveled at his resilience. I’d looked through past documents over the last decade, and the amount of readings and lectures declined sharply in the mid-90s. After that, they were few and far between.
They’d been my grandfather’s bread-and-butter: between ticket sales, the revenue from renting those cabins, and the book sales that naturally occurred after each reading, he’d been making quite a bit of profit for a while.
Why had he stopped? I couldn’t imagine there being a lack of interest, except that the mid-90s was the start of the tech boom. A rational push back against the “free love” and hippie mindset of the 60s and 70s. The beginning of internet popularity.
“Huh,” I said out loud, looking through his records. I was still slowly making my way chronologically through his journals. Maybe he’d mention it.
The other option was that my grandfather had been blissfully unaware, up until the end. Or maybe not totally unaware—he did pay his bills every month, had to notice the decline in profit. Maybe he was just unconcerned.
Which was more like him.
I dug further into the boxes and unearthed a stack of index cards he hadn’t pinned to the ceiling. They looked a little older, but not much, maybe from five or ten years ago. He must have stuck them in a random box and totally forgotten. I fanned them out, curious.
It’s a rare sunny day here in May. My friend and I have been driving up the coast for days. We stopped on in because both of our parents told us about this place. I’m so happy we came here. Before we knew it, we’d spent a few hours talking to Robert, the owner. Browsing the shelves, reading in front of the fireplace. He made us coffee in these old, funky mugs and we drank it on the front porch, just staring at the redwoods for what felt like days. I couldn’t get enough. I bought ten books! Thank you, Robert, for your kindness and this peaceful sanctuary for book lovers.
I smiled, liking this one. So many of the index cards were about authors or poets they had just seen; the power of that experience. But this one was just a simple afternoon in May—and it reminded me so much of the summers I spent with him here that my heart clenched, painfully, in my chest. I knew what it was like to watch the sunrise on that front porch, and the sunset on that patio. I knew what it was like to drink coffee from those old chipped mugs and have my grandfather quiz me on my feelings about a particular poem.
My grandfather always encouraged my natural inclination towards nerdiness—the first science fiction novel I’d ever read came from this store. I’d spent the first week of a summer here chatting animatedly about Star Wars and my obsession with Star Trek: Next Generation. He’d listened with great interest and never made fun of me. And by the end of that summer I’d left with a backpacked filled to the brim with the classics: Asimov, Vonnegut, Ursula Le Guin, Ray Bradbury.
Middle school and high school weren’t easy for me—I was too much of a shy wallflower. I struggled to make friends, connections. But my grandfather gave me different worlds: aliens, dystopic futures, and galactic empires. Worlds I could lose myself in for hours at a time.
I rubbed my hand across my chest, a feeble attempt to soothe the ache there. The grief was like this sometimes, a sudden wave you couldn’t fight against. I breathed deeply, trying to find my way. Tears pricked the backs of my eyes, and I was just wiping them away when Lucia strode past, popping a handful of blueberries into her mouth.
She was wearing a wide brimmed, floppy hat; torn jeans and a faded Abbey Road tank top. Effortlessly cool, as usual. She happened to make eye contact with me just as I was wiping tears away. She stopped in her tracks, concern and empathy flashing across her gorgeous face. I looked away, my cheeks burning with embarrassment.
“Lu,” I heard Josie call out. “I need to fix that eyeliner, mija.”
I waited a beat, and when I finally looked up, she had moved on, seated in a chair in front of Josie’s steady hands.
Sighing, I turned back to the task at hand. I read through more documents, made neat piles, stacked up the index cards for me to pin up later.
Although, really: why bother? I’d need to pack all this shit up a month from now anyway.
I grimaced, and then pulled out one of my grandfather’s journals. It was slim and black, like the rest of them, but hadn’t been in the boxes where he kept the others. Curious, I flipped through.
