Love and Joy

by Linda Seed

  “I don’t want to pay the mortgage any longer than I have to, so if I’m going to do it, I’ll have to pull it together soon.”

  “This is exciting!” Amber’s voice rose into a squeak of enthusiasm. “I’ll come over tonight and we can find you a place to rent.”

  “I’m still not sure,” Joy said. “I’m still not one hundred percent on this.”

  “That’s okay. We’ll just look. Maybe if you see what’s out there, it’ll help you decide.”

  Joy paused with her hand on a light stand she’d been adjusting. “We’ll just look.”

  She was pretty sure she’d be doing more than just looking, though. The more she thought about it, the more she was leaning toward doing it. She had nothing to lose but her sky-high mortgage payment.

  The plan was for Nix to stay at Otter Bluff for six months. He’d be working on the renovations in his spare time while he held down a full-time job, so it was likely to take that long.

  The six-month timeline made sense for a few reasons: one, the remodel easily could take that long if Evan were using a licensed contractor, considering that contractors were so in demand in Cambria that a client usually had to wait months for work to begin. Two, the defined period of time would allow Nix to rent out his place on a six-month lease, which would be easier than trying to find someone to rent month-to-month. And three, the fifteen to twenty thousand dollars Evan would lose in potential rent on Otter Bluff over that period still came to much less than he’d be paying for a contractor if he’d decided to go that route.

  The day Nix moved to Otter Bluff, he’d taken interior and exterior photos of his tiny house on Santa Rosa Creek Road, making sure to emphasize the natural beauty of the location. Then he’d posted an ad on Craigslist and a few of the tiny house rental sites offering the place for twelve hundred dollars a month—a price that would be hard to find anywhere else in Cambria.

  He’d gotten a few inquiries in the week since he’d posted the ad, and he’d even shown the place twice. But one of the applicants had a bad credit history and the other had balked when he’d seen the composting toilet. Some people were squeamish about a lack of standard plumbing.

  He found a couple of additional websites where he could post the ad, polished it up a bit with a new, more glowing description of the place, then posted it.

  If he couldn’t get it rented, then he wasn’t going to come out of this project as well-positioned financially as he’d hoped. And that had been a big reason for doing this in the first place. Friendship with Evan was one thing, but the possibility of pocketing an extra seven thousand dollars over the course of the lease—plus what Evan was paying him to do the renovation—was an attractive incentive.

  He created a flyer on his computer, printed it, and took it to work with him so he could post it on the bulletin board at the store. He carefully cut tabs along the bottom so interested parties could tear off his phone number.

  Nix was stocking organic romaine at the small Main Street market where he worked when Louise, the assistant manager and Nix’s friend, came up and nudged him.

  “Somebody’s tearing off a tab.” Louise nodded toward the bulletin board. “Maybe you’ll get your renter.”

  Nix looked over and saw the tab-tearer: an elderly woman with newly styled silver hair, full makeup, and expensive clothes. His shoulders slumped and he shook his head.

  “Nope. You think that lady over there is going to climb up a ladder to go to bed?”

  “Probably not, when you put it that way.” Louise appraised the woman. “Probably shouldn’t even try. She’s gonna fall and break something.”

  “Maybe it’s for somebody else. A relative. A grown kid who’s been sleeping on her sofa.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  It wasn’t, though, and Nix knew it. He dismissed the thought and focused on stacking the lettuce in an inviting fashion—an abundance of wholesome green goodness.

  Joy and Amber met at Joy’s place for wine and pizza. Well, Amber was eating pizza. Joy was making do with a salad drizzled with fat-free dressing.

  “Are you sure you don’t want some pizza?” Amber held out a slice to her. “It’s good.”

  “Remember the extra pound?” Joy had endured days of running, stair-climbing, carb-cutting, and spin classes, and that damned pound was still there.

  “Can’t you just Photoshop the pound?” Amber asked, not unreasonably. “I mean, that’s what everyone else does, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. I can Photoshop the pound. But if I let the pound stay, it’s going to invite friends, Amber. And I can’t Photoshop the pound and its friends. And anyway, this salad is fine.”

  “Bullshit. That salad tastes like disappointment and despair.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve eaten salad before. Believe me, I know.”

  Joy sighed and wished she could be as casual about her food choices as Amber was. Amber had a regular job at an insurance office, which meant she didn’t have to live in front of a camera. If she gained five pounds, who would care? Amber had sweet curves that were only enhanced by the occasional slice of pizza.

  Joy, on the other hand, made her living looking attractive in clothes—and sometimes without them, as when she modeled bikinis or underwear on Instagram or in YouTube videos. The pound would be noticed and remarked upon if she couldn’t get rid of it.

  That’s where things had started to go wrong with her career, after all.

  About a year ago, Joy and Amber had taken a girls’ vacation together in Las Vegas. They’d gambled and shopped, and they’d enjoyed a few too many cocktails at glitzy bars in enormous hotels.

  But more than that, they ate.

  As any visitor to the Las Vegas Strip could attest, one of the pleasures of Vegas was the food—the endless buffets, the high-end restaurants, the room service.

