Chapter Twenty-Four
W ine was delicious. I’d had at least three glasses of it, maybe more. I couldn’t remember. I didn’t care. Owen was so beautiful in the low light of his apartment, laughing until he was doubled over with his friend, Anne Marie. They threw popcorn at each other, the kernels lodging in her hair and making their fingers greased with oil. Watching him interact with another human somehow made him feel farther away from me. It made it harder to swallow that he was a human, and that despite what the Pearls’ magic had gleaned, he did have a life here.
As we came back to his place right before the rain really started, I dragged him back out so we could stand in the rain. I missed being in the water, the kiss of it on my skin. Our hair was plastered to our faces and our clothes stuck to us, but it didn’t matter. Owen kissed me like the rain had brought him back to life too, and the memory of his lips made my face flush.
Hearing his laughter now warmed me through. I didn’t hear the joke that made him double over, but it didn’t matter. Just hearing him be happy was enough for me .
I sipped more of the wine, and Anne Marie gently took the glass from my hand. “Slow down sweetie. You’re gonna have a helluva hangover otherwise.”
“I’ve never had a hangover before,” I said. I didn’t know what that was, much less how to get one.
“Well, if you keep drinking at this rate, you sure will. Eat, it’ll help.” Anne Marie got up and served me another piece of pizza. I’d already had two pieces–pizza was also delicious, but I liked the wine more.
“So! Now that you are primed with the liquid truth, tell me what’s going on, Owen.” She sat back down next to him, tangling their arms together as she gave him a quick hug. Her cheeks were heated too, the wine giving her a ruddy glow. I sat on the floor at the small table in front of his couch. My legs needed to stretch, and they needed this time to connect as friends. Owen needed it. He needed reminders that his life had value in the human world, and not just because I loved him.
The thought came to me so quickly that I tried to brush it away, but I couldn’t.
I loved him.
“God, where to even start?” he said, scrubbing his hands over his face. Anne Marie leaned back, and I watched her as she studied her friend. She waited for Owen to speak, and I admired her for that. She would push him, but never too far. Her soft brown hair hung around her face, both pretty and plain. Her nose ring sparkled and the color of it–blue like the water–drew my attention.
“The beginning is usually the best place,” she quipped. I snorted a laugh, and they both looked at me, laughter on their lips. “Oh, I like this one, dude. She’s a lightweight and she’s so cute.”
“She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met,” he said with such fondness it made my heart ache. Anne Marie kicked him. “Present company excluded, of course. ”
“Better, but I don’t believe you. I’m glad you’re happy though. You deserve to smile.”
When the moment passed, and the conversation lulled, Owen looked at me. His eyes asked for permission to tell my tale, and I nodded just barely enough for him to see it.
“Well, so you know how I love the ocean?”
“Yes? Not really a secret anymore after the exhibition,” she said.
“Well, it turns out that I really love the ocean,” Owen said, gesturing for me to stand up and show her the scales. I was hung up on how he said that he loved the ocean, like I was what he loved, instead of the beauty of the tides.
Anne Marie’s face drew together in confusion as she looked at me, really looked at me. I slipped off the dry long-sleeve shirt that Owen gave me to wear so she could see them. Anne Marie’s mouth hung open, and I stood so she could see them fully. Another patch had just popped up on my upper arm. Soon I was going to be a human girl covered in scales completely. Legs and feet covered in blue scales. I giggled at the image–if more humans saw that, they’d probably start shouting monster, monster at me. Dragging one of them beneath the tides would solve so many of my problems.
“What are those things on her?” Anne Marie asked, already up and coming over to me. She lifted one of my arms, getting closer to inspect them, with worry on her face. Things sent my blood boiling, but the wine made the anger feel distant too.
“They’re scales,” I barked, knowing my tone was far too harsh, but I didn’t care. Owen had music going and my body wanted to move . To dance. I swayed in time with it, not caring that Anne Marie stared at me like I was just a beast.
“Scales. ”
“Yeeep. Because I am a mermaid,” I said, letting the words come out dangerously close to song, to siren magic. I promised myself that I’d never use it on Owen. That promise did not extend to her.
