Beth Nield had no choice but to admit that
her sixty-seven-year-old aunt had a much more interesting love life than she
did. Actual living proof of that sad fact sat at their shared breakfast table,
eating a high-fiber cereal while watching the morning news.
Hunter was a still handsome seventy
something who’d worked for the USPS his whole life, retiring with a very nice
federal pension. But his “real” money had come from playing the stock market.
She had no idea where the two had met, but this was the third morning this
month she’d found Hunter eating a hearty breakfast after a night of, well,
nothing she wanted to think about.
Despite the fact that Beth’s divorce had
been final just over a year ago, she hadn’t been on a date. As for spending the
night with a man, well, she couldn’t begin to imagine that ever happening.
She’d been telling herself she didn’t need that sort of distraction and that
relationships were more trouble than they were worth, but thinking about how
happy her aunt was these days, she was starting to wonder if maybe she was
wrong. Perhaps there was something to falling in love. Not that she’d
ever had much luck in the romance department—her divorce was proof of that. Her
brother hadn’t been successful in love, either. Maybe there was a genetic flaw.
Not anything she was going to think about
this morning, she told herself firmly as she put her breakfast dishes in the
dishwasher and called out a goodbye to Hunter.
While the Los Angeles metro area was known
to be a nightmare traffic-wise, Beth had what could only be described as a
glorious commute. She lived a mere twenty minutes from where she worked, and
the majority of that drive was along Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu.
Yes, there were plenty of annoying stoplights, and on the weekends, visitors
clogged the roads, but it was difficult to mind when just to the west was the
Pacific Ocean.
Although Malibu was known the world over,
the LA-adjacent community was in fact much smaller than most everyone
imagined. The actual population was less than twelve thousand people, with the
majority of the businesses and houses clinging to the coast. There were canyons
and hills that stretched east, but the area everyone thought of when they heard
the name was within a couple of miles of the water.
Beth made the familiar drive with her
windows open and the scent of the salt air brightening her day. The ocean was
more lively today with whitecaps visible out to the horizon and seagulls
circling overhead. A light breeze danced with the palm trees. This early, the
beaches would be relatively empty, but by noon, they would fill with locals and
tourists, all eager to enjoy nature’s beautiful offering.
When she pulled into her reserved spot
behind Surf Sandwiches, the sight of the cheerfully painted one-story building
filled her with fierce, happy pride. She might have bought the business out of
a sense of obligation and a need to help her brother, but over the years, she’d
grown to love the place. When she and Ian had divorced, he’d asked to buy her
out of their house. She’d used the money to purchase the vacant storefront next
door and had expanded her business, giving her a much larger eating area for
customers and a remodeled kitchen and prep area, not to mention additional
parking. The latter was a precious commodity in always congested Malibu.
She’d kept the surfboard rack and outdoor
shower for her customers who came directly from the beach across the street,
and had painted the outside the same bright, cheerful yellow she used on the
logo. To make the remodel go more quickly, she’d closed for three weeks, giving
her just enough time to second-guess herself and wonder if all her regulars
would forget about their favorite sandwiches. But at the grand reopening,
there’d been a line nearly around the block, and since the remodel, sales were
up thirty-eight percent. Information that would make any small business owner’s
heart flutter with joy.
She unlocked the back door and walked to
the newly enlarged employee space. Big lockers filled one wall, with comfy
sofas opposite. During the refresh, she’d added a couple of sets of tables and
chairs and had upgraded the Wi-Fi. By giving up space in her office, she’d
squeezed in a third bathroom—this one for employees only.
It was barely eight in the morning, three
hours before the store opened, but Yolanda and Kai were already hard at work
prepping for the upcoming day. Surf Sandwiches was open from eleven until
seven. The biggest rush was from about eleven-thirty until one, with a second,
surprisingly intense post-school surge, followed by a gentle wind-down until
closing.
