After less than a minute, though, he was leaning over my side of the car, opening the glove box. He withdrew a cloth bag that he dropped in my lap. He then opened my door and stared at me expectantly. I did not budge. I knew I should, I knew I was behaving atrociously when he’d been so sweet to me, but I simply could not move, paralyzed in my seat.

“I… I can’t swim,” I managed to stammer.

He laughed softly under his breath and reached across me to undo my seatbelt, and then he lifted me from the car and put me on my feet with an effortless strength I was too startled by to even consider resisting.

I bit my lip. “But… but it’s dark out now! It’s not safe. Night is when the sharks come out.” I didn’t know if that was exactly true, but it seemed plausible. Why risk it?

He stared down at me as if I were speaking gibberish and then he burst out laughing. I felt my face grow hot.

“Sharks, little one?”

“There might be,” I muttered, looking down at the slinky bag clutched between my hands, unable to meet his eyes when he was clearly so amused at my expense.

He was still laughing and shook his head, putting a hand to his side as if he’d given himself a stitch. “Sharks…”

I set my jaw and looked up at him indignantly. “Besides,” I said, “there’s nowhere for me to change.”

He smiled and lifted his hands as if to gesture to the entirety of the newly fallen night around us as he took a step back from me. “Oh, Andromeda, there is everywhere to change.”

My eyes widened in shock, but before I could respond to his cryptic words, he turned from me, pulling off his shirt as he went back to the rocks. He dropped the shirt absently on the ground behind him, and ignoring the path, he jumped down. For a moment I couldn’t see him, but then he reappeared on the sand below by the water’s edge. His jeans were replaced by the same deep green swim trunks he’d worn at Jerrid’s party. Or maybe they were different ones. I couldn’t see them well enough to tell, and I was too distracted by the way the moonlight defined the muscles of his back to spend much time being bewildered by how quickly he’d changed.