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 Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 6:36 am
Once every fifteen minutes, she was to circle the pool deck, and it was starting to feel to Tallulah like the circling was the greatest thing since sliced bread. It was hot and sticky up on the chair, even with an umbrella and sunglasses and a water bottle filled with a slowly-melting chunk of ice. The thing they didn't tell you about OFF Athletic Formula was that it was basically useless once you got anywhere near water, and there seemed to be something about Rookie Lifeguard that signalled Open Buffet to mosquitos.
She paused at the edge of the shallow end to tell off a pair of rough-housing fifth-graders, then rounded the kiddie pool on log patrol. Swim lessons didn't start for a week, so she figured she was just being hazed until then with the worst hours at the hottest part of the day.
Kiddie pool found to be clean (for now), she started back towards her chair, but not before raising her whistle to her lips and tweeting it at a pair of middle school girls and the boy who was chasing them across the pool deck at breakneck speeds.
"Do you want a concussion?" she asked them sternly once they stopped, the implication being that either they'd slip and get one, or she would give them one herself. The answer was a scared no.
She leaned against the chair and looked around the pool once more. 1:15 and all's well, Tallulah thought to herself.
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 7:48 am
When Chris wanted to go to the pool in the past, he usually just jumped in the one at his parents' home. Now he didn't have that luxury since he'd insisted in moving into his own apartment for college, but that didn't really bother him. But with the summer approaching, he had a different reason for being at the pool.
No, it wasn't just because almost everyone was walking around with bare legs. It was actually because he needed to sign up to get his certification for lifeguarding renewed. There were summer camps and beach trips and lake trips coming up, he couldn't help but feel obligated to at least know the basics. Well, he knew the basics, but he had to prove that he knew the basics to others who were in charge of things like that.
And since he was already there, he saw no need to leave so quickly. Besides, it put some distance between himself and his younger brother on the off chance that the brat actually decided to put his phone or tablet down long enough to get in the water.
He thanked the man at the little house in the front once he got the paperwork all filled out, before carefully moving around the children lined up for the snack bar to open, looking around to see if anyone he knew was there. When he didn't immediately notice anyone, he dropped his towel, sunglasses, and wallet at the first empty lounge chair, before taking off his shirt and flipflops. He's already made sure to put on the necessary sunscreen before he left, not wanting to have to sit out and wait for it to absorb into his skin when he would really rather just... jump in the pool.
Which he did. Because why else would he be there after doing what he needed to do. It was then that he would usually do a few laps, but with all the children splashing around, he figured he should probably just wait until there was a break... if the lifeguard even got one...
Speaking of the lifeguard...
"Have we met before?" he asked her, making sure to speak over the children splashing around, looking up at her face as he waded over to her chair. She was pretty and was at least a nine, if not ten. Maybe if she was wearing heels. No matter... At the moment he was just trying to figure out why she looked so familiar. Maybe they had a lifeguarding class together at one point over the last few years?
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 8:06 am
Tallulah was halfway up the ladder when she realized someone was trying to get her attention. She looked down at him, half expecting to find fire, blood, or some other emergency waiting for her. Pleasantly enough, there wasn't one. But someone was still trying to get her attention...
Flipping her sunglasses down over her eyes, Tallulah gave the young man in the water a quick once-over while she considered the question. "Maybe?" she asked. He looked familiar, she could definitely be sure of that, but beyond that she had no idea. It was hard to recognize people out of context sometimes.
She climbed the rest of the way up onto the chair and leaned down to talk to him. "Did you go to Meadowview?" she asked. She'd thought she'd known everyone in her year, but if he'd been ahead of her then that would explain it.
"Or, huh," she said, trailing off in thought. She unscrewed the lid of her water bottle and took a pensive sip. "Model UN? Swimming? The Humane Society?"
She was just going to keep listing activities until she figured it out.
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 8:26 am
Part of him was saying that it was probably creepy for him to be looking up at her from the water, but the other part couldn't really complain. He leaned up against the edge after a few children scooted by, shaking his head at her.
"Azure," he said with an awkward smile, hoping she didn't immediately think he was one of those who looked down at Meadowview. If he'd had the choice, he would have gone to Meadowview. The uniforms were better and their sports teams actually won every now and then. It would have been a lot less stressful, too. Probably.
"Probably the Humane Society," he agreed when she mentioned it, trying not to grin too much like an idiot. That must have been where he's seen her. "Have you volunteered there recently? I thought I knew everyone there," he said, wondering if Lily knew her or not.
