He puts his mouth by my ear. “Take the whole day with him.”
The sun drops halfway into the water.
“Okay.”
The thirty-minute drive north to Olivenhain is rather nerve-wracking, but I grip the wheel and manage not to get killed on the freeway. So, that’s a good start to the day.
I feel a little bad for stranding Chris at the house with no car, but he’s not exactly locked in a hobbit-sized hovel, and he seemed fairly happy to sit by the pool and read. Besides, I have to be able to drive a car by myself. Obviously, I drive at home all the time, but it’s on quiet roads for the most part. From what I can tell, it’s impossible to go anywhere in California without having to hop on a convoluted freeway system with lanes designated for certain passes or carpools or exits. It’s confusing. The nav system is the only reason I know what I’m doing at all.
But I don’t die, and that seems to be my marker for success.
The nameOlivenhainsounds quaint and cute to me, but as I cross the city line, it becomes clear that this is not a simple town. There is money here. It’s more rural than I realized, but there is mountainous red-clay terrain that gives more of a desert feel. Properties are sprawling, many with wood fences marking the lines.
It’s when I begin the drive up the winding dirt road to reach Sabin that I realize I’m on a farm of sorts.Or a ranch maybe?My experience with whatever kind of land I’m on is limited to what I’ve seen in movies or read in books, so I’m not sure what this is, but I know I like it.
Everything about California is giving me a bit of a culture shock, and I haven’t been here for even twenty-four hours. The architecture, the weather, the way stores are all set up in strip malls—everything is new to me. And, my God, the palm trees! They really are everywhere, and I’ve already fallen in love with them. And while it might take some acclimating to handle the more urban aspects of this area, there’s a beauty here in this place that Sabin now calls home, out of the congestion of the traffic, and I can see why he likes it.
He told me to take the dirt road past the main house on the left, and I admire the single-level tan stucco house. I continue past what I think might be fruit trees of some kind, and then I pass four horses roaming in a large pen.
Horses?
Sabin never mentioned horses, but I find this all rather exciting.
I’m almost tearing up now that I’m a few minutes from seeing him, and I park the car next to a wooden shed, as he told me to do. I take the tray of to-go coffee cups and the paper bag from the floor by the passenger seat and make my way ahead. A path starts with an arched bridge that runs over a man-made pond filled with ducks, and I’m utterly charmed that Sabin has such a magical entrance to where he lives.
The path continues between leafy plants that remind me of something more prehistoric than of this age, and I emerge in a field spotted with much larger trees. I look up and smile. There is Sabin’s tree house, seemingly impossibly suspended so high up with supports running from under the house to the wraparound deck before lodging against the solid trunk. The wood is beautiful, with lots of texture and color patterns, and I am enchanted to see shutters and shingles.
It’s a real house! Just…not on the ground.
Because I’ve never been a guest at a tree house, this feels totally bizarre, and I’m suddenly unsure how one enters a tree house.Do I climb the winding stairs and just knock on the door?I don’t know. It’s not a traditional house, so perhaps one does not make a traditional approach. I don’t know if I expect to be airlifted by some kind of rope-and-platform system or what, so I decide that I’ll just cup my hands to my mouth and scream out his name. I figure it’s kind of a jungle call, which seems appropriate.
I’m about to yell up when I notice movement ahead. Then, I freeze. Someone is coming down the steps, but it’s not Sabin.
It’s a girl—and a skanky one at that, if I’m going to go with my gut and be judgmental—with rich brown hair tousled around her face, a skintight pink dress, and sunglasses so big that they’re almost comical.
Except that I don’t find anything the least bit funny about this.
Nausea tears through me, and I hear Christopher’s words in my head.
“It’s Blythe, for fuck’s sake. Why are you acting like she’s an imposition?”
The answer seems to be because Iaman imposition. Getting laid last night took precedence over seeing Chris and me. While I understand the lure of good sex, I have a feeling the girl in the pink dress is not exactly the great love of Sabin’s life, and I wonder whether his hooker joke yesterday was really a joke.
The other thing that I cannot deny is a distinct and painful feeling of jealousy. Not that I want to be stumbling out of a tree house, looking like a cheap whore, but I am jealous.
She walks past me and gives a little wave, as though there is nothing fucking creepy about this at all.
I stand, unmoving, for ten minutes while I get my emotions under control. There’s something humiliating about being ditched for a cheap lay. When my heart stops pounding, I try to grow the hell up and push aside the fact that this reunion so far has not gone as I envisioned.
Despite my now shitty mood, I’m struck by how unique it is to take stairs surrounded by leafy limbs. Because my hands are full, I have to kick the door to knock, and then I kick again after he doesn’t answer.
“Sabin!” I yell as I keep kicking.
The door whips open, and I find myself facing a shirtless Sabin.
“Jesus Christ, what?” His black hair is in messy waves that practically hit his shoulders, and he’s got at least three days’ worth of facial hair darkening his face.
“Really?” I shove the bag into his hands. “Here are your fucking blueberry bagels. Good thing I only got you a fraction of what you asked for because, based on the size of your belly, you don’t need more carbs.”
