By: Hillary Gordon
If you’re pretty, you shouldn’t have to be lonely. At least that’s how it feels living in Santa Barbara, which may be the prettiest place on earth. Last Saturday, Miles walked through my front door without knocking. He carried with him a bottle of Santa Ynez sparkling white wine and oranges he picked from the tree in my front yard. My small kitchen smelled of citrus from the oranges he juiced by hand to make the best mimosas in the world. He held my champagne glass, then I held his as we took turns crawling out the window above my couch and onto the roof. The leaves from the neighbor’s avocado tree hung over us, creating shade from the sun that was growing stronger and stronger. We laid down and listened to Neil Young’s Harvest in its entirety and got just a little bit drunk.
At the Farmer’s Market on the way downtown, we crossed State Street, busy with locals perusing the fruit stands, their bags overflowing with kale, expensive cheeses and tulips. We sat on a blanket at Alice Keck Park and watched the turtles and coy fish that swim in the pond. We ate strawberries dusted with the soil they were pulled from just hours before. There were families all around us, their kids chasing each other and throwing bread crumbs into the pond. Miles sat barefoot and played Jack Johnson songs on his ukulele. I told him when I was a little girl my grandmother took care of an extremely wealthy, one-hundred-year-old woman who lived in a mansion above The Mission. My grandma would bring her to this park every morning to watch the sun rise. When I was eight years old someone had released piranhas into the pond late in the night. When they arrived at the park, the pond was littered with slaughtered coy fish, turtles with missing legs, and blood. I told Miles that this image always crossed my mind when I came to this park. I told him how it disturbed me so much as a kid, it kept me up, sometimes all night. He told me, “You’ve got the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met.”
It’s really too bad that Miles is not actually in love with me. I hate the way I sometimes have to stop myself from touching his curly hair when it falls on his forehead, or how I have to stop myself from untangling it when it bunches like the curly fries my dad and I would eat at the fair when I was in grade school. I hate the way he says, like it’s no big deal, that I’m more beautiful than any woman he knows. Miles is never short of compliments, but it’s not me he loves. He’s in love with Jonathan. Jonathan knows Miles loves him, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. They still hike on Sundays and make sushi from fish they catch. They share clothes the way I did with my eighth-grade girlfriends. They have one of the best friendships I’ve seen. If I were prettier, I think Jonathan could be in love with me a little , but Jonathan, of course, loves Rebecca.
Rebecca is nearly six feet tall with milky skin and jutting bones and silky hair, dark and strong as coffee. On an almost daily basis, she’s told she should model . Rebecca spends her days at tanning beds and nail salons getting waxed and shaped. Her fake eyelashes are so long, she reminds me of the plastic doll I gave to my niece for her seventh birthday, her shiny plastic lashes mechanically moving up and down. We work together at an advertising agency, but somehow she never worries about money the same way I do. She’s the only person I know who doesn’t worry about making rent in one of the most expensive places to live. She lives alone and has a backyard with a pool surrounded by palm trees and a view of Ledbetter beach. The top drawer of her Pottery Barn dresser has more bikinis than I’ve owned in my entire lifetime; she looks better in them than any woman in real life should be allowed. She is used to being treated a certain way by men, so, to her, Jonathan’s attention is not exceptional. She tells him he can see her on Tuesdays and Saturdays only. On one of their Tuesday evening dates, Jonathan had hot dogs shipped in from her native Chicago for dinner. Rebecca wouldn’t eat them. She told Jonathan she was scared they’d gone bad en route even though they’d been shipped in dry ice. It was clear she was scared of the calories, mostly. Jonathan ate the hot dogs himself that night, and continued to love her anyway. And when I looked at her Instagram later that evening, there was not a picture of Jonathan, but of the untouched hot dogs with the caption “Ew, I’m so fat.”
I began to feel my skin turning red and tightening under the sun and smothered myself in SPF 45. Miles and I walked to Calypso where the margaritas were half-price. We sat on the patio and watched tourists on their way to Stearn’s Wharf – a pier that stretches over the most beautiful, silver-blue, glittering waters of the entire California coastline. We sipped cheap tequila out of salted glasses and Miles told me that I’ll never be able to fully appreciate Santa Barbara, since I’ve known nothing else. Miles came to California two years ago from Boston. Although he’d never even seen the Pacific Ocean, he flew in on a rainy night with his bags packed and no return ticket. He’s since put his master’s degree to use as an editor for The Santa Barbara Times. He knows more about this town than I do, which says a lot since he once asked me what the name of the mountain range across the bay was, as he pointed to the Channel Islands forty miles off the coast. He told me that the very patio we sat on was once a four story bank that perished in the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake. He also told me if the big one hits, we better hope we’re not inside any of the buildings that line State Street.
