Out of the Blue

3

After a good night sleep, Stephanie was up and ready by six-thirty and was on her way to the aquarium. While riding, she started to think. " Ms. Darla is such a sweet lady... I can't wait to meet Andy!". Andy was all Stephanie could think about and she didn't know why. But she got a sense of familiarity. But she's never met Andy before.

After locking up her bike, she went straight to the break room to put her lunch in her locker. Seeing that no one was in the building yet, Stephanie put her headphones in. A couple songs in, she started to get into the music, beginning to dance around and sing to herself. A couple turns later, she didn't notice the chime of the bells. The music was too loud, Stephanie spun around for the third time and accidentally ran into what seemed like a brick wall, but it was a person. Pulling her headphones out fast as lighting, she looked straight into a pair of piercing Caribbean blue eyes, all too recognizable.

"Uhhh... Andrew? What are you doing here?" Stephanie said full of embarrassment, not knowing what else to say as her heart began to pound.

" What am I doing here? I work here." Andrew said with a slightly confused smile. And then it hit her. Andy was Andrew. Which also means that she was going to spend all summer with her crush since seventh grade. Stephanie was extremely excited, yet utterly terrified. " You must be the new worker I'm training today. Well, I'm Andrew-," he paused and just stared at Stephanie. Deep in thought. "Wait... You're the girl I ran into the other day at school! Haha I guess you can say we're even now." Even more embarrassed, Stephanie tried to hide it with a smile.

"Haha yeah I guess we are... Sorry again"

"Nah, it's cool. It's Stephanie right?," he slightly tilted his head smiling and Stephanie's face grew into a huge smile, just surprised he knew her name and nodded in response. "Awesome, so how about we get started?" The two of them started to walk and he showed Stephanie each food that coordinated with each fish and when they walked outside Andrew asked " You've met all the animals right?" She nodded and as she did so, a large brown pelican swooped down beside Andrew. " And this is Philip. I don't know if you met him yet but he always flies by here. Me and Ms. Darla decided to name him. He's friendly, don't worry." He bent down and fed him a cracker he had in his pocket.

As they walked inside the two of them ran into Ms. Darla. " Why, seems like you and Andy have met already. Hey Andy dear, I need you to show Stephanie how to train Mila. Sooner or later I'm going to have her run the dolphin show." The two of them nodded and walked off to the dolphin tank.

"Have you ever worked with dolphins?" Andrew asked as they walked through the plush grass.

"Not until now." Stephanie said. Andrew picked up a large silver pail of mackerel as they walked up the steps to the dolphin platform. He made a clicking sound and the large dolphin came swimming up to Andrew.

"Go on... You can pet her, haha she doesn't bite," then he looked slyly over to her, " sometimes." Stephanie laughed and reached her hand out to the dolphin. Her bluish-gray skin was slippery and very smooth. Andrew picked up and fish and made some circular hand motions along with some clicks. Mila swam back and a couple seconds later did a front flip. She swam back up and Andrew threw her the fish as a reward.

"Not going to lie, that was pretty impressive." Stephanie smirked, attempting to flirt.

" You want to try?" Andrew smirked back.

" Sure." now facing him

"I mean, don't get too upset if it doesn't work the first time" with a full smile Andrew picked up a fish.

" I think that's a challenge. " She smiled and swiped the fish out of his hand. A tingling feeling spread through out her body, she's never acted this bold before.