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“This is nice,” Dylan said. “I like it better than the East Coast beaches. It’s more like the Gulf Coast.”
“I love the ocean.” Brooke closed her eyes and tipped her head back, letting the sound of the crashing waves sink into her. “It doesn’t matter which one.”
“I’d sure as hell hope so, with your job.”
She smiled up at the sky. “I guess that’s true. I’d be in the wrong program if I didn’t like the ocean.”
Dylan shifted beside her and laid his head in her lap. “How did you know this was what you wanted to do? It feels like something you’ve always wanted.”
She tilted her head forward to look at him, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the sunlight again. “Not always. I wanted to be a princess when I was four.”
“Didn’t we all?” He smiled and reached for her hand, resting it on his stomach and covering it with his.
Brooke gazed out at the waves as she searched back through her memories for the one that had set her on her career path. “It was when my parents took us to Gulfport for the first time. It must have been the summer after second grade, not long after we moved to Baton Rouge from Missouri. I’d never been to the beach before. We took a boat ride to Ship Island, and I remember watching the dolphins swim behind the boat and thinking it was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. It was like I’d achieved nirvana.”
“And you’ve had a nerd boner for the sea ever since.”
She laughed. “Pretty much.”
“You think you’ll stay here in Los Angeles after you finish your degree?”
His hair was tickling her leg and she reached up to smooth it down. “I don’t know. I like it here. It just depends where I can get a job.” Her fingers lingered in his hair, playing with the thick strands.
His expression relaxed into a beatific smile that reminded her of a golden retriever. “Would you work for a university? Or are there other options?”
“There are museum jobs that would be pretty great—working on stored specimens and doing science outreach, which I love. But there aren’t very many of those jobs, and there’s a lot of competition for them.” She sighed, thinking about the big black hole of uncertainty that lay ahead. Jobs in her field were hard to get, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to stay in academia, even if she had the option. There was always a chance you’d end up as an adjunct teaching Bio 101 in some landlocked state earning less than the average bartender made. “Honestly, I try not to think about the future too much. It’s too easy to get freaked out over it. I’ve got another year before I have to start looking for a postdoc position.”
Dylan’s fingers flexed on hers, pressing her palm into his stomach. “I like it here. I think I could be an LA person.”
“Really? I thought you loved New York.” She knew he was suffering from burnout, but the way he’d raved about New York when he first moved there, she figured he’d never want to live anywhere else.
“Love’s a strong word. New York’s great, but I wouldn’t mind living somewhere else for a while.”
She gazed at him and smiled at the thought of him living in California. He certainly looked the part right now, with his smooth bronze skin and the sunlight burnishing his hair with gold against the backdrop of the ocean.
Dylan was uncannily, improbably attractive, but what Brooke felt when she looked at him didn’t have anything to do with his outward appearance. Her chest wasn’t aching over the perfect symmetry of his face, and her stomach didn’t clench because of his biceps—nice as they were. The fondness she felt for him went deeper than what lay on the surface.
He lifted up his tacky purple sunglasses and narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re staring again.”
“There’s a lot to look at, and it’s all very…pleasant.”
He gave her a look of mock offense. “Pleasant? That’s the best you can do?”
“Fishing for compliments, are we?” She gave his hair a gentle tug. “As if you’re not constantly being told how attractive you are.”
Something raw and a little too real glimmered in the depths of his blue eyes. “It’s different when it comes from you.”
And just like that, her chest went painfully tight as her stomach did a series of somersaults. She looked away quickly.
“Brooke?” His fingers clenched around her hand. “What’s the matter?”
She shook her head and forced herself to look at him again. “Is this as weird for you as it is for me?” Normally she was impervious to motion sickness, but whenever she looked into Dylan’s eyes, the world seemed to swoop and sway around her.
“It’s not weird for me at all.”
“Really?”
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it before pushing himself to his feet. “Come on, let’s go home.”
