Page 4 of Female Fantasy
His brows shoot upward. “You followed me here by choice. You are no prisoner.”
“Sir, I do believe—”
“Ryke.”
The name catches me off guard. “What?”
“Ryke,” he repeats, running a hand through his hair, his expression almost sheepish. Embarrassed. “My name is Ryke.”
I pause for a moment, getting my bearings. “Merriah.”
“Tell me, Merriah. What possessed you to attempt to steal my conch?”
Blood rushes to my ears as I remember that feeling. The strong pull, the siren call of fate, urging me to declare the horn my own, to devour the noise whole.
“I am quite unsure,” I confess. “I felt drawn to it. As if phantom hands had reached inside of my body, hooked my chest with an anchor, and tugged.”
He looks up, alarmed. “A pull? Of this you are certain?”
“I do not see why I should have to answer your nagging queries when you refuse to address my own.”
The stranger—Ryke—chuckles. “Fair enough, my minnow. We are at my home, my true home, at the bottom of the sea. Here you are no prisoner but a most cherished guest. You maycome and go as you please. Say the word, and I shall deliver you back to the rock-strewn shores.”
My breath hitches as I take in his candid words. “You missed a question, Sir Ryke,” I say. “You have not confessed how you delivered me to your glacial haven. This room lacks windows and doors. I see no floating tavern. We are trapped, you and me. Here, I am but a bird in a glass cage. And yet, you ascend from below.”
He nods once. “I told you already: we swam. Well, I swam. You slept.”
I nearly let out an imprudent sound. “And how, pray tell, did we move against the current, our heads beneath the surface, for so long? I have looked toward the coast. We must be miles from shore.”
Ryke smiles then, a warm, glowing grin that bathes me in light and sends sparks through every ash and ember in my body, toward my very soul.
Against my better judgment, I return the look with a smile of my own. “You will not tell me, then?”
A shake of his head. A smirk of his lips.
“No,” he says. “But I can show you.”
Ryke leans down to open the trap door.
I watch in horror as he dives headfirst into the ravenous current of the sea.
And nearly hits me with his tail.
Chapter Two
As two lucky lovesick idiots swap saliva while hovering over a melting ice cream cone, I ponder why God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers. I mean, I’ve done my time, haven’t I? I’ve used more dating apps than cats apparently have lives. Gone on so many first dates that I’ve had dinner with three—no joke,three—different men named Marrion Chad. (And not just Chad or Marrion. Marrion Chad!) I’ve learned to play the banjo to appease a bluegrass musician, gone halal and kosher, and joined fantasy football leagues and Dungeons & Dragons games. Not to mention becoming proficient in Mandarin and a black belt in tae kwon do! And all of this for what? The mere chance of falling deeply, passionately in love with a good-for-nothing, borderline-disgusting, small-brained man who doesn’t even come within ten feet of my favorite fictional character? In fact, comparing Ryke to these imbecilesis like looking at a Picasso next to a finger painting done by a ten-year-old. It’s practically obscene.
The lovebirds pull their mouths apart long enough to turn their attention to the drawbridge. At a hundred years old, Mystic Drawbridge is one of the main attractions of our quaint little tourist trap of a town—that and Mystic Pizza. (Damn you and your million-dollar smile, Julia Roberts.) Several times a day, as boats pass along the canal toward safe harbor in New London, the brass bells chime and the bridge splits down the middle like a cracked spine. For those few minutes, time stands still. It’s like the Earth ceases its rotation, like someone hits pause on the universal remote. Us locals are used to the maddening stagnation, often grunting our annoyance that we have to wait to cross over to the other half of town. But visitors usually react with glee, sometimes even breaking into applause once the boat is finally through. While they wait, they often treat themselves to ice cream from the nearby shop, which is about as old as the bridge itself and sells only treats made in-house. A hot fudge sundae and a picture or two later, the tourists are off on their merry way.
Life here goes on as usual.
I’ve lived in the small fishing town of Mystic all my life. Settled by whalers in the eighteenth century, the town feels like a small slice of New England history, a virtually untouched time capsule. Well, except for the new glossy details. A nautical-themed inn sits on one side of the harbor, complete with an adjoining candy shop. There are a few scattered boutiques that cater to customers from out of town, a shack run out of anold mill that claims to serve the best lobster in the Northeast (Portland, Maine, can suck our dick), and a couple of local bars with dedicated regulars, one of which hosts a popular karaoke night on Tuesdays. My favorite spot on Main Street is an independent bookstore run by an old-timer named Cece, a local whose family has owned the joint for several generations. She still orders all the books herself and selects each month’s fiction picks. Sometimes she hosts reading nights themed around a specific genre or decade. There’s a donation rack full of free used books and a rotating glass Little Free Library that sits outside. Most people in town have a close connection to Ends Whale Books, but mine is personal. After all, it’s where I first discovered Ryke.
And it was love at first sight.
Some adults find it somewhat suffocating to live in the small town where they grew up, but I’ve never really felt that way. First of all, there’s a steady stream of outsiders with second homes in nearby beach towns who drift in and out. Most come with money burning through their pockets and steam to blow off, which, in my experience, can make for a pretty good cocktail party anecdote. And then there are the tourists, who see the townies as extensions of the quaint New England experience. That can be fun, too, if you’re down to play a part. Sometimes I’m in the mood to give the performance of my life. Other times I make an excuse and head straight for the door. Either way, you get to reinvent yourself daily.
Second, I take comfort in the fact that Mystic feels like a real community. I love that Terrence at Young Buns Donutsstarts making my coffee order the second I walk through the door, that I used to babysit the waitress at the seafood restaurant down on the docks when she was a kid. Plus, it helps that my family is part of the small business scene—they own a Kabob shop up by the old church, across from the parking lots. My father leased the space before I was born and bought it when I was in high school. For years, I was teased for showing up to class reeking of lemon chicken and lamb. It wasn’t enough that I was sporting a full unibrow and skin the color of sandpaper, a far cry from most of my fair-skinned public school peers. No, I also needed to smell like I’d been roasted on a spit so I could receive the maximum amount of mockery. Of course, I now accept that those kids were just trying on cruelty for size. Most of the students didn’t like the look and feel and ended up hanging it back on the rack. When we see each other now, we’re cordial. Acquaintances. Growing up, the people I felt closest to were my older brother and his best friend. But I’ve never had too many close friends.