  For once in her adult life, Joy had indulged. And after a week of hedonism, she’d come home carrying an extra five pounds.

  So what, she’d thought at the time. It was only five pounds. But the Internet was a cruel place, and the five pounds had been analyzed, critiqued, and made into a spectacularly cruel meme that would probably follow her for the rest of her life.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t timed her vacation to fall right before a lingerie photo shoot.

  That was a mistake she would never make again.

  Another mistake she didn’t intend to make again was to think of five pounds—or even one—as no big deal.

  The five pounds had started a decline in her viewership—and, therefore, her advertising income—that she hadn’t been able to recover from. If a period of time crammed into a tiny house with a shower the size of a phone booth could turn things around, she had no choice but to do it.

  When they were finished eating, Joy and Amber took out their laptops and began searching for the perfect place where Joy could revive her career.

  “Portland’s big for tiny houses.” Amber scanned her laptop screen. She was sitting on Joy’s sofa with her feet propped up on the coffee table, her laptop balanced on her knees. To her right, a wall of windows looked out onto the Los Angeles nightscape.

  “Oregon or Maine?” Joy asked.

  “Oregon.”

  Joy wrinkled her nose. “Doesn’t matter. Both of them are too far. I want to get out of L.A., but I still want to be close enough to visit my old life from time to time.”

  “Hmm.” Amber clicked a few keys. “San Diego?”

  Joy tilted her head to the side, considering it. “Not different enough. I need a real change of scenery to make this work. A whole new lifestyle along with the tiny house. I need somewhere rural. Someplace in the middle of nowhere.”

  “But within driving distance of L.A.,” Amber said.

  “Exactly.”

  They searched in companionable silence for a while before Amber sat up straight in triumph. “I’ve got it.” She spun her laptop around so Joy, who was sitting next to her on the sofa, could see. />
  “Cambria?” Joy squinted at the screen.

  “Yep. It’s perfect.”

  “Where is it?”

  Amber pulled up a new window, typed information into Google Maps, and spun the laptop toward Joy again. “See? It’s just south of Big Sur, right on the coast. Small town, lots of historic buildings, a quaint-looking Main Street. And the coastline. God, just imagine the photo shoots you can do there.”

  “Huh.” At first glance, it looked good. “Okay, show me the house.”

  Amber brought a slide show of the property up on her screen and passed the laptop to Joy.

  From the outside, the house looked like a rectangular box with a peaked roof, the whole thing on wheels. The house was covered in wooden shingles, and it had a miniature porch on one end. Windows dotted the sides.

  The inside was constructed of blond wood, with a sitting area at one end, kitchen and bathroom at the other, and a ladder leading to a sleeping loft above the sofa.

  “It’s cute, don’t you think?” Amber said. “It looks like a cozy cabin in the woods.”

  “It can’t be more than, what? Three hundred square feet?” Joy said.

  “Two fifty. Look, there’s a washer-dryer unit tucked in next to the bathroom. And, oh, wow. There’s an outdoor tub.”

  “An outdoor tub?” Joy wrinkled her brow. “You mean a hot tub.”

  “No. I mean a bathtub. Look.” She pulled up the photo. “Can you imagine taking a bath under the stars? Jeez, that’s like heaven.”

  “Maybe you should be the one to move there,” Joy said.

  “I’m not the one who needs a book deal,” Amber said pointedly. “You are.”

  Joy scrolled through the photos of the house, which was nestled under a towering sycamore tree; the land, all rolling grassy hills dotted with oaks and pines; the organic garden off to the side of the house, exactly the way Joy had imagined; and the picturesque creek that ran through the property.

  She needed to do a certain amount of suffering if this plan was going to work.

  But maybe she wouldn’t be suffering quite as much as she’d thought.

  Chapter 3

  Nix got the e-mail inquiring about the tiny house while he was on his break at the market. He was sitting in the back room with a veggie wrap and an iced tea, looking at his phone, when he saw it.

  The inquiry was ordinary enough—was the house still available? How soon could an approved renter move in?—but things got really interesting when he Googled the name of the woman asking about his house.

  He always Googled them; he’d have been an idiot not to. Usually, he found something on LinkedIn about their work history, or a Facebook profile showing their inordinate love of cats. This time, though, what he found made him put down his wrap and focus completely on his screen.

  The first hit for Joy Maxwell was an Instagram photo of her standing on a balcony wearing nothing but a red bikini, a cityscape behind her and her shiny blond hair flowing in the breeze.

  He didn’t realize he was staring slack-jawed at the photo until Louise commented on it.

  “What’s so fascinating?” She paused on her way through the break room as she headed toward the employee restroom. “You’re staring at that phone like you expect it to start spitting diamonds.”

  He blinked a few times as he came back to his surroundings. “Oh. Somebody wrote to me asking about the house.”

  “Okay …”

  “Here she is.” He turned the phone around so Louise could see.

  “Oh. Shit.” Louise whistled appreciatively. “Are you still gonna take her credit history? If it were me, it’d be an automatic yes as long as she brings the bikini.”

  “I won’t tell your wife you said that.”

