by Maren Smith
So, not only was he not a normal man, he wasn’t a normal shark, either.
That’s when Ommin lost his temper.
And that’s when KJMN called. This time the caller had been a woman, soft-spoken and cheerful, both optimistic and professional as she asked if Mr. Jones was home and might she speak with him?
“Do you want an exclusive?” he challenged, rather than asked.
“Uh,” she stammered before shock gave way and excitement took over. “Yes, please!”
And so, here he was. Squeezed into a waiting chair that seemed made for a kindergartener, one leg jiggling wildly up and down, sternly telling himself if he heard any hint of a penis-oriented question, he was going to Google seaside towns in Mexico without TV or news service, and he was going to move there.
“Mr. Jones?”
Ommin looked up from his fists and straight into the sea-green eyes of the most stunningly attractive woman he’d ever met in his life. Admittedly, he hadn’t met a lot. When one couldn’t bear to be away from the ocean and yet shifted into something less than human at the slightest hint of a salt-water mist, one tended to stay out of public as much as possible.
She smiled. She had pretty teeth and pink lips, the color of which amplified one another perfectly. Her golden hair was twisted up in a hasty bun, with stray wisps sticking out between the pins. It was a look that struck him as both sloppy and professional, both of which extended to her dress. Business casual—white slacks, white shirt, blue suit jacket buttoned up the front, just not high enough to hide the tiniest hint of a coffee stain upon the vee of her cleavage.
He ripped his gaze off her coffee stain before he could be accused of staring at her boobs. “That’s me.”
Sticking out her hand, she said, “Hi, I’m Britney Collins.”
His hand completely engulfed her much smaller one. He was careful not to shake too hard, not wanting to hurt her. But as he was releasing his grip, he noticed something on her wrist—the looping blue-ink swirls of a tattooed word mostly hidden by the cuff of her jacket. His glimpse of it was too brief; he couldn’t read it. And when their hands parted, she went back to hugging her papers again and her smile once more caught him up in its thrall.
“Would you follow me, please?”
The chair got up with him when he stood. Before he could grab the arms, it popped back off again and made the loudest, attention drawing clatter he’d ever tried to nonchalantly walk away from. His face burned. He hoped he wasn’t blushing. Guys shouldn’t blush, it didn’t look anywhere near as good on them as it did on women. On Britney, in particular. She was walking slightly ahead of him, her head tilted down, her eyes wide but she was smiling, and yeah… she was blushing. He caught glimpses of it every now and then when she stole her quick peeks back at him. Or when she tugged at her hair, trying to tuck that stray wisp of a curl that had escaped her sloppy bun back behind her ear. It was too short to stay there, so she ended up tucking it a couple times before they reached an empty recording room.
“Here we are,” she said, getting the door for him. “Office sweet office.”
He walked in. Already they were not alone. The room was split into two parts—the part he was standing in had a long table with multiple comfortable chairs and a center switchboard with plug-ins from which two headsets already lay ready and waiting. A giant picture window offered him a stellar view of the hallway they’d just walked down, and another gave him a technical view of where the magic actually happened. Two male attendants were already inside, pressing buttons, loading tapes, drinking coffee and laughing, all of which he could see through the window and none of which he could hear. Not so much as a whisper.
“Take a seat,” she encouraged. “These should be a bit bigger and more comfortable for, um”—she waved her hands, gesturing to all of him—“a man of your, um… size and, um”—she blushed even hotter. He did too. If his face got any warmer, he was positive he might spontaneously combust—“…your, um… extremely muscular build.”
“Thank you.” Was she flirting with him? This seemed a lot like flirting. A less socially awkward guy probably would have known for sure, but Ommin wasn’t that guy. Ommin was a guy who worked a nightshift custodial job at the university so as to limit the number of people he came in contact with, and who hung out quietly by himself on a bridge that was fast becoming a favorite hopping off point for suicidal people.
Still, hoping he was reading the situation right, he flexed an arm, at which point her blush went from pretty pink to flame-red magenta, complete with giggles.
She felt his arm.
“Wow,” she mouthed to the guys in the control room.
One was too busy setting up his station to pay much attention, the other had a look on his face similar to Britney’s. “Wow is right,” he mouthed back, then fanned himself.
“You must work out a lot,” she said, selecting a chair and dropping comfortably into it. Crossing her legs—no nylons, just soft bare skin with only the slightest tan—don’t be a creeper, Ommin, don’t look—she then lay her prepared list of questions on her lap.
Ommin slid into a chair beside her, picked up the spare headphones that had been set out when she picked up hers, and slipped them over his ears. He adjusted the microphone.
“Are they working?” he asked, but he knew they were when he heard himself through the earphones.
She beamed. “Yes, they are. We don’t have to jump in right away, though. We can just talk for a minute and get comfortable, if you like.”
“I’ve never done this before.” He supposed that was obvious, and he did his best to cover his awkwardness with a laugh. “You lead, I’ll follow. How about that?”