A random entry from the sixties:
I don’t know why I brought Maggie here—she’s used to living in big cities, surrounded by her family and friends. And now I’ve dragged my new wife off to this small town that lacks basic electricity. It’s like living in the 1800s out here, totally isolating and different from the coastal communities she grew up in. We don’t have any friends, and even though I thought living in a book store was romantic, I think she just thinks it’s really, really odd..
There was nothing after that. It was strange, even though my grandfather had his fair share of bad days, or boring days, he very rarely was negative in his journals. And I knew, from his stories and even from my own grandmother, when she was alive, how deeply she loved this place. In a few years, they created such a strong community they couldn’t go anywhere in town without people recognizing them. Loving them. It was strange to see this anxious, worrying side of him—that he’d made the wrong decision. That his new wife would hate Big Sur.
I flipped again, the passages suddenly leaping twenty years ahead.
It’s hard to visit our kids sometimes. They’re grown up now, in fact, they have adult lives of their own. And I know they love Maggie and I deeply—just as we love them deeply. But our lives are so different. Visiting their condos and apartments in San Jose makes me wonder if I’d chosen the wrong path—why did I choose a path that took me away from my family? From Maggie’s? Why did I choose to raise my children in Big Sur? I think this place is magical and wondrous, but to a teenager it’s completely dull. Nothing to do. Living alongside the ocean doesn’t inspire anything in them. No wonder they left as soon as they graduated high school. What teenager would have stayed?
And I know they think I’m weird. A lot of people do. And I wonder if I’m a bad person, since I find myself judging the way they’re living their lives too. Which is not bad at all. Any ‘normal’ parent would be proud and relieved: they’re both successful. Make a lot of money. They have nice houses and nice cars and so many things.
But I wonder sometimes where my children went: my children, who used to spend every evening running through the woods until twilight. Racing down the beach until they’d collapse, out of breath and exhilarated, on the sand. They didn’t need things then, they just had happiness.
My grandfather could be a judgmental son of a bitch sometimes. That was true. He’d spent his entire life purposefully pushing back against what society told us we “should” do, or what we “should” be. To him, my parents’ lives were boring and uninspired, and he let them know that. But, then again, my parents spent a lot of time telling me my grandfather was an “aging hippie who refused to live in the real world.” That he was silly, had no direction. That he lacked ambition.
I had no idea he’d regretted, even for a moment, raising his family in Big Sur. It had always been something he’d taken great pride in—raising his family “off the grid.” But my mother and uncle had entered their teen years deeply unhappy, no longer content to run through the woods. Instead they wanted TV and malls and to go to the movies. I always thought my grandfather didn’t care.
Except that it was clear now that he had.
I shoved this journal in my back pocket to keep reading for later, intensely curious about this sec
ret journal he’d kept, one of his deepest fear, worries, insecurities. It was different from the jolly, joyful anecdotes of his other journals.
I didn’t doubt that both experiences could be true.
◊
LUCIA
“Coffee break?” Josie asked, and when I turned to look at her I arched an eyebrow at the wild look in her eye. She’d had an…interesting morning, to say the least. And evening. We both had.
“Please,” I said, standing and immediately following her to the back, grabbing a blanket from one of the chairs. It was freezing outside, the wind whipping through the trees. Ray was all about it, on long calls with Shay about how we could incorporate “storm imagery” into his avant-garde style.
Calvin had been hunched over stacks of paper all day, and barely glanced my way once. He’d certainly not mentioned the poem I’d drunkenly left outside his door last night. Which was for the best. As soon as I’d woken up—a little hungover, squinting against the harsh daylight—I knew it was a mistake. Embarrassing, even. Supermodels didn’t leave secret love poems for guys they had crushes on.
It just didn’t happen.
Although, for the briefest of moments, I thought I’d caught Cal crying. He’d looked stricken, flipping through some notebook, and when I’d walked past he was wiping tears from his eyes. I wanted to jump over the desk and wrap him in a hug.
