Malibu Rising

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  When the waiter put the check down on the table, Mick picked it up immediately.

  “Do you want to freshen up before we go?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” June said, hopping up from the table. “Thank you. I’ll be out in just a moment.”

  She went into the bathroom, where she reapplied her light pink lipstick, powdered her face, and checked her teeth. Was he going to kiss her? She opened up the bathroom door to find Mick waiting for her.

  “Ready to roll?” he said, putting his arm out for her to grab.

  As they hastily made their way back to the car, June got a sense that Mick might have skipped out on the bill. But she put the thought out of her mind just as quick as it had come in.

  That night, after they left the restaurant, they parked on the side of the road by the beach. Mick took June’s hand and pulled her out into the cool evening air, the two of them running their bare feet through the chilled sand.

  “I like you, June,” Mick said as he held her close, wrapping her tight in his arms. He wanted a woman he could make happy. “You’re one in a million.”

  He began to sway with her, as if they could hear music.

  June wasn’t quite sure what Mick thought was so exceptional about her. She hadn’t played it as cool as she’d meant to. She was sure she’d made it obvious how charmed by him she was. She was sure he could sense how naïve she felt about all of this—about love, about sex. But if he believed she was special, then maybe she could dare to believe she was, too.

  “Can I sing to you?” Mick said.

  June grinned and said, “I get to hear this great voice?”

  Mick laughed. “I was talking a big game back there. Maybe it’s not so great.”

  “Either way, I’d love to hear it.”

  There, just off the Pacific Coast Highway, they were miles away from the nightclubs of Hollywood, isolated from the movie studios farther inland, far up the coast from the hustle and bustle of Santa Monica. The lands of Malibu back then were only half-tamed, all ocean and desert, navigated by half-paved roads. Everything could still feel quiet and wild.

  June pushed her body up against his and pressed her cheek to his chest and Mick starting singing a quiet song on a quiet beach with his beautiful voice to a beautiful girl.

  I’m gonna love you, like nobody’s loved you, come rain or come shine.

  His voice was buttery and gentle. She couldn’t detect even an ounce of effort. The notes left his throat like breath out of lungs, and June marveled at how easy it all was, how easy the world felt when she was near him.

  She understood then that she’d been right, back at dinner, when she said she believed he could do it. The man in her arms right now was a star. June was sure of it. And it thrilled her.

  I’m with you always, I’m with you rain or shine.

  When the song was over, June didn’t lift her cheek or stop swaying. She simply said, “Will you sing Cole Porter next?” She had loved Cole Porter from the time she was a baby.

  “Cole Porter is my favorite,” Mick said. He pulled away from her for a moment and looked her in the eye. “A beautiful woman who will fight me over the bananas Foster and who has great taste in music, too?” he asked. “Where did you come from, June Costas?”

  Mick didn’t want to go through the world alone. He had one of those hearts that stick to things. And he wanted to stick to her. She seemed like such a good one to stick to.

  “I’ve been right here,” June said. “In Malibu. This whole time.”

  “Well, thank God I finally came to Malibu,” he said before he started singing again.

  Mick wanted a woman with an entirely tender heart, not an edge in sight. A woman who could never yell, never raise her hand. Who would radiate warmth and love. Who would believe in him and encourage his career.

  He was starting to think June could be that woman. And so, in a way, you could say that this is when Mick fell in love with June, if falling in love is a choice. He chose her.

  But for June it wasn’t a choice at all. For June it was a free fall.

  And after Mick took her face in his hands and kissed her that night on the beach, June Costas was a goner.

  9:00 A.M.

  Nina’s hair was wavy and wet. Sand clung to the edges of her feet, settled in the pockets behind her knees and the roots of her hair.

  She put her board back in the shed and fastened the lock. She did not want to get out of the water, but there was so much to be done.

  As she started up the long, steep path to her house, her legs felt wobbly, her back and chest just as tired and sore as they were every time she came out of the ocean. Still, she made it easily up the hillside to her yard.

  She headed directly for the outdoor shower. It was made of teak panels and a faucet along the side of the house. As she pulled off her dark green halter bikini, she didn’t even need to shut the shower door. There was no one and nothing to see her naked body but the ocean and the bougainvillea.

  She let the water warm her iced skin, washing away the brine, rendering her once again a clean slate. Then she turned off the faucet, grabbed a fresh towel, and walked into her house.

  Her huge, quiet, echoing house. Full of space and light.

  The home was all open hallways, glass walls, ivory couches, and ecru carpets. It was intimidatingly casual, as if its excellence was entirely without effort. Paintings Brandon had collected—a Warhol, a Haring, a Lichtenstein—hung on the walls, adding a scribble of red or a dash of orange to an otherwise aggressively pale home.

  Nina dried her hair as she walked toward the stairs to her bedroom. But as she passed the kitchen, she saw the red light blinking on her answering machine. Worried that Jay, Hud, or Kit needed her, she pushed the button and started listening.