Yolanda, a pretty, petite brunette with
more energy than the battery bunny and three kids under the age of ten, was her
go-to morning person. Despite her tiny stature, she had a killer mom glare that
could reduce anyone with attitude to submission in less than three seconds.
Even more significant, she wielded the Hobart meat slicer with surgeon-like
precision. Even Rick, Beth’s actual surgeon brother, agreed Yolanda had mad
skills.
“Morning,” Beth called as she stepped into
the kitchen. “How’s it going?”
“Good.” Yolanda smiled at her. “Kai’s a
worker. I don’t mind when he comes in early.”
Kai, a twenty-two-year-old who’d walked
away from family money to surf rather than go to college, beamed at the compliment.
“Yo, that’s high praise. Makes me want to work harder.”
Yolanda winked at Beth, as if silently
saying that was the whole point of the words. Then her humor faded.
“We need lettuce. When I went to get it out
this morning, I saw it’s all rotten.”
Beth groaned. “Not the lettuce. What
happened?”
Yolanda pointed to the small kitchen where
the industrial refrigerator and restaurant-size stove sat. “You can go look for
yourself. I salvaged a few bunches, but we’re going to need a lot more for the
day.”
An unexpected but not unheard-of disaster,
Beth thought as she went into the kitchen and saw containers of sad-looking lettuce
sitting on the counter, the good bunches already off to the side. She
calculated the damage, took a couple of pictures with her phone and then pulled
the ongoing Costco list from a drawer.
While she ordered most of her supplies from
various distributors, like most small restaurant businesses, she relied on a
big box store for backup. She added tomatoes to the list, then returned to the
front to confirm they had everything else they needed.
She and Yolanda quickly discussed what she
would be buying.
“Let me get in touch with my produce guy.
I’ll head to Costco as soon as they open.”
“We’ll be fine,” Yolanda told her. “We know
what to do.”
Beth went into her office, where she
quickly booted her computer and the pay system she used. She found two large office
lunch orders waiting and immediately forwarded them to the kitchen, where they
would be flagged and reviewed. Once Yolanda determined what had to be made, the
orders would automatically go in queue thirty minutes before they were
supposed to be ready. The improved software had been expensive, but worth it.
These days a lot of customers wanted to order and pay online, then just drop by
to grab their food and get on with their lives.
She sent a quick email to her produce guy,
complete with pictures. She’d been working with him for years and knew a
credit would be sitting in her account by the end of day.
She helped with the prep work until it was
time to head out with her shopping list. Getting to the closest Costco required
a longer and less interesting drive than her commute to work. She listened to
the radio and thought about all she had to get done when she returned to the
store. Kai would make the cilantro, pumpkin seed and jalapeño pesto, which was
usually her job. He was her newest employee, but he was a good hire. She was
very fortunate with everyone who worked for her. Most had been with the store
over a decade, and turnover was low. She paid well, offered great health care
and did her best to be a fair and reasonable boss.
When she’d shut down for the three-week
remodel, everyone had been paid their usual amount. She’d even arranged for a
special evening at a local movie multiplex where she’d rented the smallest
theater and had hosted dinner and a movie for staff and their families.
Everyone had had a good time, and a few had mentioned making it an annual
event—a reaction that made her happy. Tragically for her, that was the wildest
her social life had been since the divorce. Except for work and her recent commitment
to volunteering at a local food bank, she was kind of turning into a grumpy
hermit, which wasn’t her nature at all. But she couldn’t seem to get motivated
to, you know, get out and be in the world.
She missed having friends to hang out with.
She missed being in a relationship, yet given how she was spending her days,
she was very much stuck in a rut of doing nothing. Her aunt was warm and
caring, but Agatha had her own life, what with her man friend and a new and
oddly successful home business of crocheting custom bikinis.
