Twilight and all of its characters belong to Stephanie Meyer.
If you can't tell from this chapter and from the little one-shot I posted over on Tumblr, I was in the mood to write some silly Cullen-sibling antics. Please enjoy.
The hours that passed since I left Bella at the coffee shop were beginning to feel more like days. I was well past simply missing her. The afternoon with Ben and Angela went fairly smoothly. Angela and I mainly focused on sign language while Bella blatantly ignored her homework in favor of the new book that I technically didn't buy for her. Ben happily followed her lead and pulled out a comic book instead of working on his homework, as well.
Neither Ben nor Angela directly addressed Bella, but they weren't actively cruel to her either, which was just fine for the time being. I trusted Angela would come around eventually, and where Angela went, Ben would follow. It was only a matter of time until the two of them fell for Bella's charm just as I had.
As sleep evaded me, I fantasized all the ways I could sneak Bella out from the water and into my room. Only seeing her for forty-five minutes at lunch and two hours after school simply wasn't going to cut it. Especially since all that time was in public and we couldn't properly be together—her in my arms, body curled against mine, lips locked…
Suddenly, a small pebble hit the glass door of my balcony.
"Bella?" I sat up in bed. Had a mermaid sense brought her to me? Did she need me as much as I needed her? Haste made me unusually clumsy, but I managed to get out of bed and out onto the balcony. "Bella!"
"Not quite, fair Juliet." I frowned at the sound of Emmett's voice.
"What are you doing?" I hissed.
Emmett's head popped up between the bars of my balcony, a silly grin stretched across his face. "I thought I was going to have to kiss you awake, but you're already up. Get dressed and get back out here, lover-boy."
I felt my ears get hot over my near-naked state of dress. I rushed inside and pulled a shirt over my head and shoes on my feet. Back outside, I walked over to where Emmett was still hanging from the branches like an ape. "Now, watch me climb down the tree and copy what I do."
Before I could even understand what was happening, he was already descending. I squinted into the darkness, trying to make out his shape and what he was doing so I could do the same. When I landed on the ground beside him, I saw Jasper and Rosalie also waiting for me at the bottom. Worried that I had missed some sort of disaster that drove the family from our home, I asked them what was going on.
"It's Alice's birthday next week," Jasper said, as if that made sense as an explanation.
"It is?" No one had mentioned it to me.
"Yeah, man. You should have gotten a notification about it from the family calendar."
My blank expression caused my siblings' eyes to bug out.
"You didn't sync to the family calendar?" Rosalie actually sounded appalled.
"The what?"
Emmett threw his hands up in exasperation, "The boy didn't sync to the family calendar."
"What an idiot." Ignoring my protests, Rosalie stepped forward and searched my pockets for my cell phone. She pulled it out and began furiously typing. "If I were you, I would never tell Esme that you were off of this thing for so long."
Still typing, she began walking around the back of the house towards the garage. My brothers and I followed her, tiptoeing around Esme's finely trimmed shrubs and decorative stones.
"Alice's birthday and the family calendar don't explain what we're doing stalking our own house at midnight," I complained.
"We're going to buy Alice her birthday presents." Again, not a real explanation from Jasper.
"At midnight?"
"Yeah. So, Alice doesn't know about it."
"The actual buying of the present doesn't have to be secret. You all know that, right?" I needed to know they knew that. "We can all say, at a normal time of day, that we are going to buy her presents, and the present would still be a surprise."
Emmett shook his head, "Not with Alice."
"If she finds out you bought her a present, there are zero limits to what she will do to find out what it is," Rosalie explained.
Jasper looked at me, "She once threatened to shave off my eyebrows."
"What the hell?"
Emmett put a solid hand on my shoulder, "In order to get her presents and keep our eyebrows, we make sure she doesn't know when or where. She still gets to be surprised on her birthday despite herself, and we all get to play secret agent for the evening. It's a win-win."
These were the strangest people I had ever met, and I was dating a mermaid.
"We should take the Volvo," Rosalie said when we entered the garage. "It's easier to adjust the mileage in it."
"Adjust the milage?" I repeated, eyebrows raised.
"It's one of her tricks," Jasper explained. "Last Christmas, she checked the milage in the cars at night and in the morning, and if someone drove that night, and she figured out which store they went to based off how many miles they drove and managed to find out what her present was."
"Instead of just waiting for Christmas to find out what it is like a normal person?"