“A mermaid.”
“Yeeeeeeeep!” The word rumbled around my mouth, taking its time to come out. I liked the popping of the p-sound at the end. Like a bubble. I popped my lips a few times, and imagined I was playing with bubbles like I used to as a merling.
“Owen, I think I need you to explain more, because Merrow just said that she is a mermaid, and you seem very fine with all of this.”
“Because she is a mermaid. Look at the scales. She’s getting more of them every day.”
“Cute, but really, what’s going on?” she asked me and that’s when Owen’s face fell. Admitting that I was a mermaid wasn’t so terrible; it certainly wasn’t the hard part of this conversation. Mermaids were magical and mythical, maybe even enchanting. I let myself daydream about that for a moment, how Owen looked at me like I was something truly precious, how Anne Marie would stare at me in awe instead of fear. Owen told me how the humans liked to dream of mermaids and magic, maybe she would be excited to meet one.
She was not.
“Okay, guys, this isn’t funny. How did you get those things to stick to her?” Anne Marie tried to yank a scale off of me and I yelped. The scale wouldn’t come off, but she tore a little fragment of it. The blue scale was iridescent in her palm, more silver and clear on its own than with the cluster of other scales.
“What the hell…” she muttered, looking at me again. She stepped back, needing a minute, but I didn’t let her. I grabbed her hands and held them tight, forcing her to look at me .
“I’m not a monster, and we have more to tell you.” This was the hard part to tell her. It was better to get it all out, to let the waves expose the shoreline, instead of pretending calmer seas were coming.
“God, what else could you say?”
“The mermaid thing was supposed to be the fun part,” Owen muttered. I gulped down another glass of wine. Anne Marie did not stop me this time.
“There’s a not fun part?” she asked.
“I’m on land because I’m supposed to lure him to water to be killed. We need his golden, sweet heart and soul to keep our magic going.” There was no use trying to soften this blow. I couldn’t ease Owen into it, and it was his life on the line. My head pulsed, and I blinked my eyes trying to clear the fogginess. This had to be the wine.
Anne Marie looked like I had slapped her.
“But she doesn’t want to!” Owen added. Anne Marie nearly collapsed on the couch. She sat down in a great huff. Her pretty brown hair seemed more like limp seaweed now, like everything I’d said was some great burden on her shoulders, instead of ours.
“That’s something,” she said under her breath.
“Why are you upset?” I asked. There wasn’t time for this huffing and puffing. Owen needed someone on his side now. Not after she had time to process whatever was running through her head. Anger bubbled through me on his behalf. She was supposed to be his rock for this news to break against, his dearest friend to stand by him.
“It’s just a lot.”
“How do you think Owen felt? I’m supposed to kill him.” Her eyes sharpened and she stared at me so fiercely I thought my face would ignite but I held my ground. No human would intimidate me, not when there was so much to lose.
“That’s why I need a minute!”
“We don’t have a minute!” I shouted back and Owen sat there numbly, watching us yell.
“Anne Marie, stop, this isn’t how I thought this would go. I just wanted you to know, because you’re my best friend, and I just wanted–”
He stopped. Owen swallowed down his words and we both stopped fighting too. What were we even fighting about? My head was still foggy, and I knew I should stop drinking the wine but the more I drank of it, the more I had the urge to tell Anne Marie to go fling herself into the water. Which increasingly seemed like an excellent idea.
“What do you want, Owen?” she asked, softly, gently. My pooling dislike for her smoothed away. A little. A very, tiny, little bit.
“I want to be remembered by someone,” he finished weakly, throat bobbing with emotion. I didn’t wait for his friend to say anything before I launched myself across the table, moving like I still had fins. My body fumbled over the table, legs and knees locking painfully, and I had my arms wrapped so tightly around his neck that I worried for a moment about him being able to breathe.
“You will never be forgotten, but you don’t have to worry about that, Owen Harper, because I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise. I swear to Atlana, Regis, Neptune, and Solaris. I’ll swear that to any god willing to listen.”
“Merrow,” Owen said, our foreheads together.
