Of Poseidon

always imagined he would be.
    Still, he’s good-looking, a star quarterback, and he’s not trying to hook me up with his brother. So why am I not excited?
    The question must be all over my face because Mark’s got his eyebrow raised. Not in a judgmental arch, more like an arch of expectation. If he’s waiting for an explanation, his puny human lungs can’t hold their breath long enough for an answer.
    Aside from not being his business, I can’t exactly explain the details of my relationship with Galen—fake or otherwise. The truth is, I don’t know where we can go from here. He ripped holes in my pride like buckshot. And did I mention he broke my heart?
    He’s not just a crush. Not just a physical attraction, someone who can make me forget my own name by pretending to kiss me. Not just a teacher or a snobby fish with Royal blood. Sure, he’s all of those things. But he’s more than that. He’s who I want. Possibly forever.
    But I’m not in danger of becoming “that girl.” The one who throws away her college education in favor of marrying some guy right out of high school. The one who sacrifices everything she wants in order to make his dreams come true, to make him happy. The one who hangs on his every smile, his every word, bears his children, cooks his dinner, and snuggles up to him at night. Nope, definitely not in danger of becoming her.
    Because Galen doesn’t want me. If that kiss were real, I might have thrown scholarships to the wind and followed him to our own private island or his underwater kingdom. I might have even cooked him fish.
    Sure, Galen would love for me to do all those things. With his brother.
    So it’s a good thing I’m being proactive about my own recovery by going on a date, even if it is a rebound—and even if I’m rebounding from a relationship that didn’t actually exist. My feelings were real. That’s all that matters, isn’t it? There’s no stipulation in the broken-heart rule book that states the relationship had to actually be authentic, right? Sure, I’m gray-shading the line that separates stable and crazy, but the point is, there is a line. And I haven’t completely crossed over to lunatic.
    Mark sitting next to me proves it. I’m moving on. Getting on with my life. Staying in school. Enrolling in college. Cooking chicken instead of fish. Dating other people. And with enough luck, I’ll be kissing other people by the end of this date. Even if it doesn’t mean anything.
    “Is everything okay?” Mark asks as we turn onto the interstate.
    “Sure. Why?” But we both know why he’d ask.
    Mark’s obviously too much of a gentleman to point out that I’m getting more space time than an astronaut. He says, “You just seem quiet tonight. I hope I didn’t already do something to screw this up.”
    I laugh. “That’s exactly what I was just thinking. That I didn’t want to screw it up, I mean.”
    He nods, gives a knowing smile.
    “What?” I say.
    He shrugs.
    “No. You gave me a look,” I say, crossing my arms.
    “No I didn’t.”
    “I don’t date liars.” Anymore.
    He laughs. “Fine. If you must know, I don’t think there’s anything you could possibly do to screw this up.”
    I can’t help but smile. “Oh, you shouldn’t have said that out loud.” Good-looking, smart, funny. And now sweet. So quit waiting for your purse to ring, stupid.
    “You might remember that you forced me to say it out loud. But don’t worry. I’m not superstitious.”
    “I’m not either.”
    The drive to Atlantic City is just over an hour, and we pass it by playing Twenty Questions. Mark is the youngest of four brothers, wants to be either a physicist or an animator at Disney World—he promises to decide before he graduates college on his football scholarship—and his most embarrassing moment was when he walked in on his parents while they were doing the deed. Last week.
    His questions for me are almost the same, word for word. Except the one he asks when we pull into the parking lot along the boardwalk strip. “Question number nineteen is, Who keeps texting you tonight?’”
    Here we go again. Since Mark seems to saturate the air with easygoing, the whirlpool in my stomach had turned into no more than a swirl, as powerless as a flushed toilet, even when my purse beeped. But now that swirl is more like an island-swallowing vortex. Things are going too well tonight to ruin it with the truth, but since this could be the first of many dates with Mark, a