Emmy giggles, and she loosens her death grip on Jared’s leg.
“What happened to your face?” she asks.
My chest tightens, but I put on my most dramatic face, looking around like I’m checking for eavesdroppers, before I lean in close to her. “Well, I probably shouldn’t tell you this,but…I got into a fight with a dragon. Over the last chocolate biscuit. The dragon wanted it, I wanted it, and things got a bit heated. Literally. Dragons breathe fire, you know. Very inconvenient when you’re trying to eat a biscuit.”
Emmy’s eyes go wide. “Did you win the fight?” she whispers.
“Of course I won. I always win when chocolate is involved.”
When I straighten, there’s a weird look on Jared’s face. Shit. Is it sympathy? I really don’t want sympathy from Jared.
“Let’s go see the fish,” I say quickly.
The aquarium is busy,which I suppose should be expected for a Saturday morning. I’ve only been to Kelly Tarlton’s aquarium once before, when I was a kid, and I don’t remember much of it.
Emmy holds Jared’s hand tightly as we navigate through the crowds, but she keeps glancing back at me like she’s making sure the dragon fighter is still following.
The penguin enclosure is our first stop because, apparently, penguins are Emmy’s favorite animals after dolphins. As they waddle around their ice habitat, they remind me of tiny butlers who’ve had too much wine at the staff party.
“Hey, Emmy, do you know how penguins know when there’s something wrong?” I ask.
She looks a bit suspicious, but that doesn’t deter me from telling her the answer.
“It smells a bit fishy.”
Emmy screws up her face in confusion, but Jared cracks up laughing.
God, I love Jared’s laugh. I liked it from the first moment I heard it, even in the dark when I was in all kinds of pain. But I like it even more when I can see his face, see the way his eyescrinkle at the corners and his nose scrunches just a tiny bit, like joy is trying to escape through whatever exit it can find.
“Why did the penguin cross the road?” he asks back.
“Why?”
“It was the chicken’s day off.”
Now it’s my turn to watch Jared react to the sound of my laughter.
Emmy gets bored with our joke-telling and wanders off toward the next exhibit, but that doesn’t stop Jared and me from slyly using our phones to outcompete each other with the worst penguin jokes as we follow her.
“How do penguins celebrate their birthdays?”
“With fish cakes.”
“Why should you not write a book on penguins?
“Because writing a book on paper is much easier.”
We move on to the rocky shore exhibit, which turns into spending ten minutes watching a crayfish that Emmy’s convinced is playing hide and seek with her. A couple walks past us, and I catch the woman doing that now-familiar double-take at my face. Her eyes widen, then she quickly looks away, whispering something to her partner.
My stomach hollows.
I used to love being looked at, used to love the way I could make people lose their train of thought and stop mid-conversation. Now I achieve that for all the wrong reasons.
Until my accident, I never realized how much I relied on my face to attract people.
Good for the soul to have that taken away from me, I guess.
For my sex life, not so much.
