Twelve Months of Kristal: 50 Loving States Maine Read online

  Copyright © 2021 by Theodora Taylor

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  Contents

  The Official Soundtrack

  I. CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

  1. The Eleventh Day of Christmas

  2. Time to Pretend

  3. Why, Santa, Why?

  4. J-Drama

  5. Bacchanoeling

  6. I Should…But I Don’t

  7. Merry Bacchanoel, Baby

  8. California Dreamin’

  II. I SAW HER AGAIN

  9. Last Christmas

  10. I Saw Her Again

  11. Blue Christmas

  III. DON’T WORRY BABY

  12. Don’t Worry Baby

  13. Shut Down Pt. 2

  IV. WHITE RABBIT

  14. Comin' Back to Me

  15. White Rabbit

  16. Embryonic Journey

  17. Today

  V. WOULDN’T IT BE NICE

  18. Wouldn’t It Be Nice

  19. I Know There’s An Answer

  20. Let’s Go Away For Awhile

  VI. DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME

  21. Dream a Little Dream of Me

  22. Twelve-Thirty

  23. The Right Somebody to Love

  VII. MONDAY MONDAY

  24. Got a Feelin’

  25. Monday, Monday

  26. You, Baby

  27. I Call Your Name

  28. Go Where You Wanna Go

  VIII. GOOD VIBRATIONS

  29. Good Vibrations

  30. That’s Not Me

  31. You Still Believe in Me

  32. Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)

  33. Sloop John B

  IX. I JUST WANT TO CELEBRATE

  34. Get Ready

  35. I Just Want to Celebrate

  36. In Bed

  37. Hum Along and Dance

  X. FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

  38. For What It’s Worth

  39. Hatsukoi

  XI. TURN! TURN! TURN!

  40. Turn! Turn! Turn!

  XII. GOD ONLY KNOWS

  41. Here Today

  42. I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times

  43. God Only Knows

  44. Waiting for the Day

  XIII. LOVELY DAY

  45. Lovely Day

  46. Just the Two of Us

  47. Wonderwall

  48. River Deep Mountain High

  Sneak Peek of His Everlasting Love

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Also by Theodora Taylor

  About the Author

  The Official Soundtrack

  TWELVE MONTHS OF KRISTAL

  Spotify

  Apple Music

  California Dreamin' - The Mamas & The Papas

  Last Christmas - Wham!

  Time to Pretend - MGMT

  I Saw Her Again - The Mamas & The Papas

  Don't Worry Baby - The Beach Boys

  White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane

  Wouldn't It Be Nice - The Beach Boys

  Dream a Little Dream of Me - The Mamas & The Papas

  Monday Monday - The Mamas & The Papas

  Good Vibrations - The Beach Boys

  I Just Want to Celebrate - Rare Earth

  For What It's Worth - Buffalo Springfield

  Hatsukoi - Hikaru Utada

  Turn! Turn! Turn! - The Byrds

  God Only Knows - The Beach Boys

  Lovely Day - Bill Withers

  Wonderwall - Oasis

  River Deep Mountain High - Ike & Tina Turner

  CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

  Episode 0

  1

  The Eleventh Day of Christmas

  KRISTAL

  The urge to draw hits me just as I’m about to wrap my chopsticks around the sakizuke course. This isn’t the usual delightful impulse to capture someone or some scene down on paper, but a total compulsion. My skin crawls with the need to pull out my drawing pad as the vision of this latest “loved one” fills my head and twists my stomach, making it so I can’t eat. Even though I really, really want to.

  I’ve been waiting for over a year to eat at Sukiyabashi Daniel, San Francisco’s hottest new sushi restaurant. It was founded by Daniel Ito, a Michelin star chef, whose father and uncle also became Michelin Star chefs while working at his grandfather’s world-renowned sushi restaurant in Tokyo. Typically, a chef hailing from such an eminent sushi family would have continued his career in Japan.

  But according to the People magazine article I’d read about the restaurant last year, Daniel had decided to open his own eatery after being disinherited and kicked out of the family business after he came out as gay. With a generous investment from a Japanese billionaire, he’d set up shop in San Francisco.

  The resulting omakase-style restaurant was a humble mix of tradition and outrageous fusion, and it was still creating quite a stir on both local and national foodie blogs when I arrived back in the human realm on the first day of Christmas.

  With only ten tables available, it had been nearly impossible to get a reservation last year. In fact, when I called to confirm my reservation a few days ago, the host had declared me lucky. “You only had to wait a year, honey. If you made a reservation today, it’d be eighteen months!”

