Bohemian

by Kathryn Nolan

  It wasn’t me.

  Except that I came harder than I had in months.

  ◊

  Later, after I’d walked back and given Josie some simple instructions on how to get home, I left, already feeling the shame that would creep up whenever I let a sexual fantasy get the best of me. Especially one about Lucia, who probably spent most of her life batting away the awkward affections of men like me.

  The darker desires had started when I was in college—a powerful urge to dominate. To take. To keep a woman on the edge of release for hours, on her knees and pleading.

  I thought it was due to years of pent-up sexual frustration, but the fantasies didn’t relent while I was with Claire. So I told her about them, as openly and honestly as I could. Made some suggestions on how we could—safely—act out the things I was thinking about constantly.

  “Too weird,” she’d said, dismissing the idea immediately. Which was fine—sexually what I desired was not was she desired. But she wasn’t willing to try, even a little, to make me happy.

  And her instant dislike seemed to be proof that I was destined to be stuck in a vicious cycle: too shy to get a date. And, on the off-chance I did get a date, I’d scare any woman off with my sexual proclivities.

  ◊

  CALVIN

  Today, Max and I watched the sunrise from the back patio. The news is predicting a massive storm and it’s been mistier than normal, the sky a dramatically dark gray. The clouds made the sunrise look like an Impressionist painting. Max was sprawled at my feet as I downed cup after cup of coffee.

  I haven’t slept well the past two nights — I think it’s the sudden arrival of an entire Hollywood camera crew, plus two models and a makeup artist. I’ve gotten really used to being alone these past months. Their presence is…distracting.

  I stopped, taking a sip of my grandfather’s favorite whiskey. It burned. It felt good. When I moved into my grandfather’s place I unearthed one giant box of slim black notebooks—his journals. Since he wrote every day—even it if was only a few sentences—Woke up. Busy day at the shop. Can’t seem to find my glasses anywhere— he’d easily filled close to a hundred of them over the five decades he’d owned The Mad Ones.

  I’d been reading them, slowly, each night—like peeling the layers of an onion. They showed the banality of his life, and yet his joy was so real I could almost taste it. I was still reading through the first few years, before all the hippie-bohemian wildness started. Currently, it was 1960 (two years after opening the store) and my grandfather was trying to figure out how many copies of books to order and how on earth they would all get to this middle-of-nowhere place.

  It was fascinating.

  It wasn’t that my grandfather’s life was without pain or grief. I knew what was coming in his journals—meeting my grandmother on a beach in Monterey. Moving her into this wild little store—to this day I still found touches of her. The hand-knit napkins I used; photos of the two of them shoved between his favorite books. On the wall behind the register was their wedding photo, something she must have hung in the early sixties. It still rested there, their faces young and happy, the cliffs of Big Sur rising behind them.

  And I knew that when I got to the entries from 1985, I would also read of her sudden death.

  A car crash, so stupid. The winding, dark roads of Big Sur dangerous for a woman in the early stages of Alzheimers. I wasn’t sure which would have been worse: to have her die so suddenly, or to watch her lose all memories of her life. Her loves. My grandfather.

  Although it didn’t matter, not really. Because what had happened was that she overcorrected, swerving to avoid hitting something in the road (a dog? A deer?), hit a tree and died on impact.

  I was young at the time and barely remembered my grandmother, but shortly after that was when my parents started sending me down to Big Sur for the summers. I think I was part of the antidote to my grandfather’s grief.

  And maybe that was why his joy seemed to stand out so strongly to me. Before my grandmother died, he was happy, truly happy. But after she died, he seemed to need to remember what it was like to be alive, that the moments the rest of us take for granted—eating a good meal, hearing a good joke, relaxing into a hot bath on a cold day, watching the flames in the fireplace—she was no longer a part of.

  Because really—wasn’t that what life was all about? The small moments?

