Chapter 2 #2
Moving to another country was fun and all, just not as much when you weren’t sure if you should get comfortable or not.
Mark pushed off the counter and clapped his hands together. “Well,” he said. “As touching as this heart-to-heart’s been, you’re still supposed to be at the jellies.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I grabbed the clipboard and straightened up.
“And Sinclair?” he added as he started toward the door.
“Yeah?”
“Do yourself a favor and keep your thoughts about a certain bloke to yourself.”
My stomach turned, but I managed a thin smile. “Oh… yeah, for sure. Sorry about that.”
Mark waved his hand. “It’s fine, mate. Just be careful with the donors. A billionaire is far more important to this place than a young one like you.”
“Yeah… thank you.”
Mark gave me one last look—something halfway between sympathetic and amused—before pushing through the service door and disappearing back toward the galleries.
“A billionaire is far more important to this place than a young one like you.”
Message received.
I exhaled slowly and rubbed my hands down the front of my uniform like I could smooth out the lingering anxiety.
“Okay,” I muttered to myself. “Stop being weird. Get it together.”
I grabbed the clipboard, pushed the quarantine door open, and stepped back into the main service corridor.
The shift from the back rooms to the public galleries always felt like surfacing from underwater. Sound rushed in first—voices echoing across the high ceilings, the excited squeals of kids pointing at tanks, the low murmur of adults reading the placards.
Light followed next—brighter and bluer.
It didn’t take long to reach the jellies.
The main tank curved up from floor to ceiling, a tall cylinder of softly glowing water where dozens of moon jellies drifted in slow, hypnotic pulses. Their translucent bells caught the soft purple lighting, trailing delicate ribbons behind them like ghostly flowers opening and closing in the tide.
I stepped up to the edge of the tank and rested my clipboard against the rail.
Just act normal.
You work here.
No big deal.
The jellies continued to move lazily through the water, and I watched them for a minute, then another.
My brain, unfortunately, refused to cooperate.
What if he’s noticed you hiding from him?
What if Mark’s right and you’ve already pissed him off?
What if he complains to the director?
Great job, Cove. Four months in and you’re already offending the guy who paid for half the building.
I sucked in a ragged breath, willing the sting behind my eyes to fade away. Somewhere behind me, a group of school kids moved past toward the shark tunnel while my thoughts kept spiraling.
What would I do if the aquarium didn’t want to keep me?
Moving here, I’d just sort of assumed that they would. I hadn’t thought about the what-ifs.
“These are Aurelia aurita.” The voice came from beside me.
I jumped.
Actually jumped.
My entire body jerked as if shocked, and the clipboard nearly slipped out of my hands.
“Oh—!”
Heat flooded my face as I turned and saw Mr. Fucking Kelly standing at the railing next to me.
Up close, he looked even more put together. Dark suit, perfectly pressed. Crisp white shirt. Tie neatly knotted at his throat. His glasses caught the soft glow from the tank, reflecting a faint wash of purple light across the lenses.
His expression was… calm.
Neutral.
Not amused. Not annoyed. Not anything I could easily read.
Which somehow made my panic worse.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—
“I—sorry,” I blurted, already dying inside. “I—I didn’t hear you come up.”
Smooth. Very professional.
He didn’t react to the apology.
Or to the fact that I’d nearly launched myself into the jelly tank.
Instead, he turned his attention back to the drifting animals inside the glass cylinder.
“Aurelia aurita,” he repeated calmly. “Moon jellyfish.”
Like the jump hadn’t happened at all.
Like he was politely allowing both of us to pretend it hadn’t.
“Uh—y-yeah,” I said, clearing my throat as I followed his gaze back to the tank. “That’s… that’s right.”
Brilliant contribution, Cove.
He studied the jellies for a moment longer, hands clasped loosely behind his back in that same statue-still posture I’d seen from across the room a hundred times.
“Their nervous system is surprisingly efficient for something without a central brain,” he said. “They respond to environmental changes faster than most people expect.”
My brain scrambled for something intelligent to say.
“Yeah,” I managed weakly. “They’re pretty incredible.”
Wow. Sounded like I didn’t have a central brain either.
Kill me now.
Another jelly pulsed slowly past the glass between us, its translucent bell catching the light.
