“I like what I see so far,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Ace said. “We can’t even see the house from here.”
“That’s what I like about it.” I pulled the car up to the gate and got out to enter the code.
Once beyond the gate we drove for a quarter mile before finally seeing the silhouette of the house.
“I think this is going to be the one, Ace.”
“You haven’t even seen the interior.”
“I don’t need to. This is great.”
As it turned out, Ace had really come through and had found us the perfect place. Tucked away in the canyons of Malibu, it was a large sprawling ranch style home on a few scenic acres. The long driveway was blocked off to intruders with that solid wrought iron gate, and the house was far enough away from peering eyes.
“Good work,” I said to Ace a week later as we moved in.
The place turned out to be only partially furnished. All that was missing were the beds and dressers, some occasional tables here and there, television sets and a larger desk for the computer equipment we brought in.
But the existing furniture was perfect for our needs. Beautifully worn in tan leather sofas with a massive coffee table. The built-in shelving units on either side of the majestic fireplace were well built and were great for storing a lot of our stuff.
The living space was massive, and it opened to the informal dining area which opened to the immense kitchen. The kitchen boasted two large islands topped with dark marble countertops that contrasted with the white marble of the remaining counters. The white marble climbed up the wall giving the kitchen a cool atmosphere.
Since Ace had done such a good job of finding the place, I offered him his choice of bedroom. The large master bedroom had a bay of windows that looked over the desert canyons and the distant Pacific. The bathroom had a sweet hammock style bathtub that I was dying to try and a huge tiled in shower with multiple showerheads.
The second bedroom was reasonably large, had a view of the desert sprawling out towards the east and a bathroom with a sunken tub, double sinks and a tiled shower.
The third bedroom was just as large but being at the far end of the house and with an unimpressive northern view, we both decided that would be the computer room.
“You take the big room, boss,” Ace had said. “I like the smaller room. It’s nice and cozy.”
“Right,” I’d said with a laugh.
It had taken only a week to find that new house and finalize the transaction. Within days of that, we had settled in and I was looking forward to entertaining some special guests.
But I was also happy to have a home to call my own. For a while I’d been going around from place to place, renting hotel rooms for a while, only to move into a rental for a month or so.
Now, I finally felt like I had really settled into the place where I belonged.
The house was near Hidden Falls where I’d moved to for a year to target Summer. Maybe that was also part of the appeal of being back in California. There was something strange and nostalgic about being back there. It was the closest thing to time travel.
Memories of my time with Summer would flash through my mind at the most unexpected times. Driving up the canyon, I could hear her laugh and remembered when we would find a new trail to discover and explore.
In town, I remembered every single restaurant that we went to, remembered the conversations we had, talking about nothing in particular, talking about our future together, talking about our friends and studies. It was a magical time for us both.
“You okay, man?” Ace said as he came into the great room.
I turned to him. “Yeah. Sure. What’s up?”
“It’s only the third time I call your name and you’re like… way out there. What’s got you so caught up that you don’t even hear your name.”
I shrugged and looked at him. Would he understand what I was going through? “I’m just thinking of old times out here. I’ve always loved Malibu. It’ a cool place with so many cool things to do. Most people only think of the beach and the ocean, but there’s so much more. I just love it out here… and, well… it’s a special place.”
“Because of that girl?”
Nodding, I smiled sheepishly. “Yeah,” I said. “Okay. The girl has something to do with it, too.”
“You had a lot of good times with her, didn’t you?”
“I sure did. Best times of my life.” My mind wandered off to another time. To a much happier time. “Every so often we would go to the Malibu Pier to watch the sun go down. She always loved doing that… especially when the weather wasn’t too great. There were usually less people then and she liked that sense of being out there all alone… Well, with me, of course.”
“Hey, but this is sunny California. When does the weather ever get bad?”
I laughed. “You’d be surprised. I don’t know what it is about the area, but you can have sun everywhere, and yet, if you head down to the coast you can suddenly find yourself in this really thick fog. It’s actually pretty cool… and Summer loved it. I think there was something about the obscurity of it all that she liked.”
Ace smiled, caught up in my reverie.
“One time, we drove up to Deer Creek. Man. You’ve never seen anything like it. The fog was low, and there we were, above it all. We could actually see waves in the clouds… kind of like what you would see on the ocean below it. It was mesmerizing.”
“Sounds kind of mystical.”
“It was. But the ultimate view, the ultimate hike, the ultimate summit was Sandstone Peak. Think about it. It’s over three thousand feet high, the highest around here. After a short hike of just over a mile and a gain of just over a thousand feet, you are awestruck for life.”
“A thousand feet. I bet you’re pretty breathless, too” Ace said.
I grinned. “Yeah, but it’s worth it. Summer talked about that one for days. The mountains all around us, the Channel Islands in the distance. It’s the most perfect all around view.”
“That must have been some view,” Ace said.
“Sometimes I’d take her down to El Matador Beach. It has these cool sea caves. You can just wander around, explode… hide.” I looked at him. “Well, I won’t go into too much detail about what Summer and I did down there. Suffice it to say that we had a great time… every time.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“We went everywhere together,” I went on. “We visited Adamson House, Topanga… everywhere.” I let out a laugh. “This one morning, really, really early, before school started, we headed to the Santa Monica mountains. There’s this old fire tower and it’s the absolutely most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen.”
“Don’t you mean sunset?” Ace argued. “Like to the west on the ocean?”
“No,” I insisted. “You’re up on this mountain. You look to the east, over the mountains and you see the sun creep up, then you just turn your head to the west, and you have the ocean just lighting up under those first faint rays of the distant sun. It’s the coolest thing ever. Then you take the PCH and enjoy the ride as the world comes alive.”
“PCH?”