“You love him,” Anne Marie said, the stars finally connecting. I hadn’t admitted it to Owen yet, and he pulled away, hope and shock etched in his beautiful, kind face.
“As much as I love the waves,” I said. Tears formed in his eyes and I felt it then, this connection between us, that nothing could ever take away. No force on land or sea could stop this love, and I needed him to know that in the deepest, most sacred parts of his heart .
“You… love me?” he whispered out. The words were so silent that I could have imagined them.
“Yes,” I said, loud enough for there to be no misunderstandings. For any of them.
“You love me,” he said again and again, in my ear, crushing me against his chest. Anne Marie wiped a tear from her own eye before smiling. But she didn’t matter–only the feel of Owen in my arms, his chest braced against mine, mattered now. Anne Marie leaned back against the couch, running her hands through her hair. A strange, high-pitched gurgle of a laugh bubbled up through her, and she stared at us. Waiting for us to tell her this was a joke, or that I was just crazy. Something. Anything other than the truth.
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t want him to die. God, why did I drink so much wine?” she said, rubbing her temples.
“Wine does taste quite good,” I added, trying to earn a bit of good will, of trust with her. I smiled, my head fuzzy from the whole evening. She laughed again, mirthless and anguished.
“What’s the plan? How do we dodge this shit and keep Owen safe?” she asked, blowing out a sigh and standing. She was taller than me, I realized then, but she didn’t take up as much space now with gentle defeat in her tone.
“You will help us?”
“Of course I will. I can’t just… do nothing. Mermaids. Who knew.”
“Do you have something against mermaids?” I snapped and she laughed.
“Considering I didn’t think they existed, no, I don’t. I just was expecting Owen to tell me that he officially has a girlfriend, not that she was on a mission to kill him.”
“That’s… fair.”
“So are we all friends again?” Owen asked. He still held me, not letting me out of his grip. This wasn’t how I wanted to tell him that I loved him. I didn’t want to tell him at all, in case that just made it harder for us. For him.
“Let’s start over,” I said. “Hi, I’m Merrow of the White Tides. I’m a mermaid and I’m not going to kill Owen.”
“Hi, I’m Anne Marie, Owen’s bestie. I’m also not going to kill him.” She held out a hand for me. We shook them and she nodded. “I guess this explains why you don’t know how to use a phone. I thought you might be crazy or something.”
“I don’t understand a lot about your world,” I admitted, and this felt like a new level of vulnerability, but Anne Marie needed to hear it. She needed to see that I wasn’t the threat here, and that I wanted nothing more than to help him. “I can’t even read. Owen and I were going to do some research about how to help, to see if there’s anything in your human histories, but he was doing all of the work because I can’t read your language. I can’t read any language, because we don’t have writing like this under the water. He got me these books that speak so I could listen to them, but I couldn’t concentrate on them.”
“Audiobooks,” she said softly.
“I don’t understand how you have light when it's night out, or how that thin, black box shows different people and plays music. I don’t understand this world at all, and Owen hasn’t judged me once for it. He’s been so kind and graceful with me, no matter how many times I stumble.”
“It’s electricity,” Owen said, flipping a little knob so the room filled with light. “I’ll teach you more about it one day.”
“How can I help?” Anne Marie asked, the gentle smile now replacing the hardness of her face.
“Can you read?” I asked–I didn’t want to presume, maybe she couldn’t, I didn’t know the rules about anything on land .
“Yes, I can read,” Anne Marie said as she pulled her hair up in a ball on top of her head. I wondered how she did that, and if I could do that with my hair too.
“Then grab a book, because we need to know how to find Anahita, the golden one.”
“Or, we can Google it,” she said, pulling out her phone.
“What does that mean?” There was no reason not to ask now; they knew all of my secrets, and hiding my ignorance in their world served no one.
“Research, just digitally. My eyes get too tired from books, especially after drinking two bottles of wine.”
“Do we have any more wine?” I asked Owen, and he chuckled. The sound was warm and soft, soothing all of my frayed nerves. My nails raked over his arms, savoring the simple pleasure of touching him.
“Yeah, but go easy on it. Hangovers aren’t fun,” he said, refilling my glass and pressing a kiss to my heated forehead.