Chapter Ten
I’m doing my best not to spin out over earlier. His use of my name is not evidence that he thinks about me the way I think about him.
That he’s tortured himself over perceived near kisses or the hot-and-cold behavior he exhibits.
The truth is, I’m not even sure how I think about him. Beyond finding him attractive, that is.
He knows my name. What else does he know about me?
I have a brief bio on the website. Nothing about my writing, because I’ve always worried it might invite creepy men with creepy commentary and ill intent. I talk about it freely with the people who are here. But that seems different. Different from somebody perhaps coming because they have an idea of what a romance writer might be.
In one of the author loops I’m a part of online, I’ve heard terrible stories about prison mail.
There is a picture of me, and I include my name and the fact that I’m from Bakersfield. I don’t have my last name on there. If my last name were on there, it really would defeat the purpose of me not being on social media.
I walk out of the walled courtyard of the motel and head down the sidewalk. The weather is glorious, a balmy seventy-two, which is just fantastic, and I am determined to enjoy the day.
I need to get a few last-minute things before the barbecue tonight, even though everyone pooled their money to buy most of the ingredients, which was wholly unnecessary.
But they’re insistent on treating me for my birthday, despite the fact that Elise made me a pie last night. I do think it’s lovely.
I get lost in that loveliness. It’s a choice. One I made when I moved here, one I made often. When I was moving out to Rancho Encanto, I was behind the slowest moving Volvo I’ve ever seen, and it had a bumper sticker that said: Don’t postpone joy .
I was in pain, and I had every reason to wait until I healed to start enjoying sunsets and pie and new friends.
I took it as a sign from the universe. To try to let the joy exist alongside grief.
If I can do that, I can definitely choose to just enjoy the day.
Because it’s much easier than pondering Nathan.
Nathan is easier than accepting that Christopher is going to come here, to my bubble. So this explains the perseverating.
I choose to focus on the scenery.
The sky is glorious blue, the mountains on the horizon purple. The spiky grass ripples in the breeze, and the naughty arms of the Joshua trees bend and sway as the wind picks my hair up off my shoulders.
I take in each feeling, each sound. I choose joy . Dammit.
Just then, the sound of a footstep breaks my tranquility, followed by a whole man, who steps out in front of me from a path to the right.
I stop, and so does he.
Of course it’s Nathan.
Everything in me reacts predictably. My body does not choose joy.
It chooses an adrenaline rush that makes my knees shake.
“Oh,” I say, perhaps dimly, but this is the first time I’ve seen him out of context.
I’ve only ever seen him at the Pink Flamingo. Never anywhere beyond those hallowed walls, and here he is, seeming somehow taller and broader out in the wild.
“Going for a walk?” he asks.
This is near record-breaking friendliness for him, at least without the influence of alcohol.
“Yes. Though, not aimlessly. I’m just going to the grocery store for a couple of things.” I lift my arm, which has a few canvas bags draped over it. As if he needs evidence.
“That’s where I’m headed,” he says.
I don’t know if I should suggest we walk together or if that was the implication of him saying he was headed there himself.
I want to ask him that. I want to ask him a hundred things.
What I should want to ask him about is the fundraiser, and if he would be willing to help. Instead, I’m looking at the cut of his jaw.
“So,” I say. “This is an unusual time of year for you to come to the motel.”
I sneak a glance at him, and he’s looking at me with a completely unreadable expression. So far, so predictable.
“I’m finishing something,” he says.
“Oh.”
Still maddeningly opaque, even if I do get it. I don’t want to talk about my works in progress either.
I want to know. I don’t talk to other writers in person that much. It’s funny to me that of all the people I interact with regularly, I have a very big thing in common with him.
A new book? An unexpected deadline? Maybe an unexpected rewrite, which I’ve definitely had before. But it’s not like he couldn’t work on that somewhere else. Yet again, I’m perplexed by the mystery of him being here.
Honestly, he is to Rancho Encanto and the Pink Flamingo as he is to me in general. He’s here talking to me; he doesn’t have to be talking to me. He doesn’t have to be here at all. He acts resentful about it, but there’s clearly a reason.
