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I didn’t know her.
Her father himself called her a fish after a lifetime of being around the sea.
She didn’t need me acting as if I’d just saved her from an unmentionable death.
Yet I couldn’t get my fear under control. My despair. My all-consuming panic of losing someone else.
Brushing back her wet hair, Neri yanked off her flippers, tossed them aside, then sprang to her feet and headed straight for my discarded boot.
Shaking her droplet-streaming hands, she scooped it up and padded back toward me.
She stood silently before me, her breathing calm, her black one-piece tight and far too revealing.
Raking both hands through my hair, I flinched as she sat on her haunches and passed me the boot. “It’s okay. I know why you’re worried. And you don’t have to be. You never have to be worried about me and the sea.” Hesitantly, she placed her cool hand on my knee. “It will get easier. One day. Perhaps not soon. Maybe not for a long while. But...eventually—”
“I’m fine. I overreacted. Forget about it.”
She shrugged and licked at a droplet by the side of her mouth. “You can talk to me, you know. I know you probably think I’m just a kid but—”
“You are just a kid.” I snatched the boot from her and made a show of inserting my broken limb and hissing between my teeth as I strapped up the Velcro. “I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
“Things obviously aren’t fine if you travelled halfway across the ocean and left behind everything you ever knew.”
I went cold. “Enough. I mean it.”
“But I want to get to know you. What do you miss most about Turkey? I want to know—”
“I said, enough.” Pushing myself awkwardly upright, I towered over her.
But she sprang up, temper flaring in her eyes. “You can’t just appear in our lives and not tell us who you are, you know.”
“I didn’t ask to appear in your lives. You’re the one who found me, remember?”
“And I’m glad I found you before you died—”
“You’re glad? What about me? You didn’t think to ask what I wanted, did you?” The scorn and hurt dragged confessions from my soul. “You just saw me, floating there, alone and mostly dead, and thought to yourself. ‘Oh, I know. I’ll go save him. He looks like he has so much to live for.’”
Neri shrank back. “What?” Her forehead wrinkled with pain. “Why are you saying it as if keeping you alive is a bad thing?”
“Because it is!” My snarl cut between us, slicing through my sickly fear and making my chin drop to my chest. “Kafami sikeyim.” Sucking in a gust of air, I shook my head. “Look, I’m—”
“What does that mean?”
I blanched. “Nothing. Forget I said it.”
Her eyes churned with quick-fire intelligence. “It means fuck, doesn’t it? It’s a swear word.”
“Was that a good guess, or do you like languages as much as your mother?”
‘Fuck’ wasn’t quite the translation, but no way would I elaborate and tell her it meant ‘fuck my head’ which loosely meant, ‘fuck me’.
“Good guess.” She crossed her arms. “And don’t distract me. You wish you died. You wish I’d never found you—”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did! You literally just said it was a bad thing that you’re alive!”
I winced as her fury clashed with mine, causing vicious sparks.
This wasn’t right.
In what world did the rescued yell at the rescuer?
She’s just a kid.
A kid who didn’t know how awful the world could be.
I couldn’t blame her.
I couldn’t curse her.
She didn’t have a clue why we’d been running or who I truly was.
Choking back my endless guilt for surviving, for being the very fucking reason my family was gone, I snapped, “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.” She crossed her arms over her flat chest. “You blame me for this.”
Did I?
Was that what this was all about?
Sighing, I said softly, “I don’t blame you.”
“I saw it in your eyes.” She sniffed. “You wish you’d had the easy way out. That you’d died with them.”
I flinched.
I had no words.
Silence chilled the air around us.
Finally, I shrugged helplessly. “I’m tired, probably have sunstroke, and let my fear run away with me that you’d be drowned by dolphins.” Stepping toward her, my hand came up as if it knew exactly where it belonged. My palm tingled, urging me to do something I really shouldn’t do.
The hurt in her crystal eyes.
The hurt I’d put there.
I stopped fighting the indescribable urge and cupped her cheek.
Platonically.
Gently.
Instinctually.
She sucked in a breath as I touched her like I had this morning when I’d struck her. My fingertips burned, my heart clenched, and another blade of pain cut me deep. She was just a girl. A girl trying to be good and fix all the broken and unhappy in the world.
Could I blame her that I wasn’t ready to be fixed?
