by Ivy Smoak
“Well, now I get it. He’s totally stalkable.”
“I’m not stalking him.” Why did everyone keep saying that?
“You kind of are. But he’s super cute, I totally get it. So which other lifeguards are single?”
I shrugged. The only person I had talked to was my lifeguard. And the girl that was clearly desperate for his attention. Not me. The blonde lifeguard that was currently leaning so far over to make a shot that I could see her bathing suit bottom beneath her jean skirt. Give me a break.
“I thought you’d at least scope the place out for me. Just like I scoped out the place and I have bad news…you have competition.” She nodded to my lifeguard’s teammate.
“I think they’re just friends,” I said. “He did ask me here after all.”
“So you’re definitely on a date?”
Yes? No? “I don’t know.”
“People on dates don’t usually ditch said date to hang out with another woman.”
Fair point. But she didn’t see how my lifeguard hesitated. And tried to include me. And how he held my hand. I watched his teammate laugh and flirtatiously touch his arm. He proceeded to laugh at whatever she whispered into his ear. Maybe Kristen was right. This certainly didn’t feel like a date. Which was a good thing, because I didn’t want to date anyone this summer. So why did my stomach suddenly hurt? And why did I suddenly want to bitch slap that bitch?
“Go be more assertive,” Kristen said. “You can’t let her walk all over you just because she’s taller, blonder, and tanner than you.”
I felt myself shrinking into my stool. Was that supposed to be an ego boost?
“Speaking of gorgeous people, I think I just found something I like.” She was staring at some guy across the bar. “I’ll catch up with you later.” She squeezed my arm without really even looking at me and walked away.
Bye, Kristen? I watched her walk over to the guy and start talking to him. They immediately started laughing and he stepped closer to her. She made it look so easy. I had never been good at stuff like that. Aiden had been my only serious boyfriend ever, and my dating skills felt like they’d been stomped on and thrown to sea.
I heard someone cheering and looked back at the pool table. Apparently they’d won the game. My lifeguard high-fived the girl one last time and then walked back over to me.
"You two make a good team,” I said. Better to push them together than pretend I ever had a chance. It was for the best anyway.
"Me and Abby? No." He laughed. "She kind of sucks at pool. I thought she was going to make me lose."
Maybe he didn't realize that she liked him. "I don't know. She definitely likes you."
He shrugged his shoulders. "We're just friends.”
Huh. I hadn’t expected that. My ego started to re-inflate.
“Did you want to play something?" he asked.
"Ping pong?" I had seen that there was a table on the other side of the bar. It was the only thing here that I was any good at. My ego would be huge again in no time once I whooped his ass.
"Sure."
We walked over to the table. There were two people already playing so we waited in line. I leaned against the wall and he stood in front of me. I looked up into his eyes. It was easy to get lost in them, even when I tried to tell myself I shouldn’t.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" he finally asked.
"I'm not looking at you in any way." Am I?
"Yes, you are." He laughed.
"Has anyone ever told you that your eyes are the same color as the ocean?"
He smiled. "I can't say that anyone has."
"Oh. Well. It's true." I felt a little buzzed.
“Is your friend still coming?” he asked.
“Yeah…she’s…” I looked around the bar but didn’t see her. “She’s somewhere. She got here while you were playing pool and wandered off.”
He looked around too. For a second I thought maybe he didn’t believe me. Like he thought I’d made up a friend and was a total loser.
“Her name’s Kristen,” I added quickly. God, it sounded like I was making her up by the second. “I swear she’s here somewhere.”
He nodded, although it was hard to tell if he believed me.
"Are you hungry?" he asked.
"Starving actually." And so grateful for the change of topic.
"Okay, how about the loser buys a pizza?"
"It is not your lucky day, because I'm like, really, really good at ping pong."
"Really, really good, huh? I guess I'm in trouble. I'm going to go place our order now so it's ready when we're done. What kind do you like?"