  “Hey, Nina, it’s Chris. Travertine. Looking forward to the big party tonight. Wanted to give you the heads-up before I see you: There’s nothing we can do about them releasing extra photos from your calendar shoot. They own them. And you are technically not nude, you are wearing a bikini. Anyway, look, you look hot, all right? Onward and upward. And let’s talk tonight about Playboy! All right, buh-bye, love. See you soon.”

  Nina erased the message and walked up the steps to her bedroom.

  She looked at herself in the sliding mirrors that covered her closets. She looked like her mother. She could see June in her eyes and eyebrows, the way her cheekbones rounded her face. She could see her mother in her body, could feel her in her heart, could sense her in everything she did, sometimes. The older she got, the more obvious it became.

  Nina was twenty-five now. And that felt young to her because she was so much older than twenty-five in her soul. She had always had a hard time reconciling the facts of her life with the truth of it. Twenty-five but she felt forty. Married but she was alone. Childless and yet, hadn’t she raised children?

  Nina threw on a pair of cuffed jeans and a faded Blondie T-shirt that she’d cut the arms off of. She left her hair damp and dripping slightly down her back. She grabbed her silver watch and put it on, noticing that it would be 10:00 soon. She was meeting her brothers and sister for lunch at the restaurant at noon.

  While technically all of the Riva kids had inherited it, it was Nina who felt an obligation to make sure it continued to thrive. She did it not only for the people of Malibu but for her mother and her grandparents, who ran it before her. The weight of their sacrifices to keep it standing pushed her to do the same.

  And so she usually went over for an hour or two Saturday mornings, to do the spot checks and greet customers. This morning, she didn’t really feel like going. Lately, she almost never felt like going. But her mere presence brought in customers and she felt an obligation to be there.

  So Nina slid her feet into her favorite leather flip-flops, grabbed the keys to her Saab, and hopped in the car.

  1956

  Every Saturday night for three months, Mick took June to dinner.

  They went out for burgers and fries, or Ital
ian, or steak. And they always shared dessert afterward, fighting for the last bite of pie or ice cream. It had become a joke between the two of them, their mutual love for sugar.

  Once, Mick picked June up for a date with his hand closed into a fist. “I have a gift for you,” he said with a smile.

  June pried open his fingers to find a sugar cube on his palm.

  “Sugar for my sugar, sweet for my sweet,” he said.

  June smiled. “Quite the charmer,” she said as she took the cube from his hand. She’d put it right into her mouth and sucked on it. “I understand you brought it as a joke but I’m not going to let it go to waste.”

  He kissed her, right then, still tasting it on her lips. “I brought a whole box actually,” he said, gesturing to the front seat, where a box of Domino sugar cubes was resting against the back of the seat next to a bottle of rye.

  They didn’t even go out for dinner that night. They drove up the coast eating sugar cubes, drinking whiskey right out of the bottle, and teasing each other over who could control the radio. When the sun set, they parked at El Matador—a pristine and stunning beach hidden under the bluffs, home to rock formations so massive and breathtaking it looked as if the ocean had made its own Stonehenge.

  Mick’s windshield framed the waves coming in down the shore, a beautiful movie they weren’t watching. The two of them were drunk and sugar-rushed in the backseat.

  “I love you,” Mick said in June’s ear.

  June could smell the whiskey on his breath, could smell it coming out of her pores. They’d had so much, hadn’t they? Too much, she thought. But it had gone down so easy. It scared her sometimes, just how good it tasted.

  His body was pressing against hers and it was, she thought, the most miraculous feeling. If only he could press into her farther, hold her tighter, if only they could fuse together.

  Mick put his hand up her skirt slowly, testing the waters. He got up to the top of her stockings before she pushed him away.

  “I’m starting to feel like I can’t live without you,” he said.

  June looked at him. She knew that was the sort of thing men said to women just to get what they wanted. But what if she wanted it, too? They didn’t give you any answers for that part. All they said was to bat his hand away until you were married. Nobody told you what to do if you felt like you’d die without his hand pushing farther up your legs.

  “If you can’t live without me,” she said, regaining some control of herself, “then you know what to do.”

  Mick released his head onto her neck, in defeat. And then he pulled away ever so slightly and smiled. “Why are you saying that? Are you saying that because you think I won’t ask you to marry me right now?”

  June’s heart began to beat light and fast as if trying to fly. “I have no idea what you’ll do, Mick. You’re going to have to show me.”

  Mick buried his head into her shoulder once more and kissed her collarbone. She hummed with the delight of his lips on her.

  “I want to be your first,” she said. She knew exactly what she was doing, making a statement like that. It would allow him to give her the answer she wanted and make her think it was the truth.

  “You will be,” he told her. He would tell her whatever she wanted to hear. That was the way that he loved her.

  June kissed him. “I love you,” she said. “With all of my heart.”

  “I love you, too,” he said, as he tried one more time. She shook her head and he nodded and let up.

  That night, when he dropped her off, he kissed her and said, “Soon.”

  • • •

  Mick and June walked along the Santa Monica Pier, the roller coaster and carousel just ahead. The worn boards creaked underneath their feet.

  June was wearing a white dress with black polka dots. Mick was in trousers and a short-sleeved button-down. They looked good together and they knew it. They could feel it in the way people responded to the sight of them, the way cashiers perked up to serve them, the way passersby took an extra second to glance.

