Page 33 of Waves
“What’s the matter?” I asked, opting to ruffle his hair instead and avoid getting myself in trouble.
First, a moment of silence, then a very long sigh before Ezra tucked his hands under his chin while he stared at me. “I don’t want you to leave tomorrow.”
“I know. I don’t want to leave so soon, either.”
“How long do you think you’ll be gone this time?”
“I can’t really say. Time is not relevant, and days blur into weeks.”
“You know you can always stay here.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I know.” Ezra leaned his head into my palm with a huff then chewed his words. “This isn’t home.”
“That’s not why I go back.”
“I guess I don’t understand why you leave the ocean at all.”
I shrugged since I couldn’t even say for sure why I kept coming back to land, but doing so always triggered an internal timer. Too long away from the ocean left me as neurotic as a caged animal, yet too much time spent in the water made me uneasy, almost as if I left behind something important. Perhaps, that something was how to be human.
“Do you have a seal family or something? A mate? Anything?” Ezra asked, unblinking.
I laughed but closed my mouth when Ezra’s glare suggested he was serious. “You should know better than anyone that they’re not monogamous. Most are solitary and I don’t even live with a group.”
“So, you don’t... with the others...?”
“No! Oh, no, I’ve never sought out another seal for any purpose, especially that one. And I don’t make a habit of coming ashore and humping humans, either.”
“What about the other selkies?” Ezra’s eyes narrowed when he cocked his head.
“Pardon?”
“You know, the selkies... the other seal-people. That’s what you’re called.”
“I did not know that’s what I was called.”
“What do you call yourselves?”
“Let’s see... I call myself ‘me’ and you call me ‘Kai.’ Thanks to you, I know humans named my species Phoca vitulina, and now apparently, I am a subspecies called a selkie.”
“You still haven’t answered my other question,” Ezra said with a frown. “Tell me about the other selkies.”
I let out a deep sigh. “Ezra, I’ve been in the bay for a very long time and I’ve never come across anyone else like me. As far as I can tell, all the other seals are just seals.”
Ezra curled his arm even tighter around me and dropped his forehead onto my chest.
My fingers combed through his hair, tickling the back of his neck until he lifted his head and gently gazed back at me. “What’s on your mind now?”
“I was just thinking... you must have been lonely.”
“I didn’t feel lonely until I met someone I missed.” I rolled and nuzzled my face into Ezra’s neck, kissing the skin down to his shoulder. “Which is why I intend to spend as much time as I can with you.”
Ezra smiled before he pulled his head back to kiss me, and simply seeing his face light up made my heart beat faster. I didn’t know how I would ever leave him.
* * *
Ishmael woke me up the next morning. Not sure when I became his designated escort, but I suspected this was his revenge after being locked out of the bedroom for so long last night. When I did eventually open the door to let him in the room for the evening, he had slumped onto the floor of the hallway while watching the closed door. He distinctly glared before picking up his lobster and hopping into the bed. Fairly certain he knew exactly what Ezra and I had been doing, too.