Page 51 of When We Believed in Mermaids

“That is very sexy,” he whispers, and bends into my neck, inhales, and sucks my skin there, once, then again, and again, and again. And somehow we are making love again, slowly, tumbling one more time into each other, into pleasure.

A little later, I’m wrapped in a sheet, and he’s wearing a pair of boxer briefs. We’re drinking coffee he made in a French press and eating flaky pastries he produced from somewhere, along with little green fruits I thought were limes at first. “Feijoa,” he said, and sliced one open to reveal a medieval cross of seeds within a soft fruit like a kiwi. It tastes powdery and sweet, a little like a pear.

“Delicious.”

He scoops the fruit out of the skin with a small spoon, nodding. With a finger, he strokes the discreet tattoo on my inner arm, mermaid scales withlittle sisterwritten along the outside edge. Josie has a matching one. “Will you tell me about your sister?”

I look out toward the harbor, where a sailboat is a crisp white triangle gliding toward the sea. “It’s hard to talk about her.”

He’s silent, giving me space to move forward or not. But I am soft and wide open from making love, my carapace dissolved for the moment in a tsunami of touch. I take a breath. “She was—is—two years older than me. I adored her when we were kids. My parents were not”—I sigh—“all that great at parenthood, so until Dylan arrived, Josie took care of me.”

He gives me a nod.

I sip my coffee, holding the cup between my hands. “She was a happy kid, honestly. Mischievous but never bad. She didn’t like school, but she didn’t get in trouble that I remember. And then...” I shrug.

“Then?”

“She changed. It’s hard to remember, exactly, but she started getting in trouble, stealing sips of drinks from customers, particularly the men, and then as we got a little older, she stole beers out of the bar and things like that.”

His fingers move on my ankle. “Your parents did nothing?”

“I don’t know if they even noticed.” My stomach burns a little, and I rub it, straightening my back. Amazing how much it still stresses me out. “They were fighting, very passionate fights, yelling, throwing things, all that, and they just didn’t pay any attention to what was going on with Josie.”

“And what about you? Who took care of you?”

“Dylan,” I say simply.

“The runaway. Like your brother?”

“Yes.”

“And he read to you.Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

I smile. “Yes. And many others.”

“He took care of you and your sister?”

“Yes. He worked as a sous chef in the restaurant, but he lived with us.” I suck my lip into my mouth, thinking about how to explain Dylan. “He had some problems, but honestly I don’t know how we would have gotten along without him. He was the one who got us up for school, the one who made sure we had shoes when others got too tight. He always looked at my homework right when I got home from school, even if he had a girlfriend there, which was pretty much all the time.” I am filled with the ghost of the feeling I’d had on those afternoons, sitting with Dylan and Josie, who did homework only because she was forced, and whatever girl was hanging around at the time. I grin. “He was very handsome. The most handsome boy in the whole entire world.”

Javier smiles. “Were you jealous?”

“Of course! He belonged to us!”

“How much older was he?”

“Six years older than Josie, eight older than me.” I incline my head, aware that he’s done it again—eased me into telling my story—and I give him a perplexed frown.

“What is it?”

“You seduce me into talking about myself.”

“Because I want to know everything,” he says, running a hand along my shin. “And if you tell me about your sister, perhaps I can help you find her.”

For a moment, I wonder if he could be too much. Too emotional, too intense. But I do feel a bit adrift in trying to solve this problem. Another mind on it might help. “Maybe you can.” I straighten. “Okay, let me get it all out.”

He props his head on his hand. “Please.”

“So, she was troubled, my sister. She refused to go to college and spent all her time partying and surfing. The last time I saw her, she stole pretty much everything I had, including my computer and all my clothes, and sold them.”