Page 45 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

“I’ve worked too hard to be taken seriously.” She pulls the blanket tighter around herself. “I’m not going home as the woman who slept with the Chair and hoping everybody is generous enough to believe I earned my own career.”

“I told you. I’ll step down. I won’t supervise you. I’ll do whatever—”

I stop. Her eyes close for one second. When she opens them again, she looks straight through me.

“You can’t fix this for me.”

The crew are loading equipment back into the inflatable behind her. Fergus is talking to one of them. The whole beach is moving around us, and she stands completely still.

There it is. The thing I’ve been trying not to hear for three days.

Not caution. Not waiting. Not we’ll figure it out when we get home.

An ending.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

Then she turns and walks down the strobing beach to the inflatable, upright and small in the too-big blanket, and lets one of the crew help her aboard.

She does not look back at me. For the first time since I met her, I don’t follow.

A crewman calls for me and I walk down to the water. Neri is already sitting in the stern when I climb aboard, her face turned toward the open water. There’s an empty place beside her.

I sit across from her instead. The inflatable carries us out through the small surf toward the waiting boat. Neither of us speaks.

Behind us, the signal fire shrinks to a small orange point on the beach. Then the cottage disappears. Then the island itself is gone.

She never turns around.

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.