For a few seconds, neither of us spoke.
I could feel my heart still trying to punch its way out of my ribcage.
Don’t look nervous.
Don’t look weird.
Don’t offend the billionaire donor who could probably get you fired with one email.
Beside me, Mr. Kelly tilted his head slightly as he watched the tank, then he glanced at me. Voice as even as the tide, he asked, “What do you know about them?”
“Well—uh—moon jellies are one of the most common jellyfish species worldwide,” I said, the words starting cautiously before picking up speed.
“They’re found in temperate and tropical waters, usually in coastal areas where the currents are slower.
They’re actually pretty hardy compared to most jellies, which is part of why aquariums keep them so often. ”
I gestured vaguely toward the tank.
“They don’t have a centralized brain or heart or anything like that. Their nervous system is just a diffuse nerve net, but it still lets them respond to changes in light, touch, and water chemistry. That’s how they coordinate their bell contractions.”
A jelly passed by me as if demonstrating, and I smiled softly at it.
“They mostly eat zooplankton—little crustaceans, fish larvae, things like that,” I continued.
“They trap food with the mucus on their oral arms and then move it to the mouth. Their sting is really mild compared to many jellyfish species. Most people barely feel it unless they’re sensitive.
Actually, their life cycles are pretty interesting too.
They alternate between sexual and asexual reproduction.
The adult medusae release sperm and eggs into the water, and then the larvae settle and become polyps.
Those polyps can clone themselves and eventually bud off juvenile medusae—ephyrae—which is what grows into the full jelly form. ”
I made a small motion with my hand, unconsciously sketching the stages in the air.
“That’s why you sometimes get those huge population blooms,” I explained excitedly. “If conditions are right, the polyps can just keep producing new medusae over and over again.”
I stopped.
Or rather—
I noticed that I hadn’t stopped, and my mouth snapped shut.
Oh my god.
I turned slowly toward him, mortified.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, my face burning. “You probably didn’t need the whole lecture. I’m sure you know all of that already. Sorry.”
Most people wanted a thirty-second fun fact. Not a full biology class.
But Tobias Kelly didn’t look annoyed.
If anything, he looked… attentive.
Still facing the tank, he adjusted his glasses with one finger.
“That was quite informative,” he replied, without any of the sarcasm I’d grown to expect. Then he turned his head toward me again. “Tell me something else.”
I blinked, then looked away, feeling off-balance and uncomfortable with the odd intensity of his eye contact. “About moon jellies?”
“Do you know anything about rare jellyfish?”
The question was asked almost casually, but something about the way he said rare made a faint shiver crawl up the back of my neck. I couldn’t put my finger on why it felt weird; it just did. But knowing me, I was probably just being overly paranoid.
“Well… yeah,” I said slowly. “A few. Depends on what you mean by rare.”
“I’m sure it does,” he said quietly.
“Do you want to hear about a specific kind?” I asked, needing some form of direction. “Or just… rare ones in general?”
That seemed like a reasonable question.
There were a lot of jellyfish out there.
“Surprise me,” he said.
Which was an objectively terrible instruction to give a marine biology nerd. My brain immediately lit up like someone had flipped every switch at once.
“Oh, okay,” I said, straightening a little. “Well, there’s a species called the immortal jellyfish—Turritopsis dohrnii. It’s not technically rare anymore because it’s spread all over the world in ballast water, but biologically it’s kind of insane.”
His attention didn’t drift.
So I kept going.
“It’s one of the only known animals that can basically reverse its life cycle,” I said, gesturing lightly as another moon jelly pulsed past us.
“When it’s stressed or injured, the adult medusa can revert to its polyp stage instead of dying.
The cells just… re-specialize. It essentially starts its life over again.
” I shook my head a little, still half in awe of the concept even after years of studying it.
“Biologically speaking, it could keep doing that forever. It’s sort of… functionally immortal.”
“There’s also the flower hat jelly,” I added.
“Olindias formosa. Those ones are gorgeous. Bright pink and yellow tentacles that look like petals. They’re mostly found around Japan and parts of Brazil.
Their sting’s actually pretty nasty though—causes severe pain and sometimes temporary paralysis in small fish. ”