I wrapped us in the blanket, huddled over the cup of coffee like it was the Holy Grail. Josie had bitten her lip so much I was worried she’d break the skin.
“So…” I started, “the bouquets.” Last night Josie had gone home with Gabe, the sexy, bearded bartender—and Cal’s closest friend. This morning she’d crawled home only to have a bouquet of irises delivered to her cabin an hour later.
“They kept coming,” she said, gulping down caffeine. “Six total, one every half an hour. Each with a card.”
I fought to keep quiet, but I couldn’t stop the beaming smile. “Josie,” I squealed, shoving her with my shoulder. “He’s a total sweetheart! And he’s got the hots for you, for sure.”
She shook her head. “We’re seeing each other tonight. For a date.” She grimaced at the word. Josie hadn’t gone on a date since Clarke, two years ago.
“That’s a good thing.”
“It’s against the rules.”
“Rules-schmules. Just have some fun. We’re leaving tomorrow anyway,” I said, and a corresponding feeling of dread unleashed in my stomach.
With her best friend sixth sense, Josie turned a sharp look on me. “What happened with you last night?”
I shrugged nonchalantly. “Oh you know…got a little drunk and left Cal a poem by Mary Oliver at his bedroom door.”
Josie spit her coffee out.
“What is this, The Three Stooges?” I asked, sighing.
“You have a crush on Cal.”
“I sure don’t,” I said. Lies, lies, it was all lies.
She let it go, even though it was so obvious I was lying. I hadn’t had a real relationship in years—hadn’t had real feelings for a person in years. Everything in my life as a model was orchestrated and for the cameras. I dated opportunistically. I swallowed against a panicky feeling in my throat—like a cluster of moths was trapped there.
It was fine. I had the rest of my life to fall madly, passionately, wildly in love. But not now.
And certainly not with Cal.
“We’ve known these guys for three days,” Josie said in a calm voice. “I’m really not sure what we’re freaking out about.”
“I’m not freaking out,” I lied again, and she half-shoved me. “So, um, I got a message from Sabine. I’m supposed to call her tonight, to set up travel plans, go over some mock-ups. I should be in Paris by the end of next week.”
The words sounded dull to my ears—how was it possible that our time in this…this place, this bookstore…. was giving me such stark feelings of dismay about leaving for my dream job?
Josie was quiet for a moment, and then feebly said, “Yay.”
I laughed. “This is a good thing,” I reminded her.
“No estoy seguro de que estés feliz,” she muttered, looking away for a moment. I couldn’t parse the sentence.
“What? I can’t conjugate Spanish verbs when I’m hungover.”
She sighed, biting her lip again.
“You can tell me, I’m not going to be angry.”
“No, it’s just…Lucia, you’ve seemed more excited to talk with Calvin, to read poems again, to be in this bookstore, than you are about this photo shoot or Paris. I just think that’s…interesting.”
“It’s a big move. I have to leave you. I don’t speak the language…it’s probably just nerves. But good nerves. Happy nerves.” The moths were back, cluttering up my windpipe. I was moments away from wheezing on this rain-drenched patio.
Josie looked at me—like really looked at me. “You’re sure about that?”
“Fuck yeah!” I said, charging my voice with an enthusiasm I didn’t feel. I was distracted—worried about how Josie felt about Gabe, wondering if Cal was okay, and half noticing that there was a definite poem in the way the puddles slid down the dark wood of the patio—the reflection of the trees, our toes at the edge, like twin sisters about to jump into the ocean. Holding hands, their hair whipping against the foam. The image coalesced in my mind, hardening into the rough outline of a stanza.
It took my breath away. I squeezed my fingers around the mug, attempting to soothe the itch.
“I love you, Lu,” Josie said suddenly, wrapping me in a hug. I hugged back, surprised.
“I love you too. And are you okay?” I asked against her hair. “Those flowers really upset you, huh?”
