Alex, Approximately

We start holding hands in the middle of the darkened kelp forest exhibit. Unlike the natural history museum, this place is completely romantic, and I hope Porter doesn’t hear the little happy sigh that escapes my lips when his fingers slip through mine. I don’t even care that his knuckles are making my fingers ache a little, I’m not willing to let go.

The next dark place is the jellyfish room. They are gorgeous, all lacy and ethereal, shockingly red and orange floating up and down in tubes of bright blue water. Porter’s thumb follows their fanciful movements, skimming my palm in dreamy circles. A hundred shivers scatter over the surface of my skin. Who can concentrate on jellyfish when I’m getting all this hand action? (Who knew this kind of hand action could be so exciting?)

I would’ve been perfectly content to stay with the jellies, but a tour group is making things much too crowded, so we seek another place where it’s less populated. We didn’t exactly verbalize this to each other, but I’m almost positive we’re on the same page.

“Where?” I ask.

He weighs our options. We try a few places, but the only thing that seems to be empty right now is the place he doesn’t really want to go. Or the place that he does.

The open sea room.

And I think I know why.

“This is what I wanted to show you,” he says in a gravel-rough voice, and I’m both excited and a little worried as we step inside.

It’s almost like a theater. The room is vast and dark, and the focus is an enormous single-pane window into blue water and a single shaft of light beaming through. There’s no coral, no rocks, no fancy staged fish environment. The point is to see what’s like to look into the deep ocean, where there’s nothing but dark water. It’s effective, because it certainly doesn’t look like a tank. It’s endless, no perception of depth or height. I’m a little awestruck.

A few people mingle in front of the enormous viewing window, their black shapes silhouetted against the glass as they point at schools of bluefin tuna and silvery sardines gliding around giant sea turtles. We step up to the glass, finding a spot away from everyone else. At first, all I can see are the bubbles rising and the hundreds of tiny fish—they’re busy, busy, always on the move—and then I see something bigger and brighter moving in the dark water behind the smaller fish.

Porter’s hand tightens around mine.

My pulse quickens.

I squint, trying to watch the bigger, brighter thing, but it slips away, into the black deep. I think I catch sight of it again and move closer to the window, so close that I feel the cool glass against my nose. With no warning, bright silver fills up my vision, blocking out the dark water. I jerk my head away from the glass and find myself inches away from a ginormous shark gliding past.

“Shit!” I start to chuckle at myself for jumping, and then realize that my hand is being squeezed to mincemeat and that Porter hasn’t moved. He’s locked in place, frozen as if by Medusa’s stare, forehead pressed against the glass.

“Porter?”

He doesn’t respond.

“You’re hurting my hand,” I whisper.

It’s like he doesn’t even know I’m there. Now I’m getting freaked out. I forcibly pry my fingers out of his, and it’s beyond difficult: It’s impossible. He’s got me in a deadlock, and he’s crazy strong.

For a brief moment, I panic, looking around, wondering what I should do. Wondering if anyone else notices what’s going on. But it’s dark, and there’s barely anyone in here. He’s suffering in silence.

What do I do? Should I slap him? Shout at him? That would only draw attention to us. I can’t imagine that helping.

“Hey,” I say urgently, still working on loosening his fingers. “Hey, hey. Uh, what kind of shark is that? Is that the same shark that bit you?” I know it wasn’t, but I’m not sure what else to do.

“What?” he asks, sounding bewildered.

“Is that your shark?”

“No,” he says, blinking. “No, mine’s a great white. That’s a Galapagos. They rarely attack humans.” I finally break our hands apart. He looks down between us for the first time and seems to notice something’s wrong. “Oh, Jesus.”

“It’s fine,” I assure him, resisting the urge to shake out my throbbing fingers.

“Fuck.” His face goes cloudy. He turns away from me and faces the tank.

Now I’m worried our beautiful, perfect date is ruined.

I have to summon all my willpower to push back the wave of chaotic emotion that threatens to take me under, because the truth is this: I’ve never been on a date before. Not a real one. Not one that someone planned. I’ve been on a couple of double dates, I guess you’d call them, and some spur-of-the-moment things, like, Hey, do you want to go study at Starbucks after class? But no real dates. This is all new territory. I need this to be okay. I need this to be normal.

Do not panic, Bailey Rydell.

I keep my voice light and tug on the leather key strap that dangles at his hip until he turns to face me again. “Hey, remember how freaked I got at the bonfire? Please. You aren’t half as screwed up as me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Sorry, I do. This time you’re going to have to trust me.”

“Bailey . . .”

The shark swims by again, a little higher. I jiggle his keys in my palm. “I will admit, though, despite what I’ve been through, Greg Grumbacher looks like a dandelion compared to that beast. Now tell me how big your shark was compared to the Galapagos.”

His shoulders drop, his Adam’s apple rises and falls, and the way he’s looking at me now, suddenly clear-eyed and sharp, satisfied—as if he’s just made an important decision—makes me feel all funny inside. But I’m not worried anymore—not about him, and not that our date is ruined. The danger has passed.

We both face the window, and he begins to tell me in a low, steady voice about the Galapagos and another impressive shark that swims by, a hammerhead, telling me sizes and shapes and diets and endangered status. And as he talks, he moves behind me and wraps his arms around my waist—questioningly at first, but when I pull him in tighter, he relaxes and rests his chin on my shoulder, nestling into the crook of my neck.

He knows all about these sharks. This place is therapy for him. And sure, he got stuck there for a second, but look at these things. Who wouldn’t? Not for the first time, I’m amazed at what he went through. I’m amazed by him.

“In Hawaiian mythology,” he says into my hair, his voice vibrating through me, “people believe spirits of their ancestors continue to live inside animals and rocks and plants. They call an ancestral spirit an aumakua—like a guardian spirit, you know? My mom says the shark that attacked us is our aumakua. That if it had wanted to kill us, it would have. But it was just warning us to take a good, hard look at our lives and reassess things. So we’re supposed to honor that.”

“How do you honor it?” I ask.

“Pops says he’s honoring it by admitting that he’s too old to be on a board and that he’s better off serving his family by staying on dry land. Lana says she’s honoring it by being the best surfer she can be and not fearing the water.”

I trace the scars on his arm with my index finger. “And what about you?”

“When I figure that out, I’ll let you know.”