This is my first longer work that I've posted here, and I've been playing with the idea in my head for awhile. Gil is one of my all-time favorite characters, so I want to make this as perfect as possible. Hope you guys enjoy, but feel free to be as brutal as you like; I won't be offended.
For as long as I can remember, the water has been my home.
The story my dad always tells me is that: when our house burned down, I was trapped inside, and my mom died because she tried to save me. Despite her efforts, the backs of my legs are permanently scarred from the fire, wide welts that made me self-conscious of wearing shorts until I was ten and decided I didn’t care anymore. I was constantly wracked by the pain in them, though, the shivering, fist-clutching pain that always tingled through them when I was lying in my bed, trying to sleep. I could hardly walk for almost a year afterwards, and one of the doctors suggested that I try swimming; just to see if that helped the cramping of my legs.
From the first time I dipped my toes into the pool, I was hooked. I didn’t even know how to swim, just jumped into the water, and clawed my way to the surface, gasping for breath, but that weightless, oxygen-free zone seemed like heaven for a split second. The entire summer before I turned five, I begged my dad to take me to the pool every day when he picked me up from daycare and he always complied, grateful, I think, that I was alive to begin with. He’d lost his wife but he hadn’t lost me, so he spoiled me. Maybe it’s a good thing, or else I wouldn’t have discovered my passion. Regardless, I went to the pool so much that summer that I gained the nickname that hasn’t come unglued since: Gil.
As I got older and the pain in my legs ceased to come, leaving only the ugly, discolored scars on the backs of my legs, I still went to the pool every day. My dad purchased swimming lessons for me with Coach Phil, and the rest is, as they say, history.
I’ve never had Olympic potential. I know that, and everyone else who knows me understands that, but it always lingers in the back of my head when I win a race, panting and almost dying of exhaustion, that this is what I want to do for the rest of life. To go to the Olympics would be the only way to that, I figured, but I was never that good. Every year, when my dad and Phil cheer me on at States, I know I won’t make it to Nationals. I’m not that good.
But I’m good enough.
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There are always performers on the boardwalk, even when rain is hitting the concrete like bullets, just as it always did during the late afternoon in July. Florida during the summer was predictable like that; you could always expect it to be sweltering and after those late afternoon thunderstorms, you could expect it to be humid as well. The summer before I turned eighteen, I went to the beach every morning, training for the Save a Lifeguard Race that was held every year in Sanibel Island, swimming laps to the buoy and back. The lifeguard in the tower, Frank, knew me pretty well, so he never blew his whistle at me. His daughter, Arianna, was on the Conch Grove High swim team with me before I’d graduated, so I always asked about her whenever I walked by him. Mostly, though, I just swam my laps until the thunderclouds came rolling in.
The tourists on the beach, usually of the lower class than those who frequented South Beach or any of the Ft. Lauderdale beaches, always stared at the backs of my legs, their eyes pressing into my skin. I suppose I should’ve been used to it by now, especially since I couldn’t remember having smooth legs to begin with, but I always wanted to turn and sneer, to ask them what the hell they were looking at. I’ve never been a confrontational person, though, so I just stripped off my shorts and pulled on my swim cap over the mess of curls that formed what my father affectionately called ‘whack hair’. “It couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be white hair or black hair,” he always said. “It decided to just be whack.”
When the thunderclouds started rolling in, their purple backs hunched and towering, none of the tourists were smart enough to run for cover. I guess they just didn’t know Florida, didn’t know that during the summer, when it threatened rain, rain was going to come down. It was only when fat drops began falling that they started screaming, like they’d never seen rain before in their lives. Usually, they ducked underneath an overhang from one of the restaurants that lined the boardwalk, watching the soaked performers with a kind of awe. I saw them every day: the mime with the ridiculous mustache, the silver-suited man who always blew me kisses, the guy on the coolest-sounding drums I’d ever heard, and the fire breather boy, the one who I usually couldn’t take my eyes off of. It was kind of ironic, I suppose, since I was so afraid of fire, that I’d love to look at a boy who handled it for money. I always brought a couple of dollars to put in his hat, and he always gave me that dazzling smile, the one that made me feel naked.
Maybe it’s because they’re so desperate for money or just because they love what they do, but none of them, aside from the fire-breathing boy, ever stopped performing when it started raining. Most of the time, people were so impressed that they ventured out to lavish them with dollar bills, covering their heads with newspapers or beach towels. The only exception, the fire-breathing boy, always packed up his things and walked through the rain, his dark hair dripping into his eyes, to his car. I always tried to park next to him, but half the time he was right on the beach, probably since he got there earlier than me.
I’m not very good at making friends. Since I started swimming, my only long-term friends have been Phil, my coach, my neighbor Diana, who has twelve cats and goes on adventures around the world, and the boy that works at Conch Grove Aquatic Center, Patrick. I graduated a year earlier than most of my peers, and since I go to the college my dad works at Conch College, the people in my classes are older than me. It’s not that I’m not sociable, or that I’m awkward, because I’m very good at making acquaintances. I’m just not good at turning those into friendships. They just take so much time.
One day, though, I managed to get a parking spot right next to his Scion. I didn’t even think about it as I pulled into the spot, didn’t even think that I’d have to talk to him now that I had this chance. I went through the motions of swimming, getting lost in the smell of the sea and the taste of the salt on my tongue, and when I got to the buoy, I readjusted my goggles and dove under, just like every other day. It was kind of a tradition, I suppose, that I tried to get to the bottom, or at least as far as possible before I had to come up for air. That day, in the deep darkness of the ocean, the pressure of the water got to me too soon, and when I came up for air, I could see the thunderclouds beginning to be sketched across the horizon, the sunlight winking at me for the last time that afternoon.
He was standing at his car when I collected my things to go home, peering through the window with his brows furrowed. I snapped the strap on my bathing suit nervously as I approached him and he looked up. For the first time, I saw just how green his eyes were. It was rare enough that a boy with such dark hair would have such light eyes, and even rarer that he was attractive to go along with it, but the color of his eyes should’ve been illegal. Maybe I was just infatuated, but he looked almost beautiful in that moment. “Hey,” he called out as I came closer. “Would you mind giving me a hand?”
I think I would’ve given him a lot more in that moment.