  Louise, a woman in her late twenties with spiky black hair and a nose ring, smirked at him.

  Joy made an appointment to talk on the phone with the tiny house’s owner the next day. If she’d been closer, she’d have driven up to Cambria and looked at the place in person. But she’d already put her condo on the market, and her Realtor said it would show better empty, so Joy wanted to lock things down sooner rather than later.

  The phone call was routine enough until they got to the part about Joy’s employment.

  “I’m an influencer,” she told him, as though that were an actual job.

  “An influencer,” he repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “Who, exactly, do you influence? And about what?”

  She launched into an explanation of what she did for a living: through various means including social media, YouTube, and her personal blog, Joy promoted products and the lifestyle that came with them.

  “So you advertise things,” he said.

  “Sort of. But it’s not just paid ads. It’s product placements, reviews, videos of me using things and unboxing things. It’s all out there on the web if you want to see it.”

  “Why would people want to watch you use things?” Nix asked.

  It was a fair question.

  “Look. I can show you my tax returns. I can show you bank statements. I can pay the rent, and I have references. I can get you in touch with the bank that has my mortgage—they’ll tell you I’ve never missed a payment.”

  “It’s first and last up front, plus a security deposit equal to one month’s rent.”

  “I can do that.” Hell, all of that combined was barely more than one month’s mortgage payment at her current place.

  Nix wasn’t sure why he’d given her a hard time about her work, asking her what an influencer was and why anyone would want to watch her do the influencing.

  He went on the Internet as often as the next person. He went on Instagram. He knew what she did and how it worked and why.

  It was all so absurd, though, that he’d wanted to hear her justify it. He’d wanted to hear her defend what she did as a real job, a real career.

  In short, he’d kind of been an asshole to her.

  He felt bad about that, because he wasn’t an asshole in general. At least, he tried not to be.

  He also had found himself giving her a ration of crap because he was wary of his own impulse to give her the house, no questions asked, just because of how she looked. He’d been pushing back against his own caveman urge to grab the pretty girl by the hair and drag her home with him.

  Nix was a rational guy who was more evolved than that. So he looked at the financial documents she e-mailed to him, checked her credit, followed up on her references.

  Then he called her back and offered her a six-month lease.

  “Really? That’s awesome. When can I move in?” She sounded so excited he almost forgot to ask the question that was really on his mind.

  “Look, Joy. Are you sure this is for you? I checked you out online. You’re into a certain kind of lifestyle, and the house—”

  “It’s exactly right for what I need,” she told him. “Is the first of the month okay?”

  Once she’d sent him the up-front money and electronically signed the lease, Joy had a lot of work to do. She had to pack up her condo, hire movers, and prioritize her belongings, deciding what to take with her to the tiny house and what to put into storage with her furniture and other large items.

  She had to arrange for a post office box—the tiny house didn’t get mail service—and have her mail forwarded there, cancel her gym membership, and write her first blog post about the move.

  She had to have the condo professionally cleaned so it would show well to house-hunters.

  And she also had to tell her mother she was leaving.

  She dreaded that last part, so she saved it until the last minute.

  “Mom? Are you home?” Joy poked her head in the front door—which had been unlocked in spite of all of Joy’s admonitions—on the day before she was scheduled to leave for Cambria.

  “Joy? Honey?” Delores Maxwell emerged from the hallway leading to the kitchen with a dishrag in her hand. “Oh! Did I know you were coming? I don’t remember anything,
but you know how I am these days. My mind’s like a sieve.”

  “You’re fine.” Joy came into the house, closing the door behind her, and gave her mother a stiff and perfunctory embrace. “I just thought I’d pop by.”

  “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have planned dinner. We can go out, though. There’s a new French place I’ve been wanting to try.…”

  “You don’t have to plan anything, Mom. Just relax.”

  Joy followed her mother into the kitchen, where Delores had been in the middle of cleaning out the refrigerator. Plastic containers, milk cartons, and condiment jars littered the counter, and the refrigerator stood open. The sink was full of soapy water Delores had been using to scrub the shelves.

  “I’ll just put all this back,” Delores said.

  “Don’t let me stop you from doing what you were doing,” Joy told her. “Just pretend I’m not here.”

  “Well … all right.” Delores dipped the dishrag in the sudsy water, wrung it out, then stuck her head in the refrigerator, wiping down shelves and walls and scrubbing at stray bits of ketchup and milk residue that had accumulated since the last time she’d done the task. “To what do I owe the honor of your presence?”

  Joy’s first impulse was to be defensive at her mother’s sarcasm. Why couldn’t a daughter just make an impromptu visit without it being a big thing?

  But when she considered it, she had to admit her mother had a point. Joy hadn’t been to visit in more than a month, even though her mother’s house in Manhattan Beach was less than twenty miles from Joy’s condo.

  “Actually,” Joy began, “there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” She was sitting at a new kitchen table Delores had bought to replace the one where Joy had eaten chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese as a toddler, the table where she’d labored over math homework and school art projects. The old tabletop—probably in some thrift store now—still had the scratch she’d made when she’d accidentally dropped a ceramic bowl full of mashed potatoes on it in ninth grade.