It was in one of those buildings on State Street where I met Brad. A disaster, it turned out, to be bigger than any earthquake I’d felt. I told Rebecca that it was a good sign that I met him on my twenty-ninth birthday since I’d always sworn I’d wait until my thirties to get married. The bar was decorated to look like a London Pub with a fake red phone booth and a framed tube map. There’s a blacklight Oasis poster I’ve stared at for years as I waited to use the bathroom. It was under this poster that I met Brad. He smiled and exposed his super bright white teeth, glowing in the light as he introduced himself. Brad was all charm and manners that night and for months to follow. I ordered a round of shots for everyone at my party and he promptly pulled out his credit card to pay for it. He also paid for our cab ride back to my apartment and for breakfast the next morning. I can tell you that’s the last time he bought me anything. Brad has a taste for the drink and other women and I learned quickly that being at King’s Cross wasn’t just a Saturday night thing for him. Rebecca and Miles ask me why I stay with him when I know he’s an alcoholic. They ask why I went back to him after the things I found looking through his cell phone one morning while he showered. What I would never say out loud is that if I were just a little more beautiful I would have the courage to walk away. If I were just a bit thinner and taller, Jonathan would love me and not a woman who allows him to be in her presence just a few hours a week.
Miles and I crossed Cabrillo Boulevard. It’s lined with palm trees that are so tall and thin they may actually scratch the bottom of the sky. They were planted over a hundred years ago, are often seen on postcards and promotional posters, and are adored by the people of this town. We walked along the pier and I watched the ocean through the cracks of the wood that creaked as we headed further and further out. As birds flew over us, Miles told me that it’s good luck to be shit on by a seagull. He told me that he was once shit on by a seagull back in Cape Cod and the next day he found out he was part of a class action lawsuit against his cell phone company and got a forty dollar check in the mail. I smiled at him and shook my head. “What?” he said, “That was some good luck!”
“Good luck,” I said, “is spending a day with you.” He took both of my hands and said “I just love you so much.” I held the words inside me and let them fill me up like a balloon. The words come so easy from Miles. They’re the only words I’ve ever wanted to hear from Brad. I’ve known him for two years and while he’s said plenty of kind things, he’s never come close to saying anything about love. He hasn’t even texted me in two days.
Miles and I got glasses of sweet chardonnay and sat on the pier. I watched the small waves go back and forth, smoothing out the kinked sand on the Santa Barbara shoreline, and felt drunk again. I began to wonder why everyone in this town’s lives are in knots. Why, in a place so full of beauty, everything always feels so flawed and upside down. Why everyone loves someone who will never love them back. I wonder if those people who celebrate their tenth or thirtieth or fiftieth wedding anniversaries are faking it, or if they’re really as happy as they seem. At thirty-one, I wonder if I’ll ever have the pleasure or the pain of knowing.
The sun began to go down over the water and all the tourists had their cell phones out capturing the scene that would soon be broadcast over social media to prove that they were here, in my city. The city I may never truly appreciate since it’s all I’ve ever known. Miles and I walked back to King’s Cross where Jonathan’s band was playing. The bouncer didn’t check our ID’s which irritated us both a tiny bit. Miles rolled his eyes at me, “do I really look that old?” he asked.
“You look like a baby,” I told him, which, at three years younger than me, isn’t exactly a lie. Miles and I maneuvered our way to the crowd, hand in hand, inching our way through the already drunk Saturday night crowd. Jonathan’s band was four songs in by the time Miles finished his third drink. I spotted Brad before he spotted me and my heart raced. I finished my drink fast, suppressing a cold headache with my tongue on the roof of my mouth. He was standing at the end of the bar; drink in one hand, cell phone in the other, ignoring the music. I saw the moment he noticed me out of the corner of my eye and waited for him to make his way to my end of the bar.
Jonathan’s band began to play the opening lines to Radiohead’s” Creep.” He got on the microphone and said, “this song is dedicated to my friend, Rebecca.” I looked behind me to find Rebecca, to meet her eyes with mine, but she was nowhere to be seen. I met Brad’s instead. He nodded his head and walked over to me, hugged me loosely with one arm. He stood next to me, his eyes moving from the stage to his phone and back. Miles put his arm around me, I leaned my head on his shoulder and breathed in the sweet scent of his cologne and deodorant. We listened to Jonathan sing words meant for Rebecca, and didn’t say a word.
