I slow down my breathing, center myself, and feel a long thread of awareness spread throughout my body. This is the biggest risk I’ve ever taken, and it’s all so sudden. I should be freaking out, but I’m calm. Steady.
At nine, I walk to the sanctuary to meet Mike and get inducted as a volunteer, but when I arrive, the sign on the door is still flipped to Closed. I peer through the glass into the dark room beyond, wondering what I should do. Have I made a mistake? Is the whole thing falling apart already?
“Oi! The meeting room is just through here.” Victoria pops her head around the corner. I follow her around the side of the building and through another door. “The dive crew left hours ago, but you can officially meet the museum team and see how we operate. How do you feel about public speaking and memorizing turtle facts?”
“Doable. Is this for tours?” She leads me past an ‘Employees Only’ sign and my stomach flutters. Why does a volunteer gig feel like getting a backstage pass?
“Yeah. You’ll be handling the social media, but all volunteers do museum training. Thank God they finally hired someone useful. The last girl—” She rolls her eyes.
“Good morning!” Mike welcomes me the moment he enters the room, saving me from a response. Thomas follows with a clipboard and slaps me a high five. Their infectious energy makes me sure I’ve made the right decision. They give me one of the iconic blue shirts and take me on another tour, including all the behind-the-scenes rooms I haven’t seen before.
Mike and Victoria disappear as Thomas leads me through the recovery room. I spot Jimmy, looking lonely and still, floating near the glass divider.
“He misses the ocean.” I don’t mean to say it aloud.
“Probably. We won’t keep him longer than we need to. We don’t want to release him back into the wild if he’s injured. If his reflexes are delayed, he’ll just get eaten up.”
“That makes sense.” I hold my fingers a few inches from the glass. Now that I’ve seen the turtles feasting on sponges in their natural habitat, I understand what he’s missing. The sanctuary’s tanks are a bland cage compared to the diversity and color he’s used to. But it’s only my first day, I should leave it to the experts to know what’s best.
“Sweetie and Laamu should both be out of here soon. We’re lucky that we’ve only seen minor injuries while I’ve been at the sanctuary.”
I eye the other turtles in the tank, both bigger but with much shorter tails than Jimmy. “How much longer will you stay here?”
“About a month left in my contract, but I’m not sure what’s next. Gili Telu is a great place to get lost. Mike and I have been having a blast collecting data to focus our outreach programs.”
Sweetie swims about in languid circles, occasionally pausing to munch on floating seaweed.
“I know it’s a lot,” Thomas continues the tour, leading me back into the employee office. “Don’t feel like you have to memorize it all today. We’ll give you some information packets and send you on tours with a more experienced volunteer until you develop your own spiel.”
“Thanks. It’s a lot to take in, but I’m really excited to get started.”
“Do you want to take a look at the social media accounts?” Victoria reappears, flipping her dark hair back and turning a beat up laptop around to face me. “They’re pretty pathetic.”
“Of course, let’s see what we’re working with.”
I plop down beside her and for the first time in a while, lose myself in my work. They were right; the accounts post sporadically with no consistent branding. The captions are badly edited and none of the fonts match. They have a little over one hundred followers on each platform and even worse engagement—mostly from bots and former volunteers. But starting from so little gives me a lot to work with. I can make a real difference here.
Mike gives me access to dive school photos of staff, volunteers, and customers who signed releases. I sort through them for what might stand out in a carousel post, then start following and taking notes on other animal conservation accounts to prime the algorithm and see what kind of audience they attract.
All morning I’ve been distracted by the threat of running into Steven, but I get so engrossed in my work, I forget about him entirely—until the moment he walks in the room.
I’m humiliated by the way I threw myself at him last night. He’ll probably think I’m stalking him by staying here another month. But all of the excuses, the justifications, the pleas for mercy fall from my lips when I glance up from the computer and see the way he’s looking at me.
“What are you still doing here—”
“Do you ever wear a shirt—”
We blurt simultaneously.
His eyes narrow and he looks down at his tanned chest, tugging at one of the curly ginger hairs and making my mouth water. I turn my eyes back to the screen, determined not to ogle a man who has no interest in me.
I might worry that my words have pricked his giant ego, but we both know that the chest in question is worth showing off. His chiseled abs and broad shoulders nearly fill the entire doorway. He looks like he’d be at home on a rugby field—or court. Whatever they call them in Australia.
“You startled me,” he says, taking a deep breath and standing up straight. By the way his nostrils flare, I can tell I’ve pissed him off. I just can’t seem to walk away from an encounter with this man without putting my foot in my mouth. But there had been a moment underwater when I’d thought this could be something…
Yeah, when your mouths were both occupied, I remind myself.
I’m used to everyone liking me. But something about me seems to grate on him personally, and it makes me feel weirdly out ofsorts, like my skin doesn’t fit right. So why does that feeling turn me on so much?