I liked to think of myself as a peaceful person, but if I ever came upon Clarke in a dark alley he was a fucking dead man. He’d made my fiercely independent, free-spirited best friend doubt her feelings, her intuition, her sense of self—smashed her internal compass into pieces. It was hard now, when men like Gabe showed her kindness and not just sex.
“I don’t know,” she said in a small voice. She pulled back, wiping a stray tear. There was a poem here too.
“I think he’s a really nice guy. And I think he has a crush on you, even after one night, because you are brilliant and beautiful. I think it’s okay to let yourself have fun with him tonight. Because, well, what are your chances of ever seeing him again?”
“Minimal,” she said, resolute. She lifted her chin. “And he’s sexy as fuck.”
“Thatta girl,” I said, punching her arm. “You deserve to get laid.”
She nodded, her walkie going off. Ray, wondering where in the hell we were. “And you deserve a guy like Cal.”
◊
Zippers were my fucking arch nemesis. As a model, I’d had zippers on every single part of my body—not just in the normal areas. Under my armpits, along my thighs. Once, in a full bodysuit, along the arches of my feet. I’d spent the entire runway show trying not to laugh (I have terribly ticklish feet).
And now I was stuck in the bathroom attempting to zipper this gauzy, bohemian dress and failing miserably. The gauzy layers kept getting stuck in the teeth of the zipper, and it started awkwardly low on my back, just above my ass.
“Go fuck yourself, zipper,” I said through gritted teeth, half-pushing the bathroom door open to find Josie. Instead, I walked right into Calvin.
“Oh…um…hello?” he said, stepping back quickly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“We have to stop meeting like this, Cal,” I said, flashing a grin. “Or you need to stop following me into tiny, enclosed spaces like hallways and bathrooms.”
Cal rubbed the back of his neck, shuffling on his feet. “It’s always been part of my charm: following women into small spaces. I’m a total Casanova. I spent a lot of high school, just…you know, juggling too many girlfriends in too many enclosed spaces.”
I laughed, leaning against the door. “So was that the title you held in your yearbook? Instead
of Most Likely To Succeed you had Uncontrollable Amount of Girlfriends?”
“Oh, no…I’m pretty sure it was Never Going to Get Laid.”
Without realizing it, I’d backed further in and he’d followed me. The glasses, the blushing, the nervous speech: he’d joked about being kind of a nerdy outcast in high school and I could see how it had happened. And how he’d spent those years developing such a dry wit: nerds in high school always ended up with the best senses of humor when they were adults—it was a weapon, a shield against bullying.
But also, I got the impression Calvin had grown into his good looks kind of recently. Because standing six inches from him in this bathroom, I had to admit to myself that if we’d met in high school (and he looked the way he did now), I would have had a serious crush on him. Like, can-you-hold-my books; I’ll-wear-your-letterman-jacket type of crush.
He was tall, taller than me, which was saying something since in heels I hovered over six feet. He didn’t seem overly muscular, but he did seem fit—broad shoulders and a trim waist. That crooked grin, his strong nose. Bright green eyes behind his thick glasses. He alternated between clean-shaven and scruffy, five o’clock shadow (today it was clean shaven) and I fought the strongest urge to press my hand against his jaw and feel the skin there.
“Lucia?” Cal said, quietly, and I snapped back from my reverie.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just, um…hey, can you help me with this zipper?” I asked, turning around. I’d never been shy about my body—you can’t be a model and have any kind of shyness, really. So I usually wouldn’t have thought twice about asking someone like Calvin to zip up a dress that barely covered my back. It was just skin.
But as soon as I turned—my hands gripping the sink, our faces reflected in the mirror—I realized I’d made a critical error. Because I had a front-row seat to the total shift that went through Cal at the sight of my bare skin. He placed his hands on my body: his left hand, firmly, on my hip. His right hand grasped the zipper, his thumb pressing against my lower spine.
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