Page 75 of Sucker For You

He’s gone.

He was gone, and she was alone in the crowd on the rowdy wharf.

No, no, no—

But then: “Buttercup!”

Smiling, waving, he emerged into the sunlight farther back along the boardwalk, closer to the street. He returned to her through the noise and the brine, his strides checking for just a moment when a crabman hauling a catch crossed the thoroughfare—and she staggered forward into his arms. The warmth of his body and his own breath enveloped her; his exhale was a hard huff of impact from their collision, plus the wetthwackof the halimeda sack and the shrimp bag—“Ooof!” But she didn’t retreat, just clutched his shirt tighter, her nose buried against his neck.

Sun, salt, sweat.

Wes.

“Uh—hey. . .” Though winded, his arms circled protectively around her. “You all right?”

She breathed. She wouldn’t cry. “Y-yes.”

“Good.” The heel of one hand made circles between her quivering shoulders. Wes thanked the seafood vendor over her head in a slightly breathless voice, then guided them away. Herepeated in a murmur against her temple, “That. . . that’s good. But—no one’s photographing us. Are they?”

“No.” She didn’t look, however. She just continued to breathe.

“You don’t need to. . . I mean, no one’s watching. You’re safe. Right?”

. . . no.

No.

No, she wasn’t safe. Because it might be true that no immigration agents were monitoring her to judge the validity of her relationship with Wes, that no one was documenting her urgent, unthinking embrace—but after a minute of shelter and security had passed in his arms, then another and another, she still hadn’t withdrawn from him.

She wasn’tsafeat all.

No—

“I,um—sorry, I—” Stammering, abruptly unsteady with her pulse rising again to roll hot and rough and treacherous as sea breakers in her ears, she lurched back. Her hair caught in the wind to sting her cheeks and eyes. She couldn’t trust herself to glance up at Wes, to gauge his response to her retreat, to see whether he cared. “W-we’ve bought the feed and the plants. The—she—has probably flooded the bungalow. Or escaped down the shower drain. We. . . we need to go.”

Pushing through the fish stalls and candy shops, she didn’t wait for him, didn’t look back for his confusion or his questions. Or, worse, his shrug.

She couldn’t explain.

God, what was she doing?

What have I already done?

14

Isabel was silent during their drive back to the bungalow. She fed the octopus on their return, then wordlessly introduced her halimeda sprouts into the tank. When Wes broke the quiet with an ill-advised offer to buy dinner, plus a joke about the last time he’d gotten to “see food” that wasn’t seafood here in Monterey, so did she want Chinese takeout?—she declined.

“I have a headache.”

She vanished into the bedroom before he could offer crackers or a glass of water. He stared at the door for a long time, hearing nothing except the aquarium burbling. No faucet running in the bathroom. She must’ve swallowed her medication dry. Redirecting his impulse to bother her with apologies for his bad joke—and with questions—he eventually dragged himself away to the tank for a distraction. But the octopus was quiet, too. Her white-speckled arms fiddled idly with her shrimp, a binder clip, and a lacy frill on her new macroalgae. He slipped a hand under the mesh lid and she ignored him, even shrinking deeper into her coral, her suckers anchored on rock.

“Damn,” he said, but softly.

*

Thursday morning was almost as noiseless as Wednesday night. Isabel emerged from the bedroom right before eight o’clock inher flannel, jeans, and baseball cap, just as he was preparing to finally knock on her door, to ask for five minutes in the bathroom and if she was ready to leave for MORI—or if she needed to stay home. She caught him with his knuckles raised at the threshold.

“Sorr—uh. Feeling better?”