My Online Alien Merfolk is Real novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Pool Again

I switched on every light in the boathouse.

There was the work lamp over the bench, and the bare bulb above the Marigold, and the heat lamp I hadn't unplugged since Tuesday.

They threw a hard yellow glare across the rafters and the black water of the pool.

Velun stood in the shallows with his arms at his sides and blinked.

"This is a great deal of light," he said.

"Yes."

"You have kept it dim for two years."

"I know. I don't want to hide from you anymore."

I pulled my sweater over my head.

I dropped it on the bench and stood there in the glare.

I wore a plain cotton bra, and I had my freckles and my soft stomach and a braid half undone.

I made myself look at him while he looked at me.

He took a long breath, and his gill slits fluttered wide.

"You are the loveliest thing I have seen," he said. "I have seen the Deep."

"Don't be corny."

"I am entirely sincere. It is a danger to me."

"A thirty-one-year-old merman and a twenty-seven-year-old transcriptionist," I said. "It's the worst dating profile of all time."

"I would swipe on it."

I laughed, and he came up out of the water to meet me.

I wanted to say it before he reached me.

"I'm still afraid of the ocean," I said. "I went to the bottom of it for you, and I'm still afraid."

"I am still afraid of land," he said. "I walked across a harbor for you, and I am afraid."

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