Spring Break In Napa: And Other Stories

By Joe Bondi Beach

Five short stories.

In "Spring Break in Napa," Kathleen indulges in Spring Break therapy in California with her friend Samantha and Samantha's brother and their friend Jim following betrayal by her boyfriend at school back in Boston.

The narrator in "A Picnic with April" recalls his high school romance and his self-created delusions about the continuing romance. It takes a reunion that goes badly to make him realize the truth about himself and about her.

"A New Life for Julie" is a tongue-in-cheek treatment of a pre-Easter weekend Julie spends with her family at their lake cottage. She discovers a side of her parents and brother she didn't know about, but when her mother explains Julie decides she's ready to join them. Curvy girls are desirable, she discovers, to her delight.

Jane takes us through buildup, climax and resolution In "Cocksucking," and brings us along through sight, sound, taste, touch and smell, as does the narrator in "Plucking Debbie," who didn't wait to be plucked.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781387095353

Book preview

Spring Break In Napa: And Other Stories

SPRING BREAK IN NAPA

AND OTHER STORIES

Joe Bondi Beach

Also by Joe Bondi Beach

California Central Valley Summer Heat

Swimming with Kate

Sarah’s Honeymoon

Cheerleaders in Paradise

A New Life for Julie

Chloe

A Picnic with April

Julie

Emily

Micol: Three Stories (Ed.)

Emily and Daniel

Morning at the Baths

Julie’s Spring

Goddess

Redemption

Cocksucking

Azotea

Contessa

Stockings

Copyright

SPRING BREAK IN NAPA

AND OTHER STORIES

---

First Edition (ePub)

July 2017

Copyright © 2017 by Joe Bondi Beach

Except for the cover and endpaper images, which are in the public domain in the United States,

this work is licensed under the

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

ISBN: 978-1-387-09535-3

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Clearing Rain Press

San Francisco, California

[e-mail]

Acknowledgements

The cover image, A Bather—Echo (1885), is by Jean Jacques Henner, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. The endpaper image is Henner's Reclining Nude (n.d.), from the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Spring Break in Napa

Let me come in where birds and flowers be;

   Let me once more lie naked in the grass

   That trembles when the long wind-ripples pass!

—From Eve, by Ella Higginson (1898)

Boston

I was so

furious the words came out of my mouth on their own.

Fuck you, asshole! You fucking shithead. Go fuck yourself. Fuck you. Fuck you!

OK, I admit this wasn’t a very classy way to end things. On the other hand, how cheesy is it to find your boyfriend in bed with a little freshman twat? I knew I wasn’t handling this very well and it really wasn’t my finest moment, that’s pretty obvious. Hurt. Angry. Betrayed. The whole world had fallen in on me. It was a crappy end to a crappy quarter. Day after day of snow. Grey skies. To say that matched my mood would be the understatement of the year. Boston in the winter is no picnic.

Bill. I thought I loved him, I really did. No, that’s not true. I knew I loved him. I thought he loved me, but I was wrong. Boy, was I wrong. He tried to explain while I shouted at him and the slut in his bed smirked.

Kat, I’m sorry. It just happened. Kat, listen to me!

Fuck you, Bill.

I walked out. And kept walking. It was snowing. Freezing. Shit. Everything sucked. When I got to my apartment, there were already three messages from Bill. Two seconds into the first one, Kathleen, Kat, listen, please. Don’t delete this message, I stabbed the button to delete it. Deleted the next two messages without even listening to them.

Then I couldn’t stop my tears. Couldn’t sit up, couldn’t stop shaking. Two hours later I opened my eyes, looked around. Silence. No phone. No lights. No answering machine. Power was out. My apartment was freezing.

Tears turned to fury. I couldn’t believe this. What the fuck did I do? This wasn’t my fault. I’m not a crybaby. I’m not a weakling, and I’m not stupid. Dean’s List every quarter since freshman year. Shoo-in for Phi Beta Kappa. Double major in physics and mathematics at the end of spring term. Already accepted at MIT for grad school, deferred for a year. Even Stephen Fucking Hawking knows who I am, for Christ’s sake.

Well, maybe that last one’s a little bit of a stretch. Or not. Because every year for the last few years he’s asked the head of our department, Professor James, to recommend someone to spend a year as his assistant, and this year Professor James sent him my CV. Hawking hasn’t responded yet, but he and Professor James go way back and Hawking always takes on whoever Professor James recommends.

I headed out to find a coffee shop with power. There was one in the next block, thank god. Ordered, sat down with my coffee, booted my laptop and opened my e-mail. A note from Samantha in California. We’d been friends