Who am I kidding? Forget a chubby. I’m in danger of ripping out the zipper on my cargo shorts. Thank God I still have the drill in my pocket, which at least excuses any awkward bulges in my shorts.
“There’s no Plan B?”
“This—” I gesture to the building we’re in. “Is Plan B.”
When I first came to the island, the entire “research station” consisted of a small cottage. The original goal had merely been to track and monitor the nesting sites on the island. Raul, the guy who ran it before I showed up, only came here occasionally. Almost as soon as I moved here, he told me about Jenny and Noah. They’d been living at a resort a few islands over, which had recently been sold. The new owners wanted them out ASAP and none of the other places had room for them.
Since I got here, I’d slowly been building out the program to accommodate them.
Looking around the room, Clara rolls her lower lip under her teeth. “So you can’t move the turtles.” Frowning, she asks, “I hate to ask this, but couldn’t you just leave them here and hope for the best?”
I narrow my gaze, because…the fuck?
She expects me to just leave them and hope for the best? Is she out of her mind?
As if she can hear my thoughts, she adds, “I know that’s not ideal, but your life isn’t less important than theirs, you get that, right?”
She says it so earnestly, so fiercely—like she really believes that I matter. Fuck, how am I supposed to resent her when she says shit like that?
I sigh. “First off, I don’t believe my life is in danger. And secondly, no, I can’t just hope for the best. These guys need me here. Jenny has weights epoxied to her shell that help her submerge. They’re secure, but sometimes they fall off. I have to check them each night. And Noah needs time with the prosthesis off. So I take it off every night and put it back on in the morning.”
She laughs. “So basically, you tuck them in at night?”
“No.” Jesus, she says it like that and it sounds like I’m their nanny. “They just need care, at night time.”
“Sounds to me like you tuck them in each night.” Her lips are twitching like she can barely contain her humor and only my deepening scowl is keeping her from hysterical laughter. “Do you sing them lullabies?”
“No.”
She definitely does need to know that sometimes—just sometimes—I play them whale and ocean sounds.
After a second, she nods. “Okay, then. The turtle need you. You can’t bring with us and you can’t leave them alone.”
“Correct.”
She gives me a long, hard look, her gaze moving over my face like she’s searching for some sign of…something. I don’t know what.
The silence stretches between us, and it occurs to me I’m probably looking at her in exactly the same way. Like I’m trying to memorize her features.
This is only the second time I’ve seen her in person—the first being the day we met. Our wedding day.
But I have seen her plenty of other times. She does videos to promote the resort and posts them online. Many of them are educational, discussing the ecology of the region and why maintaining it is so important. The waters off the coast of Belize are home to the second largest barrier reef in the world. The ecosystem is fragile, vulnerable to the effects of climate change and human-caused damage. She has a master’s degree in oceanography and discusses the issues and challenges in a way that makes them fascinating and accessible.
Yeah, did you catch that? A master’s in oceanography with a specialty in reef management. I found an article she wrote about managing local stressors on reef life that was so dense and esoteric, I had to Google about a third of the words. My girl is outrageously smart.
And… She’s notmygirl.
I need to stop thinking about her that way.
Okay, yeah, she’s not a girl either. She’s a grown-ass, intelligent, independent AF woman.
So thinking of her asmy girlis problematic on multiple levels, but it’s themypart of that thought that I need to cut out of my vocabulary. Because despite what’s written on a sheet of paper somewhere, she is not mine. She will never be mine.
I huff out a breath.
Despite that, I’ve watched enough of those damn videos of hers that I feel like I know her.
Which is problematic in its own way. I don’t really know her any more than the thousands of other people who watch the videos do. Still, I feel like I can tell she’s mulling over the problem and searching for a solution.
