Page 15 of Sucker For You

He’d dived into the armada of moon jellies.

Bands of tentacles lining their domed bells skimmed his shoulders, back, and calves. Prickles of pain burst up in their wake. The jab of each microscopic barbed stinger was no worse than a tattooing needle, but thousands together? They wriggled through his rash guard and trunks to catch on his skin, burying themselves and injecting tiny but multiplied dots of venom into muscle and blood.

“Fuck!”

Cursing his lack of attention, Wes threw up his forearms to protect his face and kicked blindly through the surf, until his knees scraped sand and rock in the shallows.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

These stings were nothing to the neurotoxins of box jellyfish—toxins that could stop a grown man’s heart and kill within minutes—so he wasn’t in danger of nerve damage. Still, he staggered fast out of the water and ripped off his snorkel gear. Grabbing his sandals, Wes wove through the tide pools toward the bungalow, his skin already turning an angry red from a rapidly spreading rash—and then, suddenly, from embarrassment.

Isabel.

Pale hair blowing forward over her cheekbones to expose the nape of her neck to the sun, elbows propped on her knees, squatting in leather sandals that had clearly never been shat on by gulls, wearing a turtleneck sweater tucked into high-waisted knit trousers and a serious expression—she’d also begun her morning by wandering out to the flats between the shoreline and beach house.She crouched over a tidal inlet beside a bucket that he recognized as the kitchen’s compost bin. Her gaze was intent on the rock pool. But she wasn’t frowning. Her mouth was almost soft,awed, as her fingers trailed through the algal blades. . . before her lips steeled in determination. Her arm submerged and tugged at something beneath the surface. When she sat back on her heels with her prize (a clawed oyster, dull and dark), her smile was luminous in the light that sliced through the fog and the strands of hair tangled in her eyelashes. She rose, turned, and saw him.

The smile vanished.

Shit, again.

Getting stung by jellies was a rookie mistake. He should have maintained better situational awareness, should have seen the bloom drifting back his way, shouldn’t have gotten distracted—by her. Shameful, painful heat infused Wes’s ears and chest, doubly uncomfortable for the spike in blood flow beneath his rash.

Shit, shit—

Isabel drew a startled breath. Then: “What was it?” Dropping the bivalve into her bucket, she stepped across the rocks and their slick, treacherous kelp toward him. “The species that stung you?”

“Uh, moon jellies?” He stubbed his toe and cringed.

She nodded. “The stings might be painful, but they’re not dangerous.”

“Notmightbe.”

“You must’ve swum into a bloom.” She halted a few feet away, eyebrows pulled together and assessing his damage with unflattering scientific rigor; with another nod, she pivoted and moved away through the shells and grasses, gesturing for him to follow her to the bungalow.

He shambled across the road, up the porch steps, into the living room. He dropped his gear beside the couch, then stumbled through the bedroom to the bathroom.

“You know that urine’s not a treatment for jelly stings, right? That’s an urban le—”

“No, seawater.” Isabel raised her bucket. “Please take off your rash guard and stand in the shower.”

“We can’t make a habit of my getting shirtless like this all the—ah!”

Stripping off his rash guard, Wes hissed through a lopsided smile when the fabric dragged free of his skin. It revealed a labyrinth of red blisters. But those stings weren’t the only marks on his back. Among the freckles and tan lines, old scars twined with fresh or faded tattoos: burns and cuts, the stings ofMedusozoamuch more vicious than Monterey Bay’s moon jellies, an albatross inked across his left shoulder above a Helen Keller quote—Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing—and a half-finished labyrinth curling on his hip.

Again, Isabel tried not to stare.

Focus.

Gaze averted, she slipped off her sandals, cuffed her trousers, and stepped into the shower after him. She dumped a haphazard splash from her bucket over his head. Salt water sloshed across his blisters, dripping down through the tentacle marks reddening his tanned calves. He cursed into the bathroom’s silence. Another splash loosened the jellies’ barbs. They came free under a third dousing and rinsed down the drain.

Good, but still—focus.

Breathing through her mouth to avoid the scent of sunscreen baked into his skin, studying one manageable centimeter of his damage at a time, she abstracted Wes’s ink and scars and stinger marks to douse a fourth and fifth stream over his burns. Back and forth, back and forth. . . back and forth. . . centimeter by centimeter, just exhaling. . . minute after minute, until all the apparent tentacle remnants were gone, until her bucket was empty. Switching on the shower would have been easier than rationing her salty mixture. But filtered water could activate additional nematocysts that the jelly stingers had left behind. Under stress, like dumping fresh water on the brine-dwelling moon jellies, those specialized cells in even severed tentacles were capable of irritating a mammal’s wounds.

The removal of visible barbs was only the first step in recovery from a jellyfish encounter.

Leaving Wes huffing and swearing under his breath, she retrieved a national identity card from her luggage tucked under the bed. Then she rasped its plastic edge over his skin, scraping away the hair-like tentacle remains that still clung to him. Toes curled on the damp tile floor, she worked with conscientious attention past his inked albatross and Helen Keller quote (focus). . . down into the coils of his labyrinth. . . until her card and concentration bumped against the waistband of his trunks. There, she stalled.

“Uh.”