  I’d been so looking forward to this meal. Why, Santa, why did the uncontrollable urge to draw have to hit me before I even got a chance to take my first bite?

  Okay, technically, I know why. Really it’s my own fault. I had no business looking around curiously at the other diners while the restaurant’s sole waiter brought out the first course. Shouldn’t have wondered why tonight there were eleven tables set out instead of ten… or let my eyes linger for so long on the couple, who were sitting at the only round top in a restaurant filled with square-shaped ones.

  Why hadn’t I looked away, instead of speculating to myself about why they’d been served first, even though they were seated the farthest away from the non-traditional zero-seat sushi bar?

  Usually, I keep my eyes down when I’m out in the human world during the twelve days of Christmas. Each of us elves has a special ability, granted to us by Grandpa Claus upon the night of our adoption. My bestie cousin, Krista, and many of the other elves consider their unique ability a gift, like the superpowers we all dreamed of having as kids before Santa adopted us.

  But in my case, Santa’s gift is more like a curse.

  And curse is what I do under my breath as I glance again at the beautiful people sitting at the eleventh table. A man and a woman, who I’m guessing to be in their thirties, based purely on their fashion choices and the fact that they can afford to drop so much money on a meal where the chef gets to decide exactly what they eat.

  He’s dressed in a tux, and she’s wearing an evening gown like they’ve either just returned from or are about to go to an opera. And they’re both over-the-top attractive. Like, glowing with ethereal beauty. Long, thin, and gorgeous, they look like supermodels, posin g for an ad urging you to buy something ungodly expensive. He’s Asian with well-defined cheekbones, gorgeous half-moon eyes, and a strong nose—I know I’d have all sorts of trouble capturing it on paper. She has dark brown hair and tanned skin that could have marked her as coming from anywhere: Mexico, Europe, or a tanning booth on Union Street.

  But she’s not from any of those places I already know. She’s from Brazil. Specifically, the city of Jaraguá do Sul—at least that’s where the loved one I have the overwhelming urge to draw lives. Instead of tucking into my first course, I reluctantly pull out my drawing pad and sharpie and sketch the portrait of a woman who looks so much like the modelesque brunette, I can only assume she’s her sister.

  She’s beautiful, too, but in a more wholesome way.

  She looks nice. Like a sweet big or little sister. And according to the date I add last in the upper left corner of the portrait, she’ll be dead within three months. Crap.

  Ten years I’ve had this gift, and every picture I draw still fills me with sadness. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Santa wants me to remember always that I’m not the only one, that I’m not alone as I was that night when he found me crying over my mother’s body.

  I get it. I guess. But my stomach churns because a few days ago, my human mentor, Jae-Hyun, sat me down for a long conversation about committing to my natural talent as a manga artist. He’d asserted quite rightly that he could teach me more if he didn’t only have twelve days a year with me. He even offered me a job in his comic book store, along with the use of the small apartment above the store for free if I agreed to stay on for more than twelve days and seriously commit to my study of the art form. As expensive as San Francisco apartments are, I should have jumped at the opportunity.

  I wanted to jump at the opportunity. But instead, I’d told him, “One more year. Just give me one more year at the workshop, and then I’ll come back and be your full-time student.”

  That’s how long I figured it would take for me to get my mind right for living in the real world, where things like this would happen, if not every day, enough times to break my heart.

  I look at the sharpie portrait I’ve drawn. Then back to the perfect-looking couple on their perfect-looking date. Which I’m about to ruin big time.

  Crap.

  2

  Time to Pretend

  HAYATO

  Eloa is even better than the agency promised. I hadn’t been expecting much when I contracted with a discreet San Francisco escort agency to satisfy certain needs while I attended the inaugural investors meeting for GoX Aeronautics, the aerospace start-up of one of my business partners, Rodrigo Gutierrez. After all, San Francisco is no Tokyo when it comes to making tasteful arrangements for hot dates. It’s not even London, where I attended university.

  But Eloa is as charming and witty as she is beautiful, and she has extensive knowledge of art. She’d been an exact fit for the San Francisco MOMA’s fundraising gala. And now, sitting at Sukiyabashi Daniel, I notice quite a few men sneaking glances at her while their own dates aren’t looking. Admiring and probably wishing that they, like me, got to take this vision of beauty and poise home with them tonight.

  Yet, I couldn’t be more bored.

