The Souls of Drowned People

Chapter Twelve

I woke up back in the guest room bed. Someone had tucked me carefully under the covers, and the cup of tea lying empty on the bedside table showed that they had spent the night sitting next to me. I slipped out into the hallway, cracking open the door to Cillian’s room. He was still wearing his clothes from the night before and lying face down on the bed, like he had stumbled into his room at some point and been too tired to lie down in a comfortable position.

            I couldn’t wake him up, not if he must have stayed up half the night. He must have carried me to the guest room at some point, and he must have done it carefully, because I hadn’t felt a thing.

            Sleep had been dreamless. It wasn’t until I stepped out into the kitchen and saw the closed blinds and the melted candle, and remember the nightmare that happened while I was awake.

            I forced myself to pull back the blinds. The sea was gentle this morning, and the sky was a beautiful mix of blue and gray, like something from an oil painting. But it all felt like the calm before the storm.

            The seals were sitting on the rocks, and it was hard to look at them, without thinking about their coats peeling away and their tails splitting into legs.

            In eleven days, I was going to have to love them. I was going to have to try and love the sea, but I couldn’t, not after what I had seen. I suddenly understood what my mother hated it, why she shuddered at the thought of the things we couldn’t see from the surface.

            The timing couldn’t have been worse. All my life, I wanted the sea. I wanted to live on the beach, I wanted to have gills and flippers, and turn somersaults with the seals. But now, all my dreams would be coming true in eleven days, and I wanted nothing more than the sanctuary of being in a landlocked state again.

            Last night had been the first time that I thought that I felt something about Cillian. When he first arrived, and all Chelsea’s fangirling made me realize how attractive he really was, I thought I felt something stronger then. I hadn’t really, not until last night, when the realization hit me hard enough to make my head ache.

            I didn’t want to be in love with Cillian. I never had, and especially not now. I never wanted him to be anything more than the boy I used to build sandcastles with. If we tried to make ourselves more than that, everything could crumble apart in our hands, and even the good memories would start to hurt.

            When I walked back down the hall to Cillian’s room, peeking in again to see if he was still asleep, I felt the same painful longing I felt when I watched Ronan playing on the rocks. I did want him, like I had wanted to run into the water. But there was something deep in me that warned me that if I went for what my heart wanted, nothing would go right.

            Cillian looked so uncomfortable. He was barely on the pillow, and one hand was dangling from the side of the bed. I should have thrown a blanket over him, or pushed him back to the center of the bed so he didn’t fall out. It was what he would have done for me. Moving him would run the risk of waking him up, and then we would have to talk about the selkies again. That was the last thing I wanted; what I wanted was to stand there for a minute longer, listening to him breathe.

            I went back to the guest room, and pulled on a pair of jeans. I still hadn’t returned the shirt I borrowed from Cillian on the plane, and since it was the one from Tara, I wasn’t sure if he wanted it back. I pulled it on over the shirt I had slept in, buttoning it up to my throat and hiding my hands in the long sleeves as I started for the door.