He was there again yesterday.
That surfer dude with his flashy drysuit and long blond locks. Effortlessly swimming back and forth across the estuary. Not a care in the world as his muscular arms carved a path through choppy grey waves.
Sounds strange, I know, but it feels like he’s waiting for me every day as I walk home from my job serving breakfast and lunch at the Neptune Hotel. Not that he’s ever spoken to me or anything. Just a vibe I’m getting.
And it’s only April. Still quite early in the season for any holidaymakers to be visiting the island other than birdwatchers, with their sensible shoes, expensive binoculars, and boundless enthusiasm for orange-beaked oystercatchers. Surfer dude must be here for another reason.
I couldn’t help wondering where he was staying. Not at the Neptune, that’s for sure. I would’ve noticed. And there are no B&Bs or holiday lets available on the island. Must be at the caravan park, then. He looked the sort to have rolled straight off the ferry from the mainland in a beat-up VW camper.
“Hey,” I asked my mate Dave when we bumped into each other by the black-tarred wooden fisherman’s huts lined up along the quayside. “You know that bloke who swims in the estuary every afternoon? Has he booked into the caravan park, by any chance?”
“Dunno,” Dave replied, with a shrug. “I’ve not seen anyone swimming out there. Wrong time of year for that kind of caper, what with the cold water and rip current. Plus, there’s only full-time residents staying in the caravans right now.”
I also tried the volunteer lifeboat crew, people in the pub, even the woman who runs the Post Office. Same reply. None of them knew who on earth I was talking about.
“He looks just like that actor who plays Thor,” I told a bored teen working in the fish and chip shop.
She flicked her high ponytail and pouted glossy lips. “Well, in that case, feel free to send him my way when you see him again.”
Action was clearly needed to get to the bottom of this mystery.
The next day, I deviated from my well-trodden path through the dunes at the top of the shingle beach and positioned myself a couple of feet from the water’s edge.
I waved to attract surfer dude’s attention as he made a turn. Although this manoeuvre was completed with barely a splash, something shiny momentarily caught my attention, just in the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t figure out what.
“Nice drysuit!” I shouted across to him. Not exactly my finest chat-up line.
He immediately stopped swimming and trod water. Flashed a broad grin that made my heart sing like a robin in winter.
“Thanks. It’s made of a special hi-tech fabric that’s perfect for cold-water swimming.”
He swam closer to shore and fixed me with a pair of sea glass eyes, which somehow managed to radiate many shades of blue and green all at the same time. There was something vaguely familiar about them. Something that flickered briefly in my brain, too quick to catch hold of.
“I suppose you’re here on holiday,” I said, then immediately cringed at my statement of the bleeding obvious. Was that the best I could come up with? I really needed to work on my flirting skills.
“Yeah, I wanted to catch-up with an old friend.”
“Who? I probably know them. It’s a small island.”
“Maybe,” came his somewhat evasive reply. “I’m Jason, by the way.”
Less Thor, more Aquaman, then.
“And I’m Marina. Which apparently means I’m from the sea,” I burbled in response. “It’s the kind of name you get given around these parts. East Anglia is steeped in mumbo jumbo folklore. One legend even says that people born on the island have saltwater running through their veins instead of blood.”
“I’m from the sea too,” Jason replied, with no hint of irony.
“Well, I can see that. Talking of which… Is there any chance I can tempt you out of the sea and into the pub or some other dry place?”
Jason’s face took on a downcast expression. “I’m from the sea, but can never leave the sea,” he declared.
I scrunched my forehead in confusion. The man was talking in riddles.
“Sorry, Jason, but I don’t really understand what you mean.”
“Um, I think it’d be easier to explain if you just joined me in the water.”
“Not really dressed for it,” I replied, pointing to the warm puffy jacket I’d thrown on over my waitress uniform before leaving the Neptune. “Plus, it’s probably hard for you to believe, but I can’t swim.”
He looked gobsmacked. “You never learned how to swim? But you live on an island.”
“I know, everyone here thinks I’m a total weirdo. Thing is, when I was about five, some stupid kid on holiday was messing about and he pushed me off the jetty for a laugh. I sank like a stone. Would’ve drowned but for the fact another boy dived under the water and hauled me out.”
“The whole experience left me terrified of the sea. Haven’t so much as put a toe in ever since.”
Jason seemed genuinely concerned by this revelation. “Sorry to hear that, Marina, but at the risk of sounding preachy it’s really important to know how to swim. In fact, I could teach you, if you like. Then you won’t get into trouble if there’s no one around to save you next time.”
To be honest, a swimming lesson wasn’t exactly top of the list of things I wanted to do with this man.
“I really appreciate the offer, but there’s less than zero chance of getting me into the sea.”
“You could borrow my old drysuit,” he countered, then pointed at his impressively broad chest. “See all these shiny bits of fabric that look like fish scales? They act as buoyancy aids, making it impossible for the wearer to drown. How about I bring it with me tomorrow for you to try. You’ll be swimming like a dolphin, I promise.”
I was torn between fear of the sea and an intense desire to get closer to those pecs. In the end, it was a surprisingly easy choice.
“OK, I’ll give it a go. Although how a suit designed for a big man like you is going to fit a small woman like me is a bit of a worry.”