  Yes, Eloa is beautiful and charming and sophisticated…just like every woman I’d ever contracted as a date. But I find myself shifting in my seat, wishing I’d just taken her straight back to the hotel after the gala instead of inviting her out for a several-course meal. The first sakizuke course had just arrived, and this hot date already feels…. I struggle for the words to explain it to myself.

  It’s like when I discovered “Time to Pretend” by MGMT shortly after finishing business school. I’d liked the song so much, I’d put it on repeat and played it everywhere. On the way to my then-marketing job at Nakamura Worldwide, my family’s multinational automotive company, at the gym—I even set the song as the ringtone on my very first iPhone. Then one day, I could no longer stand it. I’d listened to it over and over again until I’d broken it. To this day, that song does nothing for me. It’s a memory that no longer moves me.

  I feel the same about Eloa. All her notes are perfect, her synthesized melody smooth and fluid, but she’s a broken song. One I barely feel like fucking tonight.

  However, it’s been weeks since my last hot date, and I do have needs. I weigh whether to push through just for the release of pent-up sexual energy or send her home and take care of myself with my hand back in my hotel room after returning a few business emails.

  “Excuse me. I’m so sorry to interrupt…”

  I look up from my pondering to see the black woman who’d been sitting on the opposite side of the restaurant now standing over the table Daniel had brought out to accommodate my last-minute reservation.

  She’s dressed…if I were spending the night anywhere else but San Francisco, I might have called it odd. Even though Christmas was eleven days ago, she’s wearing an elf hat and a strapless holly green cocktail dress. The dress might have come off as somewhat appropriate if not for the Christmas print biker shorts she wore underneath its short bubble skirt. Her hair hung in long loose waves, but as if afraid such regular hair might get her mistaken for normal, she’d dyed it a brassy yellow.

  An elf… She looks like San Francisco’s version of an elf, with a body as big and curvy as the city itself.

  And for some reason, she has a portrait of someone who looks like an unsophisticated version of Eloa in her hand.

  My brow lowers, wondering if, despite my significant investment, Daniel had for some stupid reason contracted one of those cheesy third-party caricature portrait artists to start selling drawings at his exclusive venue.

  But then, instead of aiming a hard sell at me, she says to Eloa, “Hi, I’m sorry for interrupting your date, but I have to tell you something…”

  “Is that Luiza?” Eloa asks. “My sister?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” the San Francisco elf answers. “Can we talk? Maybe over there?”

  Without so much as an “Excuse me” or a thought to the substantial amount I’m paying her for tonight, Eloa goes off with the San Francisco elf.

  And instead of being entertained by Eloa’s witty remarks, I watch the two of them talk near the restaurant’s front door as I wait for the second course.

  The curvy woman hands Eloa the sketch and seems to be explaining something to her. Eloa shakes her head and crosses herself as the woman speaks. I can’t begin to guess what the San Francisco elf might be saying to her. But when she’s done, my sophisticated date reaches out and hugs her tight…before rushing out the shoji-style door.

  Eloa leaves. Just leaves. As if I’m not paying her to have dinner and then more with me later on. As if I’m not even here.

  What in the… Is she coming back?

  The San Francisco elf doesn’t seem to think so. Ducking her head, she makes her way back to her table on the other side of the restaurant. And though I stare at her, she keeps her head lowered as she picks up her chopsticks and awkwardly begins to eat her first course.

  I wait for her to look up. But just like my date never returned to our table, the adorable elf studiously avoids my questioning gaze.

  I am a man used to being acknowledged. Women have looked at me all my life. Many have stared, though that’s considered quite rude in Japan. Yet, this woman refuses to spare me even so much as an apologetic glance.

  Something stirs in me as I once again recall listening to “Time to Pretend” for the first time. Suddenly I remember how it felt to hear a song that felt utterly new…how I wanted to download it before it was even halfway through.

  It’s the same way I’m feeling now, staring across the restaurant at the San Francisco elf.

  I have two choices. I could follow Eloa out and try to figure out why she left without any explanation, or….

  I stand up, my heart beating faster than it has in a very long time as I decide on the “or” option.

  3

  Why, Santa , Why?

  KRISTAL

  “You ended my date.”

  I cringe, even though I suspected this confrontation might happen the moment Eloa ran out of the restaurant. I wish I could say this is the first time such a thing has happened, but it totally isn’t. Hearing someone you love is about to die puts things in hyper perspective for most folks. You’d be surprised how many people just bounce when I tell them. Especially when they’re on dates with people they’re not in love with, which I guess Eloa wasn’t, no matter how perfect they looked together.