"Plain is good."
"My favorite. I'll be right back."
His favorite? Everyone always made fun of me for ordering plain pizza. I smiled to myself. I watched him go toward the front counter. Another girl stopped him along the way and hugged him. He seemed pretty popular with the ladies. Which made sense, because he was gorgeous. Really freaking gorgeous. I watched him lean against the counter and order the pizza. He laughed with the girl at the counter. It was the same way he had leaned against the counter at the ice cream shop yesterday.
I swallowed hard. Is this not a date? Did he just invite me here as a friend? I was having trouble focusing. I shouldn't have had so much to drink. I put my bottle down on an empty table. Geez, this isn't a date. He was just a nice guy, being nice to the weird girl who was always alone on the beach. Who made up fake friends. At least in his eyes. I felt so embarrassed. I looked down at my flip flops. Maybe I could just leave before he came back.
"Is it okay if we do doubles?"
I looked up. My lifeguard was standing in front of me with two guys.
"Um, yeah. That's fine." Now I was just reduced to one of the guys. I wanted to be okay with the turn of the evening. But for a while there, I’d given myself this small shred of hope that he liked me. My heart was still healing from the last blow and now it just felt like it exploded again. At least, whatever was left of it. I took a deep breath. It’s fine. It’s for the best.
"Stalkers aren't usually hot," one of them said. "Do you want to be my partner?"
I looked up at my lifeguard. He looked embarrassed. Why? Because he had told them that I was a stalker? Or because he hadn't realized that they'd talk about it in front of me? Asshole. This definitely wasn't a date. I was just the weird, loner stalker girl. "That depends," I said to the guy who had just talked to me. "Are you any good?"
"Yeah, we'll crush them."
"Perfect." The table had just freed up. I picked up a paddle. I wanted to win. I wanted to completely annihilate my lifeguard. He could have just told me he was inviting me as a friend. I felt like he had purposefully tried to embarrass me. And I was pissed. Or drunk. Drunk and pissed.
"You guys can serve first," my lifeguard said.
"You really shouldn't be cocky right now.” I served the ball. It bounced low and went perfectly between them so that neither of them went for it.
"Shit, nice serve!" my partner said.
"Eh, it wasn't my best." I served again. This time my lifeguard made contact with the ball but missed the table by about a foot.
After my five serves, we were up five to zero. I grabbed the ball that my lifeguard's partner had just flubbed and tossed it hard at my lifeguard. He caught it.
They only had three points when I slammed the winning shot.
"Dude, that was awesome!" My partner high-fived me.
"Should we switch up the teams?" my lifeguard's partner asked. It looked like he wanted nothing to do with my lifeguard anymore either. “It’s only fair that we each get a turn with the stalker.”
Seriously? I felt a lump forming in my throat that I couldn’t swallow down. "Actually, I have to get going. Thanks for letting me play with you guys. It was lots of fun." It felt good to win. But I was losing my composure. I put the paddle down and walked away from the table toward the front of the restaurant.
"Hey!" I heard my lifeguard yell af
ter me.
I kept walking. I was supposed to stay single this summer. It was good that he had invited me here as a joke. I never thought I'd need a reminder that all men were assholes, but here it was. My eyes were starting to burn. I should have never come with him. I wasn't ready for anything like this. I just needed to be alone.
"Jellyfish Girl!"
I stopped in the middle of the boardwalk and turned around. "That's not my name. Or Stalker. Not that you care." People were staring at me. This was so mortifying.
“I’m sorry, I…”
"Please just leave me alone." I needed to get away from all the prying eyes. And most of all I needed to get away from him. I walked across the boardwalk and onto the beach. The sand was cold at night. I slid off my flip flops, picked them up, and ran as fast as I could down to the water.
