7. Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Morrie
I stepped off the bus in front of the aquarium, stomach filled with a mix of nerves and excitement. I’d hardly slept the night before in anticipation of this date and as I looked towards the aquarium searching for Scott, my aching hands started shaking at my sides. They were starting to dry out and crack open like they did each year when the weather turned towards winter, and every time I washed them was becoming a mixture of agony and relief. Cold water took the sting out, but hot water was the worst. Doing dishes for a living probably wasn’t the greatest job given my skin, but bills had to be paid and I could usually get by with a little bit of lotion to ease the burn. If I remembered to do that, that was. Today, I’d forgotten to slather them up before I’d left the house and they were bright red in the cold, the cracks burning as I flexed my fingers.
Ahead of me, I could see Scott standing in the little alcove beside the front doors of the aquarium. He stepped out of the shadows and into the sun as I came closer to him, his hair lighting up like copper flames beneath the glow. He was even more handsome in the light of day than he’d been at the club and I felt butterflies kicking around in my gut as he smiled at me, revealing a little dimple in his left cheek.
“Hey you,” he greeted, keeping his hands at his sides though I could tell he wanted to reach for me. I appreciated his restraint and gave him a smile.
“Hi,” I responded, nerves bubbling and butterflies kicking up their pace, crashing around inside me. I inhaled a deep, slow breath reminding myself that this was going to be a fun afternoon and even if Scott ended up realizing that I wasn’t the boy for him, at least there would be penguins and all of the fish I loved to keep me company while I drowned my sorrows with hot chocolate from the snack bar.
“I’m glad you came, Morrie,” Scott said, his voice pitching low so that only I could hear. “I hope we have a great afternoon.”
“Me too.” It wasn’t a lie. I genuinely hoped that Scott would show some of that patience with me that he showed the night at the club and part of the reason I’d agreed to this was sheer curiosity about the man who’d approached me and listened as I’d babbled about ocean creatures. The second part of the reason I’d come was named Perry and after my confession about the treats Scott had left for me in my apartment, he’d been like a dog with a bone when it came to this date. At the very least, I’d be able to tell Perry that I’d tried it, and it didn’t work before sinking back into my comfort zone.
Scott led the way to the front door, offering up two tickets to the man behind the little booth by the entry way as I got stuck staring at all of the murals along the walls. I loved the sea turtles the most, not because they were my favorite creature, but because the artist had done them in brilliant greens and reds that lifted them out of the water behind them. The aquarium only had one lonely sea turtle living in a gigantic tank with a whole menagerie of other fish and stopping by to watch him swim was one of my favorite things to do while I was here but the fish were my true love.
“Where is the penguin atrium?” Scott asked, eyeing the map behind the desk carefully.
“At the back of the building,” I offered. “By the touch tanks and the sea turtle pool. It’s easy to find.”
“Alright. You lead the way then, this map is useless.”
With a smile that was slightly on the edge of being a grin, I headed towards the door on the left, trusting that Scott would follow me. As I opened it, the room beyond became clear and I heard a low “wow” murmur from behind me. I glanced back to see Scott peering upwards at the top of the glass tunnel that ran beneath one of the larger reef tanks. This tunnel was one of my favorite places in the whole aquarium, I’d lost so many afternoons sitting beneath it and watching the fish swim by. In another life, I’d have gone to school to study marine life, but it didn’t do any good to dream about things that would never be. I contented myself with sitting in the tunnel, pretending I was underneath the water with the fish swimming around me and that was good enough.
“Amazing, right?”
“Incredible. I never went to the aquarium in Vancouver, but I’m really wishing I would have now.”
“You’re from Vancouver?” I asked, as a school of little yellow fish flew by.
“Yeah," he nodded. "I needed a change though. Vancouver wasn't a bad place to live, but there's more opportunity here, I think.”
I hummed thoughtfully as I bit back all the questions that tumbled into my brain. Did he ever see a whale in the harbor? Why did he move here? What did he do? Instead of letting all the things I wanted to ask tumble out of my mouth, I nodded and offered a smile, watching as Scott’s eyes widened. A shark slipped overhead, strong and sleek as it moved through the water. It wasn’t quite the same type of shark as my Mr. Starkey, but one of his littler cousins. There wasn’t a great white in captivity anywhere in the world though I’d love to see one up close some day. Mr. Starkey was probably as close as I was going to come though. Well, him and the shark shirt that still lay crumpled at the back of my closet in my apartment.
“That’s a leopard shark,” I offered.
Scott nodded and turned his eyes back upwards. I followed suit as more ocean life moved around us in the quiet tunnel. It was rarely this empty and if we didn’t have to get moving on to see the penguins, I could have stayed for hours in the silence. We lingered for a few more minutes until Scott checked his watch and nodded at me.
