Chapter 17
Neri
Five weeks, and being right feels a lot like drowning, except nobody pulls you out.
I got exactly what I asked for on that beach. What happened between Rafe and me stayed on the island. The department fussed for a week, the local paper ran its castaway piece, the dean sent flowers, and then everybody found something else to talk about.
And I went back to work.
My reputation is intact. I’ve written two grant applications and a full draft of the archival-survey paper. My talk slides are better than ever. Also, I am miserable.
I wake up at three in the morning in a cold bed and reach for a warmth that isn’t there. I eat alone. Work late. Go home. Repeat.
We’ve passed four times in the building.
Twice he nodded. Once he held a door and said, “Dr. Marsh,” then disappeared before the door finished closing.
Once I watched him from the third-floor window as he crossed the quad in the rain with a colleague, talking with his hands, and I stood there until the tea went cold in my fist.
I asked for this. Today is going to hurt.
I came, because skipping the AETHER inauguration would have required an explanation I’m not willing to give. The ceremony was postponed after the wreck, first while Rafe was missing and then while he recovered. Five weeks later, the ribbon, speeches and four hundred guests have finally reconvened.
He looks recovered. Better than that. He looks good in a way that makes my insides twist in painful knots.
I’m in the fourth row of folding chairs under the dome’s white curve, blazer perfect, hair disciplined, and Rafael Vasquez is at the podium in an actual suit, glasses flashing under the lights.
Then Rafe starts speaking. The speech is everything he is.
He opens with the planetarium story, and four hundred serious people soften at once.
Then comes the science, real and beautiful, atmospheres and distant suns and the kind of wonder that calls to all scientists.
He makes terrible puns with complete confidence.
The audience groans, then laughs, which only encourages him.
And then he talks about the island.
The whole room already knows the newspaper version. Rafe gives them more.
The storm. The Belle. Rafe talks about the cottage. The mussels. The flare. He doesn’t make any of it prettier than it was. He talks about being cold and scared. About the nights we didn’t know if anyone was coming. The room goes silent during those parts.
And through all of it, he protects me. He calls me “my colleague, who is the reason I’m alive.” Later I become “the best scientist I’ve ever been stranded with, and I hope never to expand the category.” The room laughs, and four hundred faces turn toward me.
I smile. Nobody in this dome knows there was a cove, a fire or a bed the size of a bathtub.
He kept his promise.
Exactly as I asked. And it breaks my heart.
Afterward, there’s champagne under the dome and people close around him from every direction. I could leave. I’ve shown my face. My own talk is tomorrow. Nothing requires me to stay.
I get in the congratulation line instead.
Up close, he looks older around the eyes than he did only a few weeks ago. Still beautiful. Still Rafe. Then the line delivers me to him. His smile stays polite.
“Congratulations, Dr. Vasquez. The keynote was wonderful.”
Dr. Vasquez.
I know he hates it. I use it anyway. Something passes across his face. Hurt, maybe. It’s gone before I can be certain.
“Thank you, Dr. Marsh.” He gives me a small nod. “Good of you to make the crossing. Enjoy the reception.”
Then he turns to the next person.
That’s it.
No anger. No punishment. Just this cold, unbearable politeness. I don’t remember leaving the dome.
One minute I’m standing beneath its white curve with champagne glasses chiming behind me. The next I’m outside in the blue coastal dusk, walking down a gravel path with no idea where I’m going.
So I do the thing I have done in every wreck of my life. I call my father. He picks up on the second ring, though it’s barely afternoon in San Francisco.
“Neri. How was the big ceremony? Did the famous telescope work?”
“It hasn’t looked at anything yet. That’s tonight, the ceremonial first light, and—”
My voice breaks.
“Okay my little seaweed,” he says immediately. “I’m here. Talk to me.”
I sit down on a low granite wall beside the path. Then I tell him everything.
It comes out in pieces. I tell him about the cove and shifting again. About Rafe. About ending it on the beach. About seeing him tonight and about thinking I might have made the biggest mistake of my life.
Dad listens. He doesn’t interrupt. He doesn’t tell me what to do. When I finally stop, he’s quiet for a few seconds.
“You want me to say something, or do you want me to keep listening?”
“Say something.”
“All right.”
He exhales.
“I know your career matters to you. And I know you’re not imagining the problem. People gossip. People make ugly assumptions. Especially when a woman is younger or less established than the man she’s with.”
