“What’s your favorite animal, Malcolm?” I asked.
He didn’t say. He just kept staring into my eyes and smiling, then he wrapped his little arms around my neck and clung to me. I looked at Zac, and he grinned and shrugged his shoulders. Neither one of us knew what was going on with Malcolm behaving like this toward me but we were both more than okay with it.
“Will you take me to see the fish?” Malcolm said, pulling back to look at me again. His voice was like an angel’s.
“If your daddy is okay with me doing that, then of course I’ll take you.”
Malcolm and I looked up at Zac at the same time and he smiled so big that it made his eyes squint. They also crinkled around the corners and that dimple in his right cheek appeared, just like it had yesterday as he and I stood in the Whole Foods parking lot talking to each other.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked me.
“That’s what I meant—for all three of us to go. Unless someone else came with you.”
“It’s just my boy and me. It always is.”
Zac knew what I’d been asking without asking. I’d wondered if Avery was here, hanging out somewhere, and I just hadn’t seen her. She wasn’t, though, and I was relieved.
“Then let’s go to the aquarium and see some fish.”
After Zac exited the petting zoo and walked over to Malcolm and me, I started to put Malcolm down so he could walk with his daddy and me, but he clung to me even tighter. He wanted me to carry him and I was all too happy to do it. I was enjoying the feeling of this little boy in my arms. A little boy who could’ve so easily been mine.
After reaching the aquarium, I kept holding Malcolm while walking around and looking at all the different aquatic life. Several times, I caught Zac watching me with his son, and then he’d smile at us. I knew he was just as blown away as I was by theway Malcolm had taken to me. I still didn’t know what to make of it, and Zac still didn’t seem to know either.
“What a beautiful little boy,” an older woman said, grabbing my attention. She was standing a few feet away from Zac, Malcolm, and me. “He’s a perfect blend of his parents.” She looked back and forth at Zac and me a couple of times and then her eyes went right back to Malcolm.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Zac replied.
The woman nodded and started making her way over to the stingrays. I met Zac’s gaze and held it, not knowing how to feel about what the woman had said or if I should’ve responded to her in some way. I was so caught off guard by her statement and couldn’t think of a proper reply, but then Zac had handled it. A “thank you” was all that was necessary. Not explaining that only one of this beautiful little boy’s parents was present, along with a woman that he met at a bar eight days ago.
Zac grinned and shrugged his shoulders at me again, and then I went back to showing Malcolm the different fish and telling him everything I knew about them.
“You should’ve been a marine biologist, Stevie. You know so much,” Zac said.
“I just enjoy marine life is all. I could never make a career out of it.”
“I have no doubt that you could do anything you set your mind to accomplishing.”
I paused and looked over Zac’s face. He still hadn’t shaven, and I was again wearing the sparkly gloss on my lips that he said looked really nice.
“Same to you,” I said, but the words came out in a whisper.
Zac kept staring at me, and I finally made myself look away from him. I had to. He’d touched me once again, but not by using his hands. Like a true Taurus, he used his eyes—those beautiful sky-blue eyes of his that spoke volumes. They also had the powerto unravel me and most certainly would have if I hadn’t looked away.
What I was feeling toward Zac was so confusing. It was also exhilarating. I couldn’t keep allowing myself to go there, though, with my attraction to him. It was as strong as it was wrong.
I had just finished telling Malcolm about stingray barbs when Zac leaned down closer to him.
“Guess what, son? Stevie is really a mermaid. During the day, her tail disappears, but at night, it comes back and she goes swimming in the ocean.”
Malcolm’s eyes got big as he looked back up at me. I was already smiling about what Zac had just said. He was a kid at heart who enjoyed playing make-believe with his son.
“Do you wanna know what color Stevie’s tail is?” Zac went on to ask Malcolm, and he nodded yes. “It’s the same color as her eyes. What color are her eyes?”
Malcolm looked up at me again and then put his hands on either side of my face, squishing my cheeks. “Blue like yours, Daddy!”
“They are blue, but Stevie’s are a little bit darker than mine. They’re really pretty, aren’t they?”
“Yes! So pretty, pretty, pretty!”