Love and Joy Read online

  “Oh, my God. Yes. That’s definitely him asking you out.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe he’s just being nice.”

  “The first part of the text—the part about doing it again—was him being nice. But the part about it being just the two of you? That’s him asking you out.”

  It really was, wasn’t it?

  “He’s my landlord, though,” Joy said.

  “He’s your really hot landlord.”

  “Still.” It could lead to potential problems, couldn’t it? If she went out with Nix—on a real date—and it ended badly, she’d be stuck dealing with a landlord who hated her. That could be awkward as hell. On the other hand, how bad could it be? She was only in the tiny house temporarily, anyway. If she had to move, it would only speed up the timeline on something she was going to do anyway.

  “Remember what we talked about,” Amber told her. “You need more fun in your life. You need more pleasure.” She waggled the eyebrows again. “Eat some real food. Go out with a hot man. Maybe sleep with him, if you feel like it. Get out and see what the world has to offer you without taking a selfie of it and putting it on Instagram. Just try it and see.”

  Joy had to admit the idea was appealing.

  Chapter 14

  Joy wrote about Amber’s idea in her next blog post.

  Physically, I’m here on the Central Coast amid the trees and the grass, with the ocean at my feet. But mentally, I’m still in L.A. wondering where the fast pace, the designer stores, and the trendy nightlife went.

  My best friend, Amber, told me it’s pointless to change my surroundings if I don’t let my surroundings change me. So, I’m going to try an experiment. For the next two weeks, I’m going to say no to materialism and yes to hedonism.

  I’m going to buy less and experience more. Walks on the beach?Picnics by the creek? Good food and good wine and long talks with good people? Yes, please. I vow to live in the moment and experience all that Cambria and tiny house living have to offer, without judgment and without worrying about how I look while I do it.

  I’m not saying it’ll be easy. But it should be interesting.

  Joy reread what she’d written, edited a few sentences, read it again, and then hit PUBLISH.

  It seemed like a simple enough plan—just have fun without milking every moment for good Instagram posts—but for some reason, it made her so nervous she thought she might be sick.

  If she ate what she wanted, she was going to gain weight. If she just enjoyed her surroundings without thinking about monetary gain, her income might plummet. And if she said yes to a date with Nix? Well. She might have a great time, or she might be slammed by disappointment and heartbreak.

  Well, what good experiment came without risk?

  Amber was right. It was time for a change, not just of address but of attitude.

  Joy took a deep breath as she sat cross-legged on her bed in the loft and set her laptop aside.

  Where to start in this quest for pleasure?

  A sexual adventure seemed like a big step she wasn’t ready for. But ice cream was almost as tempting as sex, so she decided to start there.

  Joy couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten ice cream. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. She’d eaten it a couple of weeks ago, but it was that crappy low-calorie, low-fat, low-taste stuff that was supposed to be a miracle food but wasn’t. Real ice cream hadn’t passed her lips in so long that it might as well have happened during another life.

  Surely there was a place on Main Street that sold ice cream. Cambria was a tourist town, after all.

  She got into her SUV and headed down the tree-lined, winding road toward town. When she got there, she started at the east end of Main Street and headed west at a leisurely pace, keeping her eye out for her target.

  She found Mojo’s almost immediately. The place billed itself as a coffeehouse, but a large freestanding sign in the shape of an ice cream cone placed on the sidewalk had her looking for the nearest parking spot.

  Joy had been watching her weight for so long she’d almost forgotten that buying and enjoying an ice cream cone was something a person could do. She parked and walked across the street to the shop feeling as though she were about to commit a crime.

  I can do this, she thought. I can eat some ice cream, and it doesn’t mean I’ll immediately gain ten pounds and be unworthy of love.

  When had she gotten to the point that she needed a pep talk just to eat? When had she decided that her entire sense of self should be wrapped up in her weight? When had she forgotten that she had other qualities besides a single-digit jeans size?

  She walked into the shop, approached the ice cream freezer, and found herself overwhelmed by the choices.

  Salted caramel? Cookies and cream? Double fudge?

  The teenaged girl behind the counter waited patiently while Joy decided.

  “Would you like to sample something?” she asked.

  “Um … no, thanks. That’s okay. I’ll just get this one.” She pointed to an ice cream with the unlikely name of Rooster Tracks. She paid, and the girl assembled the cone and handed it to Joy.

  It looked huge.

  At the first lick, Joy almost swooned. She closed her eyes, ran her tongue over the ice cream, and savored the flavors of vanilla and fudge. A rooster track—a mini peanut butter cup—burst open in her mouth when she bit into it, and she moaned.

  “I feel like I should offer you a cigarette and promise to call you in the morning,” a voice said.

  Her eyes flew open to find Nix standing there, grinning at her.

  Joy felt her cheeks pink up in a blush of embarrassment.

  “It’s just, this is really good,” she said.

  “I gathered. I came in for coffee, but after that, I’ll have what you’re having.”

  When Nix had come into the shop and had seen Joy in there, he’d been torn between friendly courtesy and turning around and leaving before she saw him. After all, she’d never answered his text, which probably meant she didn’t want to go out with him. That was fine, but he could do without facing rejection on a simple trip to Mojo’s.