“Should get going,” he commented. “We don’t want to miss the penguins and I’m curious about this touch tank you mentioned before.”
“I don’t do that,” I responded, the words falling out of my mouth with a hint of disgust, though I didn’t mean them to.
“Oh? Why not?”
I shivered and looked away. “I can’t imagine what it would be like swimming in a shallow tank while all sort of people petted me. Things that don’t want to be touched shouldn’t be touched and they don’t really have a choice.”
“That is a very good point.”
I nodded my agreement, though I wasn’t quite sure he was agreeing with me because he really did care, or because it was simply the easiest option for him. When I glanced at him, he was smiling though, his eyes soft and warm as they met mine. I cleared my throat awkwardly as my cheeks burned the tiniest bit beneath the scruff on my face, offering a small smile his way. “Penguins?”
“Yeah, penguins,” he responded, though the way he looked at me made me wonder what questions he had running around inside his own head that he wasn’t daring to say out loud.
The penguins up close were even cuter than when they’d been within their enclosure. I was sitting almost on the edge of my seat on the walkway, separated from where they were milling about in their Christmas hats by a thin barricade of thigh high glass. When I’d read about the event, I hadn’t been able to picture it in my mind and I’d been certain that there would be some barrier between us, but this was much better than I anticipated. I held my breath as a penguin wearing a green knit hat wobbled over to the glass and bonked his beak against it.
“Look,” I whispered to Scott where he sat beside me, watching the penguin tilt its head to the side like it couldn’t figure out what the glass was.
“Adorable,” Scott whispered back, and I nodded, offering a small smile to him before turning back to the penguins.
This event was both the silliest and the cutest thing I’d ever seen. It really wasn’t anything outside of penguins in Christmas hats walking about the pedestrian walkway, but I was secretly loving every minute of it. Adding to my enjoyment was knowing that Scott and I weren’t the only adults without children in attendance. There were some couples seated on the chairs and a few smaller groups of people who looked to be older than me if their grey hair was anything to go by. I had relaxed into the event as I’d realized that I wasn’t out of place in the group, an anomaly among actual children.
The penguin in the green hat toddled away from the glass, his little wings flapping as he joined the rest of the penguins again and I smiled as they welcomed him back with clicking beaks and tapping feet.
“What kind of penguins are these?” Scott asked.
I turned to look at him, seeing genuine curiosity in his expression. “They’re Humboldt penguins.”
“Not Emperor penguins?”
I shook my head, offering a small smile. Every time someone saw penguins they automatically thought Emperor penguins. “Nope, Humboldt. These ones are tinier. Emperor penguins are much bigger and probably wouldn’t wear hats. The aquarium doesn’t have any of those ones actually.”
“I wonder how they get these guys to wear the hats.”
“I’m not sure, but I read online that if the penguins don’t want to do it, they don’t have to. They don’t force them and they only do this twice in the whole year so the animals don’t get irritated.” While it was a pretty silly human thing to make wild animals do, I had been settled by the knowledge that they didn’t have to wear the hats, or even go on the walk if they didn’t want to. The fact that we weren’t allowed to touch them was even more important to me.
Scott nodded and settled back into his seat again, but I could feel him glancing at me every so often as the penguins continued waddling down the walkway, heading back to their enclosure. It was a pretty short walk, though with their little feet I could only imagine how long it must have felt. As the penguins disappeared from view, everyone around us started filing out of the atrium, but I stayed sitting and so did Scott beside me.
“Was that good?” he asked, breaking the silence as the crowd of people filed out around us.
“Yeah,” I replied, with a smile. “Thank you. I know it was short and I know it was kind of stupid, but I appreciate it.”
“It wasn’t stupid at all. I enjoyed it. I’ve had a good time with you so far today, Morrie.”
I felt my cheeks heating as I quickly nodded, then looked away from his face. It had been a good day, much different than I’d expected. I had anticipated him crowding me, pushing me to hold his hand or trying to put his arm around me, but he hadn’t done anything like that. I wasn’t sure if he was biding his time before he pulled out his snuggly Daddy side, but so far, I wasn’t having the worst time.
“Hot chocolate, no marshmallows?” Scott said, standing up from his seat.
I nodded and followed suit, letting Scott lead the way out of the atrium, through the hallways of tanks we’d passed by not long ago and over to the snack bar at the front of the aquarium. He seemed to have a pretty good memory because he didn’t get lost on his way back and that was more than I’d managed to accomplish on my first trip here. Then again, he wasn’t distracted by all the tanks with all the beautiful fish as I had been then. As I was every time, if I was being honest.
When we reached the front entrance area where the little snack bar and seating area was, Scott turned to me and leaned in close enough that while he didn’t touch me, I could feel his breath on my skin. “How about you go get us somewhere to sit and I’ll grab hot chocolates?”
