Page 6 of Beyond the Stroke

“Supposedly.” Tenneil eyes me again.

If she thinks I’m an imposter, she’d be right. I’d taken the gig from Darcy, a fellow waitress at the café who knows I’m in need of extra cash.

“Rich Lancaster.” He extends his hand to shake mine. “I like what you’ve got going on.” He points to the conch shell necklace around my neck that’s set off by the pound of body shimmer coating my chest and arms.

“Ugh.” Tenneil rolls her eyes. “Stop flirting with the mermaid.”

He clears his throat and adjusts his belt. “I’m not.”

“You are, too. And you’re doing it right in front of me,” she whines.

I suck in a breath. They remind me of my parents, and I’d rather this mermaid tail sink me straight to the bottom of the ocean than listen to them argue. The irony that Scarlett mentioned I should start dating again, while Rich and Tenneil here are the poster couple for anti-marriage.

“Why don’t you have Jacinda refresh your drink?” Rich asks.

“She’s with the girls. They’re playing some game in the pool.” She waves toward the beach club behind the iron gate just off the boardwalk.

“Then get your own drink?” he proposes.

Tenneil fumes in outrage at the suggestion but ultimately decides it’s a better option than staying here on the beach withus. We watch her walk angrily down the boardwalk in her four-inch heels before she disappears behind the gate.

With Tenneil gone, Rich turns back to me, giving me a half-hearted smile.

“All right, let me show you where I need you.”

Under Rich’s direction, I follow him to the end of the boardwalk and down the sandy beach until we reach the rocky bank of one of Coral Cove’s famous inlets.

At the edge of the water, he holds his hands up, his thumbs pointing toward each other to frame the scene like he’s a director showing me his vision. And Rich has a vision.

“You’ll be sitting on that rock, then when I give the signal, you swim toward the beach and wave to the girls.”

His instructions send an upsurge of uncertainty through me matching that of the water crashing against the rocks around us.

I love the ocean. I love to spend mornings on the beach with Edgar and the other dogs I walk. I love to paint it. It’s vast and beautiful and complex and never looks the same. The lighting, the waves, the people on the beach. It changes on any given day. Water has always been fascinating to me.

But I hadn’t planned for vigorous activity today.

My eyes fall to the inside of my backpack where my inhaler is.

The ocean probably isn’t the best place to test out the aerobic capacity needed for paddling around in a mermaid tail. In my defense, when I took this gig, I thought I’d sit on the beach and take pictures with the birthday girl and her friends before pulling an Ariel and trading out my tail for human legs.

“What about the pool at the beach club?” I motion back toward the Beach & Racquet Club’s white gates where Tenneil disappeared. “Wouldn’t it be easier for the girls to see me?”

“Mermaids don’t swim in pools; they swim in the ocean. It’s more realistic this way.”

To Rich’s point, mermaids aren’t real, so I should be able to take liberties with a species that doesn’t exist, but he wants an authentic ocean mermaid experience and with his next words, he hammers that point home.

“It’s what I’m paying you for.” His thick brows arch in question.You want to get paid, don’t you?

I nod, but my fingers tighten around the strap of my backpack. The water laps at the shore behind me, cold and endless. I used to dream of being a mermaid when I was a kid. Now, the idea of dragging this tail into the ocean just feels like drowning in someone else’s fantasy.

I have to make a choice. Either I find a way to get through the next hour as a visually-impaired, asthmatic mermaid whose swimming skills are questionable and collect the much-needed money, or I’m out the fifty bucks for this costume rental.

And I’m wearing body glitter for god’s sake. At this point, there’s no other option but to get my ass out to that rock and muster up some mermaid magic.

“Right. Okay.” I nod with false confidence, removing my glasses and carefully setting them inside their case in my backpack.

Rich waves me toward the water, looking on as I use the fin of the mermaid tail as a flotation device and start kicking my way out to the rock. As I make my way, I’m certain the choppy water lapping at my face is going to wash off the boatload of glitter. If sharks could sniff out body glitter like they could blood, I’d be in serious trouble. The only thing I have going for me is the buoyancy from the salt water. Its assistance in flotation is a tradeoff for the sting it’s causing my eyes.

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