Five seconds into meeting Lucia Bell and I was a nervous fucking wreck. The other model too, Taylor Brooks. They were the most beautiful (and famous) people I’d ever met and now they were standing in the lobby of my grandfather’s bookstore (my bookstore) and I could barely think straight.

Just once I would have liked to defy the nerd stereotype. Just once.

But today was not going to be that day.

“How about I show you around a bit?” I asked, putting my hands in my pockets to keep from fidgeting.

Lucia looked bored. Taylor looked like he’d never seen a book before in his life. Only Ray and Josie seemed interested.

“I’d love that,” Josie said, tugging Lucia by the arm. I thought she was Lucia’s makeup artist (the thought of someone having their own makeup artist was an astounding fact to me). She had a slight accent, dark hair tipped in lavender. Tattoos. Piercings. She was like a brightly-colored bird.

“Um…great,” I said, clearing my throat. “So…this is the lobby.”

I accidentally caught Lucia’s eye, causing a blushing attack of epic proportions. She arched an eyebrow in response.

You can do this.

“My grandfather bought this property in 1958 after graduating from UC Berkeley with a Lit degree. He loved reading and books his entire life and was really into the Beat culture that had been centered in the North Beach area of San Francisco. At that time, Big Sur was just beginning to gain a reputation as a mecca of bohemian life. Artists and writers and singers and dancers were flocking to the town in droves. This bookstore became an epicenter of arts and culture, especially for writing.”

I indicated the lobby. “This original building was a one-story log cabin. My grandfather added onto it but never wanted it to lose its intimate feel.” The lobby was one of my favorite rooms: a veritable paradise for book-lovers. Stacks and stacks and stacks of books shoved against the wall in no discernible order.

“In the other rooms the bookshelves are a little more organized, but generally, my grandfather believed in a kind of gentle chaos. Most of the books were priced the same so they’d end up in these large, dusty stacks anyone could look through. If a book didn’t have a price on it, my grandfather let the buyer choose their own price.”

That got a lot of bemused expressions.

That’s also one of the reasons my grandfather was massively in debt.

“On the walls, you’ll see the first of many, many framed photos, poems, posters for readings and book signings. Until recently, at least one reading a week was held here—and in the sixties and seventies, you can imagine they turned into quite the bohemian party.”

“Drugs and poetry, a great mix,” Lucia said softly, eyes scanning the wall. I laughed, a little surprised.

“Um…you got it. My grandfather would tell stories of poetry readings that lasted ‘til sunrise; discussions and arguments and dancing.”

I pointed up towards the ceiling. “One of the most famous elements of this bookstore are the note cards. My grandfather would hand them out and ask guests to write down some feeling they had. Something they learned. Something beautiful or painful or eye-opening.”

“It’d take you years to read them all,” Ray chimed in.

I nodded. “I’ve tried and I’m barely through this front room. My grandfather pinned them all to the ceiling, in no particular order.”

Interspersed among them were scraps of poetry; pencil sketches, scrawled, drunken messages. Someone had drawn a highly accurate portrait of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez years ago and it was still pinned up by the front lightswitch.

I walked them into the main room. “This is where I’d imagine you’d be doing most of the shoots, right?”

Ray nodded, looking around, sketching in his notebook. “Absolutely fucking perfect, Calvin.”

I nodded, oddly happy with the praise. The main room of the bookstore—the Big Room as my grandfather called it—was one of a kind. Huge fireplace in the corner. Shelves and shelves and shelves of books, my grandfather’s handwriting indicating, “California, Botany” or “Fiction, Mystery.” Coffee tables and plush armchairs, old rugs worn over the years. The walls in here were similarly covered in posters, poems, and black-and-white photos of authors. Two other rooms branched off the Big Room.

“This room is just poetry?” Ray asked, poking his head in the smaller one. It held three shelves of books, a few old chairs and a smaller fireplace.

“Oh, that was my grandfather’s favorite room. He used to ask visiting poets to write a poem on the spot—they’re all pinned up on that corkboard.”

Lucia was walking through the shelves, fingertips trailing along the book spines. She had a peculiar look on her face, mysterious and almost worshipful. She wandered closer to me and I fought the urge to back up.

Don’t be a nerd, don’t be a nerd.

“You, uh, you like books?” I asked.

 Great opening line.

She tossed her long, wavy hair. I caught the scent of coconut. Her eyes flashed up at me, almost in alarm.

“I like lattes, actually,” she said quickly. “Be a dear and make me one?”

I half-coughed, half-laughed. “Um…we don’t have lattes in this bookstore.”

“Every bookstore in L.A. does.”

“So that’s why we keep getting one-star reviews on Yelp,” I shot back, before I could stop myself.

Lucia tilted her head, looking almost as surprised as I was that I’d made a joke. A twitch of her lips—not a smile, but almost.

“I mean,” I started to say, “I just made a pot of coffee. You want some?”

I watched her eyes track down and then up my body, assessing. She took a step closer to me. I took a step back.

“Calvin, was it?”

“Cal,” I said, almost apologetically.

“Cal,” she repeated. “A cup of coffee would be great. Thank you.”

I turned on my heel and headed towards the small kitchen off the bedroom. My cheeks burned with embarrassment. I had a spotty track record with women and definitely had never had a supermodel ask me to make her a latte.

I was strangely offended. But also bewildered.

I opened the cabinet of mugs and tried to guess what Lucia Bell would like. I turned back to glance at her. She had that look on her face again, like she wanted to devour every book in sight.

I knew who Lucia Bell was before this photo shoot—everyone did. Victoria’s Secret, Maxim, runway shows, magazine covers…sometimes it felt like her face was everywhere.

Meeting her in real life was beyond surreal.

And she looked fucking gorgeous against a backdrop of novels. I’d spent the morning training my jaw not to drop so I could get through meeting her without being too obvious. I was hoping to at least appear a little aloof. So I barely looked at her when we met, tried my hardest to ignore her presence as we toured through the dusty shelves of books.

But she was gorgeous.

Gorgeous in way that knocked the breath from your lungs. Gorgeous in a way that made you question whether you’d ever truly understood the meaning of the word. Her hair was wild and blonde, curling down her back. She was almost as tall as I was, dressed in ripped, faded jeans and a slouchy sweater that hung off one smooth, tan shoulder. Eyes the color of the sky before rain. And lips…

Those fucking lips. I felt the strongest urge to bite that bottom lip. Tug it between my teeth and see what it tasted like.

This was concerning.

She was still standing in the “Fiction, Women” section, so I pulled out a mug with Virginia Woolf stenciled on it. The warmth of the hot coffee was comforting against my palm as I walked back towards her, steeling my limited confidence.

She took it from me, our fingertips just grazing each other.

“The older one grows, the more one likes indecency,” she quoted, eyes on mine with her honey voice.

Surprised, I said, “That’s from a Virginia Woolf short story, right?” Forgetting, for a moment, I was talking to a woman who had once walked down a runway with nothing but peacock feathers glued to her body.

Because Lucia Bell was potentially flirting with me, using an obscure quote from an equally obscure collection of stories.

A small, secretive smile. “She’s a favorite,” she finally said, voice lowered.

“So you do like books,” I repeated and her smile grew.

“You could say that,” she replied, taking a long sip of her drink. Tilted her head. “It’s no latte, but I guess it’ll have to do.”

I laughed, still surprised, and I wanted to ask her more, but Ray called her over, breaking the moment.

“Thanks for the coffee, Cal,” she said, tossing a wink at me.

I gawked after her before I could stop myself.

 

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