9. Chapter 9 #2
“Will you stop being so loud?” Curtis hissed, and grabbed Daren by the sleeve of his coat. Lilo’s coat. Well, Daren’s coat whenever Lilo didn’t need his tentacles. “Let’s at least go into my office, okay?”
The back area had a stock room, freezer, and at least one other smaller office, but Curtis ushered Daren and Lilo into his and shut the door behind them. None of them sat, but Curtis leaned against his desk.
“Look, I didn’t think there were any others around, I swear. I thought my father was the last one.”
“So you have never gone out there to swim?” Daren asked. “To the estuary?”
“If I had, don’t you think Lilo would have told you we’d met before?”
Fair. Maybe Daren was being unreasonable, but he’d had the biggest bomb imaginable about his closest and only friend dropped in his lap and wasn’t calm enough to think clearly.
Curtis glanced down as if he was ashamed to admit what he said next.
“That part of the ocean, even in the estuary, always felt so… big and terrifying to me. I stick to the area by my house. No one can see me back there because of how the inlet faces. And further in my defense here, I wasn’t certain Glooscap was a cecaelia.
I had a hunch. If he was, I figured, good for you, I’d find out eventually.
You can’t have expected me to just blurt out that I’m half sea creature. ”
“After over twenty years of being friends? Yeah.”
“Fine! Fine. I owe you one.” Curtis paused before saying, “But do I really? ’Cause I did maybe order those selkie books on purpose.”
Daren bristled. Part of him felt for Curtis, he did, but it stung that the person he had always trusted most, besides his parents and now Lilo, hadn't trusted him. “All that did was make me worry more that me not understanding about the coat thing made Lilo go away, that he might never come back.”
“But he did come back! He is also seriously hot, by the way. Good for you.”
“Curtis…”
“I just… I didn’t want to jinx it for you. My parents, you know, they had a really good run, a great love story, but when Mom died… so did Dad, all because of what he was. Remember?”
Now Daren had to deflate a little, because damn it. He did remember. A few years after Daren lost his father, Curtis’s parents had died basically back-to-back. All the older folks around the village said it was sweet despite the tragedy, like Curtis’s father had died from a broken heart.
Which was basically true.
Lilo reached toward Curtis and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Lilo’s sorrow—I mean… I am sorry, Curtis, for your loss.
I lost my parents too, just like you and Daren.
It is never easy, no matter when or how.
But I am sure your father was happy to be with your mother again, or he never would have given her his coat. ”
Curtis looked honestly touched by the words and reached up to pat his hand over Lilo’s. “Thanks. It’s not hard to get why Daren fell for you. And not only because of the hot factor.”
Lilo smiled. Then he turned to Daren. “Hot is good, yes?”
“Yes.” Daren snorted. “He recognizes that you are beautiful. And taken,” he said a little sharper while gently removing Lilo’s hand from beneath Curtis’s.
“I do!” Curtis affirmed. “Just making an observation, not a flirtation. And I realize that, with you two, poetically dying together might be exactly what you want, it just really sucked for the son left behind, you know? I also didn’t want me having issues with being really, really into Bradley to reflect poorly on what you were trying to foster with Glooscap—Lilo!
Then it did anyway, and I am so sorry for that, Daren, but it worked out!
You clearly love each other. I mean, you’re wearing his coat.
Lilo didn’t let your uncertainty push him away. He believed in you and came back.”
Daren had been placated enough to realize that Curtis had set him up perfectly for fair and adequate revenge.
“You know, you’re right, and because of that, I can forgive you, Curtis, even for not trusting me with your secret.
But you know one other way you can make it up to me?
” He grinned. “Looking in a mirror when you say some of that.”
“Daren, I know—”
The office door suddenly opened and in popped the adorably smiling face of Bradley Cooper. He had trimmed his dreadlocks since the other day, maybe because of the heat, now closer to shoulder length than past them, and as he peeked in further, he was also revealed to be holding…
Curtis’s coat.
“Oops, sorry if I’m interrupting something! I just wanted to warn you, Curtis, that I borrowed your coat to pop into the freezer for a sec. We got our hands on some really great lobster specimens, so no reason to let those go to waste. All yours, no charge.”
Daren slid his eyes to Curtis, who looked too shellshocked to respond.
“I know, I know, I’m a big baby when it comes to the cold, needing a coat for just a few minutes, but I wanted you to know in case it smells like sea water from my survey boots or something.
