My lifeguard was looking at the ocean and I was staring at him. It was almost time for his shift to end. I needed to talk to him. If I had his number, I absolutely would have called him before today. The more time that passed, the more I was worried about why he had kissed me and run off. I had hoped he'd show up for ice cream on Monday, but he didn't even walk by the shop. And now he was ignoring me. Or maybe he was just focusing on doing his job. I was probably just reading into everything too much. After all, there was a two-day rule for a reason.
If Kristen hadn’t been able to find him on Facebook, I probably would have felt calmer. But she had found him. And his page was just like he was in person…surrounded by tons of random girls. It seemed like every picture of him had another beautiful girl with her arms wrapped around him. It made me wonder who he was spending time with on Sunday. And Monday. And this morning.
He stood up and blew his whistle, signaling for everyone to come in from the water. Instead of walking over to me, he pushed his lookout post to dryer sand.
So that was it? It felt like he had sucker punched me in the gut. Was he really just going to ignore me now? I looked out at the water. I had told him about how much it had hurt me that Aiden had done that to me. One kiss was different than two and a half years. But it stung. It was like he was ghosting me because he knew how much it would bother me. I wrapped my arms around my legs and put my chin on my knee. Why does it hurt this much?
"I've been thinking."
I looked up and saw my lifeguard standing next to my towel. Oh, thank God. I was just overthinking everything. He wasn’t ignoring me at all. He was just working. I smiled up at him. "I was beginning to think that you were never going to speak to me again."
He didn't laugh. He didn’t even give me one of his signature smiles. "Can I sit down?" he asked.
I nodded. He sat down on my towel beside me. The relief I felt a moment ago was gone. J.J. seemed…off. The distance between us on the towel was even more than between friends. The pain in my stomach came back in a rush.
"I'm sorry about the other night."
"I'm not." I wanted to reach out and grab his hand. Instead I balled mine into a fist.
He sighed. "We can't do this."
"This?" I swallowed hard.
"Us."
I had thought about nothing but us for the last two days. And I had come to the complete opposite conclusion. "I think that you're exactly what I need right now." He made me feel alive again. I didn't want to give him up. We were both here for two more months. Why was he doing this?
"I'm not what you need. You told me you wanted this summer to find yourself. So that's what you need to do." He scratched the back of his neck. "I think we should probably just be friends, Mila."
He didn't call me Jellyfish Girl. His flirtations were gone. It felt like he had slapped me.
"Okay." I kept my arms wrapped around my legs. It felt like I was sinking into the sand.
"Things are just too complicated right now. Maybe after you're done school..." his voice trailed off. He pushed his heels into the sand.
"J.J.! Come on!" shouted a girl across the beach.
I turned my head and looked at her. It wasn't his friend Abby. It was some other girl with bigger breasts. It felt like Aiden was breaking up with me all over again.
"Right. Of course," I said. "You don't have to say anything else. I totally get it. I'll see you later then." I tried to make my voice cheery. It sounded weird. And definitely fake. Probably because I wanted to punch him, not be his stupid friend.
"Mila." He put his hand on my knee.
Don't touch me. I glared at him.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kissed you. I just..."
"It's fine. Really. I completely understand." I didn't. We had so much fun on Saturday. Why was he doing this? “It wasn’t even a good kiss.” It was kind of true. Because in reality it was a great kiss. Describing it as good didn’t do it justice.
His hand fell from my knee. "Did you want to come to dinner with us?"
I looked over at the girl with big breasts and the rest of his friends. "I'm actually in the middle of a really good chapter." I picked up my book off the towel. It was the romance I had started and stopped. We didn’t have a chance to go to a bookstore the other day because of the rain. And I had no desire to pick this book up where I left off. Especially now. "But I'll catch you later, okay?" I opened up the book to a random spot and started reading. My eyes stung from my imminent tears. I tried to blink them away.
He sat there for a minute in silence. I wasn't sure if he wanted me to say something else. I kept my eyes locked on my book. Please go away. I wiped under my eyes as discreetly as possible. Was he trying to torture me? Humiliate me? Make me feel like shit? He’d accomplished all three in record time. He deserved an asshole medal.
"Okay," he finally said. He stood up. I heard him walk away but I didn't look up. I waited for as long as I could before dropping my book and putting my forehead down on my knees. I cried for a long time. Rejection had never felt worse. I was prepared to tell him that I didn't care if our relationship was short. I just wanted to see where the summer took us. I had let myself get excited about the idea of starting something new. Being home wasn't supposed to hurt like this. I was just starting to feel whole again.
