Page 59 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
“Because I do it too much when I’m nervous or excited or whatever. Jackson calls me ‘motor mouth’ sometimes.”
“Your b-boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Does he not like your talking?”
“Oh no, he does. He gets a kick out of it, mostly. But sometimes I think he wishes he could get some words in.”
Another warm breath fanned over my toes. “I don’t mind you talking,” Alistair said. “I remember…words when you speak. Words that have slipped. Some that slipped so long ago, I don’t remember forgetting them.”
Pain kicked my gut.Emotionalpain. The sort of distress someone got when they found an old photo album and started flipping through the pages, seeing the faces of all the loved ones they’d lost.
You poor thing.
I stepped forward. He watched me, his eyes going a bit crossed as they tried to follow my movement.
“May I?” I stretched my arm forward, fingers curling toward the tip of his snout.
His nostrils fluttered as he nudged his head forward, gently meeting my hand.
“You’re sad, aren’t you?” I rubbed at the hard, spiked scales atop his snoot.
He blinked again.
“I hear it sometimes, with the way you say certain things. You sound sad.”
I feel your sadness too, but I usually don’t tell people that. They think it’s weird.
“Do I?” He billowed, dancing thin tendrils of his hot breath over the sleeves of my blouse.
“Not always. Or even most of the time. But sometimes, yeah, you do.” I ran my hand up and down the gap between hisnostrils, marveling at his face’s textures, which were hard like granite in some areas, where the scales jutted into spikes, but squishy and pliable in others.
Alistair whuffled.
The knot of distress he left in my gut loosened.
“I don’t mean to pry,” I said. “Believe me. I know if I’ve got something gnawing at me, I don’t always like strangers poking around. But sometimes it helps to talk about it, even if it hurts at first. So if you ever want to slough off some of your pain onto someone else, I’ll listen.”
The gills along his neck ruffled as he bobbed ever so slightly up and down in time with the sea, but his eyes remained stationary, fixed on me.
“I think…” he started and then paused for a long beat.
I said nothing, intent on giving him time. But when I stopped stroking his nose, he pushed his snout forward, seeking the contact. So I kept going, running my hand up and down along the ridges of his face.
“I think,” he started again, and paused, but only for a moment this time. “I think I’d like to wait until I…can find the words. Too many have slipped.”
“Of course.” I rubbed his muzzle. “We can keep it light tonight. Maybe you can tell me how you heard about Cinderella. And thenIcan tell you about the retelling I wrote when I was in high school.”
“R-r-retelling?”
“Yeah. Like, I took the story of Cinderella but put my own spin on it. And it wasterrible.”
“You wrote it?”
“Uh-huh. I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid. Still do, if I’m being honest. I’ve always had a big imagination—which isn’t always great when you start imagining bad things.”Like you whipping that snakelike head around and ripping me off theserocks, dragging me to your underwater realm, and keeping me as your sex slave.
I shook that nasty thought off and said, “But I haven’t actually written anything since college. I just haven’t had the time.”
