Summer Love (3 page)

“I'LL
play,” you say. “Is that okay, Tash? I'll meet up with you and Jade at the pool later?”

“Of course it's okay!” Tasha says, and wiggles her eyebrows. You realize that Tasha has very expressive eyebrows, and you're pretty sure you know what that wiggle means.

Since the valet guys know Dex, he doesn't have a ticket for his car, so he has to walk out with you to grab your stuff.

“We'll meet you on the courts,” he tells the tennis group. “Which ones did you reserve?”

“Four and five,” the guy you're beginning to think of as Head Tennis Guy says. “See you soon.”

You follow Dex off the patio and down the steps to the parking lot. He waves at the valet guys. “I just
need to grab her bag from my car,” he tells them. “Could you give me the keys?”

One of the valets heads into a little hut that has keys hanging off nails on the wall, grabs Dex's set, and tosses them to him. “It's in the back right corner of the lot,” he says.

You and Dex head back there. “So really,” Dex says, “how good are you?”

You're actually a pretty decent tennis player—you did make varsity your sophomore year—but you shrug. “I'm okay,” you say. “I can hold my own.”

He pops the trunk of his car, and you rummage through your bag, pulling out sneakers, socks, a tennis skirt, a sports bra, and a white collared shirt and throwing them into your tote. You dig through your clothes a bit more and find your visor and a bikini and cover-up just in case you decide to go to the pool later, then you sling the strap of your racket case across your back, and say, “Okay, ready.”

Dex eyes the model name emblazoned across your racket case. “That's a nice one,” he says. “If you're playing with that racket . . . well . . . how is it that I've known you for ten summers and we've never played tennis together?”

You shrug. “You never asked?”

He grins. “Well, I'm glad I did this year. I have a feeling we're going to kick some butt on the court.”

*

AFTER
you've changed, you meet Dex's friends on courts four and five and they all introduce themselves. You learn that you and Dex are going to be playing best two out of three against Head Tennis Guy, whose name turns out to be Mitch, and his twin sister, Mila. Then the winner of your match will play the winner of the doubles match on court five.

“You want to start up at the net or at the baseline?” Dex asks you.

“Up,” you tell him. Your net game is strong, and you figure you should put your best foot forward here so the group won't regret asking you to join.

After a little warm-up, Dex serves for the first point in the game, and the twins can't even get their rackets on the ball.

“Nice shot!” you tell him. He's even better than you remember.

He smiles at you briefly, but then his face goes back to intense concentration mode. You know you
should watch the court, but it's hard to take your eyes off him when he looks that way—his brow furrowed, his top teeth biting his bottom lip ever so slightly. You can't help but wonder what that lip would feel like pressed against yours. Then he tosses the ball high, stretches out his racket, and whacks the ball across the court. Another ace.

“No fair!” Mila says. “You're going to bagel us! If you guys win six games and we win zero, I'm so not going to be happy.”

“Want me to slow it down?” Dex asks.

“Yes!” Mila says, just as Mitch says, “No!”

Mitch is looking at you as he says, “We can take it. We're tough.” Then he grins. Is he flirting with you?

Mila glares at her brother. “Fine. We can take it.”

Dex smiles and serves again. This time the ball is a little slower, but you're not sure if it's by design or if it just happened that way. Mitch gets his racket on the ball and slams it back. You reach out for a volley and punch the ball back over the net with a ton of backspin, stopping the ball's momentum so it hardly bounces. A perfect drop shot.

“Forty–love,” Dex says. “Nice one.”

You smile at him.

“I don't think these teams are fair,” Mila says to Mitch. “They're both really good.”

Mitch looks over at you, then back at his sister. “So are you saying you think we should swap partners?”

EVEN
though the lifeguard is pretty hot and has secrets in his eyes, and even though he just rescued someone's dog from drowning, you're not quite sure if he's right for you. He seems like a bit of a Boy Scout, almost too responsible—more like a best-friend type than a boyfriend type.

Instead, you mound the sand underneath your towel into a decent-size pillow and lay your head back so you can read. You get so absorbed in the bug book that the noise of the beach disappears and it's just you and Kafka and Gregor Samsa out there on the blanket. A couple of chapters later you decide to flip over so you don't end up with one of those tans that's on only one half of your body.

You look around for Tasha, wishing she'd materialize so she could reapply the sunscreen
to your back, but instead of Tasha you find a guy wearing retro glasses and reading
The Iliad
a few towels over. He's smiling at something going on in the book and has a dimple in his left cheek. You look down at
The Metamorphosis
and decide he would not share Tasha's view of appropriate beach books. In fact, you're pretty sure he would think it was cool you were reading Kafka at the beach. His book seems even more serious than yours.

You think about Tasha's challenge and wonder if this guy might be the one to flirt with. You look at the sunscreen on your blanket. Could he perhaps help you apply it? But that might be too much, right off the bat. Maybe you could talk about books first . . . or maybe it's better to stay where you are.

YOU
figure that any guy who saved a dog's life is worth saying hello to. Especially when that dog saver was checking you out on his way back to his lifeguard chair and had secrets in his eyes.

You put
The Metamorphosis
back in your tote bag, make sure your bikini is covering everything it's supposed to, and head over to the lifeguard stand.

“Hey,” you say, yelling a little so he can hear you. “That was pretty impressive lifesaving.”

The guard looks down from his chair and smiles at you. “Thanks,” he says. Then his eyes dart back out over the water. “I have to monitor the swimmers, but if you want to climb up here, I can chat while I look. And you can be an extra pair of eyes.”

You've actually always wondered what the beach
looks like from the top of a lifeguard chair, so you say sure.

“Just climb up the front,” he says. “It's built like a ladder, for easy on and off.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” you say.