“Trust me, it’ll be fine.” He flashed another grin, then started to swim away from the beach. “See you tomorrow, then.”
When I arrived the following afternoon, Jason was already waiting for me a few metres off shore, bobbing up and down in time with the swell. He held something aloft, balled up in his right hand.
“Catch!” he yelled, then punted the object in my direction.
I’d played on the school netball team, so caught it with ease. The thing Jason had thrown turned out to be a drysuit. It looked just like the snazzy one he wore, only considerably smaller.
“You can fit into this?” I asked in amazement. “It looks more my size than yours.”
He laughed. “Yeah, it’s one I wore as a kid. Should be perfect on you.”
I couldn’t help a blush from pinking my cheeks. Then I thought about the logistics of getting changed outdoors and blushed some more.
“Don’t worry, I’ll turn to face away from the beach,” Jason said, as if reading my mind.
After checking that none of my fellow islanders were around, I quickly stripped off, then wriggled my way into the drysuit. There was no denying that it was a snug fit, but being encased in body-hugging shimmery fabric made me feel like a goddess or real-life superhero. If only the local council had installed a mirror at the beach. I bet I looked amazing.
“You can turn around now,” I told Jason.
The expression on his face when he saw me in that outfit confirmed that I did indeed look amazing. His jaw literally dropped, cartoon-style.
He held out both hands. “OK, Marina, what I want you to do now is just walk straight towards me. Nice and slow. No dramas.”
I took a deep breath. This was so far out of my comfort zone, I wasn’t sure I could do it.
“Keep looking at me,” he instructed as I gingerly poked one foot into the brine.
Well, there were much worse things than gazing into those gorgeous blue-green eyes, so I kept going. The water reached my ankles, then my knees, my waist, and finally my chest. At that point, Jason took hold of my hands and pulled me close.
“Well done. That’s the hardest part over. Now all you have to do is lie back and let your body float.”
“Wait, what?”
“Don’t panic. Remember what I told you about the special fabric.”
“Makes it impossible for the wearer to drown?”
“Exactly, so lean back, relax, and let the suit do its job.”
And just like that, I found the courage to do as he asked.
“I’m floating!”
“Yes, you are,” he laughed in response to my excitement. “And in next to no time you’ll be swimming and wondering what all the fuss was about.”
I’m not sure how long we spent out there, happily floating hand-in-hand upon the waves. I only knew that I didn’t want the experience to end.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Jason whispered in my ear. “About the reason why I can’t leave the sea.”
He released my hand, flipped over, and disappeared beneath the waves, punctuating his dive with a nonchalant flick of iridescent tail.
What the…?! Was Jason an actual flesh-and-blood merman? Or had I simply dropped into a Disney film, and we’d be singing a cheesy duet any minute.
Without warning, my memory suddenly jolted back to an incident that had occurred almost twenty years ago.
A young boy with sea glass eyes.
And a tail.
Swimming towards me at speed, holding out both hands.
“Oh,” I gasped as Jason breached the surface. “It was you.”
“You’re the one who prevented me from drowning that day.”
He gently cupped my face in his massive hands. “And you’re the friend I came to see.”
“I wasn’t sure whether you’d even remember me as we were both so young when it happened. But even at that age, I instinctively knew that I needed to save you, although it was a big risk to take what with me being a merman and you a human. Luckily, no one noticed my tail in all the confusion, so I was able to slip away once you were safely back on dry land.”
“Truth is, Marina, I fell in love with you back then and have loved you ever since. Now I’ve returned to the island to ask if you could ever feel the same way about me.”
My mind started to spin at this news. I was certainly attracted to Jason. Yet how would it even work between us if we lived in different realms? It felt like there would be so many operational issues to overcome.
Of course, Jason might be kidding and was really as much a human as I was.
“Why do you need to wear a drysuit if you’re a merman?” I asked, trying to catch him out.
“Sorry. I made up the bit about special fabric. Thought you’d freak out if you realised these fish scales are a part of me.”
“But I wore your old drysuit and didn’t drown.”
“Yeah, because you believed in the power of the suit, and it gave you enough confidence to enter the water.”
“You tricked me!”
“All with good intentions, Marina. Now, if you don’t mind, there’s something important that I’ve wanted to do for a really long time.”
And that’s how I found myself snogging a merman, our bodies entwined as we slowly disappeared under the sea.
🧜🏼♀️🧜🏼♀️🧜🏼♀️🧜🏼♀️🧜🏼♀️🧜🏼♀️
Essex-born and Glasgow-based, Vicky Heath is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer of little stories featuring elements of comedy, crime and romance. Her work has appeared in various online and print publications, including Bunker Squirrel Magazine, Fictionette, FlashFlood, KissMet Quarterly, Micromance Magazine, Paragraph Planet, Scotland’s Stories, Sunday Post P.S. magazine, and Trash Cat Lit. She was also selected as a finalist in the inaugural Granite Noir crime writing competition and the 2025 Sunday Post short story competition. In March 2026, Vicky made her stand-up debut in the First Time Funnies showcase at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival.
That was so yummy Vicky! Sweet and heart filling..💜 You craft such great stories!
Loved it Vicky, loved that they’d met before and he was waiting for her. Well done!