I want to crack him open. I want to look inside his head.
I want to treat him like one of my fictional characters. I’m not sure I know enough about him to even do that.
I need his inciting incident. The thing that made him the way he is.
I have an author bio. That’s it.
“Well, I’m glad that you ...” I trail off. He’s told me he didn’t choose the motel. So maybe it’s not the best thing to thank him for coming again.
I know, because it’s in his bio, that he lives in Washington. On Bainbridge Island, actually. It’s one of the things about him that has always struck me as extra strange. He comes to a place that is practically on fire during the summer, from the very rainy Pacific Northwest, and I would imagine someone like him doesn’t especially care for the heat. That it would make more sense to come this time of year routinely. Getting a reprieve from dreary wet.
I can’t imagine living in weather like that all the time. I don’t mind a rainstorm, but without the sun, I think I would perish.
“How is ... I don’t know the older lady’s name. The one who fainted during the fire.”
“Oh,” I say. “Gladys. She’s doing great. She ... she’s good.”
“Glad to hear it.”
I decide maybe the weather and the Pacific Northwest might pass for neutral subjects. “So how is Washington?” I ask.
I can feel him looking at me and not looking ahead at where he’s going.
“Beautiful,” he says. “Particularly if you like rain, and the color green.”
“I assume that you do?”
“Yes,” he says slowly. “Generally.”
“I’m from Bakersfield,” I say. “I’m not sure if you’re familiar.”
“I pass through Bakersfield on my way here. It’s where I cut over.”
I map it out in my head. I’ve never been as far north as Washington. I’ve been to Portland, but only a couple of times, and it’s been years. Still, I’m familiar with the long, desolate drive up I-5. So I know exactly what he’s talking about. He takes the straight route on the interstate and goes east once he arrives in Bakersfield.
“You don’t stay there, do you?” I ask.
“I have,” he says.
“Well, my deep apologies. You know what they say about Bakersfield, right?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t say that I do.”
“The only time I want to see it is in my rearview mirror.” He doesn’t laugh. I clear my throat. “Anyway. There’s a reason I left.”
I’m okay talking about Bakersfield. I don’t want to think about LA. Bakersfield is fine. Those are old wounds; they don’t really hurt anymore.
“You weren’t a fan?”
I’m surprised he’s continuing this conversation. Maybe it’s because it would be awkward otherwise. He can’t exactly go sprinting up the sidewalk to get away from me. We’re headed to the same location.
“It’s really hard to say if I dislike Bakersfield or if I needed to get away from my mother.”
He smiles ruefully at that, and it surprises me. “Difficult family,” he says. “I’m familiar.”
Excitement spikes in my veins. How ridiculous. I feel like I won a prize because he’s continuing a conversation with me. Because he’s given me a little piece of information about himself.
Difficult family.
Of course, given his whole aura, that feels like a foregone conclusion.
“Yeah. Kind of award-winningly difficult,” I say. “But it’s fine. It doesn’t worry me at this point. It was much harder when I actually had to live with her. Now I have to call her on her birthday, and occasionally Mother’s Day, and otherwise I think she forgets I exist. It works for both of us.”
“Yeah. That’s how things are best left with my dad,” he says. I’m not sure what to think about him making that statement, but I realize it doesn’t seem to cost too much. Like me, he’s clearly made peace with the dysfunction there.
That surprises me, partly because I didn’t take him for the sort of man who had made peace with anything.
“You don’t live near your parents,” I say.
He shakes his head. “No.”
I’m not telling him where I was directly before I came here. There’s missing connective tissue to both of our narratives.
We tell stories professionally, so I think we’re both aware of it.
It’s not drip feeding—that glorious authorial tool where you slowly weave your character’s backstory into the front story instead of dumping it all on the reader in a two-page barrage of word vomit.
It’s just withholding.
I don’t know where he’s from originally, or what brought him to the Pacific Northwest. I don’t know what brought him here.
He’s curating the things he tells me, and I can only respect it, because I do the same. Not just with him. With everyone.