  Went to the internet cafe to check my email, I scribbled. Edward had emailed, curious about my start date to come back. The final month of my sabbatical is starting and he seems to need to verify that I’ll definitely, absolutely, 100% be back.

  I’d been surprised at his nonchalance when I first told him about the bookstore, the sudden need for a sabbatical. I’d worked there since graduating—more than nine years. Long hours and complete loyalty. But he’d waved it off.

  “Six months? Sure. But if it’s anything longer than that, we’ll just hire an intern to replace you.”

  At first I’d been a little hurt, but it was true—at the end of the day, I was totally replaceable, my job able to be done by any number of recent, bright-eyed college graduates.

  If I wasn’t coming back, Edward needed to know so he could hire that intern. And I was coming back, so it didn’t matter.

  But I didn’t answer his email.

  I sat back, thinking. To be honest, I hadn’t checked, or responded, to my email in months, except to schedule meetings with potential investors and buyers of the property. I’d let friends drop off, especially since they were mostly friends from work and outside of talking about software, new technology and mild Silicon Valley gossip, I was learning we had absolutely nothing in common. Especially since none of them could understand why I was still up here. Why I hadn’t just sold this place for a zillion dollars and bought a nice penthouse in San Francisco with a view of Alcatraz.

  I tapped my pen against the page.

  I mean, I wasn’t entirely sure either.

  “Hey.”

  I looked up to see Lucia leaning against my doorway.

  “Hey,” I said back, startled. I knocked part of my drink over. Fuck. “How, uh…how long have you been standing there?”

  She pulled her long braid over her shoulder. “Just a few minutes. You seemed really into…” She gestured towards the journal.

  “Oh this? It’s nothing. It’s…” I struggled for a second. Journaling suddenly sounded juvenile and silly.

  “Do you write?” she asked, stepping further into the room, her face brightening. She sat down in the chair across from mine. My first instinct, as usual, was to back up, put distance between us so that what happened in the woods would never happen again.

  But I was sitting down. Nowhere to go.

  Control yourself.

  “No, it’s…well, it’s my journal. I never kept one before, but my grandfather did, every day. I’ve been reading them and it made me curious. About why a person would do something like that. Just document everything, every part of their day.”

  She leaned forward to sneak a peek, a mischievous look on her face. Lucia was wearing a loose, pale-pink tank top and as she leaned forward, she pushed her breasts together expertly. I didn’t look though, keeping my eyes on her face.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She grinned cheekily. “Have you written about me?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

  I still couldn’t make sense of her. Because women did not typically flirt with me. At all. I might try to flirt with them and fail miserably…that happened a lot in my twenties. Even Claire didn’t flirt with me. Too serious. Too goal-oriented. Life, for Claire, was like a game you were actively trying to win every moment of the day. Something as frivolous as flirting would never have interested her.

  And yet Lucia Bell sat not two feet from me, long, bronze legs in tiny shorts, dark-blue eyes wide and beautiful, and every bit of her body language was saying Fuck me.

  Except she still hadn’t brought up the poem.

  Maybe s
he never got it. Maybe a bear ate it.

  “I did, actually,” I said tentatively. “I just wrote that you and your entire crew are a huge distraction.”

  “What’s distracting?” she asked.

  You. I wanted to say. You’ve spent the last two photo shoots actively trying to get me to watch you take every single scrap of clothing off your perfect body. I got drunk at a bar and left you a poem on your doorstep —and you haven’t even mentioned it. Oh, and then there was the time I got so turned on looking at you that I jerked off in the woods.

  “Oh…nothing,” I said, smiling lamely. Because Lucia Bell wasn’t really flirting with me. She was attention-seeking. And I’d been on the wrong end of that countless times with other women, misreading their attentions and not realizing that beautiful women thought of shy, quiet nerds as a safe repository for their innocent flirting. A way to get out some sexual energy without having to actually do anything about it.

  “What can I do for you tonight? Is there something you need?” I asked, sliding the journal back onto the table and standing. She did too, her heels putting us eye-to-eye.

