The Lifeguard (12 page)

“Get on the board, Sirena. I don’t want to have to pull you out.” He pushes up to a sitting position, his legs straddling the board. There’s room behind him now, only I don’t know how to hoist myself up, or even if I can.

Before I can ask, he holds his hand out to me. “Here.”

I grab his hand and he pulls me closer. I press down on the board with my hands raising myself high enough to swing a leg over and climb on. I breathe hard, trying to catch my breath. He shoots me a look of annoyance.

I
was
farther out than I thought. What if he hadn’t been there? He leans forward and paddles with his hands as my eyes follow the fluid movements of his shoulder muscles under his smooth skin. We glide through the water without talking. Silence doesn’t seem to bother him, but I feel the need to say something, anything, so he thinks I’m at ease and this is totally no big deal. Only small talk eludes me. My mind blanks.

His nearness alters my brain waves, the rhythm of my heart. My body downshifts from thinking to feeling…to longing.

I’m powerless, hard-wired to react only to him, like a helpless victim of my blood chemistry.

Can he tell?

He doesn’t speak, but his presence does. His radar is everywhere, watching the beach in front of him, sensing me and everything around us. I draw energy from him as if it passes through his skin to mine, taking me to a more vivid dimension of feeling, being and knowing.

When we get close to where the waves break, he tilts his head back.

“Hold on.”

He reaches back, his hand momentarily grazing my thigh. I lean into him, my arms tighten around his waist as the waves bounce us up and down, dousing my heat with their cool spray. We’re skin-to-skin, two bodies melded together as one. I’ve forgotten about swimming out too far, or what I should have known. Everything is right now.

I don’t want this to end.

I want to stay where I am with him, in the water, forever.

“I’ve never been on a board before,” I whisper in his ear. “It’s fun.”

He glances back at me and a hint of a smile crosses his face. He stops paddling and we sit as the waves carry us up and shoot us down, again and again, each time propelling me against him.

We’re connected now

And I’m in overdrive. Is this sane?

“I used to be afraid of the water.”
Why did I tell him?

“And now?”

“Not anymore.”

“You should be.”

I didn’t expect that, not from him. “Are you?”

“It’s more awe than fear. It’s the power that draws me. But it’s an unfair contest.”

“Ocean worship? It sounds like a religion.”

“Yes,” he says with a smile. “The water is my god.”

Then I want to enter your church.

But I don’t say that.

We sit there together and time passes. Seconds? Minutes? I can’t tell. I’m a giddy kid on a rocket ship ride, thrusting forward and back, up and down with the waves, until our precious time together runs out. How much longer do we have left, just the two of us, in our water world apart from the shore?

My lips nearly touch the back of his neck. His hair blows back, against my face, covering my eyes. I’m blind to everything but him. I cling to waist inhaling his warm, coconut scent, my breath coming faster and harder than it should. Is this what making love feels like? How can he not sense my aching attraction, the sweet, intoxicating chemistry, the way the air is ignited between us?

I exhale against him in total surrender. He doesn’t bruise, but does he shiver? Does he feel? Respond? I have to know, only what do I ask? As if in answer, he arches back against me, his cheek grazing mine.

“Sirena,” he whispers.

A
t close to ten that night my dad calls. I’m on the window seat of my great ocean liner staring out at the crescent moon over the dark water. The ring startles me.

He sounds so alone. He’s not used to being on his own or cooking himself dinner. I remember his microwave meals, frozen on the inside, the nights my mom had to go somewhere and he was in charge.

I also remember other things now, things that I tried to forget. The phone calls I heard, but weren’t supposed to when I walked into his study without warning. The way his voice changed in a heartbeat, from low and intimate to cool and businesslike.

From wrong to right.

I block that from my head now.

He’s staying at a friend’s apartment for a while. He went out for a hamburger and a beer or three, I’m guessing. He calls because it’s his time to call. Okay, not fair, but they switch off. On even days my mom calls. Odd days, my dad. That way neither of them can blame the other for forgetting.

My dad isn’t great on the phone. To him it’s just a tool to give information or get it. He doesn’t know how to fill up the conversation.

“So how’s my girl?”

“Good.”

“How’s Ellie treating you?”

“Good.”

There’s an uncomfortable pause and I work to fill it.

“How’s work?”

“Same old, same old.”

My dad’s a contractor and he spends six days a week fixing people’s homes and, as he says, “making their dreams come true.” That means remodeling big kitchens with islands and backyards with pools and spas. I think he’s happier with a hammer, nails, and a glue gun than with people. He knows what to expect with tools. If they’re treated the way they should be, there aren’t too many surprises. Even if he had problems though, he wouldn’t say. He’d think, what was the point? Pragmatic. That’s the vocab word that suits him.

“So how do you fill your day?”

I tell him about practicing swimming and how I’m getting better at it, and about volunteering at the hospital. Also about Antonio. “He’s eighty years old and eighty years smart.”

“So then I have nothing to worry about,” he says, a smile in his voice.

If he only knew.

I wake closer to lunch than breakfast. The sweet, buttery scent of baking wafts through the air. More Norman Rockwell than my home-sweet-home, but whatever. On the kitchen stove there’s a black iron cupcake tin filled with golden popovers with swelled heads like swollen muffin tops. Would Aunt Ellie have baked them even if I wasn’t here? I decide she would. She does things like that. Baking bread and cakes, making homemade jam, even making pickles out of cucumbers which I didn’t think you could do on your own. For her it’s probably fun because she doesn’t
have
to do it. No one comes home pissed off expecting dinner on the table.

“They’re not hot anymore,” Aunt Ellie says. She watches me stumble to the table. “You must have been tired.”

