“Uh, I don’t think we need to take it that far—” Emma starts.

“Oh, no? Teenagers don’t kiss their sweethearts anymore?” Rachel crosses her arms, wagging the spatula to the beat of her tapping foot.

“They do, but—”

“No buts. Come on, sweetie. You think your mom’s going to believe you keep your hands off Galen?”

“Probably not, but—”

“I said no buts. Look at you two. You’re not even sitting next to each other! You need some practice, I’d say. Galen, go sit beside her. Hold her hand.”

“Rachel,” he says, shaking his head, “this can wait—”

“Fine,” Emma grinds out. They both turn to her. Still frowning, she nods. “We’ll make it a point to kiss and hold hands when she’s around.”

Galen almost drops his fork again. No way. Kissing Emma is the last thing I need to do. Especially when her lips turn that red. “Emma, we don’t have to kiss. She already knows I want to sleep with you.” He cringes as soon as he says it. He doesn’t have to look up to know the sizzling sound in the kitchen is from Rachel spitting her pineapple juice into the hot skillet. “What I mean is, I already told her I want to sleep with you. I mean, I told her I wanted to sleep with you because she already thinks I do. Want to, I mean—” If a Syrena could drown, this is what it would feel like.

Emma holds up her hand. “I get it, Galen. It’s fine. I told her the same thing.”

Rachel plops down beside Emma, wiping the juice spittle from her face with a napkin. “So you’re telling me your mom thinks you two want to sleep with each other, but you don’t think she’ll be expecting you to kiss.”

Emma shakes her head and shovels a forkful of omelet into her mouth, then chases it with some juice. She says, “You’re right, Rachel. We’ll let her catch us making out or something.”

Rachel nods. “That should work.”

“What does that mean? Making out?” Galen says between bites.

Emma puts her fork down. “It means, Galen, that you’ll need to force yourself to kiss me. Like you mean it. For a long time. Think you can do that? Do Syrena kiss?”

He tries to swallow the bite he forgot to chew. Force myself? I’ll be lucky if I can stop myself. It had never occurred to him to kiss anyone—before he met Emma. These days, it’s all he can think about, her lips on his. He decides it was better for both of them when Emma kept rejecting him. Now she’s ordering him to kiss her—for a long time. Great. “Yes, they kiss. I mean, we kiss. I mean, I can force myself, if I have to.” He doesn’t meet Rachel’s eyes as she plunks more fish onto his plate, but he can almost feel her smirking down at him.

“We’ll just have to plan it, that’s all. Give you time to prepare,” Emma tells him.

“Prepare for what?” Rachel scoffs. “Kissing isn’t supposed to be planned. That’s why it’s so fun.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t for fun, remember?” Emma says. “This is just for show.”

“You don’t think kissing Galen would be fun?”

Emma sighs, putting her hands on her cheeks. “You know, I appreciate that you’re trying to help us, Rachel. But I can’t talk about this anymore. Seriously, I’m going to break out into hives. We’ll make it work when the time comes.”

Rachel laughs and removes Emma’s empty plate after she declines a second helping. “If you say so. But I still think you should practice.” On her way to the sink, she says, “Where’s Toraf and Rayna? Oh!” She gasps. “Did they find an island?”

Galen shakes his head and pours himself some water from a pitcher on the table, grateful for a topic change. “Nope. They’re upstairs. He snuck into her bed. I’ve never seen anyone risk his life like that.”

Rachel makes a tsking sound as she rinses some dishes.

“Why does everyone keep talking about finding an island?” Emma asks, finishing the rest of her juice.

“Who else is talking about it?” Galen frowns.

“In the living room, I heard Toraf give her a choice between going to the kitchen or finding an island.”

Galen laughs. “And she picked the kitchen, right?”

Emma nods. “What? What’s so funny?”

“Rayna and Toraf are mated. I guess humans call it married,” he says. “Syrena find an island when they’re ready to … mate in a physical sense. We can only do that in human form.”

“Oh. Oh. Um, okay,” she says, blushing anew. “I wondered about that. The physical part, I mean. So they’re married? Seems like she hates him.”

Galen hesitates. He remembers Rachel’s outrage about this subject when he first told her all those years ago. Emma will find out one way or another. Might as well be now. “Toraf asked our brother for her, and he consented. I know humans do it a little differently, but—”

“What?” Emma eases out of her chair, leans over the table with arms crossed.

Here we go. “Toraf asked—”

“You’re telling me your brother forced her to marry Toraf ?” Speaking while her jaw is clenched makes her words difficult to understand.

“Well, it’s not like she was there—”

“What? She wasn’t at her own wedding?”

“Emma, you need to calm down. Syrena don’t call it a wedding. They call it—”