I step away and rub my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Let’s go to a hotel,” I say.
Seth shakes his head. “Nope. I have a whole day planned for us.”
And he does. Our next stop is the aquarium where we went on our second date. We wander through dark rooms, past otherworldly floating jellyfish and tanks boasting schools of angelfish, butterfly fish, and prehistoric-looking monsters called porcupine fish. It’s both captivating and deeply creepy, in the way of all aquariums.
We step out into a room with a giant sea turtle lolling in a huge, open pool, and then to something called the Shark Room, which I drag Seth through quickly. I do not fuck with sharks. This leads us to the aquarium’s most famed inhabitants: two giant manatees.
“I can’t decide if they’re cute or hideous,” Seth says, taking in their roly-poly bodies and snubbed snouts.
“Both,” I say.
“They kind of look like swimming pigs with no legs,” he muses.
“I’m sure they think the same thing of you.”
“They eat seventy-two to eighty-four heads of romaine lettuce a day,” an attendant informs us.
“Yum!” Seth enthuses.
We exit into the gift shop. I head for the doors, but Seth calls for me to wait. He’s standing at a counter inspecting marine life–themed jewelry.
“I want to buy you a present,” he says.
“I’m good on fish jewelry, actually.”
“No woman can ever have enough fish jewelry.” He flags down the cashier. “Do you have any of these necklaces with whales on them?”
I can’t help but smile.
The cashier looks confused. “Sorry, no … we don’t have whales in Florida. But we have these with manatees, dolphins, and starfish, in all the birthstones.”
“Well, manatees are like the whales of the bay,” he says authoritatively. “We’ll take one of those. In—” He turns to me. “What’s your sign, babe?”
“Taurus,” I say reluctantly.
“Taurus, please,” he says to the cashier.
“How lovely,” she says, plucking a necklace from the counter. “Shall I wrap it up for you, or would you like to wear it out?”
“She’ll wear it out,” Seth says. He takes the necklace and delicately slides it under my hair and around my neck.
“Cubic zirconia,” he says admiringly to the saleswoman. “Don’t you just love it on her?”
“Beautiful,” she agrees. “It really catches the light.”
I roll my eyes at Seth, but I take the charm in my hand and rub it with my thumb. It gives me that feeling you get when you pick out a crystal at a rock shop. You know that its supposed powers are probably bullshit, but it still makes you feel better to touch it.
“Thank you for my bauble,” I say as he hands over his credit card to the tune of $34.99. “I’ll treasure it.”
“For you, my lady, the finest jewelry the ocean-trinket industry can muster.”
We stroll back into the heat toward the car.
“Can you guess where we’re going next?” he asks me.
“The hotel?” I say hopefully.
He chuckles. “Come on. Think harder.”
The memory of our third date comes back to me. “No way,” I say.
“Yes way,” he counters.
“I’m not dressed for fishing,” I protest, looking down at my rather chic outfit. “And we don’t have poles.”
“Au contraire,” he says, popping open the trunk to reveal two fishing rods and a small cooler. “I stole my dad’s.”
“What’s in there?” I ask, pointing at the cooler.
“Kal Rubenstein’s finest cold brewskies, babe,” he says. “Get on in, it will be fun.”
We drive over a bridge to a fishing village and stop at a tackle shop by the pier. Seth runs in and emerges with a big bucket of bait fish. I carry the bucket and he hauls our gear out to the pier. There’s a pelican chilling on one of the posts, and some wizened old fishermen casting lines.
“Notice how no one else appears to be on a date here?” I ask.
“Too bad their boyfriends aren’t as creative as me.”
