Shallow Waters
((Cover by evepetal ))
Before there was Skylar Lane and her epic love-story, there were her parents. Tazia Tomasello is quick witted and sarcastic, even with her native Italian tongue. Alex Lane is a cocky jock with unused potential. When Alex fakes a drowning to catch the attention of a dark-haired lifeguard, Tazia is forced to teach him all the strokes of swimming - and maybe a few that are... not swimming related. It all depends on how shallow the water.
...
The summer sun was hot on my exposed back, the mandatory lifeguard swimsuit doing little to protect me from the summer heat. I'd already hauled my dark hair up in a half-hazard bun, but several long pieces slipped out and stuck to my skin.
I pulled at a red swimsuit strap. The red one-piece was faded from years of use, the torso stretched from all the bodies before me. Lindsey thought it was gross that we got swimsuit hand-me-downs – "I feel like my vagina is being forced to befriend another vagina," she'd said – but I thought it was kind of ritualistic. There were memories in each suit, like the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. But that didn't mean I hadn't washed mine three dozen times before I'd put it on.
Lindsey was another lifeguard at Helaci Lake. We'd both joined the summer after our sophomore years – you had to be sixteen – and stayed after graduation. She'd tried to apply to Peaches and Creamery, but I'd forced her back to the lake. We couldn't do it for two years and then bail the summer before we were going to moved miles away from each other.
We'd graduated high school.
Woo.
In the movies, graduation is always a cacophony of excited screams, caps flying this way and that. In real life, I had tripped on the stage receiving my diploma and the tassel of someone's cap flew into my mouth during the celebratory cap-throw-thing.
My mom framed my diploma in the small living room of our home, a meager pronunciation of my accomplishments. Italian families celebrate everything – any excuse to cook a feast. My entire extended family had come to our high school's crowded gymnasium to cheer me on. Where silence should've followed my rather unpopular name, there were pounding feet and, yes, a blow horn.
No wonder I'd tripped.
Lindsey's dad had come but not her mom, who was somewhere in south Hamptons with a cocktail and a man half her age, who's "cocktail" she rather enjoyed as well. Not that Lindsey cared. "I hope he gives her crabs," she'd said as I hooked a pin to her graduation gown.
I cried after the ceremony, not because it was anything special but because it was the end of normal life – of carpooling to school with my best friend, stacking library books with Mrs. Poppy, turning homework in early and having Mr. Creed mutter, "Smartass." I was going to Florida State University, renown for it's law program, and Lindsey was off to New York to study acting.
A string of loud whistles drew me from my thoughts.
I looked towards the water to see my best friend stomping towards my position on the tall lifeguard's platform, spitting a black whistle from between her lips.
"This suit is riding up my ass-crack," she said once she'd reached where I was seated. "I blame you." Her face contorts, brows furrowed. Her hair is up in a braided ponytail, wet ringlets framing her face.
"Did you go swimming?" I asked. I hadn't seen anyone wave from the water, the usual I'm drowning signal.
"No," she huffed, blue eyes on the water. "Some little bitch pushed me in." I opened my mouth to speak, but she continued. "I told him he couldn't eat by the water, so he shoved a Dorito in one of his fat rolls and cannonballed into the shallow end." A cackle of laughter escaped my mouth before I could stop it. "It's not funny!" she wined. "His mom started yelling about how—" she raises her voice to a high and nasally pitch to mimic the mother "—George Michael, you can't swim for thirty minutes after eating, and pushed me in to get him."
My laugh had turned into a full-blown asthma-attack.
My job was awesome.
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Read the rest of chapter one by checking out Shallow Waters, which can be found on my profile page! Xo