Page 5 of Sort of Seeing Someone

“Alright, dear. I’ve got to get to packing up my things. Tomorrow night will be here soon enough. You’ll be alright here by yourself for the rest of the month, won’t you? After Betty and I leave?”

“Don’t worry about me,” I reassure her.

The sound of her chair on the patio again sends a final shiver down my spine as she gets up to waddle back down the pathway toward Narragansett.

While I may be a grown woman who lives by herself, I’ve never actually lived alone. The truth of the matter is that Gerda has been my watchdog since the moment I got here—and soon, she’ll be gone.

It’s not for everyone, having their landlady come by every day to piddle, or leave the occasional passive aggressive note about forgetting to put out the trash, or to do your crossword puzzles for you before you ever open the magazine. But, it has been for me. It’s made the transition to another side of the country palatable, homey, and safe. I can’t say I would love OB as much as I do if it wasn’t for GG.

I look back at the place I’ve called home for the last two years and picture a wrecking ball being driven through my bedroom window in t-minus twenty days. What are the chances I’ll find another Gerda? Another lovely old lady looking to rent out a fully furnished beach shack with all utilities included for $2,000 a month or less? As lucky as I was to have found this spot, renting from Gerda was the exception—not the rule. I’ve been living in a fantasy land these last two years and I really don’t know how I’ll afford making the move to the real world once Gerda hightails it to Oceanhearse.

Hurst.*

Just then, she stops at the gate and looks back at me.

“What do you think you’ll do, Moonie?”

I shrug my shoulders. That’s the (three) million-dollar question.

2

Chapter Two

On my three-minute walk over to Joe n’ Flow, I see a girl my age with two-feet long dreadlocks, a guy skateboarding on alongboardwith his French Bulldog sitting on the helm, and a lesbian couple holding hands with daisy-shaped pasties over their nipples and no other tops on. I wish I could say this is what happens when you take psychedelic mushrooms before your 11am shift, but, no. This is just what it’s like to live in OB. And it’s fantastic.

I had been out of college for almost two years and had done nothing with my teaching degree—unless you count pulling a macaroni noodle out of my nephew’s nose for the fourth time in a month as furthering the youth of America. That’s when an unquenchable thirst to move as far away as possible suddenly hit me the way puberty clobbers apre-teenseemingly overnight.

Not well-versed enough in art for the east coast, but notcarb-averseenough for Los Angeles, I came across an article about San Diego. It’s not really known for anything—not tech, not fashion, not entertainment. Just…tacos and surfing. That was, and still is, my speed: tacos and surfing. And once I found outOB’sunofficial slogan wasNo Bad Days, I knew this was the neighborhood for me.

Nora and Olivia were sad when I told them I was moving. Probably because Nora was losing affordable childcare and Olivia hadn’t yet recovered from our mom, June, also heading westward. When I was twenty, my mom retired from her job as a teacher and sold her longtime Lincoln Park condo for a spot in sunnySedona, Arizona where she could work on her art among other retirees. I don’t see or hear from her as much as I would like, but my sisters and I agree she deserves to be tied up in her hobbies during this time of her life.

As for my dad? Like I said, I don’t really keep up with him. My parents divorced when I was three, after he left my mom for another woman and married her. I hope his life in affluent suburbia being married to a contract attorney with no kids is absolutely wonderful.

So the same day I pulled my U-Haul into the driveway ofGerda’sbeach house, I walked up and down the main road, Newport Avenue, looking for a place I could submit a job application. My savings were only going to go so far—I needed to get a job. Sure, I had bachelor’s degree in elementary education but I didn’t move to the ocean and perpetual warmth to be stuck inside a classroom all day. That’s when I stumbled across Joe n’ Flow—an open-air yoga studio on the second floor of a coffee shop facing the pier—and the sign in the window they had posted for a full-time studio attendant. Someone to check people in when they arrived for class, and disinfect blocks when they left. I could do that, I thought to myself.

The shop owner, a well-known yogi named Gavin who looks like MatthewMcConaughey’syounger brother, found my Midwestern accent and penchant for thick-crust pizza endearing and hired me on the spot. He agreed to pay me above minimum wage and give me as many hours as the busy studio could legally provide. I’ve been here ever since, holding down the most Zen fort that ever was. The best part? Well, there’s a lot of best parts, actually. The fact that I can constantly hear the sound of the waves crashing against the shore like a metronome—that’s one. The fact that any combination of leggings and a sports bra is my work uniform—that’s another.

“Good morning,Moonie.”

IfYasminwasn’t a regular yogi here, I would have done a double take and mistaken her for Jessica Alba. I don’t know how someone inathleisurecan be a vision of beauty, but she looks like a goddess every time she walks through the door. Today, she’s in a tangerine-colored tank top and matching biker shorts—the color emphasizes her perfect, pore-less skin.

“Fancy seeing you here,” I say with a detectable level of sarcasm. “I like your ensemble. Flashy.”

“It’s calledcolor. You should try it some time,” she says back with her own detectable level of sarcasm. I look down at my outfit—it’s the moody teenager version of hers—black bike shorts andoversizedblack t-shirt. Then I think to myself:I’m good.

Yasmin takes the 11:30am Vinyasa II every day and routinely arrives about a half hour before class starts. Most people arrive with five minutes to spare, but not Yas. She needs more time to settle in—“To absorb the vibe of the day and the space,” as she once explained. I observe this as the mere act of chatting with me. However, her interpretation of it is becoming one with the energy of her surroundings.

Nonetheless, we’ve accumulated hundreds of hours over the last two years just shooting the shit and getting to know one other. I’ll forever be impressed that she made her money being a crisis public relations guru for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars and now spends her days practicing yoga in the mornings and being a floating sommelier across many of San Diego’s nicest restaurants at night. It’s a career path unlike any other, but when you’re semi-retired by the age of forty, why not flex your hand as a Jill-of-All-Trades? What this queen sees in a friendship with me—the twenty-something yoga studio attendant with a nasally accent that sometimes makes an appearance when I say the word ‘sausage’? I’ll never know. But I like her, I trust her, and I’m grateful such a badass is my best friend here.

“One for me, one for you,” she says, setting a coffee cup from the shop downstairs on the counter and sliding it my way. “Happy birthday.”

“You remembered,” I say.

“I tend not to forget when my best friends complete another lap around the sun.”

Only Yas would turn a simple birthday into something celestial.

“Twenty-six, right? Ugh, such a great age. You don’t even need a night-time serum yet,” she explains.

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