"Chris Gallo, by the way. So you're on duty today? Is it always this crowded?" he wondered, glancing around them again at the children, feeling a little out of his element.
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 8:51 am
"Not in a few months," sighed Tallulah. It had come down to a point of School, work, patrol, volunteering - pick three. And at the end of the day she couldn't give up school or patrol and she needed money more than she needed to take care of abandoned cats, although if she could have had it any other way she would have. "I'm Tallulah, by the way," she added, thinking maybe the name would jog something. She'd worked there for all of high school until about February of this year - they must have crossed paths somewhere.
In case Chris hadn't noticed, it was a particularly sweltering June afternoon. Tallulah tapped the thermometer bolted to the leg of her chair. "Not always," she sighed, glancing quickly around the pool deck to make sure no one was in imminent danger. ("HEY, KID, NO RUNNING!")
"But you see this?" Tallulah continued. The mercury was hovering in the 90s. "As soon as it hits about eighty-eight Fahrenheit, they start showing up by the truckload. It's my first summer working, so I think they gave me the lunch shift on purpose. Hotest time of the day, you know?"
To demonstrate, she dabbed her face with her towel and took another sip from her Nalgene. "Stay hydrated," she told him sternly, but cracked a smile. Lesson one of lifeguarding - just because you're in the pool doesn't mean you're not losing water.
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Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2011 8:27 am
Hmm... maybe he'd just passed her by and hadn't really met her or something like that. Still, she looked oddly familiar. He just couldn't figure out why. It could have very well been at that humane society that they'd crossed paths, or even introduced at one point, and he was usually pretty good at remembering names and faces, but... with her... he just couldn't.
"It's nice to meet you," he said, frowning lightly as tried to place the name and face together, and all but gave up when he couldn't figure it out. No matter. They were introduced now, right....?
He smiled in amusement as she spoke, although he did his best not to look like he was going to be making fun of her or anything like that, putting any concerns about not remembering where they'd run into each other before to the side. He even laughed when she dropped the strict lifeguarding act to smile, holding his hands up in defeat.
"Yes, ma'am!" he promised, before moving to lean up against the edge of the pool again. "You at least get breaks, don't you? They can't keep you out here for hours on end without some kind of break. I'd offer to take your spot and let you rest for a little bit inside, but I think your boss would have a fit," he half-joked, part of him wondering if he could get away with that. After such a crazy winter, it wasn't all that surprising that the summer was going to be just as bad.
"When do you get off?" he wondered, hoping she wasn't stuck there until late in the afternoon, for her own health.
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Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2011 9:04 am
"Yeah, I don't think anyone without a shiny red swimsuit and a dorky baseball hat is allowed on the chair," replied Tallulah, smiling down at him. "Good try, though." The more she thought about it, the more she could have sworn she'd met him somewhere, but nothing was clicking. Still, the humane society was a big place - if they'd worked different shifts then it made sense she may have only seen him in passing.
"I get like ten minutes every hour to go to the bathroom," she sighed, "But there's only one of us on duty at a time on weekdays, so I feel guilty even taking that." What if someone drowned while she was on the toilet? That would be a lame reason to be fired if there ever was one. Not to mention she'd feel terrible - wasn't this job all about making sure people were safe.
"Anyways," she said, moving on from that slightly morbid line of thought, "I get off at three. The lunch shift sucks but it's only about four hours." Summer part-time and all that, not to mention it was probably dangerous to leave anyone out in the sun for longer. Heat stroke, melanoma, and all sorts of unhappy fates awaited lifeguards who took too-long shifts.
"Why?" Tallulah asked, trying to size up his intentions and finding him pretty unreadable (but also kind of pretty). "Are you still going to be here then? It's not for another hour and a half."
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Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2011 10:52 am
"I don't think the baseball hat looks all that bad on you," he shrugged with a grin, although he was rather biased about baseball anything. It was hard for him not to be.
Chris made a grimace at the fact that she only had a break once an hour, not thinking it was entirely fair to her, but it wasn't like he could do anything about it. It was just how the process worked, only getting tiny breaks. "That's kind of lame, but I understand," he said, not liking to take breaks unless he absolutely needed to. At lead there were usually other people to cover for him when he went on break, though.
He nodded when she told him when she was getting off, before blinking at her question. "Uh, I mean, I was going to hang around for a while, sure," he said, offering a sort of lopsided, awkward smile. He'd feel guilty knowing she was sitting there with no break and he just... up and left in the middle of it. It was a weird thing to feel guilty about, since it was her job, but there was that strange feel like he'd met her before that was keeping him from just... leaving then and there.
