Page 31 of Secondhand Secrets

She laughed again, fuller this time, and she gave him a light shove in the ribs. “Not jealous in that way. Laila’s had a rough time, that’s for sure, but there was a time when she and Mike were unmistakably in love. I look at her with Whitney now, and on a personal level, she still has so much more than I do.”

“I still think she’d trade places with you in an instant.”

The gleam in his eye held an air of confidence that compelled her to concede. “Maybe.”

Meanwhile, despite her list of confessions, she still seemed to know so little about him.

“And what about you?” She nudged her chin at him and tried not to think about how he’d ravished her not that long ago. How she still wanted him to ravish her. “Any past significant others?”

He twisted his focus back to the sky. “Nope.”

She kept her attention on him and frowned, even though he likely couldn’t see. “I would have thought you’d have your pick of women.”

He shrugged again. “It’s not that straightforward. Besides, having a pick only helps if you’re looking for nothing in particular, which is nice enough, sometimes. But there’s something to be said for quality over quantity.”

She nodded at the sky, burying the sting within her chest at how much she didn’t want him to expand on his indiscriminate picks.

“We should go.” The words fell from her without much thought, although those words made up one of her few mature decisions in living memory.

She and Chip only tortured themselves here. If recent months had taught her anything, she needed to keep her feelings to herself, especially when the odds pointed to disappointment.

She sat and dusted loose grass blades off her legs, ignoring the way his stare burned into her, giving him her back as she left for the picnic blanket and her sheer blue wrap.

Chip followed and soon helped clear the blanket, her heart twinging at the reminder that they’d never even gotten around to having that picnic.

So she set to filling the sorrowful silence. “If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?”

He straightened and stared at her, the bend of his brow denoting confusion though his glower soon lightened, and a smile graced his face. “That’s easy. A mantis shrimp.”

He shrugged and went about shaking out the plaid blanket, folding, then rolling it into submission, as though his answer somehow came with an implicit explanation.

Willing to put her usual ignorance on display, she tugged her fat beach bag off the ground and onto her shoulder, then spoke again. “Why would you want to be a shrimp?”

“Not just any shrimp.” He chuckled, turning toward the car though his attention lingered on her. “A mantis shrimp.”

“Yeah. I’m sure that makes all the difference.” Having expected a more meaningful answer, she rolled her eyes at his turned back.

“Hey, a mantis shrimp is the meanest sea creature there is.” He slowed, bringing his stride level with hers.

Meanwhile, she pressed a button on her car keys, the indicators flashing in reply, the vehicle now unlocked. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“Hear me out, okay?” He ran in front of her and pressed his hands to her shoulders to stop her stride, although the pure joy on his face alone could have done that. “While human eyes have only three color receptors, the mantis shrimp has sixteen. Not only can that badass see colors we can’t even conceive of, but they have these two raptorial appendages at the front of their bodies that enable them to strike their prey at a velocity equal to a bullet.”

“Reptile appendages?” She wrinkled her nose and reeled back a step. “Eww.”

He held a stunned silence, then laughed, and swatted in a dismissive gesture. “Raptorial appendages. Never mind. Anyway, they strike with so much force that they can set off a process called supercavitation.”

His unmistakable joy didn’t fade, but his persistence hinted that she should have understood his line of thought here, all while she tried not to gawp, because she most definitely did not understand. “Super what now?”

“Supercavitation.” His smile softened, as did his tone, as though he found her confusion endearing. “Mantis shrimp move so fast and with so much force, the water around them boils and sends a shockwave strong enough to, even if they miss, still kill their prey from the resulting shockwave alone.”

She blinked and shook her head. “Wow. Okay.”

Her breathless answer had less to do with mantis shrimp and more to do with Chip unleashing full geek-mode on her, an ability she’d forgotten about over the years, which still carried the power to leave her in his intellectual dust.

His smile faded, and new shadows formed below his eyes. “That wasn’t the answer you were looking for, was it?”

“No, it’s fine.” She cleared her throat and forced a reassuring smile. “I just didn’t expect mantis shrimp to be your answer.”

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