Chapter 1 #3
He couldn’t text Erin. But his Jeep—shipped out from Michigan for his use in Monterey, and for his sister’s promised tweaking of its rusty gears—was in Erin’s driveway.
That was good. He could nap in the front seat tonight, marinating upright in his own filth before purchasing a SIM card tomorrow, couldn’t he?
Or. . . he could risk the drive down to Monterey to grab a shower and some horizontal sleep at the beach house, couch-crashing three days earlier than his sister expected him.
Fortunately, he’d checked the route to the bungalow before he’d arrived in California.
Erin probably wouldn’t mind.
Or if she did, she’d only rough him up a bit.
Right.
Unlocking the Jeep, he tossed his personal bag behind the driver’s seat, buckled his equipment duffel with the passenger belt, and persuaded the stereo to connect with an audiobook (David Attenborough’s The Trials of Life: A Natural History of Animal Behaviour) on his phone that he’d started reading during his flights.
He tried the engine. It coughed and grumbled.
“Come on, Baby.” Wes stroked the wheel while he cranked his key again, coaxing. . . and she turned over with a groan. He loosed an alley-oop and patted the dashboard. “That’s my girl!”
He reversed onto the street, swung right toward Oregon Expressway, rumbled into traffic on the southbound El Camino Real freeway, then left the main flow of cars behind with a merge onto State Route 17.
Baby’s erratic headlights flickered, but arched up and over the Santa Cruz mountains without sputtering out.
They exited the redwoods and switchbacks, drove through an ecotone of industrial buildings with chain-link fences in Moss Landing—evidence of the community’s history with commercial fisheries—and finally emerged onto the Pacific Coast Highway.
The road opened into windswept views of the night-black ocean.
Streaks of luminescence from a crescent moon breaking through the fog shimmered atop the waves that grounded themselves on barnacle-spotted rocks.
Just south of Marina, he bumped off the highway in Fort Ord Dunes State Park, extracted his trusty Nikon, and stretched his legs with a shuffle down a series of rocky, breezy slopes to the beach. He crouched and raised his viewfinder.
Flash.
Moonlight glinted off a mist-spangled abalone shell; an adjacent beer bottle blurred into glowing circles as his lens rendered an out-of-focus bokeh effect.
Flash.
He wandered farther down the sand to capture the tracks of sandpipers and hermit crabs left among floats of bull kelp. The tide was already erasing evidence of these miniature battles between beak and shell, the water rushing up against the dunes now—unexpectedly fast.
“Argh!”
Icy foam bit his ankles, and he bit his own tongue with a yelp.
He jumped back out of range. The hair on his arms prickled through travel sweat and tattoo ink.
Any fantasies he’d had to preempt a shower by stripping off in the surf vanished.
The temperature contrast was too vivid against his body’s recent memories of Central America’s warm western sea.
And the warmer embrace of the woman he’d left behind.
Wincing, he retreated up the beach.
They’d both known their relationship wouldn’t last. He’d been transparent about that from the start. They’d enjoyed each other during his work in Costa Rica, then waved goodbye with smiles at its end. Just like all his other embraces on other continents and on other assignments.
The memories were always nice. Wes never regretted them.
Here, between work on his latest contract with the Monterey Oceanic Research Institute and whatever friendly, transient companionship he found on California’s coast, he’d be able to spend time with his sister, Erin, too.
He could even catch up with their entrepreneurial brother, Adrian, whose upcoming flight from Manhattan to San Francisco would put them not only on the same continent, but also on the same side of the country.
It would be good to see them both.
PhD Erin, skipping up the hierarchical ladder at the Silicon Valley Linear Accelerator National Laboratory, while selling sci-fi stories to magazines and training for marathons.
MBA Adrian, pitching sustainable urban-growth opportunities to investors, eager to protect the United States’ most populous cities from the effects of climate change, with his name mentioned in increasingly large print in Forbes.
Successful, interesting, independent.
Obviously, Wes wanted that success and independence for them.
He did.
As their older brother, of course he did.
. . but with decades separating them from playground scuffles and boring stretches of family road trips, his siblings also didn’t need his interference—protection, help—to run their lives anymore.
Or if they needed support, their requirements weren’t anything he could provide.
A smackdown for a bully, yes. Slug Bug and I Spy games, yes.
A boost to reach a holiday chocolate stash in their mother Lori’s Grand Arbor kitchen?
Yes again. But relationship advice, analyses of new quantum-gravity data, guidance about navigating global financial markets, or tips for wining and dining investors?
Wes: single, dyslexic, with no college degree, strapped for cash, whose business casual was swim trunks and a rash guard, maybe a nice-smelling sunscreen?
No.
Not that they taunted him about those things, or even mentioned them.
They’d tease him about almost everything else.
Including his latest friend in Costa Rica.
If he’d mentioned her. Had he? The Monaghan family’s Monday-night calls never lacked discussion topics, so maybe she hadn’t come up.
Not when he had aquatic wildlife photo reels to contribute and a perpetual cycle of fresh locations and fresh experiences to share—while his sister and brother put down roots and settled into responsible, interesting adult lives. . .
He was autonomous.
Free.
Though also—mounting the dunes back to Baby with a wet slap of his sandals—maybe a bit. . . adrift?
Adrift, and sponging off his siblings.
It was just for a couple days. Only because he’d arrived in California ahead of schedule. It wasn’t as if he didn’t usually manage alone for months at a time.
A hammock, sunshine: simple.
He’d be lucky to see the sun for more than a few hours total in Monterey.