“She stole from you,” Gil says, a low guttural sound in his throat that makes something stir inside me.
I push the feeling down and shake my head. Grams had a similar reaction when everything went down, but it’s not true. “Everything that happened was my choice. I gave it to her.”
“Under false pretenses,” he insists. “Why keep working there? Is the job market that bad in the human realm?”
“Yes,” I answer because it is. I’ve known people overqualified and under-hired my whole life. “But it is more than that. Fans come in pretty regularly, people who knew my parents, people who loved them. The accident happened when I was too young for them to live in my memories, so those little conversations? I don’t know. It’s like I can share in theirs, hear something real, feel the way they live on through their music, you know?”
His frown is deeper as he moves closer with fins spiked in irritation that begin to mellow the moment our skin makes contact. “I am sorry, Marina.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, a phrase that’s so ingrained in me I could have it tattooed. “Do you think less of me now?”
“No,” he says, easing my head down onto his shoulder. “I don’t think that’s a possibility you need to concern yourself with.”
I lean on him, and moments pass with the two of us sitting in silence, our legs kicked off the dock and into the water.
“Was hoping it might be your Grams on the phone. I wanted to say hello.”
“Why do you want to talk to Grams?” I ask, but honestly, they’d have way more in common than you’d expect. I wonder if poker is in Gil’s skill set too.
“Considering she’s the grandmother of the girl I love, I think a hello is the least I can say.” The comment is so casual I don’t think I heard him right.
I couldn’t have—there’s no way. But then again, we’ve been throwing around the words “girlfriend” and “boyfriend.” I stand up, unable to focus on anything, especially not the words I think he just said.
I do the only logical thing you can do when your old childhood best friend who turns out to be an aquatic man tells you he loves you.
I jump into the water.
Chapter 24
Marina
The girl I love.
I heard him wrong; that’s the only explanation.
I’m too busy dodging him in the water, like an impromptu game of tag, to give him a chance to say it again.
We swim slowly, above the water and under, where Gil confidently points out creatures and plants, explaining the ecosystem to me. There are bright pink water lilies, like the ones he gave me on our first date, and fish with more teeth than I’m comfortable with.
“What is that?” I ask, following a strange sound and seeing a cluster of creatures off in the distance. They’re as big as a medium-sized dog, with wrinkled skin and beady, folded eyes. The classic characteristics of something “so ugly it’s cute,” but in this case…
“Ah, just a bunch of squonks. Don’t pay them any mind,” Gil says with a shrug. “Lore is that they wander around crying because they’re so darn ugly. You’ve got some in the mortal realm too, if you know where to look.”
Their tears drip down into the water, and I think I understand.
“Oh, so do their tears help power the magic of the portals?”
“’Fraid not, darlin’. Squonks are just well,squonks,” he says, his laugh bold and untamed, as if the question itself is ridiculous. “That’s like asking if those racoons you told me about drive the city bus where you’re from.”
“In my defense, racoons don’t have magical tears, and I wouldn’t underestimate them,” I say, feeling my cheeks flood with embarrassment. “They’re pretty loud though, huh?”
“If it eases your mind, we don’t normally get many by my place. The little things are smart enough to swim from a gator, though it’s normally in circles. And,well, good luck to ’em.”
I gasp.“Clawrece doesn’t eat them, does she?”
“Nah, I think they probably taste as good as they look,” he says.“Loud things have a habit of hanging out around the office for a while—made meetings a nightmare.”
“The office?” I ask, suddenly struck with the visual of my aquatic boyfriend shoved in a landlocked cubicle.
