“It’s not my fault I’m wet more than I’m dry.”

“Anything else go wrong today? Not that anything had to.” The waitress set down two appletinis and he gulped at one thirstily. After a moment’s thought, he slammed it down and began on the second one. “Actually, it’s not picturing your mom, because she is an awesome-looking woman and I’ve had a crush on her since you brought me home after the fight…”

“Stop it,” she said, but she was smiling. Jonas had proudly shown off his no-polish manicure on the first day of second grade, and two fourth graders had discovered rather large problems with their own sexual insecurity. Their solution was to take it out on Jonas. Fred, annoyed at being interrupted from her reading, had broken up the fight by tossing one kid into the monkey bars and dumping the other one, head first, into the sandbox.

Nobody had ever laid a finger on Jonas again through elementary, middle, and high school.

“—and there she was, a blonde angel of mercy, tending to my many wounds, and yelling at you because—”

“ ‘Violence Isn’t The Answer,’ ” they said in unison.

“Right-o. So I don’t mind picturing your mom in the buff, but Sam… yech.”

“Then they do this whole song and dance about how I’m not Sam’s biological child.”

Jonas slurped again. “Duh.”

“What I said.”

“I mean, you’re a mermaid and Sam can’t get himself out of the shallow end.”

“I said.”

“Then what?”

“Then I got my ass back to work and met the new water fellow.”

“What the hell is a water fellow? You scientists and your jargon.”

“It’s a marine biologist who travels around the world trying to explain to the bipeds that they’re destroying the planet. He learns and teaches at every place and moves on after three months.”

“Hey, hey,” Jonas protested mildly. “I’m a biped.”

A pretty cute one, too, and Fred was mystified that, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Jonas hadn’t found someone to settle down with. He was tall, blond, lifted weights, had a black belt in aikido, was a brilliant engineer, was kind to children and small animals, and never judged Fred, not even when they’d gone swimming in the ocean a year after they’d met and he saw her tail.

Maybe it was because he was only eight at the time, and children were more open-minded about such things. Maybe it was because Jonas was generally open-minded about everything. Maybe it was because Jonas was—well, Jonas. Regardless, he had never judged her, he’d stuck staunchly by her, and she didn’t have a finer, kinder friend on land or sea.

It made her sad that he was alone, and it drove her mother absolutely batshit. Because she couldn’t understand why two people who had known each other forever couldn’t settle down together. After all, she had married her school buddy.

“So, is he a nice guy? This water fellow?”

“He talked about my hair.”