Jasper chuckled, fondly. "Yupp."
Still uncertain whether or not I wanted to be a part of this, I unlocked the Volvo and ducked into the driver's seat. My siblings crowded around the rear of the car, and Emmett tapped on the trunk twice with his fist, asking me to open it. The three of them stuffed a few things into the back. Emmett slammed the trunk shut and slid into the passenger seat beside me, followed by Rosalie and Jasper in the back.
Emmett instructed me to keep the headlights off until we were off the property and down the block. Once we were free and clear, Rosalie gave me a few directions, which I easily followed. Soon, we were on one of the many freeways of LA headed towards our weird, secret destination.
"Rose, did you see the party plans?" Jasper asked. I turned the music down to background noise so I could follow the conversation.
"Yeah, Alice showed me and Esme the PowerPoint at the same time." PowerPoint? What on Earth? "It's going to be insane."
Right. Alice's parties were somewhat legendary. They were brought up on my first day at school and a couple of times since then.
"And Esme approved it?" Jasper sounded skeptical.
"Somewhere in between the sobs about her baby growing up, yeah, she approved of everything."
"Wow," Jasper's voice was incredulous, "An unrestrained Alice party. Insane is probably the only word that can describe that."
"We went through the guest list together, too. It's going to be her biggest one yet."
"Are you going to bring your new girl to the party, Eddie?" Emmett reached over to muss my hair, which I nearly dodged.
I hadn't thought about it, yet. "If she wanted to go."
"What's she like, Rosie?" Emmett asked, "You're the only one who knows her."
"She's weird."
"Rose!" I exclaimed while Emmett coughed back a fit of giggles.
"What?"
"She cute?" Jasper asked.
"I guess," Rosalie admitted, "If you're into the whole heart-face, doe-eyed, little Disney princess thing. I swear, the girl looks like she has birds dress her in the morning."
Emmett leaned over in his seat to stage whisper to me, "Rose is only interested in girls who look like they could kill her." I stifled a laugh. Bella was in that category more than Rosalie could dare to dream.
Rosalie's fist emerged from the backseat. Emmett hunched up towards the dashboard out of her reach, so she settled with punching my shoulder. "Shut up!"
Between his giggles, Emmett defended himself, "You can't get mad. That's a direct quote from you." Rosalie huffed and slumped back into her seat.
"Bella is very pretty," I told my siblings, because Rosalie wasn't the only one in the car who knew her. "She's also charming and shy and sweet, not weird."
I saw Emmett shrug from the corner of my eye, "Hey man, no need to get defensive. Weird can be hot." Emmett had a point. Sprouting a mermaid tail was weird, but also inarguably hot.
"She's definitely a hot weird," Jasper decided. "If Edward was willing to ditch school and face Esme's wrath, she's very hot."
"I was just glad to know she has a house," Rosalie commented with a snort, "Some of the kids in class are convinced she's homeless and lives out of her truck."
I frowned. Did these people have one nice thing to say about Bella? They weren't far off the mark, which was a bit unsettling. She did seem to keep most of her human belongings in the bed of her truck.
"She has a house," I said, defensively, searching for an excuse on Bella's behalf. "It's just… she lives far away and she's an over-preparer. She keeps tons of stuff with in to be prepared for anything."
"Where does she live?" Jasper asked.
Crap. "Um… somewhere by the beach."
Emmett chuckled, "We're in LA, dude. We all live by the beach."
I raked my brain for the names of any of the towns we passed on the drive to Bella's beach but came up blank. "…It's near a market," was the best I could do.
"Yeah, but where?" Jasper pressed, "I searched all the beaches along here for the best surf spots; I might know the town."
"Edward probably doesn't remember where because the whole time he was driving her he had to focus on not cream—Edward! it's this one!"
The conversation came to an abrupt halt as Rosalie shouted at me to take the next exit while I was going eighty miles per hour in the far-left lane. Jasper and Emmett cheered as I veered across multiple lanes to make our exit. Off the never-ending chain of highways, Rosalie loudly directly me to a twenty-four-seven Target from the backseat. The fact that this was a required service here in LA proved that this entire place was insane. Back in Forks, every shop closed at six o'clock on the dot and that was it. No one could pick up Pizza Rolls and hand soap at midnight, and we were all probably better off for it.
