The cheek-sniffing caused him to turn his head and bump noses, but he didn't look as if the supposed invasion of personal space bothered him. "It must be the sea and my new fishy cologne," Paul teased, then returned the splash. En guard!
He cracked up laughing at the story, and also at the fact that Cassie had just splashed herself in the face. "I'm sure Larry Loser was all too eager to write a check to the Ocean Institute as well," he proclaimed. "I'll see if I can finagle someone into putting you into one of the labs instead. I have a decent amount of pull around there."
Well, Paul had plenty of embarrassing moments so it was a bit hard to narrow down! But he would give it the ol' college try for Cassie. "When I was in college we had this online message board thing for one of my classes - it was a way for assignments to be posted and for us to share ideas and whatnot, but we could send each other messages too. The professor was completely ridiculous though, and would assign us papers with very little turn-around time, give us the exam essay questions and then make them totally different the day of the actual exam, things like that. So when I sent a message to a classmate complaining about how heinous this professor was and how he probably had a hamster up his ass and collected his own toenail clippings in a jar, I didn't realize I sent it to the group list - including the professor." It was kind of funny now that he thought back on it. "Not one of my finer moments."