Chapter Eight Dinner #2
This is different. This is real work. This isn’t fun. It’s worth it, but it’s not fun—and when Eli would buy me fancy clothes, he’d get to take me out of them. When he’d take us on vacation, he got to come along.
There’s nothing glamorous about scrubbing pots and pans.
This is with a kid in the mix. Even if Mercer thinks that making dinner and being awesome to my son is going to get him something—he’s wrong.
I think.
“Pick out some bedtime books,” I murmur, kissing Zack on the head after he’s done brushing.
“Mercer! Bedtime book time!” Zack calls, and in seconds, a huge, teal form is squeezing into Zack’s room. Without prompting, Mercer scoops him up in one tentacle and makes a hammock for him, rocking and swaying.
“He’s going to be out before the first book is over if you do that,” I mutter out the side of my mouth.
“Then you can get some more work done. Or... Or we could have some coffee? Or tea?”
Zack yawns. “Coffee in the morning. Tea later.”
“Good information. Thank you, Zack.”
“Do we swim tomorrow?”
“We can swim tomorrow,” Mercer says, looking at me.
I nod. “Sure. Early in the morning.”
“Will we cook dinner again tomorrow?” Zack whispers, his voice getting softer and more drowsy before I’ve even read the first page.
Mercer looks at me.
I freeze.
“I could use the practice. I don’t have a kitchen,” he says. “I know you have steaks from the other night. Perhaps I could learn how to do something else with potatoes besides boil them.”
“French fries,” Zack says dreamily, and then rolls over.
Mercer moves fast and gets him into his bed just as he would have been kissing air.
His tentacles move in harmony, one pulling up the cover, the other smoothing tenderly down Zack’s curls and back.
My throat cannot take this. A lump is in it.
Yes, come back tomorrow, I want to scream. Come back every day, so Zack can have someone as good, kind, and helpful as you in his life.
For the summer?
What happens when the weather gets cold? What do the lake lifeguards do? Where does a kraken live when the water freezes over?
“I think he’s out already,” Mercer whispers, voice awed. “He’s so little when he sleeps. So like an angel.”
“I know. He’s a beautiful boy.” I turn off the overhead light, and Zack’s bulldozer-shaped nightlight immediately responds and illuminates the room with a soft yellow glow.
And his dad didn’t think I was beautiful enough to stay. To even try. To get to the point of seeing how abso-fucking-lutely brilliant this kid is, how sweet, how helpful...
We leave the room after I kiss Zack’s sleeping forehead. When the door is closed behind us, Mercer clears his throat.
“I am sorry if I was presumptuous about dinner and swimming. I find it very hard to say no to Zack—unless it’s something that would hurt him, that is.”
“Won’t this hurt him?” I blurt, sitting down on my couch when we get to the living room.
“Hm? What?”
“You. Being here all summer, like a really wonderful friend—almost like a dad. Teaching him, playing with him, being around so much... And then in the winter, won’t you leave? Probably by October?”
“What? Leave? Why?” Mercer sits on the floor across from me, eyes worried.
“Will they need year-round lifeguards at a lake that will probably freeze over in a New York winter?” I ask, arms crossing. I know I sound fierce, possibly angry.
“No, they don’t, but I wouldn’t leave town. I’d get a job at the community pool. If not there, then stocking shelves in a store, or waiting tables in a restaurant. I wouldn’t leave my home or my family.”
“Do krakens even have homes and families? No, I’m sorry, that sounded so wrong.” I put my hand to my head for a moment, mentally cursing myself out. “I meant, how could you have a home like this one, for example?”
“Well, my cousin and his wife have a townhouse in a very nice development, also in New York, but they have a hot tub, and they put in an in-ground pool. He works as a fisherman and sells seafood to the local restaurants. Fresh caught. I could do that, I suppose.”
“You don’t—need to live in water?”
“Not a body of water. Not year-round. If I were to, oh, I don’t know, buy a house in Harmony Glen, or an apartment for the winter, I could lease it in the spring and summer.
I could also simply live in the icy lake.
My family usually went south in the winter, but it was a matter of making life more comfortable, not a necessity.
But when you have a family, you do what is best for them.
For example...” Mercer pauses and looks around, and then finds his cell phone next to the shopping bag that he carried the flowers and vase in.