He laughs, still looking out at the ocean. “I'm not a sailor. Well, at least not at the moment.”

When you get to the top of the stand, he shifts to the right to give you some room. You sit next to him and look out at the ocean.

“I'm J.R., by the way,” he says.

You introduce yourself to him and then say, “What did you mean about not being a captain at the moment?” You're looking at his face in profile. It's a nice one. Smooth skin, shaved head, curling eyelashes, pouty lips.

“Oh, nothing really,” he responds, focused on the water. “Just my older brother has a sailboat, and sometimes I sail with him. He always lets me captain the ship when I do.”

That's one of the sweetest big-brother things you've ever heard. It makes you wish you had a big brother with a sailboat, even though you don't know how to sail.

“That's nice of him,” you answer.

“Yeah, he's kind of like a dad to me,” J.R. says.

You want to ask more about that, about what that means and why his brother has to act like a father, but it's the first conversation you've ever had with this guy, and you don't want to seem too pushy.

Luckily, J.R. continues without your prodding. “Our dad died when I was six and Chris was sixteen, and ever since then, he's taken care of me.”

You think about that and about how J.R. is kind of taking care of the whole beach right now. How he took care of that dog. “So you pay it forward?” you ask.

He takes his gaze away from the beachfront for a second to look at you quizzically. “What do you mean?”

“The taking-care thing,” you say. “Isn't that your job? To take care of people?”

“Huh,” he says. “I never thought of that. Are you a psych major or something?”

“A high schooler,” you answer. “Rising junior. What about you?”

“I just graduated from high school last month. I'm taking a gap year. Gonna work at my brother's boat dealership while I figure out what I want to do. Maybe be an EMT. That's top on my list now.”

“EMT's cool,” you say. “More taking care.”

He laughs. “You're right.”

Both of you are looking out at the water. In one section there are two people in kayaks and about ten people on surfboards, then in another section there are maybe double that number of kids on boogie boards and a handful of people swimming and jumping in the waves—one of them is probably Tasha, you think, but you can't tell which. There are also six people hanging on to the floating dock that's about seventy-five feet out into the ocean. Actually, maybe Tasha's there. It looks as if there's someone in bright yellow, but then again, it's possible there's another girl on this beach who owns a yellow suit. You have no idea how J.R.—and the other lifeguards who are down closer to the shore at the moment—can watch all of this at once.

You look over and see his eyes zipping back and forth, from right to left, left to right, scanning the water. His head is moving a little bit, too. You look out again and watch one of the kayakers. You've never kayaked before, but you think it looks like something that might be fun to try. Maybe Tasha knows where you can rent a kayak. Maybe tomorrow.

While you're watching, the kayaker gets caught
in a big wave and gets pushed pretty close to the jetty. He starts paddling away, but then you see a big wave heading straight toward him. You can't help but gasp. “Oh no! Watch out!” you cry, even though there's no way the kayaker can hear you. But J.R. can.

“What?” he asks, alarmed. “What is it?”

“The wave! The kayak!” You point toward the jetty.

“Oh hell!” he says, and blows his whistle, standing up on the chair's footrest. The people in the water turn to look at him, making sure they haven't gone out too far or anything, but the kayaker seems not to hear.

You watch in horror as the wave throws the kayak against the jetty and the tiny boat capsizes. Before you can register what happened, J.R. is off the chair with his rescue tube and running to the water. He dives in and swims in a perfect, superfast crawl stroke to where the boat capsized. By the time he gets there, the kayaker has popped up and is hanging on to his boat to stay afloat. You can't tell exactly what's going on from so away, but it looks as if maybe the guy's head is bleeding.

J.R. does some sort of maneuver that seems to stabilize the guy's head and neck and swims with
him back to shore. He comes running back and grabs a backboard, while radioing some other guards and asking you to call 911.

You jump down from the chair and grab your phone. You've never made a 911 call, but you tell them what happened and that the lifeguard said to call, and they say an ambulance will be there as soon as possible.

Tasha comes out of the ocean and finds you on your towel, where you're standing and watching all this unfold. J.R. has the guy strapped onto a backboard so that his head and neck are immobilized, and two other lifeguards have come over from somewhere—maybe farther down on the beach? Other than the blood on his head, the guy seems mostly okay. He's alert and breathing and moving at least, and seems to be talking to some of the people gathered around him.

“What's going on?” Tasha asks, drying herself off.

“The guy's kayak got slammed into the jetty. It was really scary.”

“You saw it?” Tasha asks, shaking her head to get water out of her ear.

“Yeah.” You nod. “I was kind of flirting with the lifeguard, so I was up with him in his chair.”

Tasha does her eyebrow raise, and you smile a little.

“But that's not important now,” you say. “This guy could be really hurt!”

Sirens blaring, the ambulance pulls up to the edge of the parking lot. You go running and point out where the EMTs need to go. They get to the injured kayaker and talk to J.R. He nods a few times, and then helps them carry the guy on the backboard across the beach and load him onto a gurney waiting in the ambulance. Then J.R. and one of the other lifeguards head back over toward your towel and the chair.

When they get to you, J.R. stops.

“Is he going to be okay?” you ask.

J.R. nods. “I think so. The backboard was just a precaution because of his head injury. But he seemed okay when he left.”

“I'm going to head up into the chair,” the other lifeguard says. And J.R. nods at him.

“Sounds good,” he says. “Glad you were here to help with that.”

“No problem, man,” Lifeguard Number Two says. He's already up and doing the ocean-scanning thing you saw J.R. doing earlier.

J.R. turns back to you. “So my shift's over. Any chance you want to walk with me and get ice cream or something? I think I need to decompress a little after that.”

You look over at Tasha. She gives you a go-with-him! face.

But you're not sure what to do.