Once inside, my siblings immediately split up: Rosalie to clothes, Jasper to electronics, and Emmett to home décor. I wasn't good with neither fashion nor electronics, so I followed Emmett to home décor, hoping to two of us could scrounge something together.
"She's into pink, orange, and yellow this season," Emmett said when we saw me approach.
I picked up a yellow throw pillow, which Emmett immediately took out of my hand and put back, "but not that yellow. Like a mustard."
"Mustard?" I asked. There were a lot of different kinds of mustard, and they weren't the same color. It was probably best not to think too hard about mustards and yellows and decided I would focus on the other two colors. I picked up an orange planter, which received the same reaction.
"Like a sienna."
"There is no way you actually know what that means."
"Your hair is kind of close to sienna."
Eyeing him, I hovered my hand over a small, pink vase, which he yet again rejected. "Not that pink."
I threw my hands up. "What do you want from me?"
"Something like this." He held up a framed piece of abstract art with the pinks, oranges, and yellows swirling around.
"Oh. That looks nice," I admitted.
Emmett offered me the print. "Fucking noob," he muttered to himself. He found a few more things, explaining the ins and outs of Boho design and I was sure he was repeating verbatim from when Alice explained it to him some time ago. After he was satisfied, we ran into Jasper in the card section, flipping through a couple in his hands.
When I approached, I saw the one he was reading had a glittery heart on the front. "Hey man, I think that one's more for a girlfriend than a sister."
Jasper glanced at the front and frowned, "It's times like this where I wish I had learned how to read."
Snorting, I clapped him on the shoulder. I turned to the cards as well, and soon Jasper, Emmett, and I each had one. The three of us met an impatient Rosalie at the front of the store. She was already standing, bag in hand, at the entrance past the self-checkout stations.
I drove again, carefully following Rosalie's instructions, but blatantly ignoring her criticisms on my driving. The second destination was even stranger than the first because it wasn't a storefront at all—it was a public park.
My siblings filed out of the car with their new purchases in hand, and I followed suit. Emmett asked me to pop the trunk, and I complied. I now saw that earlier he had put a large, plastic container in the truck and was now retrieving it.
"Where are we?" I asked as Emmett shoved a flashlight into my hand.
"One of Esme's landscapers is working on this park," Rosalie said, "It's going to be closed to the public for a couple more weeks."
Jasper chuckled to himself. "She's never going to think to look here."
"What are we doing here?" I asked, now following them out of the parking lot and into the park.
"You think we can just hide Alice's presents in the house?" Jasper asked over his shoulder. "Rookie mistake, dude."
I almost ran into Jasper as he stopped. Just past us was the inky darkness of a pond at night. Emmett asked me to shine the flashlight on him and we all watched Emmett find a few rocks and drop them into the plastic container. Then, he took the bags from Jasper, Rosalie, and me and placed them inside as well. Under the glow of the flashlight, Rosalie stretched plastic wrap over the top, which Jasper held in place with duct tape, and Emmett sealed the lid into place. To my utter and complete surprise, Emmett lifted the container and plopped it into the pond beside us.
I gasped in shock, but all my other siblings stood idly by and just watched it sink.
"There you have it," Emmett slapped me on the back, "We'll come to get these right before the party."
I felt my mouth hanging open like an idiot, unable to comprehend what had just happened. These people were hiding birthday presents from a nineteen-year-old girl at the bottom of a pond?
"What about mom and dad?" I asked. Surely, Carlisle and Esme had some amount of chill didn't feel the need to go to such absurd lengths.
Without saying anything, Emmett adjusted the flashlight in my hand so it shined down, where I could just make out a second air-tight container right beside ours at the bottom of the pond.
oOo
To avoid being kidnapped by my old lunch table like the day before, Bella stood in line with me as I purchased my lunch. While we waited and found seats together in the corner of the courtyard, I told her about my evening and my weird siblings. The tale had her shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
"What you like to meet them?" I asked when the story ended.
She quirked her head to the side, asking me to clarify.
"My family. We could go to Alice's party together and you could meet them."
Instead of answering, her gaze dropped to her lap.
I tried to placate her nerves. "I know they sound like a bit… much. But, I think you'd like them. Emmett especially. He'll make you laugh."
But she wasn't comforted; she began twisting the end of her ponytail in her fingers.
I gently ran my fingers through the entire length of her ponytail, coaxing the ends out of her fingers so she would look up at me. "What's wrong?"
