sharkbait \\ h.s

4

This is diferent.

I've been on dates before, but this... this is different.

Not once have I caught Harry staring at me like other people do, though I did stare at him. Instead of a ponytail and braid, there's a beanie covering his hair, which makes him look younger somehow.

He asked me questions and told me stories, most of which have made me laugh, and there hasn't yet been a moment where I've felt like I want to leave.

It was in the middle of him telling me about the time he dropped his iPhone in a port-a-potty that I realized I wanted to go to lunch (slash dinner) with him more often.

"-and all I could think was that I was not about to reach down there and get that, man," he laughs as he finishes his story and looks at me with squinty eyes. We are eating outside and he sat in the sun so I didn't have to. "All good?"

A lot more often.

"Yeah." My right shoulder has started to hurt, like really bad, but I am trying not to let it bother me. "All good."

Like, maybe every day for the rest of my life, often.

The plate before him is empty and I wonder if I even saw him eat any food while he talked. Have we even ordered yet?

As if Harry had read my mind, he said, "You ready to order?"

"Yeah."

He scoots back from the table and stands up, holding a finger up in the air. "One sec," he says before walking into the main restaurant.

The view from our table is nice. Scary as hell, almost, but kind of nice. The marina is just next to us, so there are boats not to far from us, and the balcony reaches a little bit over the edge of the water, just enough that you could dive right into the ocean without harm. I laugh to myself at the thought of someone doing just that to escape a bad date.

Then there is something in the water.

I try to ignore it, but it's practically taunting me. Through the window, I can see that Harry is talking to someone, and that he has a plate of food in his right hand. "Please hurry," I say to myself.

When I look over the edge again, there's nothing in the water, which calms me down, but I still can't seem to shake that feeling of familiarity. Too paranoid.

I must still look shaken when Harry comes back. "Okay?" He asks. All I could do was nod. "Okay." Then he sits down, placing the plate in the center of the table.

It's a huge sandwich.

And it makes me nervous.

"It's a giant pastrami sandwich," Harry says, again squinting at me. "Are you okay?"

Not particularly. "Yes," I say. "A giant pastrami sandwich." He smiles and nods excitedly, like a little kid. "Why?"

"Because you like pastrami," --he picks off a piece of meat-- "and I like giant sandwiches." He winks at me, putting the pastrami into his mouth. My cheeks start heating up, so I look down at my plate instead of at him.

"No cheese?" I say, picking up my fork. No one eats sandwiches with a fork. I place the fork back down. Harry shakes his head.

As I rip off a small portion, my arm knocks over s cup and it rolls to the edge, dropping off the balcony and into the water, making a plop sound.

"Oh God," I say. "Oh my God." But Harry's looking away from me, as if he's embarrassed, and he was smiling, his fingers over his mouth like he's trying to keep from smiling bigger.

The cup still floats on the water, and I want to smile too, but then there was something else in the water, further out. I tense and sit back in my chair.

The smile drops from Harry's face as he takes in my face. "Cali," he says slowly, leaning forward. "It's cool, ya know. It's only a cup."

"That's not... It's not the cup."

"What is it, then?"

"There's something..." I gesture with a finger toward the water. His mouth formed an "O" when he sees.

"Come on, then," he says as he stood up. "I'll walk you home."

The chair creaked when I pushed it back. My shoulder still hurts really bad. There was nothing in the water again.

"It's cool, California." Harry and I walk out of the restaurant and down the sidewalk.

He isn't holding my hand now.

The thing creeped closer to the boat and the water shook.

Then I was dragged into the ocean by my arm.

"Oh my God, Cali!" Was what I heard before everything went black.