Free An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant by LeAnn Neal Reilly

handful, like peanuts or popcorn, into
her mouth.
    Could he
tell her that he didn’t eat fish? But he’d eaten beef last night. In for a
penny, in for a pound. Besides, she’d clearly never had peanut butter before
and she hadn’t hesitated. Maybe he could just spit his out, too? John
swallowed and reached for one of the larvae, grasping its slippery body. It
squirted from his grip and dropped in the sand.
    Tamarind
laughed, leaned over, and dropped several into his mouth, as though he were a
seal. Or baby bird. He didn’t chew. He swallowed. It was like swallowing salty
noodles. Not so bad after all, but he’d pass on doing it again.
    “Thanks.”
His voice came out as a croak.
    She
finished eating the tiny fish from her palm, sucking the last three between her
lips. John shrugged; he’d watched enough cable television to know that people
of different cultures ate all kinds of things. Fish seemed rather benign in
comparison to insects. Or snakes.
    She
lifted her face to the sky and smiled, an unself-consciously happy upturn that
rendered her eyes half moons of pleasure. Particles of food still outlined the
corners of her mouth and there was a smear of peanut butter in her hair, but
she was oblivious to them. Instead, she started humming a tune. John had never
heard anything like it before. The vibrations thrummed through her torso as if
her ribcage were a tuning fork. He heard variations in pitch emanating from her
throat, serving as a nice counterpoint to the bass of her body. She clicked her
tongue against her teeth at the same time. John sank his feet into the warm
sand of the beach and closed his eyes to listen. His spirit soared into the
cerulean above them. When she stopped, he dropped back into himself.
    “Why’d
you stop?” He looked at her. Whatever she’d done, she’d gifted him with the
sweet blankness that he’d experienced on his bike ride.
    “Do you
ever fly up with the birds?” she asked. In the space of a heartbeat, she went
on, “Do you ever go underwater, I mean, way underwater or do you only use one
of those tubes and stay near the surface?”
    “I’m
trying to learn to dive, but—”
    “Where’d
you come from? Is it far from here?”
    “I’m
from Pittsburgh, which takes two short flights to get here. I—”
    She
didn’t wait for more but leaped up. “It was very pleasant meeting you, John.
Thank you for the shirt. I hope to see you again.”
    She laid
a cool, moist hand onto his cheek and looked at him unsmilingly. After a
moment, the spectacular smile split her face again and lit her eyes, and then
she backed away from him without looking at the ocean.
    “Wait!”
    But she
only waved and turned to run into the shallow water. When the water reached her
thighs, she flung herself into the next wave. John saw a tangle of arms and
hair as she surged away from him.
    “Wait,”
he repeated to himself. He didn’t know what else to say.
    When she
looked back at him, her laughter danced like sunlight on waves. And then she
disappeared around the point toward the canal.
    ***
    That
evening, John ventured south over the drawbridge to the Dockside, as much to
avoid running into Raimunda as for a change of culinary pace. Isla Encantada
was small and intimate, and he’d be a sitting duck if she showed up. He’d had
all day to consider what he’d done last night and he still didn’t know how it
had happened. He wasn’t a saint by any means, but he knew where his boundaries
were. At least, he thought that he’d known. Raimunda had waltzed right over
them as if they didn’t exist. As if she had a secret code that bypassed his
system programming. The question was: would Zoë believe him? Would she forgive
him? They lived together; it mattered a great deal what he did with another
woman, to himself as much as to Zoë. Stefan, if he knew, would grin and offer
to buy him a beer.
    John
asked the waitress to seat him as far from the entrance as possible and she led
him to a small table next to