“That works, um, but”—she hesitated, then did her best to cover her own awkwardness with a half-chuckle of her own—”I do feel like, in all honesty, I should tell you know that I, um”—she rubbed imaginary crinkles out of her pristine questionnaire—”I’ve never done this before, either. See, I’ve only just got my degree and I, um, I’m still in my internship. I have done announcements here and there,” she rushed to assure him. “Plus, I filled in once when someone was sick. You know, over the midnight shift. It’s just that when everything hit the news, I thought yours would be such a great story, especially since no one seemed to have asked you yet. So I called you. To be honest, I never in a million years thought you would say yes, much less offer me an exclusive. In fact, I was fully expecting you to hang up on me.”
“If you’d asked about my penis, I would have.” Of all the things to come flying out of his mouth.
Face slowly heating up all over again, Ommin watched while Britney’s eyes got huge and her eyebrows slowly arched all the way up toward her hairline.
“Um, uh, well,” she stammered. “Those kinds of questions never quite made it onto my list…”
“I appreciate that.”
“I’m pretty sure if our situations were reversed, I would too.”
He liked her for that. He also relaxed a little.
“Still,” she said, “being as I am so new at this, if you would like your interview to be conducted by someone with more experience and, uh,” she both laughed and flinched as she confessed, “a wider listener base, then I would totally understand. In fact, the station has someone on standby—”
“No,” Ommin said, surprising both of them with just how fiercely he declined. Clearing his throat, he reined it in, but his tone remained as firm as his rejection of that offer. “No, thank you. You’re going to do fine.”
And by that, he meant she’d do fine for him. As an interviewer—not as like, say, a girlfriend, or something sleazy. Even though he’d already ogled her breasts and her legs and—ha ha—not that there weren’t plenty of other places in between that deserved a little ogling. But that was creepy and inappropriate behavior, and even socially awkward (not to mention newly-proclaimed) superheroes knew not to cross that line.
Anyway, that’s how he meant it, and Britney’s already lovely smile blos
somed into a grin, and her sea-green eyes sparkled as bright as sunlight on rippling waters. It could have been blinding.
“Thanks,” she said.
A crackle snapped through the headphones, followed by a male voice from the control room. “Ready when you guys are.”
The other guy opened the door long enough to hand them both a cold bottle of water.
Still beaming, Britney said, “We can break whenever you want to and, um… just in case I forget to tell you later on when it’s all over, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity.”
“Not a problem.” Outwardly, Ommin shifted in his chair, cleared his throat, and stubbornly avoided looking at her. Inwardly, he might have fallen just a little bit in love. Which was tragic, because she was… oh man, with a box of cookies on the side, and he, well, he had to wait thirty minutes after a sea salt bath before going outside or he scared the tourists.
The headphones crackled again and the voice said, “And we are recording in five… four… three…”
Britney visibly braced herself, smoothing both hands over her questionnaire, but even in her obvious nervousness, she still flashed him a reassuring smile, which made her eyes scrunch and the bridge of her nose wrinkle. “You’re going to be great,” she mouthed silently, and God, if he didn’t fall in love all over again.
“Good evening, folks,” Britney began, launching smoothly into what was obviously a well-rehearsed greeting toward all the non-existent potential callers who wouldn’t even be hearing parts of this tape until who knew when. Still it was everything Ommin could do not to watch the magic of her lips moving as she ran through her spiel, thanking radio sponsors before launching into a rundown of his—to hear her tell it—very heroic actions on the bridge. The next thing he knew, she was saying his name and every muscle in his stomach tightened in the most delicious twitch of sensation. “So please, Mr. Ommin Jones, tell us all about you.”
His mind went utterly and completely blank. “Okay.” He floundered. “Starting where?”
“Well, let’s start at the beginning.” Her smile was so beautifully relaxed. Dear God, he was a frog in the presence of a princess. “Where are you from?”
“Earth,” he said firmly.
“So, you’re a native San Franciscan?” she asked, her eyes sparkling.
Jesus. Ommin caught himself before he cringed. Of course, she was asking what city he was from. Only an idiot would think planet. “Yes.” He could have kicked himself. “Born at Zuckerberg’s Hospital, the same as a lot of other perfectly normal babies.”
He could have kicked himself for that too, especially when she, her smile gentling, next said, “But you’re not ‘perfectly normal,’ are you?”
Had anyone else said that, he’d have bristled. He expected it. Hell, he waited for it, that slow irritation to crawl up his back and over his shoulders, except… it didn’t.
“No,” he admitted. “No, I’m… not quite normal.”
“Ommin,” she said, her smile drifting away, her beautiful oceanic eyes turning almost sad, “were you on that bridge because you were going to jump too?”
Ommin startled. She looked so concerned for his mental health in that moment, he couldn’t even be upset that someone would jump to such an awful conclusion. He forgot about the headphones, the microphones, and the two guys sitting behind the window in the control room, sipping their coffee and watching them. He forgot everything, except Britney.
“No. God, no. I’m not suicidal, I’m—” Suddenly realizing what he was about to reveal about himself, Ommin hesitated.
Facing him instead of the table, Britney scooted her chair in closer. She left her notes in her lap and reached for his nearest hand, taking it in both of hers. Touching him. Comforting him. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had done that. He liked it.
He liked her.