I close my eyes.
“But, Neri, you’ve spent years trying to make yourself so perfect nobody could ever question you. Don’t you think it’s time you live for yourself and not just to prove yourself?”
My throat tightens. Dad has a way of seeing right through me and to the heart of any problem.
“I’m serious. You cannot build your whole life around stopping people from being idiots.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. It hurts.
“There she is,” he says softly. “I miss that sound. You have your mother’s laugh.”
That nearly gets me crying again.
“She was proud of you. God, she was proud of you. But she loved you regardless of the degrees, the papers and the career. She loved you for you, little seaweed. Just as I do.”
The gravel blurs under my shoes. I wipe at my face.
“She would be proud of the scientist you became,” he continues. “But these last few years? Watching you make yourself smaller and smaller because you thought it made you tougher? That would have broken her heart.”
“Dad.”
“I’m not telling you what to do about Rafe. That part is yours. And I am definitely not telling my only daughter to throw away a career she worked this hard for because of some man.”
“He would love being called some man.”
“I’m sure he would.”
I laugh again.
“I’m only saying this: your mother wanted you to live. So did I. We still do.”
The dusk has gone darker while we talked. Below the path, beyond the dock lights, the sea moves against the granite.
“Dad, I have to go.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
We hang up. I don’t go back to the reception. I take the path downhill instead, through the spruce, to the little shingle beach south of the dock where the shore drops away dark and clean.
There’s nobody here. Just me and the ocean. I shifted on the island with Rafe standing on the shore. I haven’t shifted since. Now I need to know if I can do it without him.
I step out of my ceremony shoes and leave them on the shingle. The blazer comes next, then the rest, folded on a dry rock above the tide line. The water reaches my ankles.
Cold and familiar.
I walk deeper. My heart is beating hard, but I keep going until the water reaches my waist.
The change comes.
No witness. No fire. No one holding his breath on shore.
My body remembers. My legs merge beneath the surface. Teal and silver scales catch what little light reaches the water. My gills open.
I dive.
The cold closes over me and I go down hard, then turn beneath the surface and kick toward open water.
Fast. Then even faster. I break through the next swell and laugh.
The sound comes out half breath, half saltwater, and I laugh again because I can.
Because this is mine. It wasn’t the island that gave this back to me. Rafe didn’t give it back either.
But he was there when I finally stopped fighting it. He comforted me and held me and made me feel pleasure more fully than anyone before him.
That matters. So does the fact that I miss him so badly it hurts.
I float on my back beyond the break, the dome of the AETHER telescope glowing on the hill above the trees.
And finally I stop avoiding the other truth.
I love him.
I don’t know exactly when it happened. Maybe it started on the Belle, somewhere around a Tupperware container full of home-baked muffins.
Maybe it happened on that island. It doesn’t matter.
I love him.
I ended things because I was afraid being with him could damage the career I fought for. That fear hasn’t disappeared. People may talk. Some of them may assume the worst.
But now I know what being without him feels like. And I don’t want it.
I don’t know if he’ll forgive me. I don’t know how we make the department problem work. Maybe he doesn’t even want me anymore. But I want to try. I owe him that much.
I swim back.
The shift back comes easily. One moment tail, the next legs, and then I’m standing naked and dripping in the dark. Getting dressed takes forever because wet skin and formal clothes were not designed by people who like each other.
I finally manage to pull my pants over my wet legs and hold my shoes in my hand.
Then I go back.
A knot of departing guests is moving toward the gangway, wraps and laughter and event badges. I catch a program officer I vaguely know by the sleeve.
“Dr. Vasquez. Have you seen him?”
She takes in my bare feet, wet hair and damp clothes.
“Are you not boarding? It’s the last boat of the night. Anyone left is going to have to spend the night on the island.”
Everyone is getting off the island. Well, everyone sensible is getting off to the safety and comfort of a hotel on the mainland, where they will sleep in a well-made, plush bed.
But not him.
I know Rafe. There’s no way he’s going to leave the AETHER telescope tonight.
There’s a peninsula on the south end of the island, past the dome, where the land runs out and nothing blocks the sky.
That’s where he’ll be.
The boarding crew is already calling the final passengers.
“No,” I tell the program officer. “I’m not getting on.”
I turn away from the boat.
I run.