Chapter 10
Delight. I think that’s the best word to describe what I feel as I drive to the address in La Jolla.
I’m still getting my bearings, which means Google Maps is directing me through charming streets with nary a freeway in sight.
The ocean, which is always in the wings, comes steadily into focus as I wind my way deeper into La Jolla.
It’s easy to understand where this town got its name.
It is an unapologetically beautiful jewel.
Five minutes later, I ease into a parking space under an enormous California juniper tree, probably planted a hundred years ago.
The sidewalk around it is cracked and hewn upward by its enormous roots.
It’s charming, but so is the sound of the surf and the sea breeze.
I stand on Nautilus Street and marvel. The road slopes downward, as if it ends directly in the deep blue of the Pacific.
To think I’d normally be head-down in a cubicle right now, with no window in sight.
Surfers bob among the swells, looking for all the world like playful sea otters, and I feel the smile spread on my lips.
I’m going to learn how to surf. I’m going to do yoga on the beach.
I’m going to live my life. I’m going to have my own slice of chocolate cake with an espresso. I’m going to be free.
I text Adam that I’m here, and he texts back immediately. There’s a separate alley entrance for the studio. Address is on the gate. Everything is open. Just make sure to close the doors firmly when you leave.
I send a thumbs-up emoji and slide my phone into my khakis. It’s a good thing that Adam texted about the alley entrance. He saved me the trouble of wandering around the block to the front door.
An old wooden door with copper hinges that have patinaed in the salt air stands along a high block wall in the alley. Vines of some sort crawl along the wall in an incomplete array of green. I knock, and the door opens with a gentle clank of metal jangling on metal.
My breath catches. I’m standing in a private, spacious courtyard paved in old concrete tiles that have been weathered by years of sea breezes and salt until they may as well be marble flagstones, they are so gorgeous.
Jasmine, climbing roses, and more of those same vines from the alley cover the walls around the courtyard.
Pretty blue glazed terracotta pots hold ornamental banana trees.
Cascades of geraniums burst out of others.
And roses—old heirloom varieties—are tucked here and there.
A white privacy fence spans the west side of the property just beyond the courtyard.
It must be a new addition—no vines are climbing up it yet.
My sandals skid against the concrete tiles as I bend to inhale the white rose closest to me.
Flanking the south side of this courtyard is a small seafoam green cottage. I step under the cedar pergola that frames the French doors and knock. A clamshell, planted with succulents and nestled against a gorgeous pink hydrangea, looks so cheerful that I nearly introduce myself to it.
Adam said to just let myself in, that the owner had left the studio open for me, but years of living with two older sisters and one younger brother, to say nothing of parents who are still into each other after thirty-five years of marriage, have instilled in me the habit of knocking and waiting just long enough to allow for a scramble.
There’s no answer. So I let myself in. I gasp and maybe squeal too.
The cottage is gorgeous. It’s a studio, but it’s also charming, and it is perfect.
Pretty hardwood floors. So many windows.
A full-size, if small, kitchen along the back wall.
Stacked but full-size washer and dryer next to a bathroom that is covered in white penny tile and has a claw-foot tub inside.
How is this place so cheap? Yeah, it’s small, but it’s amazing. I think there would be enough room for a queen-sized bed and a generous couch and sitting area besides. There’s definitely enough room for a table.
Judging the space is a little tricky since the owner didn’t stage it, unless the books and leather chair in the corner were a halfhearted attempt. I slide into the chair, wrapping my fingers around the armrest and enjoying the scrape of the old rich leather against them.
Stacks of books are piled around the chair and against the wall.
The owner at least has the good sense to face the spines inward so that the books aren’t a distraction from the rest of the cottage.
The owner also left a vase of calla lilies on the small table next to the chair.
I frown at the choice of flower. The creamy white of the spathe’s whorl and the yellow spadix feel playful but also out of time.
The flowers are bigger than the trendy bouquets of bright red and purple calla lilies that Mom’s florist is always sending.
I brush the silkiness of the spathe between my thumb and forefinger before grabbing the closest book. A pretty volume of Tolkien. I thumb through it, but stop when I notice it’s been annotated. Notes crowd in the margins of many pages.
“Marked up to there and back again,” I say with a smile. “Maybe it’s used.”
I reach for the book under it to see if it’s annotated too. This is a well-worn paperback of Shakespeare’s Richard III. More of the same notes and blue underlines. I flip to the sexiest part of the play, when Richard persuades What’s Her Face to marry him.
How disappointing that such a strong will so easily bends here, the notes say. Where did it happen and how? There are arrows back to earlier lines with more questions.
Here? If spoken with sincerity/vulnerability?
Here? If words were growled from behind into her neck?
I keep reading, feeling my pulse race. If I take this book with me, would the owner notice?
I scoot the stacks around and whimper. Can you fall in love with someone based solely on their personal library?
“Yes,” I answer after I’ve flipped through Jane Eyre. I’ve landed on my favorite passage about strings and ribs and hearts. All underlined. All with the same untidy notes in the margins. “Emphatic yes.”
The nonfiction titles scattered in the stacks make me whimper too. The fiction is mostly classic literature—and there is a lot of Chekhov. But there are also some contemporary titles thrown in. Each annotated in the same handwriting.
I shouldn’t be panting over someone’s library.
But I am. And my imagination is running wild.
Maybe these books belong to a sexy silver fox, and I’ll enjoy a May-December romance of epic proportions because of it.
I squint at the untidy scrawl in the books.
Maybe these books belong to a dearly departed relative of the owner, and I will pine away after a ghost. Maybe they belong to a sexy young woman, and a platonic love and admiration a la C.S.
Lewis and Tolkien will enrich the rest of my days.
That one isn’t as fun for my hetero brain, which nose-dives into a fantasy where these books, covered in thoughtful introspective notes, belong to a handsome, eligible young man.
My phone vibrates and pings with a text from Adam. Did you find the apartment?
I text back, It’s perfect. Tell your buddy to send over the rental contract. Ask when I can move in. I’m tired of spending half my life on your couch.
I grab the next book from the stack. My heart melts as I flip through Dune.
What if this really is just staging? A borrowed collection?
I grab my phone and text Adam again. What’s up with the books?
Are they the owner’s? My heart is pounding.
I don’t know why I’m trying to play it cool. Who I’m trying to convince.
My phone pings again. Yeah, Adam texts. He didn’t have time to move them before today. He says sorry and to ignore them.
A giddiness, accompanied by a devious smile, spreads all over me.
I text back. Cool. Ask your friend when I can move in.
I spend the rest of my lunch break flipping through these books, taking a few pictures of the notes that must be immortalized lest I forget them, as the sound of the ocean waves crashing and the scent of heirloom roses and jasmine waft in through the open French doors.
I’m home, and I’m falling in love.