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“Oh, that’s a thing.” It’s true. Our song calls to the listener. I’ve been raised on the stories and songs of my ancestors, cursed to lure sailors to their deaths along the rocky coasts of the Aegean Sea. “But what no one talks about is the fact that if a siren’s song is heard, we die.”

The silence around me is almost harsh. Brittle.

“But that makes no sense,” Amara says, disbelief in her voice. “You have to sing when you dance, right?” Her eyes go to Javier. “You always told us the sirens can’t swim without being compelled to sing.”

I look at Javier’s face then. He nods in response to Amara’s question, but there’s something off about his expression. There’s a tightness around his eyes and mouth I’m not used to seeing. I want to ask him about it, to put a hand on his chest and invite him to lean on me, to let me care for him the way he cares for me.

But before I can do any of those things, Javier speaks. “It is true. The sirens are cursed in many ways. Cursed to sing the moment they start to dance in the water, and cursed to die if their song is heard.”

“It’s a great time,” I offer, hoping some humor will diffuse the tension hanging in the air. “Being a siren. Ten out of ten, would recommend.”

“There is an exception.”

Surprised, I look over at Zephyr, who is watching me with a weird expression of sympathy. He must see the confusion on my face, because he adds, “I like old stories. There are legends about sirens whose lives were spared if the person who hears them is their fated mate.”

I think back to my conversation with Cora over lunch, and the dismal fucking fate of our species.

“How would that work?” Amara asks, incredulous. She looks over at me. “Are there any sirens who are willing to risk dying in the hopes of finding a mate?”

“Fuck no,” I laugh. “It’s just a story. My siren grandmother always told us her mother had been mated to a human man, but none of us believed it. We sirens love ourselves too much to risk our life for something as saccharine as a fairytale.”

“That’s horrible,” Cadmus says softly, moving closer to his wife. “Our matings are beautiful things to be celebrated. To find a mate is to feel a sense of totality and wholeness I could never imagine living without.”

When my gaze slides to Javier, I feel like the breath is punched from my lungs. He stares unseeing into the air in front of him, and his eyes are full of sadness, the kind of desperation you’d expect to see in the wake of a loss.

Who died? I want to ask him, but I settle for placing my hand on his warm thigh below the table. He sends me what he probably believes is a reassuring smile. I squeeze his leg, hoping with every place where our skin touches he can feel my words: I’m here, let me carry it with you.

“It’s not so bad,” I say to the table, not taking my hand from Javier’s thigh. “Like you said, we get to wear cool leather headgear, and we get to walk on land.”

The merpeople respond to my teasing exactly as I’d hoped, protesting that they’d take their beautifully adorned, partially submerged, living coral homes to a dryland residence any day.

I still prefer being able to move through the human world with ease, but they did make a solid point about the benefits of fucking in the water.

The look Javier gave me when I mentioned finding a merman so I could get some firsthand experience made my toes curl in my shoes. Gods, the man was hot, and the possessive way he looked at me had me squirming in my seat.

When the conversation shifts to memories from the years Javier spent coaching the merpeople, I sit back and relish the opportunity to learn more about the man beside me. There’s a distinct difference between having someone in your life when you are young, and truly knowing them as an adult. The more I listen to the merpeople swapping stories, the more the truth settles into me: I don’t know Javier at all.

A part of me hates them for it. They got to have Javier as a coach after he left us. I wonder if they still hear his encouraging words in their heads when they swim. But even below the bitterness, there’s a sadness that accompanies a painful realization: for all the admiration I had for him as my coach, and the weight I put on each of his words, he was still a stranger.

I was deeply familiar with his crouching silhouette on the side of the pool, and the way his voice sounded through the echo of the water. I was around him, in the same places as him, and yet our lives and worlds could not have been more distinct.

Now, the same man sits beside me, head tilted back in laughter. The tension and sadness has faded, leaving nothing but open warmth on his face.

Now, he’s not a stranger. Not anymore.

Chapter 10

Is This Your First Shower?

Aleks

The last of daylight is fading behind the trees when we get back to the bungalow.

Javier is quiet and steady behind me as he guides me inside with a hand on my back before pulling the door shut behind him.

I walk into the kitchen and stand there, gnawing on my lower lip. It’s the first time in the last few days I’ve wished I was alone in this space. Not because I want to be alone, but because there are things about my life I hate having to explain.

I need to do my shot, and I don’t know how to bring it up.