Beth turned in to the industrial area where
the Costco was located and drove toward the sprawling building at the end of
the street. As she headed through an intersection, her gaze drifted to a large
billboard on her right. Immediately her entire body went on alert as her brain
struggled to comprehend what she was seeing. She instinctively turned toward
the billboard—and accidently steered in that direction as well. Before she
could slam on the brakes, she’d driven off the road, up onto the sidewalk
(mercifully empty of pedestrians), stopping less than a foot from a fire
hydrant.
It took a couple of seconds for her to
start breathing again. Adrenaline poured through her from both the near
accident and the billboard itself. She managed to put the car in Park before
turning off the engine and getting out to stand on the sidewalk and stare in
disbelief.
The billboard was huge and showed a happy
couple staring into each other’s eyes. Not really noteworthy if she ignored
both the fact that the man in question was her ex-husband Ian and the heartfelt
message next to the photo.
Patti, you mean the world to me. I’m so
grateful to have found you. I love you. Will you marry me?
She pressed a hand to her chest, as if to
keep her heart from jumping out and flopping around on the road. Her brain was
still having trouble processing what she was seeing, and she honestly didn’t
know what was more confusing to her. The billboard itself, the fact that it was
two blocks from Costco, or that her very ordinary, believer-in-a-routine
ex-husband had proposed in such an un-Ian-like way. Oh, and maybe the fact that
he had obviously moved on and fallen in love with someone else while she hadn’t
been out with friends, let alone a man.
Ignoring a sudden wave of sadness, she
sagged back onto the driver’s seat and pulled her phone from her handbag.
Within seconds she was on Instagram and scrolling through to find Ian’s
account. As their divorce had been as low-key as their marriage, she’d never
blocked him, and apparently he’d never blocked her, either. Which meant she
could see everything he’d posted for the past couple of weeks in color
photographs and videos.
If the picture of the two of them holding
champagne glasses and smiling at the camera was any indication, Patti had said
yes. But instead of staring at the happy couple, Beth found herself searching
the crowd of friends that was gathered around them. Friends she’d thought had
been her friends as well, back when she and Ian had been married. The three
couples had been tight, hanging out together, even taking the odd vacation as a
group. But when the marriage had fallen apart, she’d discovered she was actually
only the friend-in-law. The other two women hadn’t wanted to get together and
had finally explained they were picking Ian. At the time, that had hurt about
as much as the end of her marriage.
She flipped through more pictures and saw
one of Ian and Patti with Ian’s large, extended family. The family she’d
thought of as her own, appreciating the sheer size and volume of get-togethers.
Growing up it had just been her, her brother and her mom. She’d always dreamed
of being part of a big family, and with Ian, that had happened. Only once she
and Ian split up, her relationship with them had ended as well.
Beth dropped the phone on the passenger
seat and stared at the billboard. Ian was getting married again, to
Patti—whoever she was. They would have a life, possibly kids. All the things
she’d thought would happen when she and Ian had been together. Only they
hadn’t.
She knew she didn’t want him back—their
relationship was long over. But she did envy his future, or at least all the
possibilities. Ian had kept living his life and looking for ways to be happy.
And here she was, in her car, alone
and semi-friendless. Except for Jana, a relatively new friend she really
liked, there was no one. Yes, she’d done great things with her business, but
what about her personal life? Why was she half-parked on a sidewalk, staring at
a billboard while on her way to Costco? Didn’t she want more?
A sharp pain cut through her—two parts
regret but one part intense longing for more than the nothing she’d apparently
chosen. She needed friends in her life and possibly a man. While the latter
seemed like more than she could comfortably take on right now, the former was
doable. She was a good person. She was likeable. The friend thing shouldn’t be
so hard.
She needed more than just work, she told
herself. She needed to get out of the house and start doing things. Anything.
Beginning right this second. Or possibly after she made her Costco run. But
today for sure.
Excerpted from Beach
Vibes by Susan Mallery, Copyright © 2025 by Susan Mallery Inc. Published by Canary Street Press.
