Page 35 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

On the mainland he is the Halloway Chair in Astronomy, the man with a telescope attached to his name, the face in the university press releases, the person senior scientists cross rooms to greet. He has tenure. Authority. Money. A career so established that one bad story would barely dent it.

And I am a second-year postdoc in his department. No, not just a second-year postdoc. A mermaid.

The difference between us has been invisible out here.

On the island, he’s Rafe. He digs clams and harvests mussels. At Halloway, he’s the Chair.

My stomach tightens.

Nobody would have to accuse him of anything. Nobody would have to say the ugly part aloud.

They would look at us and do the arithmetic.

How long has this been going on?

Did he help her get that opportunity?

Was the paper really that good?

Did she sleep her way into the room?

The questions would attach themselves to me far more easily than they ever could to him.

That’s the part Rafe would never understand. Not because he doesn’t care. Because nobody has ever looked at his success and searched for the man he slept with to get it.

The thought is ugly enough that I open my eyes.

He’s still there.

Warm beneath me. Half asleep. One hand moving lazily over my back like touching me has already become something his body does without instruction.

For a few seconds, the fear retreats.

This is real too. None of that disappears because he has a title.

The voice with the clipboard waits.

Patient.

It has one last question.

And when the island wears off?

My throat tightens.

That’s the question underneath all the others.

Not whether I want him. I do.

Not even whether he wants me now. I know he does.

It’s whether this version of us survives the real world.

Whether Rafe looks at me the same way when there are colleagues in the room. Whether I can stand beside him without wondering what everyone thinks I traded to get there. Whether something this good can remain ours once the rest of the world gets an opinion.

And beneath all those reasonable fears is one smaller, meaner one that doesn’t bother pretending to be professional.

Men like him have choices.