  But when he’d seen the ecstasy on her face, when he’d watched her tongue dart out and sweep over the ice cream, her eyes closed … and then the moan, it had been impossible not to imagine her exactly like that, in his bed, but without the ice cream.

  And having imagined it, it had been equally impossible not to say so.

  Now, having said it, he felt a little bit bad for embarrassing her. But her blush delighted him, so maybe it had been worth it.

  “One of those, please,” Nix said to the girl behind the counter, pointing at Joy’s cone.

  All Joy had wanted was to enjoy a little harmless hedonism. How had she ended up at a table in a coffeehouse eating ice cream with the admittedly delectable Nix Landry? Life was funny that way. Open the door to a small amount of pleasure, and the universe sent you the opportunity for so much more.

  The problem was, she wasn’t sure she was ready for quite that much self-indulgent abandon.

  As they sat beside the shop’s front window, sunlight streaming in and highlighting Nix’s glorious hair, Joy decided that she hadn’t fully appreciated just how beautiful he was.

  It wasn’t just the hair. He had perfectly sculpted cheekbones, long eyelashes that lay gently on his cheeks when he closed his eyes, and flawless skin that would probably have been pale if he didn’t spend so much time in the sun. And those eyes. Their color was so improbably light, with just a hint of sky blue, that she couldn’t help feeling that she was being drawn in by them.

  No wonder Amber had been a little bit smitten.

  “Amber really likes you,” Joy said, then caught a drip of melting ice cream with her tongue.

  “She’s nice. And she’s a good friend to you.” He looked at her meaningfully, and Joy wondered if he was referring to how Amber had tried to play matchmaker instead of pursuing him herself. Instead of getting into that, Joy opted for the generic answer.


  “She really is.”

  He licked his ice cream, then focused that pale gaze on Joy. “She thinks you and I should go out, you know.”

  Suddenly, Joy’s mouth was dry. “Um … does she?”

  “Mmm hmm. She asked me whether I was seeing someone, and she said you weren’t, either. Then she spent a full ten minutes talking about how great you are.”

  Joy froze, speechless. She’d known all of that because Amber had told her. But now that it was out there—now that Nix was laying it on the table—she didn’t know how to respond.

  “Wow,” was all she could think to say.

  Nix finished his cone, wiped his mouth with a napkin from the dispenser on the table, balled up the napkin, and tossed it into a trash can ten feet from where they sat. Then he gave Joy a tentative grin that made her feel all warm and soft inside.

  “Look. I know you and I got off to a bad start,” he said. “But it means a lot to Amber that you and I go out. You should think about it. For her sake.” Then he got up, gave her a wave, and left.

  Nix left Mojo’s wondering how big an idiot he actually was.

  Joy didn’t like him. She was generally surly and critical, and there was a good chance that going out with her would feel like a particularly brutal visit to the dentist. And yet, he’d not only asked her out via text but had doubled down in person.

  What was he thinking? Was he that shallow that he would pursue a woman just because of how she looked?

  But it wasn’t just about how she looked. It was more than that. Nix liked to think he had good instincts about people, and his instinct said Joy was more than she let on.

  He’d seen her angrily eating a veggie patty and iceberg lettuce, and now he’d seen her blissfully devouring an ice cream cone. What did that tell him? She was a woman who’d been holding herself back, and who maybe was ready to stop doing that.

  She was, maybe, ready to let herself go.

  That would be a beautiful sight when it happened, and he wouldn’t mind being there to see it.

  He didn’t know what her story was—why she’d been so repressed up to now and what had happened in her life to make her want to change. But he found that he really wanted to know.

  She was tightly knotted, but it seemed possible that she’d started pulling on some threads in an effort to free herself from all of that tension.

  Nix wouldn’t mind pulling on a few threads himself, just to see what happened.

  He drove back to Otter Bluff, let himself inside, and decided that Joy Maxwell would be a fine thing to think about while applying grout.

  When Joy got back to the tiny house, she texted Amber.

  All I did was eat some ice cream, and now everything’s spinning out of control.

  Almost immediately, three dots bounced on her screen, indicating that Amber was formulating a response.

  You’re going to need to explain that.

  So she did.

  I went to town and got an ice cream cone, and I guess I made an obscene sound because, Amber, I haven’t had ice cream in so long and it was soooo good. But I ran into Nix and he heard the sound and now he’s got ideas.

  Amber responded: !!!!

  It turns out he really was asking me out before, and now he’s asked again, and I really have to answer him at this point, Joy wrote.

  So answer him! Amber responded. Then: Just in case that wasn’t clear enough, say yes!

  She wanted to. She really did. But then what? When everything went to hell, as it always did, she’d be stuck handing her monthly rent check to a guy who was trying not to strangle her.

  Then again, she couldn’t seem to forget how he’d looked sitting across from her, the sunlight on his hair, those long eyelashes resting on his skin.

  She wanted to touch that skin. Maybe even lick it the way she’d licked that incredible ice cream.

  I’m going to do it, Joy wrote.

