Page 16 of A Merman's Tail
Ethan
Iglared at Joey and shoved him again for good measure. “That’s a fucking shark, dipshit.”
“How do you know?” Joey laughed and ran a hand through his hair, leaning back against the edge of the boat. If I was in a worse mood, I might have thought about pushing him overboard and driving away.
“How do I know?” I shook my head and tapped the screen of the sonar. “Because that’s a fucking shark. I’ve been out here long enough to know what they look like. Have you? You wouldn’t think so, with the way you thought that could have been anything but.”
Joey laughed harder and the temptation to push him grew stronger. I cursed him in my head and glanced toward the boy. He sat where I’d left him with his clothes intact, which was a pity because I liked looking at his pale ass.
“What’s happening there?” Joey asked, stepping closer and nudging me in the arm. “Since when do you like dudes?”
I shrugged and smiled when Boy looked at me with those big, innocent eyes of his. Fucking him had felt amazing, better than any chick I’d been with. “You said it yourself. He’s pretty.”
“Pretty with a cock,” Joey said, smirking. He crossed his arms. “And you won’t share him.”
“Since when haveyoubeen into dudes?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Always.”
“What?” I opened my mouth in surprise and he gave me a one shoulder shrug.
“You never asked, I never told.”
Fuck. That was a new development. “Well, you can’t have Boy. He’s mine.”
I turned to look at the sonar again and sighed. It felt like every time we were close, it ended up being bust. Sometimes I thought about giving up and moving somewhere people didn’t know me as insane like my father, but I’d always pushed the thoughts aside. Now they were in my head again, and I hated how I’d gotten nowhere with this venture. I often wondered what had gotten my father so obsessed with it. Maybe I was suffering the same fate as him, disconnected from the world and lonely. At least he had a son. I didn’t even have that.
“You all right?” Joey touched my shoulder and squeezed.
“Yeah.”
The sound of footsteps on the metal had me glancing at the stairs that led up onto the navigation floor. Boy appeared, face flushed pink and a whimsical smile on his face. He raised his palm toward us when he got up the ladder and waved his hands in a way I didn’t understand. He sighed and then gestured for us to follow him back down.
I frowned at Joey, but we trailed after him, descending the stairs and over toward the bench seat that he’d been sitting on moments before. He flapped his hands more, and finally, he let out a quiet sigh. He shifted away from us and toward the container we kept fishing nets in. Opening it, he dragged one out, and while my instincts were to stop him from whatever he was doing, I watched him work.
He dropped it on the floor of the boat before he came to us and pushed at our chests, guiding us to the other side.
“What’s happening?” Joey asked, confusion crumpling his face.
“No idea. Just do what he says.” I didn’t know why Itrustedhim, but my gut told me to follow his orders, even if they seemed ridiculous.
When he had us on the opposite side of the boat, he raised his hands as if telling us to stay there, before he grabbed the net off the floor again. He leaned over his side and tapped his hand on the fiberglass. Even though the whole thing was ludicrous, I couldn’t look away from his bubbly ass and the way he presented it to me, almost begging me to fuck him again. But Boy wasn’t paying attention to us. It was almost as if he was trying to catch something’s attention in the water.
“Boy—”
He waved his hand at me, and I pursed my lips together.
Holding the net tightly in his hands, he pressed his knee into the bench seat and leaned over the edge. The sounds of clicking and yipping caught my attention, but I didn’t know where it was coming from. Boy cocked his head and then threw the net overboard, the rope we used to drag it back in wrapped tightly around his hand. There was more yipping and screeches, louder than before, and Boy sent us a desperate look as he struggled with the rope.
Joey and I moved on instinct, rushing forward to Boy’s side. When we reached him, I noticed what had been making the noises.
A goddamn merman was caught in the net Boy had thrown overboard. In the flesh. Real.
Fucking hell.
Joey gasped, and we both grabbed onto the rope, tugging the heavy as hell merman up as he thrashed around like a fish on a line. The tail—gray-scaled—smacked from side to side, and it hissed at us, or more specifically at Boy. Together, we tugged him up and over into the boat.
Thethingyipped louder, kicking its tail at Boy, and it would have hit him, too, if I hadn’t yanked him out of the way. Boy fell against my chest, panting, and together we stared at our prize.
