Page 43 of Reel Love

“Are you cyberstalking this woman?”

“What? No. I’m just developing hypotheses from what she gives me.”

“Sounds like you like her.”

I can’t help but smile. “I can be different with her.”

Kai’s quiet. He passes me another tank and I turn the compressor on to fill it.

“I’m not nervous around her at all. Besides, she has no idea what I look like, so I know everything we say is authentic.”

“Authentic?” Kai chuckles. “She could be an eighty-year-old man. Or a lonely housewife who lives in sweats and has ten kids, but is actually married to a man who’s too busy with work to pay enough attention to her.”

I’m horrified. “She’s not.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“You. The man of science? You are going on what? A hunch?”

“Hunches are some of the best starting points of science. We sense things outside our awareness. It’s a fact that the brain only raises a fraction of what we see and hear, smell, touch, taste to our awareness. The rest filters in. We simply don’t acknowledge it. So, hunches aren’t so mysterious. And I know she’s a woman. She’s actually beautiful.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just know.”

“Then she knows you're not ugly.”

“Nah.”

“I bet she does. Does she flirt with you?”

“Flirting? I don’t know if you’d call it flirting?”

“Tell me this. Did she always know you were a man?”

“No. She just recently found out. My gamer tag on Play on Words is Wordivore. No gender is evident. She had to ask.”

“And she asked. That means she was thinking about you.” Kai’s eyebrows lift quickly and he flashes me a grin. “And did she act more flirty—warm, open—after that detail was revealed?”

I consider Kai’s question. He may be on to something. It doesn’t matter because SaturdayIslandGirl lives so far away. This is not a realistic line of thought to pursue.

“It really doesn’t make a difference. It’s not like we’re going to start an actual relationship.”

“You never know. Weirder things have happened.”

My dive group shows up after Kai and I finish filling the last of the tanks. We spend three hours in the water, plus the short boat ride over to the cove and back. Once the equipment is cleaned and stored, I head to Mom and Dad’s for family dinner.

Mom greets me at the door. I’m the last one to arrive. The sounds of Mitzi and Dustin’s voices carry through to the front room from the kitchen.

“Everyone’s here.” Mom’s face looks less cheerful than I’d expect considering all three of her grown children are under one roof for the evening.

“Are you alright?” I instinctively reach out and pull her into a hug.

She clings to me and takes a deep breath. I think I hear a sniffle.

“You’ll know soon enough,” she mumbles her words into my chest.

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