***
I plopped the box of wine onto the kitchen counter. I had stood in the aisle at the liquor store for half an hour trying to figure out how many bottles it would take to get really freaking drunk. I’d decided it was more bottles than I could afford. Hence the box. I opened it up and filled my glass all the way to the top. And it didn’t take me long at all to get all the way to the bottom of the glass. I topped it off again.
I needed pizza. And not Grottos pizza, because that would remind me of J.J. and I didn’t want to be reminded of J.J. I started pulling ingredients out of the pantry. Also, I couldn’t really leave my apartment because I was two huge glasses in and there was no going back.
“Woah,” Kristen said from behind me. “Do you want to talk about whatever happened today?”
I slammed my fist back into the dough instead of kneading it the way I was supposed to. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Then why are you assaulting the dough?”
I laughed. And then I couldn’t stop laughing. “Assaulting the dough? You can’t assault an inanimate object.” Weirdo.
“I don’t know if that’s true…”
I picked up another wine glass, not caring that my hands were covered in flour, and filled it up all the way to the tippy top like mine.
Kristen accepted it without complaint. But she did grab the dish towel and wipe off my flour fingerprints. “So back to my earlier question…do you want to talk about it?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” If she could repeat herself, so could I. At least…I thought I was repeating myself. What had we been talking about again? I took another huge sip of wine as I started rummaging through the drawers in the kitchen. “Do we really not have a rolling pin? What kind of rental doesn’t have a rolling pin?”
“Probably most beach rentals. People usually come here to relax, not cook.”
“Well isn’t that nice for them.” I slammed the drawer closest to me shut.
“Seriously, what is up with you?”
“I’m officially on a new diet. So I’m a little grumpy. You’ll have to excuse me.”
“A diet where you consume only wine?” She pulled the glass out of my hand and set it on the counter.
“No, a dick diet. And there are no cheat days on dick diets.”
Kristen laughed. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m giving up men. All of them. Not just the ones that act like dicks. I’m talking anyone who has a dick. Even women who have dicks…because that’s a thing now right? Dick diet. No dicks for me.”
“I’ve never heard the word dick so much in one rant.”
“Touché.”
“That isn’t really an appropriate use of touché. But I’ll forgive you. Because you’re on a new diet and you’re a little grumpy.”
“You get me.” I lifted my glass back up.
“I’m guessing things didn’t go well with J.J. today?”
“What gave it away?”
“There were a lot of signs. Do you want to talk about it or…”
“No.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “So what are we doing with this dough? And how can I help?”
I loved her for not forcing me to talk about today. I never wanted to think about today ever again. I just wanted to stick to my new diet and forget about ever dating again. Ever. “We’re making homemade pizza. And I need you to flatten out this dough somehow because we don’t have a rolling pin.”
“So...how should I do that exactly?”
I lifted up the dough and started stretching it between my hands. But every time I let it go, it shrunk back to its original size.
“You know what…I’m going to order us a backup pizza just in case.”
I tossed the dough back on the counter. “Good idea. This dough is cursed.” Just like me. “But not from Grottos. Grottos reminds me of J.J. and J.J. has a dick and I don’t want to ruin my new diet.”
She nodded like she understood what I was talking about, even though I wasn’t sure I understood it.
“I’m so sorry, Kristen, I’m going on and on about my diet and I didn’t even ask you how it’s going with the lifeguard you’re dating. How is that going?”
She opened her mouth and then closed it again. “We’re going to talk about that some other time. Tonight we’re just going to focus on you, okay?”
“That means it’s good. I’m so happy that you’re happy.” For some reason I started to cry.
“Mila.”
“And I can’t even make a pizza. I’ve made it so many times, and now I suddenly suck at it. Just like I suck at relationships.” I abandoned the dough and sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor.
Kristen sat down on the floor beside me. “I’m sorry you’re hurting. If it makes you feel better, my love life isn’t going any better than yours. The other day when I was looking up J.J. on Facebook I ended up searching for the guy I’ve been seeing too. Apparently he’s in a relationship. Which was news to me. I didn’t say anything because I was embarrassed. And I know you’ve been on the other side of that, and I didn’t want you to be mad at me. But I had no idea he was seeing someone. I feel like such an idiot.”
I rested my head on her shoulder. “So…maybe you should give that dick diet a try too.”
Kristen laughed. “Probably. But I’m liking this wine diet in the meantime.” She clinked her glass against mine.
“Touché.”
“You’re still using that word wrong.”
I laughed. “I know what it means. It’s just hard to use it when you’ve had all the wine.”
“Touché,” she said.
“Touché.”