No, it’s just crabs I don’t like.
The spindly legs. The spiteful little claws. The certain knowledge that, given the opportunity, the mean little bastards would take over the world and make us all their helpless slaves.
Well, okay, not that last bit. I think that’s maybe more of amething than it is acrabthing, really. A thing resulting from that time I found a particularly gruesome specimen washed up on Heather Bay beach, and, later that day, Mum told me if I didn’t make myself scarce before her new boyfriend came round, the crab would come back to life and peck my eyes out in some kind of gruesome Zombie Crab scenario.
I think I was about five at the time.
Cheers for that, Mum.
After that, the phobia took hold. Then it grew and grew, until it reached the point where I couldn’t even look at a photo of a crab — zombie or otherwise — without screaming.
And that brings us fully up to date.
It also brings us to Santa Monica Pier, where I’m apparently going to be coming face-to-face with my sworn enemies. And then eating them.
“No. No way.”
I don’t even know I’m going to say it out loud until the words are out of my mouth and Jett is pausing in the act of opening the car door to look at me with exasperation.
“Look, I don’t want to be here either, Alexandra,” he says, speaking as if to a very small child. “But we have to. It’s in the contract, remember?”
“Crabs aren’t in the contract,” I say immediately, relief flooding through me as I spot a possible reprieve . “I woulddefinitelyremember that.”
Jett frowns, and a line appears between his eyes. It somehow manages to make him look even more handsome. I hate him.
“The Crab Shack isn’t good enough for you?” he asks bluntly. “Were you hoping to go somewhere fancier?”
“No. Well, yes. I mean—”
I pause, flustered. I wasn’t expecting him to fly me to Paris or something, but Iwashoping for somewhere that didn’t come straight out of a horror movie, you know? Literallyanywhereother than this would’ve worked for me. Even McDonalds, say. At least a Big Mac doesn’t look likeit’sthinking about eatingyou, right?
I can’t really tell Jett this, though. One of the many things I’ve learned in my 30 years — sorry,25— on this planet is that, for reasons that are totally incomprehensible to me, Other People just don’t see crustaceans as the evil predators they so clearly are. And once they know you’re scared of them, they will take that fear, and they will use it against me. Like the time Charlie Lawson snuck a hermit crab into my schoolbag one break time, just to make me cry. Or the way Mum cheerfully led me to believe that all the crabs in the great ocean were only after one thing: Lexie Steele’s eyes.
Fear is weakness.
That’s another thing I’ve learned from life. Well, from my mother, to be exact. She was right, though. Maybe not about the eye-pecking zombie crabs, but about the fact that, if you want to protect yourself, you can never tell anyone what you fear.
So I won’t.
I’ll just let Jett go on believing I’m a superficial airhead who’s disappointed in his choice of venue for our first date.
That’ll work.
“It’s fine,” I say stiffly, unbuckling my safety belt. “I love seafood. Who doesn’t?”
Jett looks at me, clearly unconvinced.
“Well, as long as you’re sure,” he says, with the weariness of a man who’s been dealing with idiots like me his entire life, and who just wants a break from it all. “Let’s get this over with.”
Chapter 13
To be fair to me, The Crab Shackisa pretty weird place for an A-lister of Jett’s caliber to be hanging out. Inside it’s “rustic” and “charming”, in a way that’s designed to look totally authentic, like a genuine old-style seafood shack, but which you just know has been put together by an interior designer who’s never seen the sea in their life. There’s probably a warehouse in Wisconsin or somewhere filled to the brim with mass-produced fishing nets and sailor’s hats, which chain restaurants can buy in bulk.
And that’swithouttaking into account the huge lobster tank in the entrance, which I have to close my eyes to get past.
It’s a nightmare. I’m just having a nightmare. Soon I’ll wake up, and all of this will be over.
I repeat this mantra to myself as Jett leads me through the tightly-packed restaurant to a table in the back, which is tucked away in a corner, but still uncomfortably exposed.
