There’s Something Fishy About My Boyfriend

Prologue

Ten Years Ago

When no one answered, I unlocked the door with my master key card, pushed it open, and—

“Ugh!”

I reeled back, assaulted by the stench of stale beer and Axe body spray.

Pro tip: The Jersey Shore was a nice place to visit. But cleaning up after some of the visitors…? Not so nice.

Breathing through my mouth, I rolled the housekeeping cart inside and left the door open to try to air things out.

The room was a little trashed, but I’d seen worse this season.

Now that I was sixteen, I had a summer job working at the small seaside bed-and-breakfast that was basically my family’s legacy.

According to the stories I’d been told and told again, my great-grandparents bought this property back when Atlantic City, New Jersey, was in its heyday, when it really had been the boardwalk empire portrayed in that HBO series (Mom’s words).

Over the years, as the shore town experienced more ups and downs than the rides on its famous Steel Pier (Dad’s phrasing), ownership of the Sunny Side Bed-and-Breakfast was passed to Nana and Pops—may they rest in peace—and then to my mother and father.

With Atlantic City now deep into its Jersey-Shore-on-MTV era, Dad handled breakfast and kept the B and B in good repair while Mom was the one who ran things.

After a quick survey, I decided to tackle the bed first. As I began to straighten the sheets, I spotted something tangled in the folds. Something long and slippery and—

“Aah!” I screamed, my heart practically jumping out of my chest. There was a goddamn snake in the—

Oh, wait.

Not a snake.

Snakeskin leggings.

Duh.

Rolling my eyes at my silly mistake, I got my heart rate under control and went back to work.

I was wearing disposable plastic gloves—a cleaning girl’s BFFs—but even so, I picked up the leggings gingerly, with just my thumb and forefinger. I dropped them on top of the jumble of Ed Hardy tees, muscle shirts, and artfully ripped jeans spilling out from one of the unzipped duffels.

After I finished making the bed, I grabbed a trash bag from my cart. I shook it out a couple of times to open it so I could gather up the empty Bud Light bottles standing on the dresser and the other rubbish strewn around the room.

FYI, this summer job was supposed to be teaching me the family business from the ground up.

Instead, what I was learning—besides the fact that people could be real slobs—was that I never ever ever wanted the Sunny Side Bed-and-Breakfast to be passed on to me.

And sorry, not sorry. Maybe my folks and their folks and their folks before them were fine with their lives revolving around eight guest rooms and a dining room, but I was not.

When it came to my life, I wanted something… different. Bigger. More.

The problem was, I couldn’t tell my parents how I felt.

It would straight up break their hearts.

I was their only child, born to them late in life.

There were…expectations. The eyes of my ancestors were literally upon me, day in and day out, staring down at me from the vintage photographs hung throughout the B and B.

To buck tradition would be a slap in the face—not just to my mother and father but to the previous generations.

I was stuck.

Lately, I’d started wearing my tankini under my work clothes so I could escape to the beach as soon as my shift was over. But I still hadn’t figured out how to escape my preordained future as the next owner of the Sunny Side.

Having collected the trash from the bedroom, I headed over to the bathroom. And opened the door.

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

Someone had been sick in here. Really sick.

Like, projectile-vomit sick. Oh, there’d been some half-assed attempt to clean up, but there were telltale smears of puke on the floor, on the walls—even, somehow, on the ceiling.

And the dirty towel they’d used to mop up the sick was still here too, tossed in the bathtub.

The stink was so vile, I seriously thought I might lose my Cheerios and add to the mess.

And just like that, something inside me snapped. The feelings that had been building all summer long reached some kind of tipping point, and I was done. I had to get out of here. Now.

Doing an abrupt one-eighty, I made a beeline for the doorway. I bolted into the hall, down the stairs, and toward the front door.

“Hannah,” I heard my mother call after me from her usual spot behind the check-in desk. “Where are you going?”

I didn’t answer her. Didn’t even look back.

As I yanked the door open, I caught sight of my great-grandparents, the original owners of the Sunny Side, looking out at me from one of those black-and-white photographs. Judging me, it seemed. Disappointed in me, for sure.

I tried to shrug it off. But even after I peeled off the disposable gloves and made my getaway down the B and B’s front steps, I could still feel their eyes watching me.

* * *

I ended up at the beach.