Chapter 5
Friday
My alarm went off and I groaned. It couldn’t possibly be time to wake up. I touched my forehead where I had a pounding headache. People who just got hit by a ton of bricks in the face shouldn’t have to wake up in the morning. It was only fair. But the beeping was relentless despite how unfair it was.
I reached out to silence my phone. When the alarm stopped, I was about to let go of my phone when everything came back to me in a rush.
No. No, no, no. I pulled my phone close to my face and checked my most recent calls. No! There it was. At 10:30 last night I had made one outgoing call. To fucking Aiden.
My headache suddenly got worse. I remembered everything from last night. Drinking too much. My lifeguard making fun of me to his friends. Me stupidly thinking it was a date. Crying on the beach, the feelings mashing together with when Aiden broke up with me. And then…I called Aiden because drunk crying me apparently wanted my life to be worse at 10:30 last night.
I would have thrown my phone across the room, but my screen was already cracked. I was lucky it even worked. Instead, I slammed it against my pillow and tried not to start crying all over again. Why of all people did I call the devil himself? Being embarrassed and drunk shouldn’t have made me need to hear his voice. But it was hard being so close to him for years and then getting cut out of his life. I was used to going to him when I was upset. It was a normal reaction, even if it was an accident. I never needed to hear his stupid voice again. Ever.
I closed my eyes and pulled the covers over my head. Luckily Aiden hadn't answered. But I remembered leaving a long, awkward message. I’d asked him why he called things off. I’d told him I was across the country and no matter how far away I was, it still hurt. I was pathetic. It would have been better if I’d stayed at the bar and gotten made fun of to my face for the rest of the evening. At least then I wouldn’t have called my ex in a fit of despair.
My alarm started going off again. I’d hit the snooze button by mistake. Because there was no way in hell I was going to work today. Elephants were stampeding in my head and my soul hurt. I turned off the annoying beeping again.
“What are you doing?” Kristen asked with a yawn. “You’re going to be late for work.”
“I’m not going.” At first I thought she didn’t hear me because I was hiding underneath my blankets.
“You have to go to work.”
“No.” I felt the bed sag beside me.
“Did something happen last night?” she asked.
“No.”
“Mila.”
“Kristen.”
She laughed and pulled my sheet down from my face. Her smile disappeared, probably because I looked like I’d been crying half the night and was about to burst into tears again.
“Jesus, what happened to you?”
If she kept looking at me with so much sympathy I really would cry. “Nothing.”
“Clearly it’s not nothing. What did the hot lifeguard do to you? Was it the anal thing we talked about? Because you’re really supposed to work up to that slowly…”
I tried to pull the blankets back over my head but she grabbed them and held them down.
“So…not that. You have to tell me what happened. I know what he looks like now. Want me to go kill him?”
“No. He’s just a stupid boy, if you kill him you might as well kill the rest of them too. And I don’t want you to go to prison for killing half the population. I need you.”
She smiled. “Will you at least tell me what happened?”
I sat up, wiping beneath my eyes. I was pretty sure I’d collapsed in bed right after sitting on the beach last night. My sheets felt sandy. And my hands were blackened by running mascara. “It was stupid. I thought that maybe it was a date, but I’m pretty sure he just brought me there to make fun of me with his friends. They called me Stalker Girl.”
“Mila, I hate to break it to you, but you were stalking him.”
“I was not stalking him!”
“You go to the beach the exact same time on Tuesdays and Thursdays specifically to watch him. That’s what stalking is.”
“Stalking is when you sit in a tree outside someone’s window with binoculars and watch them change.”
“No…that’s a peeping Tom. Please tell me you don’t do that too.”
“Of course I don’t! Because I’m not stalking him.”
Kristen shrugged. “So the date was a bust. You gotta shake it off.” She pushed my shoulder like she could shake it out of me. “There are plenty of lifeguards in the sea.”
