Malibu Rising: A Novel, Taylor Reid [best fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

That night, Mick and June danced cheek to cheek as the band played standards. “We’re gonna do it all right,” Mick said to her. “We’re gonna love this baby. And we’re gonna have more of them. And we’re going to have good suppers and happy breakfasts and I’ll never leave you, Junie. And you’ll never leave me. And we’ll have a happy home. I promise you that.”

June looked at him and smiled. She put her cheek back to his.

Toward the end of the evening, Mick got up in front of the crowd. He grabbed the microphone. “If you’ll indulge me,” he said, with a half smile. “I have a song I’d like to sing for you all tonight. I wrote it for my wife. It’s called ‘Warm June.’”

Sun brings the joy of a warm June

Long days and midnights bright as the moon

Nothing I can think of but a warm June

Nothing I can think of but you

June sat right in the front as he sang to her. She tried not to cry and laughed as she failed. If this was their beginning, my God, how high could they fly?

• • •

Nina was born in July 1958. Everyone pretended she was premature. Mick drove them both home from the hospital directly to a new house.

He had bought them a three-bedroom, two-story cottage, right over the water. Baby blue with white shutters on Malibu Road, the back half extending out over the sea. There was a hatch in the floor, on the side patio, that led to a set of stairs that went directly to the beach.

As if a new house wasn’t enough, there was a brand-new teal Cadillac in the driveway.

When June first walked through the house, she found herself holding her breath. A living room with windows that opened to the water, an eat-in kitchen, hardwood floors. Surely it couldn’t have everything, could it? Surely each one of her dreams hadn’t come true all at once?

“Look, Junie, look,” Mick said, leading her excitedly into the master bedroom. “This is where the king-sized bed will go.”

Holding tiny, delicate Nina in her arms, June followed her husband through the bedroom and soon made her way to the master bathroom. She looked at the vanity.

She ran her right hand along the side of the sink, felt the smooth porcelain curve down, level out, and curve back up. And then she kept running her hand along the cold tile and rough grout, until she hit the curve of porcelain of her second sink.

10:00 A.M.

Nina pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant and shut off her engine. As she got out of her car, she glanced up at the sign and wondered if it was time to have it redone.

Riva’s Seafood, once known as Pacific Fish, was still very much old Malibu, complete with a faded sign and peeling paint. It was no longer just a roadside dive but an institution. The children who used to come with their parents now brought their own children.

Nina walked through to the kitchen entrance with her sunglasses still on. She found herself leaving them on more and more lately. It wasn’t until she saw Ramon that she took them off.

Ramon was thirty-five and had been happily married for over a decade with five kids. He had started as a fry cook and had worked his way up over the years. He’d been running Riva’s Seafood since 1979.

“Nina, hey, what’s up?” Ramon asked her as he was simultaneously keeping an eye on a fry cook and getting shrimp out of the freezer.

Nina smiled. “Oh, you know, just making sure you haven’t set the place on fire.”

Ramon laughed. “Not until you add me to the insurance policy.”

Nina laughed as she came around to his side of the counter and took a sliced tomato off the cutting board. She salted it and ate it. Then she braced herself and headed out to the picnic tables to smile and shake hands with a few customers.

As she stepped outside, the sun was already bright on her eyes and she could feel the false version of herself coming to life. Her face took on an exaggerated smile and she waved at a few tables full of people who were staring at her.

“Hope everyone is enjoying lunch!” she said.

“Nina!” shouted a boy not much older than fifteen. He rushed toward her in madras shorts and an Izod polo. Nina could already see the rolled-up poster in his right hand, the Sharpie in his left. “Will you sign this?”

Before she responded, he started unrolling it in front of her. She could not count the number of people who had showed up at the restaurant with a poster of her surfing in a bikini, asking for her signature. And despite how bizarre she felt it was, she always acquiesced.

“Sure,” Nina said, taking the Sharpie from his hand. She wrote her name, a perfectly legible “Nina R.,” in the top right-hand corner. And then she put the cap back on the pen and handed it over to the boy. “There you go,” she said.

“Can I get a photo, too?” he asked, just as his father and mother got up from their table, armed with a Polaroid.

“Sure.” Nina nodded. “Of course.”

The boy sidled up right next to her, reaching to put his arm around her shoulders, claiming the full experience for himself. Nina smiled for the camera as she inched away from the boy ever so slightly. She’d perfected the art of standing close without touching.

The father hit the shutter and Nina could hear the familiar snap of the photo being printed. “You all have a wonderful day,” she said, moving toward the tables in the front, to greet the rest of the customers and then head back inside. But as the boy and his mother looked at the photo coming into existence, the boy’s father smiled at Nina and then reached out