Her eyebrows drew together, and she pointed to herself.
"Of course, they'll like you," I said, understanding what she had asked. I circled my arm around her and placed a hand on her hip. "Honestly, I'm more worried that Esme is going to try to adopt you, too, and we'd have to break up."
She rolled her eyes.
"I'm serious!" I squeezed her hip, "You're everything Esme and Carlisle look for in their children. Intelligent, beautiful, talented..."
"Talent?" she signed.
"Most would agree that breathing underwater is an incredible talent. And you know what else?"
She quirked an eyebrow.
Leaning down, I traced the curve of her ear with my nose. I gave her earlobe a lingering kiss and whispered, "They love fish."
She placed her hand firmly on my chest and shoved me away.
When my chuckles dissipated, I asked her again, "So, will you go to the party with me?"
She gave me a side-eyed look as if she were going contemplating saying no, but ultimately nodded her head yes.
More tired from the night's excursion than I realized, I yawned. I felt Bella's fingers brush against my bottom lip. When the yawn passed, I smiled and gave her thumb a small kiss of appreciation.
"Mermaids don't yawn?" I guessed.
Fingers still tracing my bottom lip, she shook her head.
"Do you get tired?"
She bit the inside of her cheek, considering for a second, but then shook her head.
"Do you sleep at all?" I asked.
She nodded and held up a hand with her pointer finger and thumb barely touching to say, "A little."
"Where?"
She signed, "Water."
"Like, in a bed?" I asked, trying and failing to picture what it would be like to sleep in the ocean. "Or do you have to keep moving forward while you sleep, like a shark?"
Her pretty face twisted in a way that told me my question was stupid without any words.
"Do you have a house in the water?"
This time, she took out her notebook. I think I consider the ocean my home. But I do I have a few places where I like to rest better than others.
I could think of a place where I would like her to want to rest more than the others, but I kept that thought to myself.
"Was the place we went on Wednesday one of them?" I asked, remembering the breathtaking coral reef.
She shook her head. We can go to one today.
"Yeah?"
She nodded.
I was about to ask another question, but it got smothered by another yawn. Bella smiled at the sight, bemused. I sagged against her side and let my head fall on her delicate shoulder. "If you never get tired then you can take care of me when I'm haggard and worn. Feed me." I let my mouth hang open wide.
Instead of food, she shoved the heel of her hand into my mouth, trying to push me off her. Laughing, I tried to fight back by rooting myself in place.
The sound of a throat clear had us bolting upright.
Angela stood in front of us, shifting from one foot to the other. "Do you guys mind if I sit?"
I looked down at Bella who shook her head and I gestured to the empty seat in front of me, "Not at all."
Angela placed her lunch tray down and offered Bella a tentative smile. "Thanks. How has your day been so far?"
I was about to respond but was interrupted by yet another yawn. "Sleepy."
Angela smiled. She looked like she wanted to say something, but she reconsidered and stiffly turned, "Bella?"
Bella scrunched her nose and stuck out her tongue.
Angela giggled, bright and genuine. "Oh no! What happened?"
Angela patiently waited for Bella to scribble her response down. As she read, Angela's expression soured, then softened with pity, "That sucks. I'm so sorry."
Instantly worried, I angled the notebook towards me so I could see what she wrote. My class did a team-building assignment this morning, but my teacher thought it would be best if I observed and wrote an essay instead.
Bella shrugged as if it was no big deal. But being ostracized like that was a big deal, and I wished she would do something about it.
I placed my hand on her knee underneath the table and gave it a supportive squeeze, "Team building things are stupid anyway."
"Yeah," Angela agreed with a nod, "I would write an essay instead of doing one of those things any day."
Bella and Angela exchanged another smile, this one more genuine than the others.
Angela took a bite of her lunch. "Oh, hey!" she snapped her fingers into a gun and pointed at me, "We all got our invites to Alice's party last night."
"Invites? I live there and I didn't get an invite."
Angela pulled out her phone, tapped the screen a few times, and held it out for Bella and me to see. Lo and behold, there was an elegant graphic depicting the time and place of the party.
"Huh. Is everyone at school invited?"
"Nah," she turned the phone back to herself and tapped it a few more times. "They're super exclusive. We got sent a link and a password. People are bugging out, constantly refreshing their emails to see if they got their link yet."
"Alice's parties can't possibly be that big of a deal." I couldn't imagine any party being that big of a deal.
