Page 23 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

I don’t hear him come down the path. I just become aware of him beside me, an arm’s length away. I can see him from the corner of my vision, with his hands in his pockets, looking at the water and not at me, and we stand there while the bands of gold over the horizon turn to a deep amber.

“You know,” he says, at last, gently, like someone talking to a skittish little creature, “this is the closest I’ve seen you get to the ocean.”

“I was literally in the ocean a few days ago, remember?”

“Not voluntarily,” he agrees. “But now, you are.”

And that’s all. No question mark. He just sets the observation down between us on the sand, and leaves it entirely up to me. Something about that, the room he gives me, the incredible patience of this man gives me the final push I needed.

The door I’ve kept shut for so long opens on its own.

“I haven’t shifted in five years.” My voice comes out level, but there’s no missing the pain underneath it, even to my own ears. “Not once. Not for a full moon, not in a pool, not in a bathtub.”

He doesn’t move. The tide breathes and the iodine scent of the ocean caresses my skin.

“Everyone thinks mermaids just, do it. Like blinking. And we do. At least, I used to do it.” I watch the water instead of him, because I can’t do this facing him. “From before I could walk, my mother would take me out past the kelp line in San Francisco Bay, where I grew up. On full moons, the whole mermaid community swims together, hundreds of us, thousands on the solstices, and she’d hold my hands in the swell, and …”

Emotions swell in my throat and my eyes burn with unshed tears. I haven’t cried in so long, it takes me a few moments to recognize the feeling.

When I do, I decide to let it go. For some reason that defies all logic, I don’t care that Rafe sees me cry. Maybe it’s the Golden Retriever in him, maybe it’s the beauty of the ocean, oily and still as a painting.

But I let the tears fall down my cheeks and I keep going.

“She died. Five years ago in March. I was twenty-two, finishing undergrad three thousand miles away. After the funeral I went down to the bay at the full moon because that’s what you do, that’s how mermaids grieve, you give all your pain to the water. The whole community was out. They left a space for me, right in the middle of the circle.” The words are coming in easy which surprises me. “And I stood on the beach and I reached for it, the shift, the way you reach for a light switch in your own house. And it wasn’t there.”

Beside me, Rafe is giving me his total attention. The kind of listening you can feel on your skin.

“Not, it hurt. Not, it was hard. It wasn’t there. Like the whole half of me that was her had been erased.” My hand does something in the air, like mimicking the saddest magic trick of all. “The doctors, and I saw all of them, mer-specialists, neurologists, a shaman in Half Moon Bay my aunt swore by, they all said the same thing with different letterhead. Suppression. Stress response. It happens, it lifts, give it time. It doesn’t last, they said. There’s no recorded case where it lasts.”

I laugh, one note, the ugliest sound this beautiful cove has ever hosted.

“Congratulations to me. I’m the recorded case.”

“Neri.”

“The pull never stopped, that’s the joke, that’s the actual joke.” My words wobble and I don’t even try to hide it. “Every time, it comes up under my ribs like a tide and it wants, and I stand at whatever window is nearest and I feel the whole ocean asking where I am. And I don’t answer. Because what if I walk in and reach for the switch and the room is still gone? Every month I don’t try, the room might still be there. I’m Schrödinger’s mermaid.” My eyes are burning, my cheeks are wet and the horizon’s gone smeared. “As long as I never open the box, I don’t have to solve the problem. I’m not broken.”

“Broken,” he says. Very quietly. The word I said to him on the boat without saying it.

The last of the light is going off the water, turning the sky a shade of the deepest, darkest blue.

“What else do you call a mermaid who can’t shift?”

I stop. Because he’s turned to me, and I make the mistake of looking at his face.

There’s no pity on his expression. I have an early-warning system for pity that can detect it through walls, and there’s none here. What’s on his face is both worse and better: he’s just with me. Fully, terribly with me, the way he was in the wheelhouse, believing me before the evidence. His eyes are bright behind the glasses and his jaw is tight. Still, he doesn’t ask.

“Maybe this time would be different,” he says.

“Don’t.” It comes out cracked. “Everyone says that and it never is.”

“I’m not everyone, and I’m not saying it’ll work.” He steps in, slow, and his hands come up and frame my face, his thumb brushing salty tears off my cheekbone. “I have no data. But this is a different situation. There’s no one watching, no doctors, no deadline. Just me.” His mouth crooks, helpless, even now. “And I’m on your side.”

The pull under my sternum rises like the tide coming back in.

Five years I’ve been avoiding this, terrified of what would happen if I tried again. And the pull swallows me, and I am so tired. Not sad-tired. Load-bearing tired. Tired the way a wall is tired but still stands. The worst thing that can possibly happen is I try and I fail, and the only thing that would change is I’d finally know.

At least, I would still have Rafe with me. And Rafe has a bad habit of making every terrible thing a little bit better. A little bit more bearable.