With my hair damp and sand-ruffled down my arms and shoulder blades, a fraying towel wrapped around my dripping torso, and flip-flops smacking loudly against the puddled concrete floor, I skimmed the wall posters detailing the local seashells, mollusks, and water birds, ran my fingertips along the display coral, and slapped my way to the center of the arena to peer into the topless saltwater tank that seemed to be a watery cross-cut of everything squirming, swimming, and crawling in the entire Florida gulf. I leaned over on my tip-toes. There were fat, pale starfish suctioned to the tank’s sides, pulsating slowly; spindly-legged hermit crabs scuttling underneath rocks and across the sandy tank bottom; long, dark blobs that looked like slugs on steroids; some clam shells that were clamped shut at the bottom, others that looked like they were chattering away on barnacled rocks near the surface, and others still that zoomed backward underwater at the slightest touch. There were violet-colored spike-balls that I assumed were what sea urchins looked like when they were still alive; chunks of coral like yellow, wrinkled brains; and even what appeared to be a tiny, colorless octopus clinging to the glass side of the tank, its eight squiggly little legs splayed out as if it alone should be the sea star.

“You can touch them if you like, you know.” I glanced up to see this young guy in a vibrant turquoise polo, white visor, and glinting name plate grinning at me from across the tank with a kind of slanted smirk, almost as if he knew something I didn’t.

“What?”

He made his way around to my side of the tank. “You can touch the stuff in there,” he repeated. “Nothing could possibly hurt you.” He dunked his hand into the tank and scooped up a scurrying hermit crab, which immediately zipped back inside its minuscule butterscotch-speckled conch shell. With his thumb and forefinger he delicately turned the shell upside down and slowly stroked the slimy crab-pad until once again a tiny leg emerged. His skin was sun-cooked in the way of lifeguards and beach volleyball players, the hair on his arms light blonde, nearly gold.

“I wasn’t so much worried about anything in there hurting me,” I said, reaching up and tracing the hermit crab’s shell with the curve of my fingernail. “I just didn’t want to hurt them.”

“Ah. I see.” He carefully set the crab back into the tank, flicked the water droplets off his fingertips and turned back to me, grinning now with his whole face, like a little boy. His eyes were green and his teeth were white, white. He even had dimples. “Want to see a trick?”

I didn’t mean to I swear, but at once I found myself twisting a wet-tangled lock of hair around one finger, bending slightly forward and doing that little pop thing with my shoulder that I’ve learned to finesse since high school when around men. The second guy I cheated with, the one from Lake Huron, had practically drooled over it. “Girl, that thing you do with your shoulder is breaking my heart,” he told me. “Breaking my heart.”

“Sure.”

“All right then.” He dipped his hand into the tank again but this time pulled up one of the clam shells. “Watch this.” He held it towards me flat in his palm, and as I leaned forward it suddenly squirted a cold stream of saltwater directly into my face.

“Hey!” I squealed, burying my face into my towel. But I was laughing, and he was laughing, and in that moment there it was, and I knew.

He set the clam back into the tank, wiped his hand on his pant leg, and held it out for me to shake. “Chase.”

I shook it, hoisting up my towel underneath my arms. “Dosinda.” Little shoulder pop.

He raised his eyebrows. “Dosinda...that’s a pretty name. It sounds Spanish.”