"They're probably not," Angela shrugged, making me like her even more. "But for years they've been this amazing, elusive thing that everyone on the outside would build up in their minds. And, you know," Angela took another bite, "It doesn't hurt that there will be college boys there."
I grinned. "You gonna bag yourself a frat boy, Weber?'
She laughed. "Oh yeah. I'll woo them all with my epic keg stand."
I glanced down at Bella's furrowed brow—I might have to explain frat boys and keg stands to her later.
I tried to think of a way to steer the conversation into something she could participate in. Luckily, Angela did it for me. "Are you not eating, Bella?" she asked, indicating the empty table in front of her.
It was the second time in as many days that someone commented on Bella not eating. If we were going to spend more time with other people, she might have to start to not raise suspicions or start any more ridiculous rumors about her. I pushed my tray over, so it was between us, "We're splitting this."
Angela looked doubtfully at the tray but said nothing.
"What?"
"It's just surprising, that's all. I feel like I've seen you eat much more by yourself in one sitting."
Beside me, Bella covered her mouth with both hands to hold back a burst of laughter. These girls and their comments on my eating habits. "I'm a growing boy."
"He ate four sandwiches on our first real date," Bella signed.
Angela's face morphed into disgust, "Ew, Edward!" Bella's shoulders shook.
"Hey! It was our second date."
Angela's hands flew in sign language that was too quick for me to pick up. I only just realized that she and Bella had been going easy on me—by the time I translated the first two words, I had forgotten the rest of the signs.
"What was that?" I asked.
Smiling innocently, Angela folded her hands on the table in front of her, "Oh nothing."
"I thought I saw roll and butt" I frowned. Angela's smile grew.
Angela gave Bella a look, who reached up at covered my eyes with her hand.
"I'm getting the strangest feeling that you're both talking about me."
The bench shook lightly with Bella's silent laughter and Angela calmly stated, "Not everything is about you, Edward."
Bella's fingers slipped from my face as she caught another burst of giggles from escaping at whatever Angela had signed. As looked down at Bella—cheeks pink, eyes bright—I decided that Angela was right. In fact, nothing was about me. Despite the small amount of time we've had together, it was clear that everything would be about Bella from now on.
oOo
It shouldn't be a surprise that Bella knew every secret beach in the greater LA area.
After school, I joined Bella in her truck so we could spend the rest of the day together at another one of her secret spots. I was better equipped for my date with a mermaid this time around; I changed into my swim trunks in my car and my backpack held towels and snacks rather than schoolwork.
The drive today was quicker than the one on Wednesday, but a lot more time was spent off-roading on a hidden road off the interstate. After bouncing around the cab for about thirty minutes, the truck came to an abrupt stop in front of an impassable wall of trees. We got out of the truck, presumably to finish the journey on foot.
Hand in mine, Bella led me deeper into the trees. We emerged from the forest at the top of a cliff, waves crashing below us. I stuttered a stop, slightly worried that Bella would expect me to jump into the water with her from here, but she tugged on my hand, guiding me away from the edge and around a bend. The small path she led me to was more like a slide than a trail it was so steep. More than once, I had to snatch Bella by the waist to stop her from slipping and sliding the rest of the way down—not that I minded the excuse for contact, of course. The path ended in a sheer drop, but it was no taller than Bella, who lightly hopped down to the sand below.
Nestled into the steep rock was a small strip of sandy beach, no larger than my room at home. I took my time laying out towels for both Bella and myself. Bella, however, wasted no time. She threw off her dress and dove into the waves in one, fluid motion.
Once I was ready, I sucked in a breath and jumped, crashing into the water after her. A rush of bubbles raced over my skin toward the surface above. Clusters of fish in every color swarmed the crests, catching the light with iridescent scales and rippling fins. My eyes lit with the sting of salt as I turned in a circle, searching for her.
As she did every single moment of every single day, Bella stunned me with her beauty. Sunlight streaming through the water reflected off her golden tail, giving her an ethereal glow as she drifted in the water before me. I stared at her for a moment, letting a string of bubbles trail up from my lips.
It felt almost sinful to approach something so glorious, and even more so to touch, but that didn't stop me from swimming up to Bella and taking her into my arms for a kiss. I had no idea how this beautiful creature considered herself anything close to monstrous. She was perfect in every way—her heart, her mind, her taste. Especially her taste. I deepened the kiss to get more of the taste I so desperately craved.
