Page 7 of Seashells and Daiquiris

“Yeah, used to come here a lot when I was younger.” I play with my fingers. “So you have a name?”

“Liam,” he replies, smiling as he slides me my drink.

"I want to pull his hair out of that bun with my teeth.”

Liam pauses, his hand hovering next to the glass. His golden-brown eyes snap not to my face.

But to my bag.

“Uh,” I scramble, having no idea what’s happening right now. “I uh, you know, your hair is silver,” I say, taking a long, deep drink. “Is it a magical thing? Or, um, well, you know… I don’t actually know.”

It doesn’t help. His expression has fully shifted⁠—

“Look at the size of his arms,” the shell adds, with the enthusiasm of a narrator who is absolutely loving this. “I’d climb him like a tree.”

Liam's jaw tightens.

He heard all that.

Uh oh.

He moves so he’s directly across from me. My mouth grips tighter on the straw and I take a deeper drink. Then he leans across the bar, close enough that I can see the gold flecks in his brown eyes.

“What,” he says, very quietly, “was that?”

“I know you heard me, sexy man. You can polish my shell whenever you want.”

He heard that too.

FREDDIE

I should clarify something.

I did not, at any point, consciously think the words I want to climb him like a tree. That thought did not pass through the curated, editor-approved portion of my brain that handles things like social behavior and basic survival instincts. That thought had to be from the shell, even if it sounds exactly like my voice.

But does that matter if the bartender still heard it?

He's leaning across the bar, close enough that the rest of the place starts to fade away, and his expression is doing something I can't parse. Is he humored at all, at the very least? “You good?” He asks, looking me over. “What was that just now?”

"What was what?" I try, which is the verbal equivalent of hiding behind a lamp. I almost laugh at how dumb that makes me sound, especially with how I basically squeaked that out of myself.

His lips perk slightly, like he’s about to laugh, too. Then his eyes drop to my purse again. “C’mon, Freddie. I heard that.”

"Uh, it could have been that lady that walked by⁠—“

“I wonder if his hands would be good at holding our hips in place.”

My jaw drops as heat floods my face.

Yeah, there’s no denying that. It’s so loud, so clearly my voice, and so obviously coming from my purse. And no one else seems to hear it. And used ‘we’! His eyes widen enough that my face catches actual fire.

"Okay, you know what, maybe there is something,” I correct, gripping my daiquiri like a life preserver. "Okay, so, funny story. I bought a seashell today. From a shop. A very cute shop. And it, um. It does a thing. I swear I’m not telling it what to say. I didn’t know it was this inappropriate.”

“It sounds like your voice.”

"It says my thoughts,” I say, then realize I’m admitting I thought those things. “Oh my god, I don’t mean I was looking at your hands like that. It says the ones I don't think? Or, I think it’s just making things up. Okay, no. Oh my god,” I say, drinking more and feeling the alcohol hit my bloodstream. “I think I’m just going to go ahead and jump off of a cliff now.”

“Oh, no, you’re not going anywhere.”