Besides... he didn't mind the view from where he was.
"Did you at least eat beforehand?" he asked, wondering if she was going to be eating after her shift to get some energy back.
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 7:59 am
"Really?" she asked, twisting the hat to an askew angle and vamping. She laughed. "Destiny City Lifesaving Corps, at your service." And then she turned her hat back around the right way and straightened her ponytail because she was nothing if not a professional.
"My shift started at eleven. I had a kind of late breakfast, and I was gonna grab lunch after, otherwise..." She opened up the tackle box beside her that served as a first-aid kit and pulled out a handful of foil-wrapped granola bars. "Quaker Oats is taking care of me, I'm afraid."
She mock-swooned. "In the hands of High Fructose Corn Syrup for the rest of the afternoon! Why, Chris Gallo, are you asking me to lunch? My hero! But seriously."
And she was serious again as she put the granola bars away and closed up the tackle box. "You don't have to stay if you weren't planning to just on account of me." But already she was tossing around the idea of lunch and deciding she was okay with it - she'd broken up with Jaimie nearly three months ago, and there was nothing wrong with moving on after three months. It wasn't like they were going to get back together.
She took a moment to blow her whistle at two kids wrestling in the shallow end, and then looked back at him. "I mean it. Only if you really want to."
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Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2011 7:34 am
"They're highly collectable, I hear," he joked, amused that she was at least indulging his lame wannabe-attempt at flattery. "I have one just like it." Not that he wore it all that often. Hats did nothing for his hair. Nor did being in the water for that matter, but he'd live with it.
Chris continued to watch and listen as he leaned up against the edge of the pool, although he glanced over his shoulder at the children splashing directly behind him. Ah, to be young and carefree... Must be nice. Of course, by the time he looked back up at the chair, she had pulled out her granola bars in foil, which made him half-grimace in an awkward half-grin kind of way.
"That sounds delicious," he mumbled sarcastically, certainly hoping she was going to be eating something a little more substancial for lunch... Which he was asking her out to...
He blinked only once, a smile on his face to hide any sudden awkwardness, "Of course! If you want to, I mean." That hadn't exactly been his intention, but he saw nothing wrong with going to lunch with a very lovely lifeguard. "I would love it if you went to lunch with me, Tallulah," he confirmed, figuring they would both be needing lunch afterwords, anyway. "Something more than just high fructose corn syrup, at least."
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 7:49 pm
It was a moment too late that Tallulah realized that she'd probably read him all wrong (the brief hesitation was a bit of a giveaway), and she practically blanched. Well, she had basically invited herself - only person to blame for any ensuing weirdness was Tallulah Cowden, by all logic. "Good, then!" she said. "I guess I'll just... uh... meet you back here then?"
And this conversation had been going so well, too, she berated herself, shoving the granola bars back into the kit. Lunch would be awkward and he'd try to let her down easy - she was already playing out all the ways she had just set herself up for disaster in her head.
She glanced at the clock on the poolhouse wall, and found it to be her salvation. "I've gotta do another circle," said Tallulah apologetically, pushing herself up from her seat. She made a face. "Make sure no one's drowning in the kiddie pool, you know?"
It was known to happen. She gamely saluted him. "See you in an hour and a half, then?" she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking from the humiliation that was only mostly inside her head.
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Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2011 9:55 am
No worries! It wasn't as though he minded! After all, the conversation had been going rather well. It wasn't as though he was upset by anything they were talking about. Or suggesting or assuming. Maybe she was just a hopeful person...? Nothing wrong with optimism!
"Sounds good to me," Chris grinned, although he did his best not to seem too amused by her sudden realization. It wasn't as though he was going to correct her. That would be kind of rude of him... And it would make him feel horrible, too.
He would have made a comment about how someone drowning would probably put a damper on lunch, but since she already seemed to be feeling self-conscious about it, he kept his mouth shut.
"An hour and a half. Got it," he said with a smile, watching as she made her way down the chair and started her rounds, before floating back into the water. Now would be a good time to try and catch up on some swimming, at least. If the little kids weren't all in his way...
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Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2011 2:06 pm
"Well, okay," smiled Tallulah weakly as she adjusted her hat. She was trying to look on the bright side of this - really, she was. It was just a tricky trajectory change to make, even if by all reasoning they ought to have plenty to talk about.
Maybe they'd figure out why they looked so familiar to each other, at the very least. That was as much as you could hope for, right? She wiped her whistle on her suit front and doffed him a playful salute.
"Well, off I go," she smiled, and popped the whistle into her mouth before striding away across the pool deck.
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