  She’d intended for her hedonism project to progress a bit more slowly than this. After all, it was a big jump from ice cream to getting involved with a hot organic farmer.

  Still, in for a penny …

  Yay! Amber wrote. Keep me posted, and you have to tell me everything.

  Chapter 15

  Joy and Nix had their first date a couple of days after the ice cream incident. She’d let him choose the place, since he knew the town better than she did.

  He opted to take her to The Sandpiper, a restaurant on Moonstone Beach Drive with a view of the ocean.

  He picked her up at six, knocking on the door of the tiny house exactly on time.

  When she opened the door, she was momentarily speechless.

  Usually when she saw Nix, he was wearing torn jeans, sandals, and a T-shirt that looked like it had been through the wash so many times it might dissolve into dust at any moment. His hair was usually tied back to keep it out of his way.

  Today, though, he’d made an effort.

  Pressed khakis, a blue chambray shirt open at the throat and turned up at the elbows, and a pair of loafers that looked like they’d been shined recently. And the hair—loose and wavy, thick and lustrous. She wanted to bury her hands in it. Usually, he had a day or two worth of stubble when she saw him, but today he was freshly shaved. He smelled faintly of spicy aftershave.

  “Wow,” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

  Nix’s eyebrows rose and he gave her a slow grin that made her feel alarmingly hot and melty. “Wow yourself.”

  Joy was wearing the only dressy outfit she’d managed to wedge into the closet at the tiny house: her little black dress with an off-the-shoulder neckline and a swingy skirt. On her feet were the sole pair of designer shoes she’d kept out of storage.

  “It’s too dressy, right?” she said, doubting herself. “It’s probably too dressy for Cambria, but most of my clothes are in storage, so—”

  “It’s perfect. You look great.” From the way he was looking at her, Joy knew he meant it.

  “Well, let me just grab my purse, and we can go.”

  Nix was feeling pleased with himself as he drove to The Sandpiper. He’d been uncertain whether it was a good idea to ask Joy out, but now, with her sitting beside him looking the way she looked, he couldn’t help but think it had been an inspired bit of brilliance.

  “I read your blog post.” He kept his voice casual and his eyes on the road.

  “You did? Which one?”

  “The one where you said you want to become a hedonist.” He glanced at her, and her blush was adorable.

  “Oh. That one.”

  He grinned. “You know, I think it’s a great idea.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I really do. I mean, hedonism’s bad if it gets out of hand, but a little fun? A little harmless enjoyment? I’m all for that.”

  She gave him a knowing, mischievous look out of the corner of her eye that required him to shift in his seat.

  “I suppose you have ideas about that?”

  She was flirting with him—shamelessly—and he realized how long it had been since he’d enjoyed a little suggestive banter with a woman.

  “I might,” he said.

  “Such as?”

  “Let’s start with a good meal. No salads, no grilled chicken breast with steamed vegetables. A real meal. Then we’ll go from there.”

  She didn’t object, and that seemed like a good sign.

  Oh. My. God.

  Joy had almost forgotten what carbs tasted like, and now, as she savored the flavors of seafood pasta with lemon butter sauce, she nearly blacked out with bliss.

  She heard a helpless whimpering sound, then realized it was coming from her.

  She snapped her eyes open, embarrassed.

  “I … uh … I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be. Watching you eat pasta is the most satisfying sexual experience I’ve had for a while.”

  Damn it, there she went, blushing again. She could feel the heat in her cheeks.

  “It’s j
ust … carbs. It’s been a long time.”

  He put down his own fork, folded his arms on the table, and regarded her. “Tell me something about women, would you?”

  “Sure. I mean, I’m not our spokeswoman, but I’ll try.”

  “What are you afraid will happen if you enjoy yourself a little? What’s the worst-case scenario?”

  The worst-case scenario is that once I start, I won’t be able to stop. I’ll fall into a pit of need and desire so deep I’ll never be able to dig myself out of it.

  And then I’ll be lost forever.

  That wasn’t the kind of thing you say to someone on a first date, but he’d asked a real question, and she tried to give him a real answer.

  “Self-control is a slippery slope,” she told him. “Once you give in, it’s too easy to keep giving in. I mean, it’s like alcoholism, right? Nobody asks a recovering alcoholic why they can’t have just one drink. But if you’re dieting, everybody wants to know why you can’t have just one piece of cake.”

  “Fair point,” he said. “But what if you take self-control so far that you’re not enjoying life anymore?”

  What if, indeed?

  Joy had been at that point for a while. Everybody thought it must be great to be a size four—as though the lack of body fat meant she didn’t have any worries, any problems. But they didn’t know what it took to get that way, and they didn’t know what it cost her to worry over every mouthful, every pound.

  When other people saw her in a bikini, they saw … well, whatever they wanted to. Sexuality. Perfection. Some construct of female beauty.

  But when Joy saw herself in that same bikini, she saw the bumps of cellulite along her outer thighs, the visible veins in her calves, the fact that her boobs weren’t as high as they used to be. She saw failure and unattainable goals and the unstoppable effects of time.

  After a while, she realized she was lost in her thoughts and hadn’t said anything.