“Porter.”
“Bailey.” Lazy smile.
“Porter.”
“Bailey.” Lazier smile.
“?at was so … Ugh. I don’t know what to say.”
“You didn’t think it was stupid?”
I bump his arm with my shoulder as we cross the street. “Shut up.” I’m full-on lost for words now, completely thunderstruck. Could he be any nicer? Doing this today was beyond thoughtful… . It’s almost too much.
I exhale hard several times. I’m unable to express how I feel. My words come out fast and crude. “Jesus, Porter. I mean, what the hell?”
He grins. “So I did good?”
It takes me several strides to answer. I swallow hard and nally say, “Today was great—thank you.”
“Don’t make it sound like it’s over—it’s not even two o’clock yet. Strap yourself in, Rydell; we’re headed to stop number two.”
I don’t mean to laugh. I sound like a demented person. I think I’m nervous again. I also feel a little drugged. Porter Roth has that effect on me. “Where to now?” I somehow manage to get out of my mouth.
“If this place was a slice of my childhood, then I’m about to give you a front-row seat to my nightmares.”
• • •
Porter’s family has an annual membership to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and it comes with a guest pass, so he gets us both in for free. ?is is no Podunk attraction. Porter tells me it draws two million visitors a year, and I believe that. It’s huge and beautiful and more professional than anything in Coronado Cove.
Today the crowds are sporadic, and Porter weaves around them. He’s clearly been here a hundred times, and at rst I think it might be a repeat of the museum: He’s going to be giving me a tour, pointing out all manner of marine life. But after we stop to watch a little kid nearly fall head rst into the stingray pool, things … get so much better.
We start holding hands in the middle of the darkened kelp forest exhibit. Unlike the natural history museum, this place is completely romantic, and I hope Porter doesn’t hear the little happy sigh that escapes my lips when his ngers slip through mine. I don’t even care that his knuckles are making my ngers ache a little, I’m not willing to let go.
?e next dark place is the jelly sh room. ?ey are gorgeous, all lacy and ethereal, shockingly red and orange oating up and down in tubes of bright blue water. Porter’s thumb follows their fanciful movements, skimming my palm in dreamy circles. A hundred shivers scatter over the surface of my skin. Who can concentrate on jelly sh when I’m getting all this hand action? (Who knew this kind of hand action could be so exciting?)
I would’ve been perfectly content to stay with the jellies, but a tour group is making things much too crowded, so we seek another place where it’s less populated. We didn’t exactly verbalize this to each other, but I’m almost positive we’re on the same page.
“Where?” I ask.
He weighs our options. We try a few places, but the only thing that seems to be empty right now is the place he doesn’t really want to go. Or the place that he does.
?e open sea room.
And I think I know why.
“?is is what I wanted to show you,” he says in a gravel-rough voice, and I’m both excited and a little worried as we step inside.
It’s almost like a theater. ?e room is vast and dark, and the focus is an enormous single-pane window into blue water and a single shaft of light beaming through. ?ere’s no coral, no rocks, no fancy staged sh environment. ?e point is to see what’s like to look into the deep ocean, where there’s nothing but dark water. It’s effective, because it certainly doesn’t look like a tank. It’s endless, no perception of depth or height. I’m a little awestruck.
A few people mingle in front of the enormous viewing window, their black shapes silhouetted against the glass as they point at schools of blue n tuna and silvery sardines gliding around giant sea turtles. We step up to the glass, nding a spot away from everyone else. At rst, all I can see are the bubbles rising and the hundreds of tiny sh—they’re busy, busy, always on the move—and then I see something bigger and brighter moving in the dark water behind the smaller sh.
Porter’s hand tightens around mine.
My pulse quickens.
I squint, trying to watch the bigger, brighter thing, but it slips away, into the black deep. I think I catch sight of it again and move closer to the window, so close that I feel the cool glass against my nose. With no warning, bright silver lls up my vision, blocking out the dark water. I jerk my head away from the glass and nd myself inches away from a ginormous shark gliding past.
“Shit!” I start to chuckle at myself for jumping, and then realize that my hand is being squeezed to mincemeat and that Porter hasn’t moved. He’s locked in place, frozen as if by Medusa’s stare, forehead pressed against the glass.
