Page 55 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

"I do,” I say. “I’m splitting my time between coasts just for the privilege of being with her. I’m a man who knows his luck.”

Neri rolls her eyes at me, but she blushes anyway. I love that she still does that.

I stepped down as department Chair in the spring. What I kept was AETHER: the research, the collaborations, the telescope runs, the work I actually wanted to be doing. Neri took that research position at Scripps and her career has flourished ever since.

Our home is in La Jolla now.

These last six weeks in Saltford Bay are for me. We rented a cottage two streets up from the harbor while I helped get AETHER's new survey running. Neri worked from the cottage when she could and flew back to California twice when she couldn't. Earlier this year, it was the other way around. I spent more time on planes while she settled into Scripps and got her own work moving.

Sometimes we spend a few weeks apart. Sometimes one of us follows the other. Sometimes we eat dinner together every night for a month and start taking it for granted until one of us has to pack again.

It isn't always convenient, but it works.

And at the end of it is our house in La Jolla, where my stand mixer occupies more counter space than Neri thinks any appliance deserves, and her papers spread across every remaining flat surface in retaliation. Carl Sagan the Second stands beside the bookshelf, turtleneck and all, mail-ordered once it became clear the original was staying at the bottom of the Gulf of Maine with the first Belle. The balcony gives me enough sky to be happy, the Pacific is two streets away for her, and we have two offices because sharing one lasted nine days and nearly ended in bloodshed.

Home. I'm ready to go home.

Not my home. Ours. I still like the sound of that.

Fergus squints up at the sun, then at the tide, then at nothing at all, and produces the single least convincing performance in the history of maritime theater.

"Well," he announces. "I've a tremendous amount of captain business to see to."

He goes up the gangway at a speed I never witnessed from him on land. Both deckhands abandon the foredeck and follow without being told, which is its own miracle. And then the pier is just us and the gulls.

Neri watches all of it with her eyes narrowed to blue slits.

"That was strange," she says. "Even for Fergus."

"Was it? I didn't notice. Captains contain multitudes. You could say he has a lot on his plaice."

"That's a fish pun."

"It absolutely is not."

"That's the third pun in ten minutes, Rafe." She turns toward me fully. "You're nervous."

"Nothing's wrong."

"Rafe, I know you better than that. Spill it.”

"Nothing is wrong," I say, and that part comes out steady, because it has the advantage of being true. "Nothing is wrong at all."

I've had the ring since March. I kept waiting because I didn't want to ask her while everything still felt new. I wanted to know what happened after the reunion, after the first months together, after we had to start making actual decisions about jobs and travel and where we would live.

Now I know what our ordinary life looks like. Sometimes it means airports. Sometimes it means six weeks in a rented cottage because my work needs me in Maine. In October, it means Neri disappearing onto a research vessel for three weeks while I stay behind.

I love all of it because it's ours.

"Neri."

Something in my voice makes her go still.

"I had a speech," I tell her. "Three drafts. The second one had an extended metaphor about binary stars that, on reflection, nobody needs."

"Rafe, what—"

"Here's what survived." I take a breath. The harbor smells like diesel and salt and fresh paint. Her eyes are enormous. "We've spent the last year figuring out what our real life looks like. It's busy and inconvenient and sometimes I miss you so much I hate every airport in North America."