In retrospect, he should have known better, but at the time Adam was sure he was being paranoid, that there was nothing really different about her at all. In the few months since he and Jessica got divorced, he has slept with a lot of women, and not all of them were shallow gold diggers. Some of them he would classify more as groupies – eco-sluts, his Marine Life cameraman, Mark, calls them, although in reality they are usually just college girls looking for a certain whale-saving cachet. But the one thing they had in common was that none of them really cared about why Adam was on television, only that he was on television – even if Marine Life airs on a station that no one has ever heard of, shoehorned in on Sunday mornings between a talk show about local politics and a show called Nothing But Trailers that actually shows nothing but movie trailers. Adam could have been a news anchor or a soap opera actor or a judge on a reality-TV show. He could have hosted the goddamned Price Is Right.

“But how did the shark get into the lake in the first place?” Yasmine kept asking, swirling the whisky in the little plastic hotel cup, her knees pulled up to her chest on the flower-patterned duvet.

“You’ll just have to watch the show to find out,” Adam said. He was trying to sound coy, but really he just wanted her to leave so he could take a shower.

“My boyfriend loves sharks,” she said, settling back against the pillow. “Wait until I tell him.” Burying her cherry-painted toes beneath the duvet, digging herself in.

—

Ever since his night with Yasmine, Adam has been sitting in this hotel bar. What he should be doing is going back to L.A. and doing research for the special they’re pitching on manta ray rehab in Monterey for Animal Planet. He should just leave. Get away from the lake shark, Yasmine, everything. Get away from fucking Shark Week.