Salmonella

Side Story - Gigi

🫧Gigi🫧

"Is that him?" Terra asks for the tenth time, tugging frantically at my bra strap. We're seated at a booth at the back of the packed Reef Cafe, stuffing our faces with cake slices while waiting for her date to turn up. 

"No, obviously. What are you doing?" I yank away from her.

"Well, what am I supposed to pull, your hair? You don't have sleeves."

"I have arms."

She ignores me, glancing back at the door as someone else swims in and she nearly leaps out of her seat. "HIM! Is that him?!!"

"NO." I roll my eyes. This dumbass. She showed me her date's pic once and I can still recognize him better than her, who's been staring at her phone and thirsting over him since yesterday.

"Wait, I was wrong—That one! It's that one!"

"He is WITH—" I grab her chin and pull her face in the direction of the girl floating beside the guy she's pointing at— "A date. That's not your guy."

My idiot sister finally gives up on watching every single person that swims in here to turn to me. "Why didn't you find a date like I suggested? Then you wouldn't have to sit and watch me."

I shift uncomfortably in my seat. "You said I could find someone here."

"Yeah, well, that was a lie. Who the hell would come to the cafe on Valentine's without a date? Sorry sis, but you're not gonna find any single people here."

I shrug, digging around boredly in my dessert. I don't want to go out with some random person I don't know anyway.

"Hey, are you Terra?" a voice interrupts. We look up from our cake to face the mer floating by our table with a big lopsided smile, and I do a double take. Dammit, Terra got whiskerfished*. Dude is way older, grosser, flabbier... absolutely nothing like the pics on his profile.

"Yeah..." Terra manages, looking ready to puke. I'm this close to grabbing her arm and dragging her away, but before I can, the guy just invites himself and sits across from her enthusiastically, trapping us here. Then his eyes stray over to me and he does some really scary, raised-eyebrow attempt at being flirty. "Ooooh, another girl... You didn't tell me there'd be two of ya~~"

I clench my hand around my fork, ready to gouge out the bastard's eyes if need be.

Terra squeaks a high-pitched laugh, looking ready to melt into her seat. "Ha ha, yeah, this is... my sister..." She's careful not to tell him my name. "Her date's not here... yet..."

"Well, his loss. But don't you worry." He spreads out his arms like he's imagining holding us both in them and winks. "There's enough of me to go around. You ladies feel free to share."

My stomach churns, all of my cake threatening to rise in my throat like zombies from the grave and spill onto him.

"Ahahaha," Terra chokes. Guy's completely broken her, my ever cool, composed sister. I'd otherwise find it hilarious, if the dude weren't hitting on me too. How the hell do I get out of this one?

"You're, uh... a little different from your pics," she says tightly.

He lifts a hand as though to shrug, completely shameless. "Yeah, you know, good lighting. " I glower at him. Dude's really going to play dumb and pretend he didn't edit the shit out of those photos? What kind of idiot does he take my sister for?

The guy snakes a hand over to nudge Terra's fork from her and I watch in horror as he starts licking off what's left of her dessert in what seems to be an attempt at being seductive, but he just looks like an ugly-ass whale with his fat, slimy tongue.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Terra says, smiling sweetly, "but that's my cake. Why don't you order your own if you want it so much?"

"My bad, babe. You have the rest." He leans over the table, trying to feed her. She twists her head away and politely refuses; the guy just keeps persisting until she finally leaps off her seat.

"I. Am twenty-two, bastard," she seethes, voice loud enough that some of the other tables can hear us over their conversations and look on in confusion.

I smile. There she is.

"If I wanted some ugly-ass, crusty old dude—" She scoops up her plate, still with a little icing on it, and slams it in his face. "—then I would have matched with one!" The guy slowly peels the plate away from his skin and looks up dangerously at her, hint of a smile playing on his lips. "You're a liar and a fake, because you know nobody would want to go out with a wrinkly piece of shit like you. Well, you messed with the wrong bitch." She grabs me by the elbow and starts swimming me away from him. "Come on, Gïg."

We can hear him calling after us but we grab our bikes and speed away as fast as we can, not stopping until we're home and safe.

"Can you believe I got whiskerfished? Waste of a fucking Valentine's," Terra gags as we swim through the door, pulling up the mer's profile on her phone. "Look at this shit. Boy looks like a koi in the profile, but the guy who shows up is ugly as a damn whiskerfish."

"All his whiskers and gaping lips~~" I tease, feeling lighter now that we're away from that creep. "Ooh, sexyyy~~Don't you wanna kiss that?" I make kissy faces at her.

"Stopp!!" She bats me away, but smiles a little. Relief floods over me now that she's back to normal. "Ugh, talk about grossest experience ever! Minus that one time I got food poisoning from the spoiled seaweed..."

𓆟𓆟𓆟𓆟𓆟𓆟𓆟𓆟𓆟

*whiskerfish = catfish because they don't know about cats' existence