He liked her so much, one minute he was staring into those beautiful sea-mist green eyes of hers, and in the next, he was telling her things he’d never told another living soul. Not even his mother, back when she was still sane and still trying, between medication changes, to be his mother.
“I was up on the bridge because the ocean, it… it calls to me,” he confessed. “As far back as I remember, it’s always called to me. But, uh… I don’t belong there any more than I belong here. The bridge is as close as I let myself get.”
“The man you saved, he wasn’t the first, was he?”
“He was the third.”
“Ommin, what happened up there on that bridge? If you wouldn’t mind telling us, what was going through your mind?”
Her fingers squeezed his, offering silent encouragement, and it had been such a long time since anyone had cared enough to ask. So Ommin told her. He told her everything.
Chapter 2
“Once again,” Britney said, in that soothing late-night talk radio voice that he was fast growing enamored with, “thank you, Ommin Jones, for your time and for your candor in talking with us tonight.”
He tipped his head in a nod, before remembering the station’s listeners couldn’t hear that. “Thank you for having me.”
“For those of you just getting up, good morning! And for all you third-shifters now winding down your day, drive safe if you’re still on the road, get some good sleep today, and I’ll be here for you all tomorrow night, from 2:00 am to 4:00. This is Britney Collins, KJMN San Francisco, signing off.”
She looked back through the control room window, waiting until one of the guys gave her a brisk thumbs-up before snatching the headphones off her head. “Oh my God!” She erupted off her chair, green eyes dancing as she grinned at him. “That was the best interview I’ve ever done, and I’m not just saying that because it’s also the only interview I’ve ever done. You were fantastic!”
Her smile made him smile too. He would have demurred on the praise, but she never gave him the chance. Her questionnaire gripped in her hand, she flung herself at him for a quick but exuberant hug that squished her breasts up against his chest and tickled his nose with what few wisps of blonde honeydew-shampoo-scented hair that had escaped her sloppy bun. She smelled good. She felt good.
Don’t get a woody, he told himself desperately, but it was too late. She was hugging on his neck, which put his arm smack into the valley of her breasts. Like they were embracing him too. Two hugs in one. No amount of self-scolding could hope to counter that, and already he could feel that telltale tingling moving down into his lower half.
Both hugs were mercifully brief, but the damage was already done. When she pulled back, it got even worse, because that was when she realized what she’d done and her whole face turned the most beguiling shade of pink. She blushed so hard, it moved down her neck to stain the part of her chest that could be seen above her button-up blouse.
“I’m so very sorry,” she stammered. “I, um… get excited and sometimes forget it’s a no-no to hug people in the workplace.” After brief consideration, she also added, “And when you’ve only just met them.”
It was just as big a no-no to reply you can hug me anytime with a semi-hardon just now pushing back against the confines of his jeans.
“It’s just that I was listening as you talked about your job and your life… your mom. It was all so… so touching, and poignant, and sad, and… and lonely.” Her smile fell and she sank once more into the chair opposite of him. “Oh my God, Ommin. How do you deal with being so lonely?”
“I don’t mind being alone,” he quickly assured her. “In fact, the more reporters I find camped on my doorstep, the more I’m reminded just how much I’d rather be alone.”
“Yes, but that’s reporters,” she said, casting that aside with a dismissive wave. “Replace every single one of those jerks with screaming, cheering, bounce-happy girls, every one of whom can’t wait to get their hands on Daddy’s shark-y bits, and I’ll bet being alone no longer has quite the same appeal.”
Ommin blinked twice. “Daddy’s shark-y bits?”
As if just r
ealizing what she’d said, Britney’s blush deepened. “Did I say that out loud?”
She cupped the side of her hot pink face, her jacket sleeve falling down just far enough for him to once more catch a glimpse of her tattoo. Not one word, but two—written in the loops and swirls of beautifully penned calligraphy—it quite simply read: Daddy’s Little.
Daddy’s Little, what? He had no idea, but there was too big a gap of bare pale skin below the ‘little’ for there to be another word hidden beneath her sleeve.
A knock interrupted them. Excusing herself, Britney went to stick her head out the door they’d entered through, holding a quiet conversation while Ommin ran through a very brief mental list of what he thought ‘Daddy’s Little’ might mean. ‘Daddy’s Little Monster’ was the first that sprang to mind, but if she was a Harley Quinn and Joker fan, then she hadn’t spelled it correctly. ‘Daddy’s Little Girl,’ except why had ‘girl’ been left off?
His train of thought became utterly derailed, however, when Britney tapped him on the shoulder and softly said, “One of the station executives brought his kids in and they were wondering, if it’s not too big of an imposition, would you mind signing their autograph books?”
All thoughts of ‘Daddy’s Little’ went straight out of his head, not to be seen or heard from again until long after he left the studio. Signing autographs was at once the most unnerving and yet exhilarating thing he’d ever experienced. Easing himself out of his chair, he approached that recording room door like a condemned man walking into his place of execution. It felt weird, to go from being someone who did everything he could to hide himself from public scrutiny, to being the guy two little girls—ages nine and eleven—stared wide-eyed and hopefully up at, while hugging their autograph books to their chests.