Fluke

26: Linnaeus

"Sorry, Reagan. I'm not supposed to let anyone adopt her. Not even someone ten thousand times more responsible than my sister," Nastasya said.

The smile fell off my face. Racecar and Blue would have to do for the time.

I went back to my laptop until one of the applicants for next year took the spot beside me on the bench.

"Why don't you tell me all about the whales we saw earlier?" he asked, and I looked up from the screen.

"Yeah, sure. That'd actually—" I laughed. "What was your name again?"

"Logan."

He looked nothing like the original Logan. His wide smile and dark blond hair contrasted Logan's pissed-off expression and brown curls usually tucked away in a hat of some sort.

"We actually already have a Logan back at Paradise City, so that's just going to be confusing. Can I call you Logan Two? No, I'll just go back to calling Logan One my nickname for him, Puke Boy." I laughed.

"We can just be Logan One and Two. I don't want to ruffle any feathers."

"Yeah, good call. He'd probably fight you, so he can be the alpha Logan."

And they were nothing similar in attitude either. At least it made the dichotomy in my mind a little easier to manage.

His forearms rested against his thighs, which were turned in my direction, and judging by the way I could see the muscles move when he shifted his thumb, he probably would beat Puke Boy Logan for the title of alpha Logan.

I smiled. Logan One, my Logan, wouldn't give a damn about that disadvantage.

"Well, I've only identified one of the three whales from earlier, and her name is Midnight. She's a humpback, her fluke is almost all black, she's around forty years old, and her breeding grounds are in the Bahamas." I shrugged. "I don't know much more than that right now, but there's still plenty of information to find about her."

"Like what?"

"Well, once the test results come back, I'll be able to add any parasites she has or some other diseases."

He nodded but didn't say anything, so I scrolled through the whales I had identified and described each one to him.

Even if I couldn't keep a three-year-old entertained, at least I could hold the attention of someone with a common interest.

***

We arrived at the island a little more than an hour later, and as we approached the shore of my paradise, a faint sound carried through the breeze, barely audible over the squawking of the gulls and, of course, the awful foghorn. And as the tide came in for the afternoon, it approached two figures that laid across the rocks.

Puke Boy and Brett.

Just in like my imagination of what a paradise should have looked like, they had a couple towels that brightened up the rocks like the sunshine, and they had a speaker that played something familiar.

The Beach Boys?

I sighed. That was pretty much the opposite of what we did on the rock, and it would certainly give Hailey, Logan Two, and the rest of the gang the wrong impression.

And as we climbed onto the shore with bags in our hands, their song of choice was indeed Kokomo by The Beach Boys. I assumed it was Brett's idea.

"Just another day in paradise," Logan One said over the water crashing onto the shore. The sea wasn't too rough that day, but it crept up on their towels every time it came in.