My Online Alien Merfolk is Real novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Photo

Sorcha confesses she used her sister's pictures; Velun says he knew in week two and quotes her own words back. Brent's truck turns into the drive at dawn.

I wanted to throw myself into the inlet and let the tide take me out.

"I can explain," I said.

"I'd like that," Velun said. "But your lips are going blue."

"They are not."

"I can see your blood moving under the skin. It's slowing down."

"That's a horrifying thing to say to a person."

"I'm sorry. I'm new at this."

He slid one arm along the boards and nodded toward the end of the dock.

"There is a boathouse behind your house, with water inside it. I've sat in that pool at night when you were typing."

I stared at him.

"You've been in my father's boathouse?"

"The pool under it is open to the inlet. It is the only deep, quiet water for a mile."

"For two years."

"Some nights," he said carefully. "When the signal was strong."

I should have been terrified.

Instead, I was a woman in rain boots with no socks.

The only person who had ever asked how I was feeling was a fish.

"Come on, then," I said. "I'll open the gate."

The boathouse sat on stilts at the back of the cottage, a gray shed with my father's trade painted on the door.

MACAULIFFE, CRABBER.

I had not been able to scrape it off.

Inside, the Marigold sat on her cradle in the dark, nose toward the water door.

Beside her, the floor opened in a square, and the tidal pool below it was black and glittering.

Velun slipped through the gate of old pilings without a ripple.

He surfaced in the middle of the pool, and his eyes lit up the whole shed a soft gold.

I sat down on the edge, my boots dangling over the water.

"Okay," I said. "The photos."

"You don't have to."

"I do."

I took a breath that shook.

"Two years ago, I met a man in a chat who said he was an alien."

"I thought, he's harmless, he's funny, he'll go away."

"I didn't go away."

"You asked for a picture. And I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, and I sent my sister's."

"The woman on the ridge."

"Maya. She's twenty-nine. She hikes. She looks like she's never been tired a day in her life."

I made myself look at him.

"And I'm just me. I work on my sofa. I'm twenty-seven and I've never been anywhere."

"I sent her face because I thought nobody would stay for mine."

He was silent for a moment.

The pool lapped around his shoulders.

"You said, in the first week, that you were afraid of the ocean," he said.

"I am."

"You said your father gave his whole life to it, and you couldn't hate it, so you kept it in the house instead."

My throat closed.

"You said, 'The tide keeps its own time and doesn't care what I need, and I find that restful.'"

"I wrote that at four in the morning."

"I know. I kept it."

"You kept it?"

"I keep all of it."

He touched the side of his head, near the dark teal hair.

"I have your words in a place where I don't lose them."

I covered my face.

"I knew in the second week," he said.

My hands came down. "Knew what?"

"You forgot to close your laptop camera. The relay saw the window behind you, and the window showed your reflection against the dark."

"You saw me."

"A woman with red-brown hair, in her father's shirt, crying while she typed me a joke."

I made a noise between a laugh and a sob.

"I stayed," he said. "Because the one who wrote those words was the one I wanted. The face on the ridge was never the point."

Something in my chest cracked open.

"Why didn't you say so?"

"Because you were afraid. And I was afraid you would stop talking."

I pressed the heel of my hand against my eye.

"That's very romantic," I said, wetly. "I hate it."

"I am told it's a feature of human feelings."

"Who told you?"

"You did. In month eight. You were watching a lot of films."

I laughed so hard I had to hold the Marigold's rail.

Velun watched me with his glowing eyes and his head on one side, and he looked, for a moment, almost young.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"Thirty-one of your years, by my count."

"Your count."

"My people count tides. It comes out the same, near enough."

"I'm twenty-seven."

"Yes. I know. You said it in the chat."

"I said it as Maya. Maya's twenty-nine."

"Then I'll call you Sorcha," he said, "and you can call me Velun."

"We'll agree neither of us has been honest, and begin again."

I held out my hand.

He took it in his wet, cool one, and we shook, and neither of us let go.

The tide shifted in the pool, rising toward morning.

Gray light began to leak through the gaps in the boards.

I should have been exhausted, but I felt like a kettle just before it sings.

Then I heard tires on the gravel.

I went still, with my hand in his.

Headlights swept across the boathouse wall, slow and white, and a car door slammed.

"Sorcha?" a man called from the cottage steps. "I know you're up. Your lights were on."

Velun's hand tightened around mine.

"Who is that?" he said, very low.

"That's Brent," I said, and my mouth went dry.

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