looked just like a dick.
Jim had shown him a couple of crabs mating, too--he called them
doublers--and that was just too much. The guy crab just climbed aboard
the girl, tucked her under him, and swam around like that for days.
Seth figured they had to like it.
Ethan had said the crabs were married, and when Seth had snickered, he
lifted a brow. Seth had found himself intrigued enough to go to the
school library and read up on crabs. And he thought he understood, sort
of, what Ethan meant. The guy protected the girl by keeping her under
him because she could only mate when she was in her last molt and her
shell was soft, so she was vulnerable. Even after they'd done it, he
kept carrying her like that until her shell was hard again. And she was
only going to mate once, so it was like getting married.
He thought of how Cam and Miss Spinelli--Anna, he reminded himself, he
got to call her Anna now--had gotten married. Lots of the women got all
leaky, and the guys laughed and joked. Everybody made such a big deal
out of it with flowers and music and tons of food. He didn't get it. It
seemed to him getting married just meant you got to have sex whenever
you wanted and nobody got snotty about it.
But it had been cool. He'd never been to anything like it. Even though
Cam had dragged him out to the mall and made him try on suits, it was
mostly okay.
Maybe sometimes he worried about how it was going to change things, just
when he was getting used to the way things were. There was going to be a
woman in the house now. He liked Anna okay. She'd played square with him
even though she was a social worker. But she was still a female.
Like his mother.
Seth clamped down on that thought. If he thought about his mother, if he
thought about the life he'd had with her--the men, the drugs, the dirty
little rooms--it would spoil the day.
He hadn't had enough sunny days in his ten years to risk ruining one.
"You taking a nap there, Seth?"
Ethan's mild voice snapped Seth back to the moment. He blinked, saw the
sun glinting off the water, the orange floats bobbing. "Just thinking,"
Seth muttered and quickly pulled in another buoy.
"Me, I don't do much thinking." Jim set the trap on the gunwale and
began culling crabs. His leathered face creased in grins. "Gives you
brain fever."
"Shit," Seth said, leaning over to study the catch. "That one's starting
to molt."
Jim grunted, held up a crab with a shell cracking along the back. "This
buster'll be somebody's soft-shell sandwich by tomorrow." He winked at
Seth as he tossed the crab into the tank. "Maybe mine."
Foolish, who was still young enough to deserve the name, sniffed at the
trap, inciting a quick and ugly crab riot. As claws snapped, the pup
leaped back with a yelp.
"That there dog." Jim shook with laughter. "He don't have to worry about
no brain fever."
even when they'd taken the day's catch to the waterfront, emptied the
tank, and dropped Jim off, the day wasn't over. Ethan stepped back from