I devour three popovers with strawberry jam and drink a glass of milk, studying the carton of organic low-fat milk. It’s dark green and plum with little cows in a field like a Ben & Jerry’s tableau. About as real as Legoland.

The kitchen is bright with sun. I notice for the first time that the green painted chairs around the table match the yellow-green grass outside. I also notice a slant to the floor. It’s an old house, maybe that’s why. Outside, the seagulls soar above the beach. They sound excited to be alive and have the entire sky to themselves, like ice skaters on an empty rink.

Everything is right about this new day. It feels like a new season, a fresh beginning. I look at the clock. He’s been on duty for three hours. Is he thinking about me? Remembering? I can’t get him out of my head. The feel of my arms around his waist. His warm skin against mine. His sweet smell. His nearness. I’m drunk with him and I don’t want to get sober.

Even through my thick web of sleep, I saw his face. He was watching me. Dreams last only minutes, they say, but this lingered through the night, fading in and out as if we stayed together, entwined, stepping outside one universe and entering another where only we existed.

I wash my dishes, lost in thought. I find myself standing at the sink, staring at the bottle of green dishwashing liquid as if it’s some odd find. I forget what I was planning to do next as if my mind and my body have separated inexplicably. Then I remember the shower. Slowly, I make my way upstairs.

Only now I don’t use the white Dove soap in the bathroom. I go to my makeup bag and get the soap Marissa gave me last Christmas. It was in a glittery sack with makeup from Sephora. On the pink wrapper, gold letters spell:
Intoxication
.

“For SPECIAL occasions only!” she wrote on the gift tag. She surrounded the note with red hearts from a glittery pen. I tear open the paper and sniff the sweet, musky perfume. When I come out of the bathroom, Will is sitting on my bed. He lifts his head and gets to his feet, ambling over to sniff my skin, detecting something new and curious, something he needs to take note of.

I put on shorts and a T-shirt and bike into town. Before I go the beach, I want to make a stop. The sun is warm on my face as I make my way along the main street. I steal a glance at myself in store windows—casual looks, so no one knows I’m checking myself out.

I look leaner now than when I first got here and my arms are stronger, even though they’ll never be sculpted the way his are, each muscle so distinct he could pose for an anatomy chart, the kind they put up in the gym. My hair is full and the layers are longer and it’s blonder from the sun. It cooperated today. It feathers around my face instead of poking out everywhere. I stand straight, not slumping, my mom’s words echoing in my head: “Stand tall, head high, shoulders back.”

I’m in the zone. I can handle shopping for a new bikini; never mind that it’ll blow my budget. I take a deep breath and enter Waterworks, a bathing suit universe with floor-to-ceiling racks as if bathing suits were the only things in the world anyone needed.

The girl behind the counter is busy with another customer. Good. I don’t want help. The right suit will speak to me.

I find my size and push past the one-piece suits, the tankinis and bikinis in the all-black section. Too severe. No push-up bras either because you look desperate or like you just got implants. Hawaiian prints, but I’m not the flowery type.

Zebra? No, I’m not the jungle girl. Deep coral? There’s a possibility with a solid blue top and a checked bottom, but I keep going. Whites, tans, crazy geometrics.

And then I see it.

A soft, celery-green bikini, perfect against tanned skin. Definitely glad my dad’s not here because he’d cross his arms over his chest and veto it in a heartbeat. Low bottom, low top. Both pieces are outlined with tiny bands of ruffles. I take it off the rack and hold it against me in front of the full-length mirror.

I lock the dressing room door and drop my clothes on the floor. I slip it on, studying myself in the three-way mirror.

Perfect.

I take that as another good omen. Revealing, not slutty. I used to wish I wasn’t five-foot nine. I was always taller than the boys in school. Not anymore.

I open the door and check myself out in the bigger mirror outside. The girl behind the counter passes me on her way to hang up an armful of suits in the dressing room next to mine and smiles. “Ohhh,” she says. “You look hot.”

I smile and shrug. What do you say to that?

As I’m waiting to pay, I see a necklace on the counter—a chunk of pale-green sea glass on a fine, gold chain. It’s the same color as the suit. I slip it over my head and it falls just above the ruffled band of the top. The glass is pointed, like a shimmering arrowhead directing the eye to my cleavage.

I leave the store wearing the new suit and necklace with cut-offs over the bottom. I take my time, strolling to the beach, savoring the anticipation. It’s hard to imagine that reality could feel better than this. I almost laugh out loud, practically tasting my happiness. My heart flutters in my chest, the nervous kindergartener on the first day of school. Almost instinctively, I start to dial Marissa’s cell number, and then stop. I’m insane. She’s a million miles away with no cell service. What was I thinking?

I saunter along the sand, brushing past a family with a cooler so large it could hold not only their entire dinner, but also a TV. I keep walking, passing teenage girls who look like they’ve OD’d on the sun because they’re already third-degree fried. Finally I spread out the blanket and then, super casual; I turn my head in the direction of his chair, my north star.

Only now in a split second everything is different.

The world has fallen off its axis.

To the side of the lifeguard chair there’s a blanket—with a girl on top of it.

The girl with the blond hair that reaches her butt—the maybe-aerobics instructor, the maybe-actress who jumped on the back of his Harley and locked her arms around his waist, holding him tight, just like I did. Jealousy spreads through me like poison and within seconds, I feel sick. I fight that, standing taller, resolute. I don’t feel anything—my face works hard to show the world. I stare at her, trying to understand the enemy.

Snow-white bikini. I doubt it’s a sign of her purity. Not too many girls can get away with a suit like that. If her nearness isn’t enough, she’s wearing his black cap that says
lifeguard
. He’s kneeling next to her, smiling. She whispers something. Her jokes are obviously hilarious because now he’s laughing. I’ve never seen him look so happy or relaxed.