beautiful.” I can’t call her hot. She is, but she’s more than that. She’s this burst of lightning and the calm right after it all in one. She’s just not for me.
“Can’t blame a mermaid for trying.”
My laughter is nervous. “You’re the one who said I never had a chance with you.”
“That’s before I really knew you.” She brushes her hair away from her face. “When I heard they were presenting you at court, I thought you’d be a stupid skin sack.”
“Why do you even call humans that? Merpeople have skin too.”
“And you make me laugh. I saw how insanely brave and stupid you can be for your friends. Elias never cared for me that way. It made me long for that. Maybe I just liked the way you held that scepter.”
Gwen turns over her shoulder with that mischievous smile. She closes the space between us and brushes away the scales at my hips to reveal the skin beneath. “Is her hold over you so strong?”
And I don’t hesitate, holding her by her shoulders at a distance. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”
Layla. The name hangs between us like a pendulum ready to snap.
“You can do better than me.” I rummage for clothes in my backpack. They’re all wet, but it’s better than walking home in glittery underwear.
“I’m not used to having an actual choice in this. Before, Elias was it.”
I hug her. Her hands hang at her sides at first. I can feel her breath hitch.
“That’s the great thing about now,” I tell her. “Now, you get a real choice.”
My feet feel foreign.
They’re numb. Awkward. Possessed.
They’re leading me past my own street.
No, I can’t go home yet. I can’t stand in my kitchen and cross off the end of another day.
I pick up the pay phone and dial her number. On the second ring, she picks up.
“Did I wake you?” I can hear her rub her eyes and kick the covers off.
“Tristan?”
“Only if you want it to be.”
“Shut up. Where are you?”
“Down the block at the bodega.”
“My dad is this far away from putting remote control bars on all the doors and windows because of you.”
“That’s never stopped you before,” I taunt.
“Is everything okay?”
I inhale loudly. Nothing comes out. “I’ll be on your porch.” I hang up and turn the corner.
•••
Her mom’s garden is overgrowing, leaves wild and swaying in the cool night. I used to pluck a flower and give it to Mrs. Santos. She never complained that I took it from her own garden. “You look like crap,” Layla says.
“Exactly what I wanted to hear after swimming in torpedo-fast underwater currents for over ten hours.”
She comes around from the back entrance. She’s wearing her black Guardian Knight T-shirt and denim shorts. I wonder if she sleeps in her underwear. As if she knows what I’m thinking, she smacks me on the back of the head. “I’m familiar with that grin on your face.”
She sits beside me, and I get a hot flash. Damn, I thought these things only happened to women. She burrows herself into my shoulder and says, “Tell me.”
I run my hand along the top of her hair. Why is it that girls have this effect? Things like long hair and long eyelashes and the smell of flowers just throw me. I squeeze the bridge of my nose.
“Tristan, you’re shaking.”
She rubs the cold away from my arms. The iridescent sheen of where my scales were rubs off on her palms. For a moment, she smiles down at her hands, then at my face. Then dusts it away and says, “Gross.”
It calms me, and I tell her about Violet (she laughs) and Kai (she laughs some more). Then the sea dragon. (No, I didn’t hurt it, thanks.) Kai’s father. Eternity burning.
“The oracle was a centaur?”
I nod. “I was expecting a mermaid or something with tentacles.”
“Actually that makes sense, because Poseidon did create a horse as a gift to Artemis.”
I take her head in my hands and kiss it. “Smart chicks are so hot.”
She bats me away. “I just read, you dumb jock.”
We laugh together and it’s the best I’ve felt all week. Except for yesterday in the locker room, but this is an inside kind of good. I remember Kai singing underwater for her father, the way it made me long for something more. That’s why I couldn’t kiss Gwen. That’s why I can’t kiss anyone but Layla.
“That’s horrible about Kai’s dad.”
“They’re weird about death. It’s like they take a moment to see it