Free Fish Out of Water by MaryJanice Davidson Page B

never dating.”

Fred did her famous impersonation of a goldfish; her mouth popped open, then closed, then popped open again. Her thoughts, chaotic enough this week, were whirling.

Stop the roller coaster, I want to get off!

Why hadn’t he—why had she assumed—what did this mean for her relationship with Artur—why hadn’t she known this before Artur proposed—why had she so stupidly jumped to conclusions—why—why—why—?

“Are you all right?” Thomas asked, polishing off the last beer. “You look a little green. Even for you.”

“It’s just—it’s just that kind of week,” she managed, thinking, He must never, never know what I assumed, or what I hoped, or the effect his little announcement had on me. Never.

If he really loved her, he wouldn’t keep going off on months-long trips. If he really loved her, he would have stayed in touch while he was in
Scotland
, the
Black Sea
, wherever.

And that was fine . . . he had never promised her a damned thing.

But it was clear to her now what her answer to Artur must be.
    Twenty-three
    Later that night, Fred sat quietly on the couch, pretending to read about herself in Time . Around her, the bustle of an impromptu dinner party went on. And on.

Her mother and Sam had come back with groceries, and once again Thomas was manning the grill. Jonas had returned with a catalogue of tuxes, the one he’d chosen clearly marked. Black tuxedo, red cummerbund, yak-yak-yak. He’d also informed her she would be trying on bridesmaid dresses the next day at ten.

And the hell marches on . . .

Dr. Barb, Jonas’s fiancée and Barb’s (former?) boss at the New England Aquarium, was also at the house. She had arrived promptly at four, refused both a written and verbal resignation, then pretended she wasn’t dying for Fred to shift to her tail.

Fred had given in, diving into the deep end of the pool and shifting to tail form more or less without thought. There was a method to her madness; she’d tried to resign yet again while Dr. Barb was fairly dazzled, and it hadn’t worked. Yet again.

“Dr. Bimm, if I may—” Dr. Barb was always perfectly polite, even squatting beside a pool dressed in madras shorts and a white button-down, talking to a mermaid. “How do you breathe underwater? Do you have internal gills? And if so, do they—”

“No. I just pull oxygen from the water through my cells. I hold my breath, of course, but I still get plenty of air, so to speak.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“Well, I’ve never seen a post on a fellow Undersea Folk, so I couldn’t say for sure . . .”

“But, Dr. Bimm, you’re a marine biologist.”

“Really? I forgot all about that. So that’s what that diploma is for . . .”

“Surely you’re curious about your own . . . ah . . . unique physiology. Blood tests at the very least could . . .”

“I didn’t want to call attention to myself in college. Or grad school. Or anywhere,” she said shortly, and that was the end of that. At least, Dr. Barb was too polite to bug her further.

But Fred knew the real reason she, an alleged scientist, knew so little about her own body: she had been a freak all her life. She had no interest in running tests that confirmed her freakishness. She wanted to blend, not call attention to herself. (How annoying to find that hair dye never took; it washed out the moment she grew her tail . . . thus, cursed with green freak hair.) Ignorance, at least in this one case, was bliss.

Well. Cowardice, really. But dammit, she was fine with that. She’d had a loaded gun in her face, for Christ’s sake. She’d been shot , even. She was entitled to be a coward in the minor area of her extreme freakish appearance.

Now, Dr. Barb and Jonas were snuggling at the dining-room table and tossing the salad. Or snuggling the salad and tossing each other; Fred was careful not to look too closely. The scenes she’d walked in on star-ring the two of them . . .