It wasn’t really the date or lack thereof that I was upset about. It was the fact that I’d foolishly thought for a second that maybe I’d be able to put the pieces of my heart back together and then bam. I felt naïve and stupid. This summer was supposed to be about me figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. Not falling for the first guy who looked my way. Not that I was falling for my lifeguard. He was a dick. And on top of being beaten back down to my self-pitying ways? I made a horrible, awful mistake.
“It’s not just the date I’m upset about,” I mumbled. That would have been bad enough. But I had to go and put a cherry on top.
“Did he do something else?”
I shook my head and looked down at my phone. “I called Aiden.”
“The Aiden? The one that never stopped saying he loved you, yet his dick was probably in some chick for months before you broke up?”
Vulgar. But I nodded my agreement.
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t answer. He hasn’t spoken to me since he kicked me out of his place. There’s no reason for him to suddenly answer his phone now.”
“Phew. Well, good. No harm no foul then.” She patted my leg.
I wish. “I left a message.”
“Oh, no.” So much freaking sympathy on her face. “What did you say?”
“The usual…that I missed him, how could he do this to us, had I caused the breakup in some way. I just looked at my phone and I left him a five minute message. Five minutes! Who knows what other shit I said. So…I’m not going to work today.” I lay back down, pulling the blankets up to my chin.
“None of that changes the fact that you have to go to work.”
“I’m going to call in sick.”
She looked at me. “Heartache isn’t an illness.”
“It is too.”
“It’s not.” She pulled my blankets back down again. “And even if it was…I don’t think you’re actually upset about the stupid voicemail you left Aiden.”
Of course I’m upset about that. I just glared at her.
“You put yourself out there and got hurt again. That really freaking sucks, Mila. And if I ever see that lifeguard’s beautiful face again, I’ll punch him for you. But two tools doesn’t mean everything in the toolbox is rotten.”
“That’s a weird saying.”
“But it’s true. I met a great guy last night. And I’m sure he has cute friends. How about you do call in sick and we go down to the beach with two sexy, single guys and shove it in hot lifeguard’s face?”
I stared at her. She was already wearing a bikini. I gue
ss she had heard my alarm being ignored before she went on her beach date.
“I have a date with Ben and Jerry.”
“Stop.”
“And Tim Gunn and Swatch.”
“Tim Gunn is gay and Swatch is a dog. Get out of bed.”
“My heart hurts.”
She pressed her lips together.
“I just need one day in bed. Tomorrow I’ll be back to normal, you’ll see.”
“Are you sure? I feel like some fresh air would be really good for you.”
I pictured myself sitting in the sand crying last night. I’d called Aiden for a reason. I felt completely and utterly alone. When would that feeling go away? Fresh tears were starting to form in the corners of my eyes. Besides, my lifeguard knew my work schedule. He might show up to apologize. Fat chance. I’d never seen him again. The thought of never seeing him again made the pain in my chest worse. “Just one day in bed,” I said again.
“Okay. But don’t you dare watch Project Runway without me. And I’ll pick up some more Ben and Jerry’s on the way home.”
Thank you, bestie. I curled into a ball in my bed, holding my knees against my chest. She even closed the blinds for me before she left our apartment. As soon as she was gone, I closed my eyes again. I pictured the hue of my lifeguard’s irises. Exactly the same color as the ocean. I thought I could get lost in them. Instead, I felt like I was drowning.
I was never going to let my guard down again. My heart couldn’t take it anymore. I hugged my knees closer to my chest. When would it stop hurting?
Chapter 6
Friday
I had hibernated in my room for the past week pretending I was sick. Kristen kept threatening to pull me outside in my pajamas like some sort of monster, but then we’d end up binge watching TV instead. It turned out she wasn’t a monster at all. Her threats were empty. If anything, she catered to my awful behavior by refilling the freezer with ice cream and helping me eat all the baked goods I started making. Depression now gave me a sweet tooth, whereas in Cali my depression had made it impossible to eat. And I couldn’t eat everything alone. So in reality, Kristen was an angel.