Monterey in December
By Melissa Flores Anderson
Listen to Melissa reading this piece:
I look at the time on my phone and then walk from the living room to the kitchen though I don’t need anything there. The house is quiet because it’s a work day and it’s just after the holidays, with opened gifts piled on end tables and on the corner of the couch. I have one wrapped present on the coffee table for James, when he arrives. I have taken the day off work, a precious vacation day, precious because I have so few of them and my supervisor is so reluctant to grant even the ones I have.
I’ve been dating James for almost two months. He missed spending Christmas with me because his truck broke down when he visited his mom and stepdad in Mariposa. We are in the precarious phase of our relationship where I’m too scared to call him my boyfriend, to say we are dating, so I tell people we’re hanging out.
I told him to pick me up around 8 a.m., and now it’s past 11. He texted me the night before to say his younger sister asked to visit him. She graduated from college last spring and now she is heading to Korea to teach English for a year. It’s the only day she can visit, but as soon as she leaves he said he’d drive down to see me.
The later it gets, the more anxious I get that he won’t show. Then I get angry that he’s wasting my time, my precious vacation day. I’m used to people ghosting me or changing their minds. I don’t yet know that his sister is always late, will always be late.
James shows up after noon and I mask my frustration. I hand him the gift. Inside, there is a blue cashmere sweater. It’s expensive. I wanted to give him something nice. I tell him if he doesn’t like it, tell me so we can return it for something else. Don’t feel bad if he doesn’t like it. I don’t yet know he will put the sweater in the bottom of a dresser drawer. He will never wear it.
He hands me a gift. It’s a DVD of my favorite movie, a 1980s romantic comedy starring John Cusack. I mentioned it the first time we hung out, when we went to lunch and rented movies from Blockbuster.
He knows I love movies and I see one in the theaters almost every week because I write a movie column for the paper where I work. I write a food column, news stories, shoot videos, take photos and design pages. The staff is only three people now. That’s part of why this day off is such a luxury, and I spent half of it alone. Waiting.
He apologizes for being late.
“My family isn’t great at planning, but I couldn’t say no to my sister when she was leaving for a year.”
I can choose to hold onto the bad mood and let it sour the day, or I can let it go and appreciate the time we still have.
We leave his truck in the guest parking outside my place and I drive my car south through the green hills along Highway 101 and then cut across the rural stretch of Highway 156 that connects to the Pacific Coast Highway. He tells me his uncle has a place out this way. He used to visit when he was a kid. I don’t yet know that his grandparents and my grandparents at one time lived in the small rural town not too far away, in Hollister. Even though we grew up in different valleys.
When we arrive at Cannery Row, we park in a lot a few blocks from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I’ve been here dozens of times, but never in the month of December. The wind whips through my silver coat and blows my hair around my face. James’ cheeks turn red with the cold. He takes my hand as we make our way into the guest entrance and stop in front of the sea otter tank. I point them out, name them. One of the otters has been here since I was a kid, and I’ve watched its fur go from a golden brown to gray around its whiskered face. We watch them dive and circle back up to the top of the tank, where they chase each other and play.
James takes my hand again as we walk to the open sea exhibit and all the remnants of my morning’s frustration flow away. We peer together into the extraordinary tank that houses sun fish and sea turtles, bluefin tuna, hammerhead sharks. We are just in time for the afternoon feeding and a school of sardines swirls around the center of the tank, their scales glimmering like Christmas tree lights.
I spot the sea turtle as it moves lazily up to the top of the tank to catch chunks of fish. The turtle is my favorite animal and a trip to the aquarium isn’t complete until I see it. I don’t yet know that someday these trips to the aquarium will be different, with a small hand guiding me toward his favorite spots, and I will be willing to give up the sea turtle sightings.
When the feeding is over, people clear out and move to a new exhibit. James and I sit on the fabric covered steps in the dark. He puts his arm around my shoulder as we watch the creatures swim in the immense tank.
We walk across the aquarium to see the penguins and I tell him how they’ve been rebranded. They used to be called jackass penguins because they sound like they are braying. I know because I saw them in South Africa. But now they are South African penguins. He laughs and his blue eyes follow the birds diving in the water.
We leave the aquarium and get lunch at a brewery then walk toward the wharf. It’s colder now so James ducks into a store and buys a beanie and gloves. There is an outdoor skating rink, but I don’t know how to skate. I confess that I have a fear of falling. We watch families and children circle the ice. James takes my hand, then takes a selfie, our noses red from the cold and our smiles bright.
We don’t yet know, but we are falling, falling in love, and this time it doesn’t feel scary because I don’t recognize it for what it is. It’s not overdramatic and full of chaos, like in stories and movies and TV shows. It’s quiet and warm, like when he puts the DVD of my favorite movie in to play on his PS3, and I cuddle up to him on the futon that serves as a couch in his apartment on the weekend. I don’t yet know I will move in to that apartment in 15 months, after we get engaged. That I will buy a couch for us, and it will be our home when we are first married, where I will take a pregnancy test that has two lines, where we will bring our baby home from the hospital and he will laugh and cry, and roll over. That the apartment will be the first of three homes we share.
What I know is that what is happening is different than anything that has happened before.
Melissa Flores Anderson is a Latinx Californian who lives with her husband and son. Her creative work has been featured in more than 40 literary venues and anthologies, including swamp pink, Chapter House and HAD. She is a reader/editor with Roi Fainéant Press. She has co-authored a novelette, “Roadkill,” (ELJ Editions) and a chapbook “A Body in Motion,” (JAKE). Her first full-length short story collection “All and Then None of You” is out September 2025 (Cowboy Jamboree). Follow her on Twitter/Bluesky @melissacuisine or IG/Threads @theirishmonths. Read her work at melissafloresandersonwrites.com.