It is when the young man is about to excuse himself and rush out of the room in shame, that Angela stops him with her fingers now curled around his wrist. She does not need to speak—neither of them do—for the way they look at each other goes much further, and beyond what any words could ever hope to convey.

Angela motions to the notebook with a tilt of her head. Then, at the tiny, round stool.

She taps pen against paper. ‘Sit,’ she writes. And he does, to her relief.

The siren traps her lower lip between her teeth. ‘Something is bothering you—what is it?’ she asks, before she nudges the notebook back toward the young man.

Francis shifts against his seat once more. And Angela can tell he is hesitating, as he reluctantly takes the writing utensil back from her hand.

Outside, a soft breeze urges the scent of summer lilies past the bathroom’s small, circular window.

Francis purses his lips together. He swallows—hard—once more, before he finally grasps at the pen with an iron grip, and spells out a single word for her to see: ‘Aroused.’

The siren wants to chuckle, and tell him something akin to: Well, yes, of course, you are. Angela holds back, however. Something tells her the young man is not used to baring himself, and exchanging such vulnerabilities with others like this—his shoulders are tense. For once, he is not looking. He has turned his head away. Lodged his fingers between his knees, that shake as if he’s feverish.

Angela reaches out to rest a single hand against his thigh. The wetness of her skin marks his wood-brown pants a dark black. This time, Francis does not use the notebook. He signs something that—although Angela cannot comprehend it—she can only guess it is similar to an apology, with the way the young man’s brows arch up in pain, as he draws the words into the air for the brief, instance of a second.

Yet, to his apologies, the siren shakes her head. She shows Francis a smile in which she unintentionally also reveals the rows, and rows of sharp teeth aligned across her gums. There is a pang in her cold, heart of the sea. She fears, that this may very well be the end of any and all their sweet, meaningless interactions. But then, Francis squeezes his legs together even more, and—odd as it may be—the siren realizes that it seems the young man truly is, without a doubt, genuinely smitten with her, and everything that being herself entails.

She retracts her nails. Angela’s palm glides upward, to where she is able to sense great heat, emanating from beneath Francis’s undergarments. The siren presses the mid of her palm to Francis’s groin, and the young man lets out a quivering sigh, before his head tips back, as he closes his eyes, then indulges in the feel of her against him.

All of this is but a mere tentative effort—on Angela’s end, of course—to figure out how serious the young man truly is. She did not expect him to accept her brief caress. In fact, the siren finds herself at a loss for what to do now, for she would have bet half her fins that he would have pushed her off with disgust, once engaged in their current activity.

Francis points to the notebook. Angela pulls away from him as if she has been burned. She immediately reaches for an empty page, then hands it to him, along with the pen.

Now, she is the one acting shy.

She also wonders, if Francis has lost his mind. How on Earth could a human male be enamored with her? Especially when she has yet to use any tricks or strange trinkets to seduce him!

Soon, Francis returns the notebook to her. Angela—nervous wreck that she has become—almost drops the dratted thing in the bath’s water, that swishes and sways from side to side as she tries to regain her bearings, then takes a deep breath.

The young man is staring at her expectantly as she opens up to the page she had just lost. ‘It is okay for me to assume you are interested?’ he asks.