Page 3 of Seashells and Daiquiris

Yes. This is what I needed.

I walk without direction before I see it.

Tucked between a bait shop and a magical gemstone shop, there's a storefront I almost miss entirely. It's narrow and crooked, with a window display that looks less like merchandising and more like someone's eccentric grandmother exploded. Driftwood sculptures, jars of sea glass, and a taxidermied pufferfish wearing a tiny hat.

The sign above the door is hand-painted, the letters slightly uneven. The Cove Curiosities—Everything Washes Up Eventually.

I've been dreaming about a shell, haven’t I? Dove says sometimes our dreams call to us for a reason. So alright, I’ll give this weird, cluttered, pufferfish-hat-having little shop a chance. Maybe they have something like what I see in my dreams…

I push open the door, the metal handle slightly cold despite the warm summer. The little bells chimes happily, and the shop inside is so beautiful and cozy that I can’t help but smile as I lift my sunglasses up over my head.

Every surface is covered with something like driftwood art, sea glass jewelry, old nautical maps with coffee-stained edges, jars of sand with little handwritten labels like Storm Beach, 1987 and Mermaid's Teeth, full moon and, alarmingly, Do Not Open. There are wind chimes made of shells and fishing wire, one by an open window that moves so gently.

“Well, look at you! You look ready for the beach today.”

The voice comes from behind a counter I didn't notice, mostly because it's buried under a small mountain of abalone shells and what appears to be a vintage cash register that predates electricity. The woman behind it is somewhere between sixty and immortal, dark brown skin, silver-streaked locs piled on top of her head, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, and the kind of expression that says she already knows why you're here and finds it mildly amusing.

“Hello,” I say, stepping fully inside. “Yeah, it’s really nice out, like usual. I was actually distracted by the pufferfish in the hat."

“Oh, him? That's Gerald. He's been wearing that hat since 1972."

A grin spreads on my face. “Is he magical?"

"What do you think?… I'm Odessa, by the way,” she says, glancing back down to whatever she's writing in a leather-bound ledger. "You're Dove's cousin, correct?”

“Is that a magic of yours?” I ask, looking at all the small trinkets, trying to make sure my purse doesn’t hit or snag anything. “That you knew who I was, I mean?”

“Oh, something like that.” She glances back up again, studying me over those glasses. "You've got her cheekbones but none of her aura. No offense."

I smirk. “Hey, it’s none taken. I'm aggressively non-magical."

Odessa chuckles. “Mmm." She goes back to her ledger. "Browse. Touch whatever you want. If it bites you, that's between you and it."

I take her at her word and wander deeper into the shop, running my fingers along shelves crammed with objects that vibrate faintly when I get close. "I always wished I wasn't human,” I say, slightly to myself, and slightly to her. “That I belonged to some kind of community like this. Where you just are what you are and that's enough."

Honestly, I wonder how much easier it would be to forget Tommy if I had a place like this to permanently live in.

Odessa looks up at that. Really looks, enough to make me glance her way for a moment. Her expression does something complicated, softening at the edges while her eyes sharpen. "Dove belongs here," she says carefully. "But belonging isn't just blood, sweetheart. Sometimes you belong to whoever you wash up to.”

“Yeah, I’m definitely adrift right now… Maybe if you could help me drift up to a mansion I somehow inherited, that would be great,” I mumble, not spotting the shell I’m looking for, as if I’d somehow actually find it⁠—

My eyes widen.

At the very back of the shop, on a shelf by itself, sitting on a small square of dark velvet like it's been waiting: a very small conch shell. Iridescent. Slightly curved at the bottom, like a hook that got frozen in time. Exactly like the one in my dreams.

I stare at it without moving, blinking rapidly as I legitimately cannot believe it’s here. “Have you ever, um, dreamt of something, and it’s actually real?” I ask.

“Oh, all the time. Well, not frequently, but it’s common.”

“What does it mean?”

“That’s only something you can answer, little dove.”

As I near it, I get this overwhelming sense of purpose. Like maybe all the bullshit with Tommy was for a reason, that the universe isn’t actually trying to take a massive shit on me, but instead was just guiding me somewhere.

Drifting with a purpose.

When I finally get brazen enough to touch it, my hand settles over the smooth shell with a clasp.