I nodded, face heating up just a little bit at how close he was and left him behind to join the line up of people waiting for treats while I scoped out the room around us. I found a table at the back towards the windows that gave me a great view of one of the tropical tanks if I looked to the right and the snow outside if I looked to the left and made a quick jaunt over to the table before anyone else could grab it. Sandwiched between the window to the outside world and the warm tropical tank, I found myself staring more at cold outside then the fish. It was freezing out and it would only keep getting colder as the winter dragged on. I had woken up shivering in my apartment earlier that morning and had needed a long shower to get some heat back into my body. The moment I’d left the warm bathroom behind, the cold had seeped right back in though. My apartment had always sucked in the winter, almost as much as it did in the summer when the heat would bear down and turn the little space into a furnace. I was making plans to buy a space heater this year though, I wasn’t willing to go another winter in the cold little ice box my apartment turned into.
“No marshmallows,” Scott announced, approaching the table and sliding a steaming cup of hot chocolate in front of me. He sat down in the chair across from me with a smile, placing his own cup on the table.
I immediately reached out and wrapped my hands around mine, knuckles stinging as the skin split but thankful for the warmth. “Thank you.”
“Does that hurt?” Scott asked, looking at my hands.
I resisted the urge to pull them back and hide them in my sleeves, embarrassed at how ugly they looked even though it wasn’t my fault. Not really. I could have remembered lotion this morning, but the fact that they were gross was a weather problem. “Kind of. They get bad in the winter.”
Scott made a displeased sort of noise under his breath. “I have a good lotion. I’ll bring you some to try, if you’d like.”
“I have lotion,” I confessed. “I just forget sometimes.”
“Morrie,” Scott admonished and I felt his tone rattle inside my bones. Ducking my head a bit, I pulled my hands back, leaving the warmth of the cup behind. His face fell a little bit and he almost reached out like he was going to grab my hands, but he stopped himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I just want you to take care of yourself, that’s all.”
I shrugged. I had a lot on my plate and sometimes the little things got missed, like lotion for my hands or doing laundry. Actually, I hadn’t done laundry in a while and should probably be doing that instead of spending time at the aquarium. When I got home, I’d have to creep down to the laundry room and throw some things in before work tomorrow morning.
“What are you thinking?”
“Laundry.”
Scott chuckled. “What about it?”
“I forgot to do it, so I have to tonight when I get home. I don’t have anything clean other than what I’m wearing.”
“Laundry and lotion for those hands.”
I nodded, taking the chance to look up into Scott’s green eyes. He met my cautious gaze with warmth, and I felt my lips curling into a small smile. Reaching out, I took a sip of my hot chocolate, letting the sugary sweetness warm me from the inside. Scott followed suit, though I saw he had marshmallows inside his cup.
“Why no marshmallows?” he asked, putting his cup down again.
“I just don’t like them.” Because in one foster home, I had eaten a whole bag of them once when the foster parents had left the snack cupboard unlocked by mistake. In that house, food was earned instead of given and after spending days with a growling stomach, I’d gorged myself on the sticky sweet marshmallows. Sadly, my crime had been found out quickly because I ended up throwing up everywhere and making the whole situation worse for myself. Those particular foster parents had shown their feelings about my thievery with a heavy belt to my backside, and to this day, just the thought of eating marshmallows churned my stomach all over again. Not that I would say that out loud to Scott, who seemed to have just taken my dislike at face value.
“Can I ask a question?”
I took a sip of my hot chocolate and nodded at the question he’d already asked.
“Is it all touch you don’t like? Or just some kinds?”
My heart kicked in my chest uncomfortably and I could feel sweat starting to slick my palms as I looked over into Scott’s handsome face. “Some kinds.”
“So if someone bumped into you…”
“I’d be fine.”
“But if someone hugged you…”
“I’d punch them in the face.”
Scott snorted a surprised laugh. “Fair enough. Is it the hug itself that makes you uncomfortable or the care?”
Butterflies churned in my stomach and I could feel my leg shaking beneath the table. A nervous tick that had started when I was just little, it only came out now when I was really uncomfortable. It wasn’t the hug or the care. It was the lie. The big fat lie hidden behind those gestures that I couldn’t help but think about even though I was so far removed from what had happened when I was younger that it was almost comical. Until I really knew someone wasn't trying to hurt me, I couldn't relax into touch. I didn’t have the words to explain all of that to him, knowing that he wouldn’t get it if I tried. Just like Perry didn’t get it when I’d tried to explain it to him. “I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore.”
“Okay,” Scott said, his tone soft and accepting. “That’s perfectly okay, Morrie. If I pushed too hard, I’m sorry.”
I nodded, stomach still churning uncomfortably and foot still tapping a rhythm against the floor.
“Have you thought any more about Christmas?”
“I don’t need a Christmas.”
“Ah, but do you want one?”