In front of a bedroom vanity table, Sawyer Nelson stood dressed in a tux that made him feel already grown up. With gold cuff links and a black tie in the present and the departure of two dolphins and the isolation of one from Clearwater Marine Aquarium on his mind, he was just plain nervous since he and his mother were about to visit everybody at Embassy Suites Tampa Brandon for a going away party. He and Kyle were due for a three month course at Sea Education Association in Massachusetts, home of the Red Sox, in learning how to work a sailboat, a yacht, private vessels and simulations of steamships.

There was a three chime knock on the door, he did not acknowledge it first, but it was Hazel in a ruby red dress with a sparkle of sequins, leaning from the doorway. In her right hand appeared to be the kind of box that held jewelry from places like Macy's or Beverly's in Fort Lauderdale that sold very popular prices of diamond necklaces or chokers with white pearls from the ocean.

Hazel studied Sawyer's face in the mirror as she leaned in; she smiled while he just had a blank and forlorn expression that only she knew the reason why.

"I know you have been nervous, and I don't plan on knowing why."

Sawyer said nothing; instead he just let Hazel sit next to him on the rear edge of the table, ready to show him what was in the box.

"I had been saving it for something special and this has got to be the occasion."

She opened the box, and slowly with careful hands, Sawyer looked at the contents: it was a very familiar looking sapphire carved in the shape of a heart that was held together by a string of diamonds. Sawyer had seen this before in a historical drama, and Hazel was just trying to flirt with him by reenacting the scene.

"A diamond?" he asked, while playing along. He placed his hands on the centerpiece and from her most esteemed look of expectation; Hazel was just willing to let him put it on her neck.

"If it's yours, I think you should put it on yourself."

But Hazel just pushed her breasts up to his chest.

"No."

Her voice was very serious but charismatic.

"Men are supposed to put them on, not the other way around."

"Okay."

At last, he gave in and hung the necklace like so until both sides of the chain were coupled together. Hazel placed her left hand on the diamond, flattered and reminiscing something about her late mother.

"Mom took Dad to see Titanic when it first came out, and she was just so amazed by the Heart of the Ocean, that she just had to have one…for just $250."

Sawyer turned his eyes away from Hazel, remembering his own experience with jewelry from his parents.

"My dad had something similar for mom…before he left for Berlin. Except it was a blue Topaz, the birthstone for-"

"Winter?" Hazel felt perked up by the very mention of the famous dolphin, even if she was to be sold to Texas by the end of the month. Sawyer, on the other hand, had not heard from his father since the divorce, though a friend of Mr. Nelson had told his remaining family that he was working as a juror in the German parliament and Sawyer could only imagine that his dad was exploiting laws that bounced back in 1919 when Kaiser Wilhelm II fell out of power… along with a series of macabre results that made Germany a very unpopular country among historians.

Hazel lowered her head onto Sawyer's left shoulder, still smiling like a brave fool. Sawyer always felt weirded out by her lack of personal boundaries, especially since she caught him shirtless one time at the aquarium while he was changing out of his casual clothes.

"If there is nothing else I can give you," Hazel went on. "That's fine with me. But sadly with you going and all, we're all going to miss you-humans and animals of any kind, to be technical. But this necklace symbolizes the love that's deeper than the sea that all dolphins come from."

She rotated her head at the real Sawyer's face, not the one in the mirror, but the physical face of reality. Then, in a bland imitation of Billy Zane:

"Open your heart to me, Sawyer."

She gave the young man a quick kiss and left the door without saying a word.

Sawyer felt the kiss with both hands before he sided them down to his pulse, he was sure that Hazel's replica of the Heart of the Ocean was choking on her like a dog collar. But if he could image what he had to say to anybody about this private moment, well….

They were just friends, weren't they?