  “It’s our second-to-last night,” she said. “We’ve just been laying around. Bored out of our fucking minds.” She laid a palm on her chest. “I was sent as a goodwill emissary.”

  I grinned. “And it’s barely been two days,” I couldn’t help but say. “You really miss L.A. that much?”

  “I miss the internet that much,” she said quickly. “And, you know, Netflix.”

  I shook my head, fighting a smile. Her life was so different than mine, although six months earlier I was plugged into the internet every second of the day too. I remembered that craving.

  “You could read a book? Take a walk? Star-gaze?” I said, rattling off ideas. She crinkled her nose, stuck her tongue out.

  “Any other options?” she asked, sighing.

  I laughed, twirling my keys. “Um…you could have some beers with me and my friend Gabe on my patio?”

  “A party?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “No, no…well, I mean, I guess if you invite the whole crew over that’s party-size. I’ll have Gabe bring the beer and any locals who are hanging around. He’s a bartender at the only bar in Big Sur and he’s got the access.”

  “Party it is!” she said, throwing her hands in the air. She grinned at me and I fought the urge to touch her. This. This small moment, in the quiet of an empty bookstore. Lucia Bell grinning at me after I’d made her happy.

  But I knew the truth. And it couldn’t be real.

  “Go round everyone up,” I said. “I’ll call Gabe. Give me thirty minutes?”

  Lucia reached forward to squeeze my arm, the brush of her fingers a shock to my system. And then she whirled around and left.

  ◊

  The patio off the back of the bookstore was magical, and with a few strands of white string lights and two firepits, it did kinda-sorta feel like a party. The patio was surrounded by forest but you could still hear the ocean. I pulled out some chairs, threw on some music, and called Gabe.

  “You’re having me over for beer with models?” he’d asked, sounding surprised. “You want me to bring some other folks over?”

  “Sure, I think. I mean…I think they kind of want to meet people. Or something,” I said. “Bring beer. Bring liquor. We’ll see what happens.”

  And now, an hour in, I leaned back against the railing, beer in hand, and observed. The camera crew had put together a game of beer pong. A few Big Sur locals were sitting around the fire pit. Gabe and Josie were standing close together, having an intense conversation. I sipped my beer, content. I wasn’t lonely up here—in fact, I was learning to love the silence.

  But I did miss this…this community. My grandfather had a community easily; in fact, the week before he’d died he’d thrown a party like this. Beer, trees, music, fire. A simple recipe. I was happy he’d had that, happy he’d been able to enjoy the unpretentious pleasure of drinking whiskey with friends.

  “How’s it going?” Taylor asked as he and Lucia walked towards me. I half-choked on my beer but managed to recover.

  “Oh…good, you know,” I managed to reply. “I guess…well, I guess I’m still a little surprised that models are standing on my patio. I know you probably hate when people say that.” But it was true. Taylor had probably spent the day texting celebrities and having his photo taken with his shirt off. Tonight he looked comfortable being The Sexiest Guy here at the party—shirt half un-buttoned, hair on-purpose-messy, Lucia Bell hanging off his arm.

  “No way, dude, I love it,” Taylor said, flashing me a grin.

  Lucia looked away, pulling her phone out automatically, then rolling her eyes when she realized we still didn’t have internet.

  “I wanted to be a model my entire life…I mean, I’m only 23, but basically since I was like, I don’t know, ten years old it was what I wanted to be,” Taylor said.

  “Huh,” I said, taking a sip of beer. “I’m pretty sure at ten I wanted to be a dinosaur. Or a stormtrooper.”

  Lucia laughed, delighted, while Taylor said, “Why? And what?”

  “Oh, you know, a stormtrooper? From Star Wars? I’m a nerd in the classical sense, I guess. Very sci-fi.”

  “Natalie Portman was in the one when we were kids,” Lucia said softly, tugging at his arm. “You know, the ones with Darth Vader?”

