“You look good in that color.”
She’s wearing a cropped lilac hoodie and jeans, with her hair pulled half up with a clip.
“Thanks.” She smiles shyly.
A staff member greets us when we walk inside. “Hi, friends! Are we arriving with our tickets, or do we need to purchase them?”
Lainey holds up her phone. “I have them already.”
“Perfect! Then you two lovebirds can head right this way down Coral Reef Lane!” he instructs us overly enthusiastically, pointing toward a roped-off path.
I nod, and Lainey thanks him as we head down the blocked-off path. We round a corner and stop behind a few families waiting in line to get their tickets scanned.
Lainey stops directly in front of me, and I take advantage of her closeness, standing to my full height and flattening my hand on her hip, pulling her into me.
“That’s going to be us one day,” I whisper into her ear. “A big family coming to the aquarium.”
She leans back into me, nodding. “I can’t wait.”
There’s a slight catch in her words, and I wonder if she’s saying that because she truly feels that way or if she’s just appeasing me. I never want her to tell me what she thinks I want to hear if it’s different from her truth.
I want to ask if she really wants that, but maybe the line at the aquarium isn’t the appropriate place. God, she pulls out this intensity in me that I’ve never experienced with anyone else. Not romantically at least. There’s always been a seriousness with Lainey, even when we were just friends.
We’re next up in line, and the worker scans the codes on Lainey’s phone before letting us pass through. “Have a great time!”
“Thank you,” I murmur before addressing Lain. “Where should we start?”
She pulls up the aquarium map on her phone. “We could either start with this or end with this.”
“You lead me wherever you’d like, and I’ll follow happily.”
She makes her decision, nodding and stowing her phone away before gesturing with her arm. “Right this way, sir.”
“Thank you,” I reply kindly.
Lainey turns left and leads us down a hallway with an arched ceiling. “Right through here, we’ll find the predatory tunnel.”
A second later, we’re standing beneath thousands of gallons of water with sharks swimming all about. We step off to the side, letting a bumbling bunch of kids rush past us as we marvel at the tank.
“Whoa, look!” she gasps, pointing behind me.
I turn and come face-to-face with a massive hammerhead shark. “Jesus. That thing is huge.”
“We’re going to have to come here again,” she murmurs happily. “You know we could swim with them if we wanted.”
“With the sharks? Umm, no thanks.” I scoff. “Besides, that has to be some kind of breach in my contract.”
She shoos my concern away with her hand. “They wouldn’t need to know.”
I chuckle as a new shark pulls her attention deeper into the tunnel. Alongside the sharks are a plethora of fish swimming about. There’s always been something special about the ocean. It seems so magical and mysterious.
We continue through the tunnel and enter a new room at the end, tanks full of small jellyfish and other vibrant sea life. As we approach the exit of this dark room, my jaw falls to the floor. Crutching into a massive open space, I’m in awe at the hundred-foot-tall aquarium, spanning at least forty feet wide, and that’s just including the viewing part of this room. Fish disappear in the sides, swimming farther than the wall shows.
“No way,” I whisper as a gentle giant passes behind the viewing glass. A fifteen-foot-long whale shark. “Holy shit.”
“Ooh!” Lainey points. “There’s a bench that just opened. Come on!”
She takes off for it, plopping herself down and laying claim. I catch up to her, sitting down next to her on the bench that’s centered in front of the glass.
