My beach romances have been a disaster.
At Silver Strand in Coronado, a guy tried to teach me how to surf. I nearly drowned. I gave up after falling face-first off my surfboard and into the wet sand. I was once left stranded by a guy at McAbee Beach in Monterey when I refused to sing a Kenny Rogers song with him during karaoke. I sat in the dark on the cold sand for an hour, waiting for someone to take me home. At East Beach in Santa Barbara, I tried to impress a guy with a homemade picnic, but sand got into everything. (Expert tip: Sand always gets into everything.) He made fun of me for the sand-crusted “crispy chicken,” which you can’t eat.
But I thought my luck had changed when I met a handsome musician in Pismo Beach.
He was playing guitar and singing at Harry's Night Club & Beach Bar, a block from the pier. He was tall, handsome, and funny. I was there with some friends for an after-wedding party. He flirted with me from the stage and made me laugh. After his performance, he invited me for a walk. Daylight on the beach is nice, with the sun and all, but moonlight on the beach is amazing. He leaned in and kissed me, and I let him. Blame it on moonlight magic and too many lime-laced Coronas.
A month later, a friend took me to Pismo Beach for my birthday. We drove south in my Ford Mustang convertible with the top down and parked in the beach parking lot, across the street from Harry's, where the sexiest musician was playing. We spent the afternoon there. He asked us to stay when his band came for the evening concert, and we did.
And then… well, it was my birthday. I slept with the most handsome musician.
I didn't see it as anything more than a romantic fling that began one warm summer night in a quaint little beach town. Turns out he was into flirting. He flirted with women in every beach town in San Luis Obispo County: Avila Beach, Moonstone Beach, Spooner's Cove, Cayucos State Beach, Morro Strand State Beach. It was all part of the act, he said, and besides, we weren't serious.
When we were alone, he was charming and attentive. He would drive to North County to be with me every night, even after late-night concerts that were often an hour or more away. Over time, I fell head over heels in love. The only problem was that I was looking for lasting love and he wasn't.
He broke my heart over and over again. And I beat my head against the wall trying to make him into someone he was never going to be.
One day, he said to me the most sincere words I have ever heard: “I know I can be self-centered and I know that doesn’t work for you, but it has worked for me all my life, so I don’t think that will ever change.”
I know he meant it when he told me he loved me. He waited almost a year to say those words for the first time. But then I realized that being in love meant something different to him than it did to me. Our mistake wasn't falling in love. It was trying to force a love that didn't suit either of us.
Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” I didn’t believe her the dozens of times she showed me she wasn’t going to settle down, but I did believe her when she told me straight. And I knew I deserved better.
I've never had the ability to keep a boyfriend, but I do have the ability to maintain friendships with my exes, and the handsome musician was no exception. We'd go to the movies sometimes and stayed in touch, even after he moved a thousand miles away almost ten years ago to take care of his elderly mother.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I moved south of downtown San Luis Obispo to Pismo Beach to be closer to the ocean. I’m a writer and an introvert, and I enjoyed having an excuse to stay home all the time. But the isolation was too much even for me. So I moved into a 100-year-old beach bungalow half a block from the ocean. After being housebound alone for months, I felt so free walking the beach every day without a mask. There were always other human beings on the beach with me, and even though we were physically distant from each other, I felt a connection to them. I breathed the cold, crisp air so deeply that my lungs hurt.
Then the sexy musician contacted me after his mother died. He was sad and lonely too. I invited him back home to Pismo Beach to rent the guest bedroom in my bungalow, two blocks from the beach bar where our failed romance began. He moved in with me and we walked together to the end of the pier, on the same beach where we had once kissed.
First we fell in love. Then we were friends. We were friends for a long time. And then, 20 years after we met, we became roommates. He’s in the other room as I write this, probably watching basketball. Maybe “Family Guy.” He takes out the trash every now and then. He brings me tortilla chips, so I have enough salt. Sometimes cheesecake — last night, my favorite, Meyer lemon. He still makes me laugh. But we’re different people now, and it doesn’t break my heart anymore.
I never found lasting love on the beach, but I did find lasting friendship. And it took a long time, but I found the determination to be true to myself. For now, those things are more than enough.
The author, a lifelong Californian who earned an MFA from UC Riverside Palm Desert, is the fiction editor of Kelp Journal. You can read his work at leannephillips.comShe is on Instagram: @leannebythesea
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