I stood facing the water, my Docksiders sinking in the soft sand as I stared out over the waves.

A couple of shirtless, tan gym bros jogged past. Then an old guy meandered by, methodically waving a metal detector back and forth in front of him, apparently seeking his fortune in lost coins and jewelry instead of trying his luck at one of the local casinos.

Otherwise, it was just me and the seagulls.

At barely 8:00 a.m., even the lifeguards weren’t on duty yet, their tower standing empty.

I took a deep breath that smelled strongly of salt and seaweed. I was going to catch hell from my folks for ditching work like this, but I didn’t care. What were they going to do? Fire me?

I wished.

Unfortunately, there was only one way out of the family business for me, and I knew it. One day soon, I’d have to suck it up and have a serious talk with my family.

At just the thought of that, I started to sweat. Bucketloads. And the hot, humid ocean breeze wasn’t going to cool me down. I needed a swim. Big time.

I toed off my dock shoes and stripped down to my swimsuit.

While I was wriggling out of my denim cutoffs, a paperback fell out of my back pocket and hit the sand with a soft thud.

I almost always had a book with me—after swimming, reading was my favorite distraction—and this summer, I was big into romantic fantasy.

I put the novel on top of my clothes to keep them from blowing away.

As I made my way down to the ocean, the tide swirled and foamed around my ankles.

The wet sand squished between my toes. The water was chilly, but I didn’t flinch.

I kept moving forward, wading in up to my knees, up to mid-thigh, splashing my arms and torso.

When I spied a gently swelling wave coming toward me, I inhaled and dove headfirst under it.

I glided confidently through the water, the initial shock of the cold quickly dissipating as the ocean seemed to welcome me in a warm embrace. I swam out a bit before coming up again for air.

With my long, wet hair plastered against my skin and the taste of salt water on my lips, I peered out toward the horizon. Restlessness stirred like a wild animal in my chest. I was sorely tempted to keep swimming, to get as far away from the B and B as possible.

But I wasn’t a fool. Already submerged to my shoulders, I could just touch the balls of my feet to the bottom. Even without a lifeguard to blow their whistle at me in warning, I knew I was out far enough.

So, setting the next lifeguard station as my distance goal, I began to swim parallel to the shore.

I’d always been an avid swimmer, but these days, I did most of my swimming at high school team practices, where it was all about drills and beating my best time.

But swimming like this, in the open water—no coach, no clock—was different.

With the waves lapping around my body and the soothing sound of the surf in my ears, the burden of my birthright seemed to slip away, sinking down to the ocean floor.

Stroke by stroke, I felt lighter. Freer.

This was my happy place.

As my limbs fell into a repetitive rhythm, I let my mind wander.

I thought about a life beyond the Jersey Shore and the Sunny Side Bed-and-Breakfast. Beyond the beach and the boardwalk, beyond making beds and cleaning bathrooms. There was something else out there for me.

I knew there was. I could almost hear it calling.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a life as adventurous or magical as the ones in my romantasies.

But who knew? Maybe it was.

Reaching the next unoccupied lifeguard stand, I drew a deep breath, dipped my head underwater, and curled my legs up to my chest to do a flip turn—basically a somersault in the water—just like I’d done a thousand times before in the pool.

Once I was upside down, I was about to exhale, blowing bubbles out through my nostrils so the salt water wouldn’t go up my nose, when—

Ow!

Pain seized my left leg. A cramp.

The sudden, sharp ache interrupted the flow of my turn, and for a few moments, I was completely disoriented. Seawater shot up my nose, stinging my sinuses. All I could hear was the thump-thump of my heartbeat in my ears.

My butt hit bottom, and I struggled to right myself and find purchase on the shifting ocean floor. Once I got my footing, I was still in over my head, but at least I could tell which way was up. Trying to ignore the swimmer’s cramp in my leg, I pushed off.

Sputtering and coughing, I broke the surface. I shoved my hair out of my eyes and looked around to get my bearings. Somehow, I’d emerged much farther from the shore. And the water was a lot choppier.

The thumping of my heart picked up speed.

My eyes scanned the beach, searching for someone I could signal for help.

Gym bros? Metal-detector guy?

Nope. Just me and the seagulls. And since I wasn’t a french fry or a discarded pizza crust, there was zero chance of one of the scavenger birds swooping down and plucking me up.