Page 34 of Oceansong
Once her feet met the sand, she shivered. Kaden surfaced again, facing her, his breathing shallow, face flushed, and he clutched the sandy ground as if it were a life preserver.
Angie quirked one eyebrow. “You good?”
“I will live,” Kaden replied with an audible inhale. “If you would like, I’d meet you again. And perhaps devise a plan. The usual spot? Three tidesdays from today?” His brilliant eyes shone even brighter at his request.
“Sure, okay.”
Kaden gave her a nod before making an abrupt turn and disappearing under the sea.
Angie made her way back to the docks, walking as fast as her feet were willing to move. The cold of the sea stung at her when a breeze swept by. Goosebumps covered her arms and legs. She quickened her pace while clearing her raspy throat. Once she arrived, she headed straight to the locker rooms and changed into spare clothes before any dock workers spotted her. She would see Kaden again in three days and anticipation simmered, a small burst of heat emanating beneath her skin. Was her heart, once hardened like a stone in winter at the thought of seeing a mer, slowly thawing?
She frowned, perishing the doltish notion. Whatever warmth fluttered in her stomach was only her body recovering from shock and regaining her senses after a near-drowning.
That had to be it.
Sixteen
Angie felt like Bàba’s ToyotaTundra ran over her. Twice.
The day after she left Kaden, her throat itched. It took one more day for it to turn into a sore throat and runny nose. Chest congestion and repeated sneezing arrived soon after.
Her blackout curtains were pulled shut, not allowing a sliver of sunlight through. She would do anything to stay in her bed the rest of the day.
Working overtime, swallowing seawater, and freezing her ass off in forty-degree weather was a very, very bad combination.
Just as Angie was drifting back into deep sleep, extra weight appeared on her bed coupled with an effortful chitter. Twitching whiskers tickled her nose, followed by a furry paw on her cheek.
“Lulu, not now.” Lulu’s large eyes searched her expression while sniffing her face, pink nose twitching, tapping her forehead like Angie was a small rodent she was coaxing closer.
The cat’s mouth opened, and she mewed into Angie’s face, cat breath prominent. She gently nudged Lulu toward the edge of the bed. With a meow of protest, Lulu jumped off and returned to her window perch, throwing Angie one last, haughty, “I-won’t-forget-this” look over her shoulder.
“Beibei!” Bàba’s booming voice drifted up the stairs into her room. “Breakfast is ready! If you’re not going to work for the second day in a row, the least you can do is eat something!”
Angie groaned into her pillow.
“Coming.” Leave it to her father to make her feel guilty for not going into work or eating his meals while she was sick. Bàba, the man who would only put his life on hold if he were on his deathbed.
Angie pulled herself out of bed and wrapped a robe around herself. She slid into her soft, velvety slippers, shuffling down the stairs and snifflingevery other step.
If she could muster up an appetite for anything, that would be great.
Bàba stared at her, holding a mug of steaming tea. “Feeling better?”
“Slightly. Thanks, Bàba,” Angie grumbled, moving to the kettle and turning on the switch to boil water. She reached overhead for a cylindrical container of dried chrysanthemum flowers, wincing at the stretch, and filled her tea steeper with them. “Probably stress. And falling into the freezing cold ocean.” The kettle gave off apop!Signaling the water inside had come to a rolling boil. She filled her cup, inhaling the soft scent with honey undertones.
“You still haven’t told me what exactly happened.”
Angie swallowed a proverbial rock. Carrying her tea to the table, she stirred in a tablespoon of raw honey from their local apiary. “I’ll tell you the whole story once I feel better.”
“I’m holding you to that.” Bàba sat and pushed a plate of deer sausages and toast with watermelon-berry and crowberry jam toward her, half the portion that they normally ate. It would sate her in her ill condition. Her belly protested as soon as she laid eyes on the meal, mouthwatering steam still drifting from it. She undertook the Herculean task of forcing herself to reach for her fork.
Having enough food on the table now was one of those times she appreciated her father’s near-neuroticism about keeping the fridge, freezers, and pantries overstuffed to the point where they barely closed. He grew up in a poor family in rural China, where they didn’t know when or where their next meal would come from. When he immigrated to the States with his family at eighteen, and joined the Navy at nineteen, he had vowed to make something of himself. He had vowed that his family would never be without food or have to suffer the way he did as a child.
She pulled out a chair, a subtle scritch following it. Bàba narrowed his gaze at her.
Angie sat, lifting the chair with her in it and walking it under the table before setting it back down.
Bàba returned to his breakfast. He was protective of the hardwood floors he’d installed himself and made it clear that whoever damaged the floors would be responsible for coughing up the cash, or time, to fix them.