  “Aw fuck, I loved that movie. You wanted to be Natalie Portman when you were 10?”

  I shrugged, laughing into my beer. I liked Taylor. Maybe he wasn’t the brightest, but I could tell why people gravitated towards him. A pure soul. “Something like that. When did you start modeling?” I asked.

  I was impressing the fuck out of myself with my non-nerd social skills tonight. Must be the beer. I dutifully took another sip.

  “When I was 20, which is kind of old for modeling? Lucia was fifteen.”

  “Wow,” I said, glancing at her. “So young for something so…adult, right?”

  Taylor shook his head but something flashed across Lucia’s face before she hid it. “It was pretty fun for me. Just hot women and staring into a camera. Easy.” He smiled that golden smile. “What about you, dude? How long have you been running this bookstore?”

  “Only five months,” I said quickly. “My grandfather died at the end of April and he left me the bookstore in his will.”

  “Before that?” Lucia asked.

  “I was a software engineer in Silicon Valley,” I said. “Am a software engineer, I mean,” I corrected.

  “You’re a real computer nerd, aren’t you?” he asked, but with a smile.

  “Through and through,” I said, laughing, enjoying an easy social interaction with two famous people.

  “Taylor, we need you at beer pong!” one of the camera guys called out, catching Taylor’s attention.

  “Fuck yeah, dudes,” he called to them. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he said, and Lucia waved her fingers at him.

  And then she turned back to me, flashing a smile that could knock the redwoods over. “Calvin and Lucia,” she said. “Finally alone.”

  ◊

  LUCIA

  Calvin was having some kind of coughing fit—or maybe a heart attack?

  “You okay?” I asked, stepping forward to pat him on the back. He stepped back, shaking his head.

  “Totally,” he finally managed to say. “Just…swallowed wrong is all.”

  “You seem to do that a lot around me,” I said, biting my lip to keep from smiling. He was cute when he was jumpy.

  I leaned my arms against the railing, sipping my red wine and staring out into the woods. I felt the breeze in my hair, the back of my legs warm from the flames of the fire pit crackling softly behind us. The rain was holding off and the air held that delicious just-about-to-rain smell I forgot I loved.

  After a moment, Cal joined me. If I slid six inches to the left, our arms would have touched.

  “So you started modeling when you were only fifteen?” He a
sked, returning to our earlier conversation.

  “Yep,” I said. “Fifteen. And it was only through the sheer force of my will that we didn’t start doing it earlier.” I paused. “My parents are in the business.”

  “Modeling?”

  “No…” I said, shaking my head, “it’s a Hollywood term. The Business, with a capital B. Film. She’s a famous movie director. He used to be an actor but is now a producer. When I was eleven I first started to get noticed and they were ecstatic.”

  “They didn’t want you in school?” he asked.

  “School is not important to them. They’ve both worked with child actors who have to take classes while on set, so they know all about minimum-schooling, believe me. But they love being famous.”

  “They wanted a famous daughter,” Cal finished.

  I sipped my wine and nodded. I turned to face him, liking it when he did the same. “My parents really wanted me to start when I was fourteen, but I just wanted to be a regular high schooler.”

  I watched him grimace. “It’s…I’m sorry, but I guess I always think of modeling as being…” he paused, looking for the word.

  “Sexual?” I chimed in.

  “Ye—yeah, I guess. Or selling something at least. Something about having a fourteen-year-old use her body to sell something feels totally wrong to me.”

  “Same,” I said, laughing. He laughed too, but looked surprised. “It’s okay,” I said. “I didn’t do it. I’m pretty fucking stubborn and I had my teachers write letters to my parents about why it was important for someone going through puberty to have a normal childhood experience.”

  Cal looked impressed.

  “I’m determined when I want something,” I said and he nodded, bringing his beer to his lips but holding my gaze.

  “I can see that,” he said.