  As they walked toward the water, with the Ferris wheel dominating the sky to their left, they were peeling pink sticky wisps of sugar off the mound of cotton candy Mick was holding. It had tinted June’s lips a rose-colored hue. Mick’s tongue was dyed as red as a raspberry.

  He threw the empty paper cone of the cotton candy in the trash and turned to June. “Junie,” he said. “I wanted to run an idea by you.”

  “OK …” June said.

  “Here goes,” Mick said, as he got down on one knee. “June Costas, will you marry me?”

  June gasped so hard she gave herself the hiccups.

  “Honey, are you OK?” he asked, getting up off his knee. June shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said, trying to gain control of her breathing again. “I … just … I wasn’t expecting this today. Do you mean it? Really?”

  Mick pulled out a tiny ring, a thin gold band, a diamond smaller than an apple seed. “It’s not much,” he said.

  “It’s everything,” she told him.

  “But one day, I’ll get you a huge ring. So big it will blind people.”

  “Oh, wow,” she said.

  “I’m on my way, I’m going places.”

  “I know you are.”

  “I can’t do it without you.”

  “Oh, Mick …”

  “So is that a yes?” he said. He was surprised to find himself finally nervous. “You’re saying yes, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I’m saying yes,” she said. “I think I was put here on this earth to say yes to you.”

  Mick lifted her into his arms and spun her around. And June suddenly felt as if human flight was no big thing at all.

  “I know that I can make you happy,” he told her as he put her down and put the ring on her finger. “I promise you won’t ever have to step another foot in that restaurant once you’re mine. And I’ll get you the house of your dreams one day. Two sinks in the bathroom, bedrooms for as many kids as you want, the beach at your front door.”

  All she had ever wanted.

  “Of course I will be your wife,” June whispered, tears in her eyes.

  “It’s me and you, baby,” Mick said, as he pulled her close to him. She buried her head in his neck, inhaled his scent, pomade and aftershave. They held hands as they made their way up the pier and Mick kissed June with a passion and gravity that he’d never kissed anyone with before.

  His parents had died when he was barely eighteen. But now he was building his own family. His own piece of the world. And they would be different, he and June.

  When they got to his car, they quickly made their way to the backseat. And this time, when Mick slipped his hand up her dress, June let herself rejoice. She let herself be touched, the way she had so desperately yearned to be touched by him.

  People act like marriage is confinement, June thought, but isn’t this freedom? She was thrilled to finally be able to say yes, to feel everything she wanted to feel.

  As they pushed against each other, June guessed—from the confident way Mick held her, the finesse with which he moved—that it was not his first time. Her heart ached a bit to know he’d lied to her. But hadn’t she asked him to? She found herself drawn to him that much more, quenching a need to be the only one who mattered. She let him push himself into her, pulled him as close as she could, and she let it all go.

  June was shocked—surprised, stunned—when he put his hand on her while he was inside her. She felt embarrassed and shy about being touched like that. But she did not want to tell him to stop, could not bear the thought of him stopping. And moments later, bliss ran through her like a bolt.

  And somehow, as she lay there next to him in the back of the car, the two of them breathless, June understood that she could never go back to who she was even a moment ago, now that she knew what he could do to her.

  “I love you,” she said.

  And he kissed her, and looked her in the eye, and said, “I love you, too. God, Junie. I
love you, too.”

  • • •

  The next day, Mick came over and held her hand as they stood in her parents’ kitchen and told them they were getting married.

  “I wasn’t given much of a choice, it seems,” her father said, frowning.

  “Dad—”

  Theo nodded. “I’ll hear him out, June. You know me well enough to know that. I’ll always hear a man out.” He nodded to Mick. “C’mon, son, let’s talk about your plan to take care of my daughter.”

  Mick winked at June as he followed Theo into the living room. She felt a tiny bit more at ease.

  “Get the chicken out of the fridge, honey,” her mother said. “We’ll make chicken and rice for supper.”

  June did as she was told, moving quietly, trying to hear what her father was saying to Mick. But she couldn’t make out a single word.

  As Christina lit the stove, she turned to June. “He’s certainly as handsome a man as I’ve ever seen,” she said.

  June smiled.

  “My God,” Christina said. “He looks like a young Monty Clift.”

  June got the carrots out and put them on the cutting board.

  “But that’s just all the more reason to be cautious,” Christina said, shaking her head. “You don’t marry the boys who look like Monty Clift.”

  June looked back down at the carrots in front of her and started chopping. She knew her mother would never understand. Her mother never bought new dresses, never tried a new recipe, never watched TV except the news. She watched her mother reread her old, worn copy of Great Expectations over and over every year, because “why take a chance on another book when I already know I like this one?”

  If June didn’t want her mother’s life, then she couldn’t take her mother’s advice. Plain and simple.

  Twenty minutes later, as Christina was stirring the rice and June was nervously setting the table, Mick walked in, Theo’s hand on his shoulder.

  Theo smiled at June. “You might have picked a good one after all, honey.”