There are great gaps in my own personal story I have no real desire to fill in for anyone. And haven’t. Not here. I’ve learned that you can forge very meaningful friendships with people by focusing on the present.
I show up for the people here. For the people I care about. That makes my past immaterial, both to them and to me.
I look down, and then turn my head to look at him. I feel lost in what happened two summers ago. With the power outlet. When I had been mostly certain that he was going to kiss me.
That moment when I had admitted to myself that I wished he would.
“What’s it like to be here in the summer when you are used to such rainy ... cold weather?” I ask this because I don’t know what else to ask without digging. Without making him shut down. I don’t know how I know he will; I just do.
We’re talking about the weather. If I were editing this story, I’d cut all this out since it’s so clearly a stand-in for us discussing anything meaningful, but I feel locked up because I don’t want him to get hostile and push me away again. I’m not sure he wants to have a deeper conversation with me ever .
“To me it’s all the same,” he says. “I don’t go outside.”
He’s not being totally honest. He’s outside right now. I can’t decide if he’s being deliberately difficult to end the conversation or what.
We arrive at the grocery store, a small sun-bleached building with automatic doors that groan when they open.
“I have ...” I gesture toward the aisle that has wine in it. I make my way away from him, conscious of the fact that we aren’t shopping together. For all I know, we may not even walk back together.
I want to push him, but I also don’t want to make him be outright unkind to me. It’s such a strange feeling, and I can’t explain it. It’s like I’m tiptoeing around land mines when I talk to him.
It’s difficult.
I grab a couple of bottles of wine that come from vineyards within a hundred-mile radius. I also grab some fun drinks for kids. I want tonight to have a party atmosphere.
I happen to intersect with Nathan at checkout. He has a pile of frozen meals.
“You know we’re having a barbecue tonight,” I say.
“You mentioned,” he says.
“I mentioned the movie,” I say. “But there will be food. Of course you’re invited. We kept on doing these barbecues after the fire and ... it’s been good for the community. You really helped that night, Nathan.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment.
“I’ll think about it,” he says as the first of his meals begins to go across the belt. I can hear the no buried in the I’ll think about it .
“I’m turning thirty-two,” I say. “The same as your room number. I just ... I thought it was funny.”
It’s been so long since I’ve gone on a date, or really had to work at getting to know somebody, that I feel like I might be out of practice. Because that was a very silly thing to say.
He lifts an eyebrow. “You’re young.”
I know how old he is because I’ve seen his driver’s license. His birthday is in April, and he’s closer to forty than thirty.
I’m not entirely sure if I should act like I know that or not.
“I’m trying to decide how weird it would be if I told you I know when your birthday is,” I say finally as he pays.
He looks at me like I’m an alien. Which forces me to conclude I’ve made the wrong move.
He takes his receipt, and I’m ready for him to bolt out the door, but he lingers as my groceries start to go across the belt.
“I’ve seen your driver’s license,” I say.
“I’m aware of that,” he says.
“I have a good memory.”
Which is true, but it’s also a little bit of a lie. Because I do specifically remember his, when it isn’t like I know everybody’s.
“I could have pretended,” I say. “I could have pretended that I didn’t remember.”
The cashier, who I know, is looking at me and telling me desperately with her eyes to stop talking. But I’m in too deep.
“You could have,” he says.
“Sorry I didn’t hide my eye for detail.”
He laughs, and I’m struck dumb by the sound because I’ve never heard it before. Then he takes my bags from my arms and begins to carry my groceries and his out of the store. I’m immobilized. Then I remember how to move, and I race after him.
He begins to head back to the motel, and I follow at a quick pace.
“If it were April,” I say, “I would go to your barbecue.”
Granted, I’m having a week of celebration dedicated to me, as I like to prolong such things, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Would that be customer service?”
“No,” I say.
He looks at me like he has no idea what to do with me. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s stopped walking. Like maybe I’ve immobilized him . I take an extreme amount of pleasure in that.
“So, what are you working on?” I ask. “New series, same series?”
“A never-ending project,” he says. “But it’s got to be done. I can’t ... It has to be done.”