It shouldn’t! Bad joke. I don’t smell like anything…
” Bradley sniffed himself and then tilted his head in contemplation. “Other than mint maybe?”
He stepped in further to hand Curtis the coat, who remained utterly tongue-tied, not that it appeared to bother Bradley.
“This thing is gorgeous, by the way. You'll have to tell me where you got it sometime so I can get one for myself. Daren even has one. Oh hey!” he said as he took notice of Lilo and held out a hand. “Bradley Cooper! No, not that one. You’re the guy Daren’s been all gaga over, right?”
“Lilo!” Lilo took hold of Bradley’s hand in both of his and shook it vigorously. “It is very nice to meet you, Bradley!”
Daren half expected Lilo to spill the beans and add something like the guy Curtis has been all gaga over, but for Curtis’s sake, he seemed to have more tact than that.
“Cool! Nice to meet you too! Sorry again to interrupt. We’ll all have to get together sometime.”
“Yes!” Lilo agreed.
They were strikingly similar in some ways and would probably get along, well…
Swimmingly.
Bradley left, leaving Curtis holding his coat with an expression like someone had just walked over his grave. Served him right.
“Well then,” Daren said, thinking back to that book he’d read through and some of the lore around these creatures. “Wasn’t there a part of that selkie story that said someone taking your coat and giving it back to you is a sign of—”
“No, no, no!” Curtis leapt away from the desk, beseeching Lilo, “That is not, like, mystically binding, is it?”
Lilo’s expression went a little blank, contemplative, brow furrowing as if worried and full of sympathy. Then he grinned. “No.”
Oh, Daren loved him.
“Just a… gesture. A nice gesture. To become mates, Bradley would have to willingly accept your coat and know you are one of us.”
“Oh thank god.” Curtis sagged back against the desk again. “I used to know some of this stuff, but my parents raised me mostly human.”
“You still owe me one,” Daren said with no small amount of warning.
Curtis sighed. He had been doing that a lot the past few months. Served him right again.
“Just ask the guy out already. On a date. Assuming you like him as much as we both know you do.”
Defeated as Curtis looked, there was also the little inkling of a smile at the corner of his lips, and after glancing back and forth between Daren and Lilo a few times, he conceded, “Well, you two are pretty inspiring.”
“Good,” Daren said. “But one more thing…”
LILO
Lilo loved it when Daren wore his coat. He knew it wasn’t practical for humans to wear one so thick in these warmer months, but it turned out it wasn’t only Lilo who felt well-climatized in it. Daren reported the same, that in Lilo’s coat, he felt as comfortable as if he were wearing nothing.
Lilo liked when Daren did that too, especially while still in the coat.
But today was a day for Daren to return the coat to Lilo.
“Thank you,” Lilo said, accepting the coat from Daren and setting it beside him so he could begin to undress.
They were on Daren’s boat, tucked away in the estuary for a summer swim.
Curtis was with them too, currently on his cell phone talking to Bradley, which was part of Daren’s criteria for forgiving him for not admitting he was one of Lilo’s people.
It was impressive that Curtis could get a signal out here, Daren had said, since he rarely did, but Lilo didn’t really know what a signal was. He could always ask later.
“Lilo, maybe wait—” Daren cut off whatever he had been about to say when Lilo stripped his underwear off with the rest of his clothing. He didn’t really care for it, but Daren had insisted he wear some.
“Is something wrong?” Lilo asked.
Daren just sighed, while Curtis, who had been pacing up and down the boat deck, turned and saw Lilo, and promptly stopped in his tracks with a gape.
Lilo had forgotten for a moment that humans were very particular about wearing clothes, and though Curtis was half cecaelia, he had been raised among them.
“Uh, what was that, Bradley? I got distracted for a moment.” He then silently mouthed something to Daren that seemed to be the word…
Nice.
Lilo wrapped his coat around himself and promptly jumped into the water.
“Lilo!” he heard Daren call after him. He could hear very well, even when under the surface. “I wanted to see… whoa. Amazing.”
It really was, Lilo could admit, the way he gave himself over to the coat’s pull and it reaffixed itself to him, reforming his tentacles and periwinkle skin and all the other aspects of Lilo that made up his true self.
His human side was his true self too now, but he did feel a wonderful rush and comfort being in the water, back in his original skin.
He surfaced with a fling of his wet hair away from his forehead and grinned up at Daren on the boat’s deck with his shark-toothed smile.