Just as she had before, Bella shot us back up to the surface to let me breathe. When we resurfaced, I coughed up saltwater I didn't even realize I swallowed. She raised two exasperated eyebrows and signed the word, "drown."
I laughed. "I know, I know. I don't seem to notice..." I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her through the water into my chest, "It's just that I'm always at a loss for air around you."
She quirked her head to the side.
"Because you take my breath away, baby."
She rolled her eyes and dunked my head under the water.
Bella showed me the small alcove she liked to rest on in the ocean-worn rock—it didn't look very comfortable, but I didn't mention it. We continued to swim and share kisses for the rest of the afternoon. To everyone's surprise, I didn't drown or even come close. Eventually, Bella said she wanted to go further out into the water to find something to eat. After another lingering kiss, she departed. I crawled back out of the water and gratefully sprawled out face-first onto my towel. Fatigue from the night before and warmth from the sun lulled me to sleep in a matter of minutes.
When I awoke sometime later, I peeked through my eyelids to see Bella army crawling out of the water. Startled, I hurried to her side and swept her up in my arms. She immediately wrapped her arms around my neck and tucked her head right under my jaw. I walked her out of the water, up the sand, and placed her down on the towel laid out next to mine. Knowing she would be naked any minute now, I looked around for her abandoned dress and saw it in a wet bundle in the lapping waves. I offered her the dry shirt out of my bag instead and she pulled it over her head.
She beamed up at me. "That is so much easier with you," she signed.
I smiled, "Good."
She lay back, letting the sun do its job and dry her tail back into legs. She pulled her book out of her bag and began to read, while I settled back down in my own towel, listening to my music.
I had almost drifted to sleep once more when I felt her pry open my eyelid. Bella was sitting up with her notebook and pen in hand—she wanted to talk.
Even though I technically didn't need to, I paused my music and took my headphones out. "What's up?"
There's something I wanted to ask you.
"You can always ask me anything," I reminded her, tucking three tangled strands of hair behind her shoulder.
She smiled dreamily at the contact. You know how you asked me to meet your family? I nodded. How would you feel about meeting mine?
I forced my neutral expression to stay in place. From what I could tell from Bella's story, she didn't speak to her mermaid kin anymore. But maybe I was wrong. I had no idea how I felt about a meet-and-greet with a coven of deadly sirens, but if it was important to Bella, I was sure I could put on a brave face. "Your sisters and your mother?"
Her facial expression twisted into one of disgust, and I was immediately relieved. Not my family, she wrote, I meant Charlie.
There was that name again. She had mentioned him briefly before. "Who is he?" Please don't be a mate or something. Please don't tell me mermaids are polygamous.
She pursed her lips, A dad. Maybe an uncle.
A father figure: I could handle a father figure. Light with relief once more, I smiled. "When would that be?"
He'll be at the docks tomorrow. Is that too soon?
"Absolutely not," I pulled her over to my towel and sat her in my lap, peppering her with as many kisses I could in as many places I could reach. "I'd be happy to meet him."
She nuzzled her head into my neck, gifting me with a few kisses of her own. I thought about my revelation this afternoon when I realized how my whole world seemed to change course to revolve solely around her. I pushed her still-wet hair away from her face so she would look up at me as I said, "Everything you want, anything you need, consider it done from now on."
At that, she closed her eyes, and I swore I could almost hear her hum in contentment.
The next day, Bella brought me to another market on the outskirts of LA. The air reeked of salt and fish, the place was jam-packed, and I was constantly running into someone's elbow, but the brightness in Bella's eyes and the curl of her lips made it impossible for me to dislike anything about this place.
We held hands as Bella led me down the docks. We stopped in front of an older boat—smaller, more well-loved than the others around it. A few lawn chairs were placed out on the hull and laundry hung on a wire tired across two posts at the stern, giving the boat a homier feel. Coolers were stacked out front, presumably holding fresh-caught fish that would be sold at the marker we had just wandered through.
An older, weather-worn man stepped out of the cabin and onto the deck, "There's my girl!"
Bella dropped my hand and took off up the ramp, across the deck, and into his arms. He chuckled—the sound was gruff, but warm—and lifted her off the ground and into his embrace.
After he set her down, he looked out over her head towards me, standing awkwardly on the dock. "Now, what did you bring to meet your old man?"