I listened contentedly by his side as Cove continued, his face bright and animated as he led me back out to the galleries.
Yes, this was undoubtedly the best way to get closer to him.
4
Cove
It had been a little over a month since I started talking to Tobias.
Well, not…talking, exactly.
Not like how normal people talked, where there was a back-and-forth, and you were both expected to contribute equally and somehow also not say too much or too little or the wrong thing in the wrong tone at the wrong time.
It was so much easier than that.
I exhaled deeply, leaning my forearms against the cool side of the touch tank, watching the very, very slow progression the conch was making.
It’d been a little over a month now.
In the first week, I’d kept expecting it to stop.
For him to lose interest. For Mark to intervene again. For something to shift and snap the whole thing back into what itwas supposed to be—staff and donor, distance, polite nods, and nothing more.
But it hadn’t.
Instead, my chats with Tobias had become a normal part of my routine. It was even something I looked forward to most days.
My fingers tapped against the rim of the tank.
Mark hadn’t said anything about it to me.
That was the weird part.
I shifted my weight a bit, glancing toward the far side of the gallery where a young couple was quietly chatting on the bench facing one of our larger tanks.
Mark hadn’t pulled me aside, hadn’t written me up, hadn’t even directly told me to stop again.
But—
My mouth pressed into a thin line.
I knew he wasn’t happy with me.
It had started small—easy to brush off at first. Just a few shorter responses, and a bit less eye contact. Things that could be explained by a bad day, or him just being tired, or even him being focused on something more important.
Assignments had been getting handed to me without explanation, without the usual half-joking commentary he used to tack on.
Now, when I walked into a room, I could feel it almost immediately. The tension wasn’t enough for anyone else to comment on, but enough that you noticed if you were paying attention.
It was like he thought I had done something.
Like I had gone over his head somehow.
Which—I mean, I hadn’t.
I didn’t even know when Tobias would’ve talked to him. Or if he had. But something had changed, and Mark was acting like I—
Like I had gotten him in trouble.
