What the Tide Brings

Chapter 9 - Liam - The Boardwalk

The next several days passed in a hazy, dreamlike blur, filled with laughter, adventure (for Kaelin that definition was skewed to include grocery shopping), fun, and the occasional stolen moment, when Liam could get Kaelin alone, that is, without his mother unknowingly shoehorning herself into their plans. It didn't help that Kaelin was unfailingly polite, always inviting Mrs. Bainbridge along. After that day at the waterfall, something happened to change his view of Kaelin. She wasn't just some beautiful stranger that he needed to look after during her recuperation, she became more than an infatuation. Somewhere along the way, she became someone he wanted to really, truly know.

Still, she was a mysterious, impossible creature, and his mind tried to tell him that she couldn't be. Every morning Liam awoke with the same fear that Kaelin would be gone when he went to her room. Or, worse, he would discover that she had never been there to begin with. He dreamt several times that she'd left in the middle of the night, and the only thing left of her was a vintage dress laying on the shore. Then, a wave came in and swept it up, carrying it out to sea, and no one remembered her, except him.

And every day when he would go downstairs to find her in the kitchen, watching his mother make breakfast with a fascination that Mrs. Bainbridge found endearing, he was thankful that those fears were unfounded.

To maintain the cover story that Kaelin was a tourist stuck in town, Liam told his mother that Kaelin had written a letter to her family to inform them what was going on, just to keep her from trying to send Kaelin away.

Most of their time together was spent hanging around the house. They swam in the ocean; because, now that he was aware that she wouldn't transform on the crowded beach, that was a legitimate option, and an easy one, given that it was literally right outside the back door. He taught her how to catch a fish with a pole, while she taught him how to catch a fish with his hands. She was even able to wrangle a couple of dolphins close enough to shore so he could have a chance to swim with them, which was something he'd always wanted to do. But even the little things, such as helping her build a sandcastle without using her weird mermaid magic, were just as enjoyable.

At night, exhausted from a long day's adventuring, he and Kaelin would veg out in the living room, huddled under a shared blanket to watch television. Liam had learned very little about Kaelin in the time that he'd known her, but one thing he'd found out was the fact that she enjoyed the antics on trashy reality television shows. She watched the shows as if they were documentaries, convinced that these over-the-top melodramatics were how humans behaved on a daily basis. It took him two hours to explain the concept: that it was all fake, just a mindless means of entertainment.

After a shaky start—that whole broken arm, turned sprained wrist thing was not fun—the week had ended up being possibly the best of his life.

Liam had to wonder if Kaelin was having as much fun as he was, though. She seemed to be, until there came a moment when she would get lost in thought and her face morphed into this look of such terrible sadness that made him question what tragic thing she had endured to have such an expression. But she became tense whenever he asked about her life, and she usually found a way to quickly change the subject. So, after several failed attempts to get her to open up, Liam stopped asking. He thought that she would tell him when she was ready.

But, then, he returned from his morning run to discover her standing in the surf, weeping openly. It wasn't just a few tears either. She was full-on bawling while the tide came in, rising up to her knees. The spray from the waves had soaked her dress thoroughly, but she didn't seem to notice. Or, perhaps, she just didn't care.

He pulled her back from the water, not caring in the least about how wet he'd gotten, himself. He didn't say anything, he just held her in his arms and let her cry, feeling each tear drop against his bare shoulder to roll down the skin of his back. He wanted to do something for her, to take her mind off of whatever was so troubling, but he didn't know how to help if she wouldn't talk to him.