Chapter 6

More madness. Sorry its been awhile....

Six months after she returned from the crash, Zoe had pushed herself too hard on a night out. Since becoming a mermaid she had her suspicions at the origins of the saying ‘drinking like a fish’ because it took double the amount alcohol of what most her friends drank to even get her tipsy. So usually by the time her friends were tripping over things and throwing themselves at random strangers, she was just starting to wind up. But this one particular night she had been drinking since 2pm at a friends place so by midnight she was hammered. Normally she remembered her trusty water bottle, as alcohol dehydrates which is of course deadly to mermaids. But this time she hadn’t remembered to bring it or lost it in the chaos. Zoe woke up in hospital, on a drip and with all the nurses staring at her in awe. 

They were hooking her up to her fifteenth drip bag. 

But she remembered the sensation of waking up, the world swimming in black and white and everything rocking like she was underwater. It felt the same except Josiah’s face was looming in her vision. Oh and Madelyn’s. Damn. 

“Its ok, I’ve got her,” he said gently propping her upright. 

Madelyn looked panicky but after a few moments when she realized that her boss wasn’t going to die, she left them be. By then Zoe was sitting up on her own and drinking greedily from the water bottle. She shouldn’t be dehydrated but Josiah was insisting she drink. As soon as the door clicked shut, Zoe looked across at him before pegging the water bottle at him. Josiah burst out laughing, that same, silly goosy laugh that immediately made Zoe think of the island, a thought she quickly quashed. 

“How dare you walk in my life now! What are you even doing here?” Zoe gasped. 

Josiah tried to help her up but she ignored his hand pulling herself up on the edge of the table. He watched her sit shakily in the chair before sitting back down in the one opposite. “I always promised myself I would come find you.”

“And thank me for giving you immortality,” Zoe said dryly.  She noted that his voice seemed to have dropped a couple of notches in timbre over the past eleven years, it was far from a masculine voice but it didn’t sound quite so high as she remembered. 

Josiah coughed slightly. “Its not like that.”

Zoe leaned back, folding her arms and fixing him with a glare. She looked older, more mature but apart from the stronger line around his jaw and filling out a bit, he hadn’t changed. Still that boyish, the impish look of trouble. “Oh really. I haven’t heard a blip from you in I dunno, ten years and you suddenly swan or should I say swim back into my life,” she said frostily. 

“Eleven years actually,” he corrected. 

“No matter. You could have called or something,” she continued. 

“Skype doesn’t work so good underwater and message in a bottle is so unreliable,” he grinned. 

Zoe merely glared but she could feel herself weakening. That smile and the way his lips tuned up in the corners and his hair fell in those eyes which twinkled with mischief. Suddenly her eyes fell on the picture of Daniel. Snap. Daniel. He wouldn’t like this, not that she had told him obviously but you couldn’t hide Josiah under a mountain and the two would run into one another sooner or later. Sooner knowing her luck.

“That’s a nice ring,” Josiah said casually motioning at the rock that Zoe wore on the appropriate finger. 

“Stop reading my mind,” Zoe glared. 

“I cant help it. Besides it explains the burning smell is this room,” he chuckled. 

“Ha, ha, ha. Still using the same old jokes I see,” Zoe laughed dryly.  

“Hows the fins working for you?” he leaned forward, dropping his chin into one hand and grinning at her. 

“They’re a nuisance. I want my money back,” she replied. 

“Well your not having my immortality.”

“How does that even work? I mean what if you get injured or something?”

Josiah shrugged. “Don’t really know. I’m the first mer-folk to attain immortality in 2000 years.”

“Gee I wonder why,” Zoe said dryly. 

They regarded one another for a few moments, Zoe’s mind involuntarily slipping back to that wonderful flash in time. Quickly she squashed that thought but not before Josiah grinned smugly at her. Damn, she hated that he could hear her thoughts. At least Daniel couldn’t do that. 

“Daniel is it. Hmm I have a cousin Daniel, gay as a nudibranch,” Josiah grinned, his voice echoing in her head. 

“Leave. My. Thoughts. Alone,” Zoe glared across the table at him. 

“I bet you haven’t told him your half fish. Wow, there’s a wedding night confession ‘Darl there’s no easy way of saying it but I’m a mermaid,” Josiah said before trailing off in hysterics. 

“I might as well say I’m a mermaid whose had a sex change and be done with it,” Zoe grumbled despite herself. 

Josiah laughed. “No only molluscs can do that.”

Zoe sighed deeply. “Really what are you doing here? I’m getting married in a month so if its to sweep me back to that island, forget it.”

Josiah suddenly looked serious. “I…well we need your help.”

“We?” Zoe asked. 

“My family, well all Mer-folk I fear,” Josiah said, suddenly grim. “I fear you’re the only one who can help us.”