Page 7 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

“You bake for the whole department.” It’s not really a question. He has all the indications of a man who likes to bake just to please people.

Golden. Freaking. Retriever.

“Most Mondays.” He shrugs. “I like to bake when I think. This year involved a lot of thinking. There was a stretch in March, the commissioning reviews, when the third floor was basically a patisserie.”

And there it is, that little tone shift, the commissioning reviews, tossed off the way you’d mention weather. The man spent ten years building the most ambitious ground telescope in the hemisphere and he narrates it like it was nothing more than baking a casserole. Meanwhile I’ve spent five years and my entire blood supply getting to this postdoc and this paper, and if I tossed any of it off casually my molecules would disperse.

“That must be nice,” I say.

It comes out with edges. I hear myself and I regret it immediately. I have no right being curt with a man like that. Not when he’s so nice to me.

He tilts his head. “Which part?”

“Having a hobby.” I close my laptop, too hard. “Having spare capacity.”

“It’s cheaper than therapy, and you get muffins.” He says it lightly, but his eyes have gone attentive behind the glasses, and being looked at attentively is my least favorite thing in the world. “You’ve got the future-of-the-field slot Sunday, right? I read your biosignature paper. It’s the best thing our building produced this year, and I’m counting the espresso machine.”

And that.

That is exactly the kind of thing men like him say, generous and easy and costing him nothing. Something in my chest goes hot and tight, because he means it, that’s the worst part, he means it and it’s still free for him. Everything is free for him. The captain laughed for him in ninety seconds. The department eats from his hands on Mondays. Literally.

He walks into rooms and the rooms are already his, and now he’ll walk onto that island and the telescope has his name all over the coverage, and if his talk goes badly today, if he stands up there and puns for twenty minutes, everyone will call it charming.

If mine goes badly, it confirms what half of them already think about girls who look like me. Mermaids aren’t meant for science. Mermaids are meant to look pretty and smile.

I hate how bitter I sound, even in my own thoughts.

“You read my paper,” I say. “That’s nice. Do you know what happens to me if the talk is as good as the paper?”

He blinks. “I’d assume a job offer.”

“Nothing happens. Nothing is what happens. Good is useless to me.” I’m keeping my voice down and it’s costing me. The words come out fast, pressure-hosed. I wish I could stop talking, but I can’t. All this pressure comes out and my baking-golden-retriever companion is the unintended target of my ire.

“You can afford a hobby. You can afford a bad Tuesday and a dumb joke, and it all rounds to charming, because when you walk in, they see an astronomer.” I pinch my lips briefly, then I go on. “When I walk in, they see a pretty mermaid.”

He just looks at me, with his big brown eyes, his Tupperware full of muffins and for some reason, it spurs me on.

“When I get up there, they’ll spend the entire speech focusing on me and not the science. Any slide, any sentence, any single thing that is less than perfect can cost me my entire future. You can’t possibly understand what it’s like. You’re a star astronomer with a telescope named after his own initials, practically, and you could not possibly, not on your best day, with a running start, grasp why I have to be perfect.”

The engine thrums. A gull keeps pace off the rail for a second, checks our speed, banks away.

He doesn’t do any of the things men usually do when I tell them to get lost. He doesn’t put his hands up in fake surrender, doesn’t tell me to relax, doesn’t inform me that I’m being unfair to him personally, the great ally. He just looks at me, and behind the glasses something has gone quiet and serious, and he says, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Which is worse. Which is so much worse than arguing, because there’s nothing to push against, just a handsome, generous man agreeing with me, looking like he’s actually listening instead of waiting for his turn to talk.

The hot, tight thing in my chest cracks into something dangerously close to regret, and I do not have time for regret. I have the talk of my life to polish. I have a career with one exit left.

“Thank you for the muffin,” I say and I gather my laptop, my garment bag and my remaining dignity, all two ounces of it, and I walk to the stern.

He doesn’t follow.

I set up shop on a locker by the rail, back to the wheelhouse, face to the water because it’s the only direction on this boat without line of sight to Dr. Rafael Vasquez, and I eat the rest of the best muffin of my life, alone.

The wake unspools behind us, white on gray-blue, and the mainland is getting thin and low back there, and the ocean underneath all that churn is enormous and quiet and paying attention. I fix my eyes on my screen.

Biosignature detection is not a promise, it is a probability.

I read my opening slide twelve times. I do have to be perfect.