Page 39 of Sucker For You

“Maybe not, but our interviewer could.”

Tucked into her trouser pocket, Chase’s circlet jabbed at her thigh. Her skin itched where its metal had rubbed an irritated indentation under the knuckle of her fourth finger. “Yes, but something small.”

“So an eight-armed sucker like the one on this clock can’t sneak it off you, along with your pencil?” Wes pointed at the bungalow’s novelty timepiece. Its cephalopod arms were now angled toLime & Coconut: seven o’clock.

Saturday was almost gone.

“Yes.”

“Deal.”

“Not tonight, though. It’s. . . late.”

His gaze flickered so quickly from her fists under her sleeves, to the western sunlight still trickling into the bungalow, that maybe she’d imagined him looking at her at all. It wasn’t late. But he just squatted down to watch the oyster in its tank and said, “Sure. Sleep tight. Don’t let the morays bite.”

No eels slithered up from the shower drain while Isabel lathered soap over her goosebumps and rinsed her hair in cold water. There were also none in the bed, with its dreamcatchers and upholstered purple-and-orange patchwork headboard. But she didn’t sleep. The bedroom was stuffy, scented heavily with sage and lavender. Opening its windows to the bungalow’s rear garden admitted a breeze, though the drone of mosquitoes, too.She shut them again. Restless, she turned over and over through the sunset and the gathering dark until she’d twisted her slip into knots, until the mattress began to squeak under her body. She froze and flattened her palms on it. She squeezed her eyes closed, guiltily waiting.

Listening. . .

Outside in the living room, the couch cushions sighed.

Her fingers fisted in the sheets. Her pulse rolled in her ears.

Had she disturbed Wes while he watched the oyster, or tuned into his Attenborough audiobook, or reviewed his daily photo rolls? She wondered, listening harder. But after a minute a muffled snore whispered under the door. The cushions groaned a second time, then stilled. Another snore followed.

Good, she breathed.

She’d sleep now. She had to. She began to count backward through the 1,600 suckers of a giant Pacific octopus.

One thousand, five hundred and fifteen.

One thousand and two.

She counted for an hour.

Six hundred and eighty-seven.

For two hours.

The moon was high, pale and mocking, sailing across the ceiling.

She kept counting, frowning.

Three hundred and fifty. . .

Still murmuring sucker numbers, she blinked awake sometime later to her sheets kicked off onto the floor and a spear of daylight prodding her eyelids.Morning.Her mouth was sandy and her neck was stiff. Almost as if she’d been the one sleeping on the couch. No squeaks or rustles came from those cushions in the living room. But water sang in the house’s pipes.

Not in the bathroom.

Her door was still locked.

Wes was up, in the kitchen, and from the clatter of frying pans and spatulas when she poked her nose out into the common space, he was cooking breakfast.

She was late.

He would have wanted a shower, and the toilet.

Wincing at the taste of her tongue and his noisy humming—no one was that loud or cheerful unless they’d been up for at least an hour, likely after several cups of coffee or a swim—she washed her face, brushed her teeth and her hair, and rubbed balm over the salt-cracked fissures in her lips. She wiped a small blob of toothpaste from the sink, then collected all evidence of her morning routine and stashed it away under the bed. She retrieved the last of the clean clothes from her overnight bag: a boat-neck blouse with long sleeves and French seams, a pleated midi skirt, ballet flats. When she’d packed before Friday’s wedding shower and her planned city weekend, she’d anticipated days at whiskey bars in San Francisco. Not. . . this.