Page 6

“Why?” Jordie asks, looking at me like I am a stranger.

I let out a pained laugh. “I was scared. I left my home and the team I coached and never looked back.” I walk to the couch, sitting down heavily on the over-stuffed cushions. Spreading my legs to accommodate my belly, which has only grown since moving to the Mazarine Coast eight years ago, I lean back and sigh. “And I just found out the athlete might have survived.”

The couch dips beside me. “Oh.” His voice is small. “So you want to go see them.”

It is not a question. “Yes. I do.” I need to know if the guilt I have been carrying for years has been a lie. If my entire life is about to be turned upside down, I need to see them with my own eyes.

“Have you told the merpeople you’re leaving?”

“Not yet.”

“Zephyr is going to kill you.”

A pained laugh bursts from my chest, and I try to imagine the look on my best friend’s face when I tell him I am leaving. “Oh, I know he will.” I turn then, looking right at Jordie. His knees are tucked up against the thick sweater enveloping his soft curves. “I am so, so sorry. I wish it was not like this,” I say, softly.

His smile wobbles and tears slip from the corners of his eyes. “So this is it, then? You decide we’re done and that’s that?”

I swallow. “Jordie,” I start.

“I…I would have come with you, if you’d asked. I would have followed you wherever, because…I sound stupid, but that’s the kind of love I thought we had.” Jordie’s voice cracks, and I hate how much this hurts him. It is taking all of my willpower not to comfort him, even though I know I will only be making things worse.

“When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Who is going to water your flowers?”

I think of the bright ceramic pots lining the bare ground on either side of my front door. The pale aloe and yellow hibiscus, and the pink and orange snapdragons finally blooming as the weather warms. They had not crossed my mind when I was making my whirlwind decision to leave. “I do not know,” I admit. “I will probably give them away. You are welcome to take them, if you want.”

He shakes his head. “Fuck you, Javier,” he whispers, but there is no heat behind his words. There is nothing there but quiet grief and defeat.

Later, I stand alone on the beach, the bitter, salty wind tearing at my hair as my bare toes sink into the coarse, black sand. I called Jordie’s best friend Sam and asked her to come over and be with him. He needed comfort and friendship from someone other than me.

I wish my mind was filled with Jordie. I should be mourning the life I am about to walk away from, but instead, I am haunted by pale green scales and the memory of a siren’s song.

“Coach,” the familiar voice says on the other end of the line.

Wiping the sweat from my forehead with my forearm, I lean back in the driver’s seat of my parked rental car, staring at the modest apartment complex in front of me. “I am not your coach anymore, Zeph.”

“It’s only been a week, asshole, and I can’t call you Javier. It’s too weird.”

“We have been friends for a decade. At some point you should learn how to say my name.”

Zephyr lets out a melodic laugh, and I cannot help but smile. It has only been a week since I got on a flight halfway around the world, leaving behind the Mazarine Coast for the hot and arid Central Lowlands. This is also the most time I have spent without seeing my best friend in eight years, and I can admit I miss the merman.

“Where are you?” Zephyr asks. I hear the rhythmic sound of waves in the background, and guess Zephyr is sunning on one of the wide rocks scattering the edge of the beach. It is easy to picture in my head: the rocky cliffs of the Mazarine Coast and the strip of black sand below them, the submerged caves where the merpeople live, the constant taste of salt in the air.

As a human, the small house where I lived was in a village adjacent to the beach, but Zephyr and the merpeople of his community always went out of their way to include me in their lives. I got used to eating most of my meals in board shorts next to the tide pools, often with Jordie at my side. The merpeople embraced me, the human son of sirens, and my human boyfriend, more than my mother’s siren colony ever had.

I miss them already. I miss the familiar warmth of the merpeople who welcomed me when I fled my home.

I did not want to leave the Mazarine Coast. I was able to coach artistic swimming at the highest level, and the merpeople I worked with—Zephyr included—made my job easy.

My life was good, better than I had imagined it ever could be.

But that was before I saw the articles.

Heat creeps in through the windshield, the air conditioning struggling to keep pace with the midday sun. Those distant beaches I called home could not be more different from the asphalt and manicured crepe myrtle trees in front of me. “I am in Soledad, over in the Central Lowlands,” I finally say, drumming my free hand on the wheel of the new model sedan I still have not gotten a good feel for.