Chapter 13 #6
A sudden crowd of middle schoolers from a class trip bore down on them in a dash toward the aquarium’s Splash Zone; their noise drowned out whatever he’d meant to ask.
Maybe Wes shrugged in the crush, his arm extended to shield her from elbows and backpacks.
Regardless, he was grinning and easy again a minute later, once the children had passed.
“How about we go see the Kelp Forest and Open Ocean tanks, grab lunch, and head to the wharf to buy more shrimp? Maybe even a little treasure chest and some plants for—Bubbles? Kali? Thalassa?”
“Yes.”
After flagging down a staff member beside the Rocky Shore’s touch pools, who validated their knowledge about shoreline bait balls (“No, schooling fish only form them as a last resort in open water”), they took discounted leftovers from the lunch rush at the Aquarium Café, ate on a deck that overlooked a living tide pool spilling from the aquarium to the bay, then rumbled back along Del Monte Avenue to the wharf’s midweek fish market.
“If it wasn’t a bait ball, what do you think I saw on Monday?” Wes weighed a sack of moist vegetation sprouts—halimeda, a popular tank plant—in one hand.
“It’s likely that the majority of marine species are still undiscovered.” Isabel paid for the sprouts. “Up to two million. Which means that most behaviors haven’t been observed yet, either.”
“True. I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s just weird. But that’s the ocean for you. Weird—”
“—and wonderful.”
“And wonderful.”
At her next stop, she smiled to herself while she placed a bag of prawns on the register scale.
“Hey, I remember you.” The vendor returned her smile as he waved off a gull and calculated her total. He eyed her flannel, then her hands. “You bought a load of shrimp over the weekend. Are you starting a restaurant? Or a popup? I’ve got bulk deals.”
“Oh. . . no, we’re not—”
He overbore her objections to list his discounts, and held the octopus’s feed hostage for her attention.
Following several minutes of her silence and his bargaining, however, she had to admit that his prices were decent.
And were they operating a popup restaurant?
A restaurant for one very hungry diner. If they kept feeding the two-spot through their tenure in the bungalow, discounted seafood prices would be useful.
She turned to consult with Wes behind her—who wasn’t.
He wasn’t there.
He isn’t here, and a sharp stab of anxiety pierced Isabel’s chest. Between one quick inhale and another, her pulse accelerated. Her stomach seized. Her fingers froze.
“Careful with your bag—”
She caught the bag, but lost her breath. “. . . Wes?”
He’s gone.
He was gone, and she was alone in the crowd on the rowdy wharf.
No, no, no—
But then: “Buttercup!”
Smiling, waving, he emerged into the sunlight farther back along the boardwalk, closer to the street.
He returned to her through the noise and the brine, his strides checking for just a moment when a crabman hauling a catch crossed the thoroughfare—and she staggered forward into his arms. The warmth of his body and his own breath enveloped her; his exhale was a hard huff of impact from their collision, plus the wet thwack of the halimeda sack and the shrimp bag—“Ooof!” But she didn’t retreat, just clutched his shirt tighter, her nose buried against his neck.
Sun, salt, sweat.
Wes.
“Uh—hey. . .” Though winded, his arms circled protectively around her. “You all right?”
She breathed. She wouldn’t cry. “Y-yes.”
“Good.” The heel of one hand made circles between her quivering shoulders. Wes thanked the seafood vendor over her head in a slightly breathless voice, then guided them away. He repeated in a murmur against her temple, “That. . . that’s good. But—no one’s photographing us. Are they?”
“No.” She didn’t look, however. She just continued to breathe.
“You don’t need to. . . I mean, no one’s watching. You’re safe. Right?”
. . . no.
No.
No, she wasn’t safe. Because it might be true that no immigration agents were monitoring her to judge the validity of her relationship with Wes, that no one was documenting her urgent, unthinking embrace—but after a minute of shelter and security had passed in his arms, then another and another, she still hadn’t withdrawn from him.
She wasn’t safe at all.
No—
“I, um—sorry, I—” Stammering, abruptly unsteady with her pulse rising again to roll hot and rough and treacherous as sea breakers in her ears, she lurched back.
Her hair caught in the wind to sting her cheeks and eyes.
She couldn’t trust herself to glance up at Wes, to gauge his response to her retreat, to see whether he cared.
“W-we’ve bought the feed and the plants.
The—she—has probably flooded the bungalow.
Or escaped down the shower drain. We. . . we need to go.”
Pushing through the fish stalls and candy shops, she didn’t wait for him, didn’t look back for his confusion or his questions. Or, worse, his shrug.
She couldn’t explain.
God, what was she doing?
What have I already done?