He really is being deliberately evasive. Which I guess is fair. He’s a big deal. Maybe he can’t talk about it. Maybe it’s a secretive TV thing.
“I’ve watched your show,” I say.
“Oh?” He looks surprised by that.
“Yeah, it’s really good. The lead actor is hot.”
He laughs. “I probably owe that guy a good portion of my earnings.”
“Have you been on set?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Did they invite you?” I ask.
“Yes, I’ve been invited. So I can really earn that honorary executive producer credit.”
I laugh. I’m familiar with the vanity credit sometimes given to a big-name author. I worked on a lot of adaptations before I quit LA. I decide not to mention that.
“You haven’t gone?” I ask.
“It might shock you to hear this,” he says, “but I’m not very social.”
I feign shock. “What? That is very unexpected information, Nathan. Very. Even with your lack of sociability, I’m surprised, because usually ... I don’t know. Having your books adapted is exciting. Or I think it would be for me.”
“I appreciate it. I like the show. They do a great job. I guess I like what it’s done for book sales but ... I don’t know. I don’t need to go to Vancouver and stand around and watch other people work. I do my work shut in a room by myself. I’m not a team player. That’s why I’m a writer and not in the military anymore.”
I think he might be being intentionally funny. Which is unexpected.
“I like a group project,” I say.
“You’re a monster.”
“I also like a solitary project. I enjoy writing my books on my own.”
“Well, since you were so disdainful of my one a year, how many books a year do you write?”
I offer him what I hope passes as a conciliatory smile. “I didn’t really mean that how it came out.”
“I think you did,” he says.
I sigh. “Four. Though they’re only fifty thousand words.”
“But you still come up with that many characters, that many plots, every year?”
I don’t get into how fast paced we used to work in writers’ rooms. How I got used to accepting different ideas, or feeling like things weren’t perfect because I knew the important thing was getting it done, or compromising when compromises needed to occur. All of that had been really good training for writing the way I do.
“Yes,” I say. “Though I always say ideas are the easy part. It’s actually doing it that’s hard.”
“Agreed. So you write while you run the motel?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Between fielding requests from guests. I prefer to be busy. I’m also working on a Christmas tree for our Very Desert Christmas, plus organizing the whole auction.” It’s a good time for me to get that in there. Introduce the existence of it all. “It’s a fundraiser this year, because of the fires.”
“When do you spend time alone?”
This is a genuine question. He seems honestly concerned.
“Not often,” I say. “I write in the front office between interruptions, or in the evening before bed. Generally, I’m alone then.”
Always I’m alone then. But I don’t want to say that, because that reveals I’m not sleeping with anyone, and it feels a little sad.
Especially to admit to him.
“And that works for you?”
“It’s preferable,” I say.
I like to have my characters’ thoughts in my head. Or to have conversation happening around me. My own thoughts often feel hostile.
“Not my experience,” he says.
“Yes. I have noticed that you prefer time alone.”
I’m about to ask him if he wants to do an event. If he’ll help me with the fundraiser. If he’ll help me defeat my evil ex-boyfriend.
But right then, we arrive at the Pink Flamingo, and I can’t bring myself to ask something of him for some reason. He’s tired, and I can feel it. Not physically. There’s something more, and I can’t put my finger on it. He hands me my bags, and the beer.
“As amazing as your frozen meals look ... Barbecue. In the courtyard.”
“I’ll think about it,” he says.
Yet again, I already know he’s lying.
I think he did think about it and he decided not to do it. I don’t know how I know that. Like so many things about him, I just do.
“Great,” I say. “Hopefully I’ll see you then.”
I say that like I don’t know he’s blowing me off.
Because I hope it will make him feel bad. A little bit.
As he turns to go, I notice a hardness to his expression that I can’t untangle. Which is when I remember he’s the same man who made me think he was going to kiss me when in fact he was just taking a power strip out of my hand. A man I thought I was ... getting closer to, when after that near kiss, he didn’t speak to me for the last month he was in residence.
I persist in trying to make Nathan someone I’m getting to know.
While he persists in making sure I can’t.