He picks it up off the coffee table and, in a few seconds, holds it out so I can see a kraken man with a beautiful Hispanic woman, and their two babies—who have tentacles and legs.
“Your cousin?” I ask.
“Calder and Janet, and their twins. They are cousins, but the boys are my honorary nephews.” He beams with pride.
“Janet always wanted to open a nail salon. When she got out of the army, that is what she did. She owns her business, and she and Calder raise their boys together, in one place. He doesn’t go swimming down to the southern Atlantic each winter any longer.
He couldn’t bear to be apart from them. If my wife—let us say that one day I am fortunate enough to have one—needs a house and a wi-fi connection to work, and our children need their friends at school, and they have their sports teams and their swim clubs, well, then I would put down roots in one place.
On vacations, we could go to the ocean or swim down the river. ”
“That’s very sweet. And how I think marriages and families should work, but not everyone feels the same way.
Sometimes they say they do, but they don’t mean it.
Or maybe they didn’t figure out that they didn’t mean it until after the baby came along and their wife’s boobs sagged and her stomach never went back to pre-baby flatness. ”
Did I say that last part out loud?
Yep.
Dang it.
Mercer spends a moment untangling the end of my rant, then nods slowly. “Some people do not know what they want.”
“You can say that again.” I study my crossed arms and slowly let them unfold when I realize how I’m holding myself, half-defensive and half like I need to be swaddled and soothed. I push my hair back and muster a brave smile.
Mercer continues speaking, his eyes boring into mine when I look up. “But I know what I want. I know what I want, who I want, and it is based on things that do not change with weight or childbirth.”
“You’d better not be talking about me,” I rasp, shocked. “Because you just met me.”
“I know that. But I know that I want to get to know you better. I know that so far, everything I’ve seen of you, your son, and your home makes me want to fight to prove I deserve a place in it. I have such an admiration for you, Madelyn. You may not realize it.”
“I sure as heck don’t!” I snap. I clear my throat and give a startled-looking Mercer an apologetic grin.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so bombastic.
But honestly, I think whatever you’re seeing is skewed.
Blurred. Just not quite right, you know?
Let’s rewind. The first time we had a real interaction was because I was a careless mom, scrolling my phone while my son almost drowned.
” My stomach threatens to lose the amazing dinner I just ate at the memory.
“You were not idly scrolling. You believed Zack was playing in the sand a few feet away, in the care of a girl old enough to babysit. You got a message from your ex-husband, an extremely ugly, frightening message that—” Mercer stops when I rocket to my feet.
It’s my turn for a hard, burning stare. “How do you know about the message?” I demand, voice low so that I don’t wake Zack, but there’s anger simmering underneath it.
I don’t even know why I’m so angry. I guess it’s thinking that Mercer was such a saint, knowing that I trusted him with my son, and now I find out that he somehow snooped through my phone, and this seems like such a breach of my privacy. Mistrust. That’s the word.
I don’t trust many people these days, and I feel like I just let myself get tricked.
“When you were carrying Zack, I helped gather your things. The message was still open on your phone. I didn’t even intend to read it, Madelyn.
I know you’re angry, but I didn’t mean to see something you wished to keep private.
That’s why I never mentioned it before. I was shocked and appalled by his threats, but I also knew I wasn’t supposed to know about them. ”
“That wasn’t a one-word message. You could have stopped looking.
” My jaw juts, but the rage is dying down.
All of that day is a horrible, scary jumble, but I do remember Mercer not only saving Zack’s life, but also helping me gather our things, comforting me, and making Zack feel better. The whistle. The offer of lessons.
“Krakens are fast at everything they do—well, almost everything. We live by our wits in the water. We hunt, and we escape the hunters. When you’re both predator and prey, living in a vast ocean of threats, sometimes in miles of darkness—your eyes adapt.
I only glanced at it for a second, and I saw the whole thing.
Just how when you kissed me—I sensed that it was meant to be an action of adrenaline and gratitude, but I knew in that moment,” Mercer lets out a long, slow breath, “that I wanted to remain in your life, and Zack’s life, sharing every moment with you, doing things to earn your gratitude, doing things to protect and care for you both.
I bet that seems strange for a human.” He tucks his long hair behind one ear, looking at me guiltily.