3. Reflections
T he sun is already burning when I slip through the side gate into the backyard.
It’s the kind of place that could be on a magazine cover—hedges clipped into unnatural obedience, rows of white hydrangeas perfectly spaced as they bloom on command.
The pool water glistens in the sunlight, still and pristine, framed by a stone deck that probably cost more than the house I grew up in.
My uniform shirt’s already damp—light blue, logoed, with “Sunbelt Pool & Spa” stitched across the chest. When I set my equipment bag down, I peel the shirt off.
The heat’s a good excuse. Nobody questions it when you’re sweating, even if it breaks company policy, but I do it anyway.
Mr. and Mrs. Phillips wouldn’t mind. They’re cool people, especially considering their wealth, and both travel during the week for business.
Still, they like the place to look perfect, even when they’re not here.
Me, a housekeeper, a lawn maintenance crew, a private gardener—all here twice weekly to fulfill the Phillips’ needs.
The water calls to me—not spiritually, just instinctively.
Familiar. It reminds me of a time not so long ago, when I was in high school and competing on the swim and dive team.
It wasn’t the competition that was appealing, but rather the freedom—the quiet isolation under the water’s surface.
It’s the best part of the job, and why I took it.
It’s part of Bayview that I miss the most— being surrounded by water: the lakes, the Bay, the Gulf, and the large pools with swim lanes at school.
I miss the silence, the rhythm, the way it gives me something to do with my hands while my brain calms. Back then, it felt like I was moving toward something.
These days, I’m just trying not to sink.
Dropping the vacuum hose into the deep end, I kneel to connect the line to the skimmer.
The water ripples around the hose as it disappears beneath the surface—clean, blue, undisturbed.
It reminds me of that night. Not all of the night, only flashes of it.
The wet hush between words. The way I floated on my back while Kevin watched me.
The way we belonged to the water—his bent knees under the surface supporting me when I sat on them—the stillness before everything changed.
I shake it off, shift my weight, and brush the walls of the pool. Focus. One tile at a time. The grout along the shallow end continues to collect more grime. Like everything else in life, it’s the corners where things build up. But the flashes of that night keep coming anyway, uninvited.
His breath on my neck in the dark.
That pause before he asks if I’ve ever thought about being with another guy.
The flutter in my chest.
Finally, my answer. Yeah, I had wondered.
The way the pool’s submerged light had glowed beneath us, casting luminous shapes on our legs, swimsuits, and torsos—the space between us pulsing with unfamiliar energy and warmth.
Focus, I remind myself again. I skim the surface first—leaves, a couple of dead insects, and a floating clear plastic straw wrapper blown in from another property. The water eventually captures everything discarded by nature and people alike .
The pole slides through the water as if it remembers every move I make before I make it. My body knows this. Like muscle memory. Like diving. Like Bayview.
Like him. Kevin.
I try to keep the name out, but it creeps in anyway. Soft at first. Just his voice. His laugh. The way he leaned in to touch the other guy’s wrist. The window, the light behind him, the curve of his mouth when he smiled at someone who wasn’t me.
I scrub the pool tiles harder than necessary.
Naomi’s voice elbows into my memory: Dreams don’t walk into diners with boyfriends unless the universe is stirring your pot on purpose .
I still don’t know if spotting him was a dream or a warning.
I move to the filter basket and pull it up, shaking out anything skimmed off the surface.
The pool is out in the open, so there’s usually nothing.
Every part of me tries not to go there, but my mind keeps skipping, like a scratched record, back to the one night I try to forget but have never been able to.
The pool’s deck was wet. Kevin’s bare skin glowed under the moonlight.
I remember the sharp inhale when I touched his chest for the first time, unsure if I was allowed.
The water was dark around us, warm from the day, cool against our skin.
We stood in place, inches apart, the quiet so deep we could hear each other’s heartbeat.
“Hey,” a voice cuts through the haze of my remembrances.
I look up. The kid stands in the open doorway, silhouetted against the house behind him. He’s shirtless, lean, and tanned. A towel is wrapped low around his hips, flip-flops smacking against the concrete as he walks out like he owns the sun.
“Didn’t know you were coming today,” he says, lowering his head as he walks by, his Ray-Bans slipping just enough to peer over. His eyes are a sharp, oceanic blue, made even more striking by the blond hair that falls across his face like sunlit sand.
I nod. “Tuesdays and Fridays.”
He sits and stretches on one of the loungers, settling in like he’s done it a thousand times.
His body is nothing special—not muscular or athletic—just young, tender, careless.
The kind of body that has never been told no and hasn’t yet learned what the word means.
He watches me work, arms resting above his head, pretending not to watch me behind those dark, expensive sunglasses.
Is he unaware of the ache he stirs? No, I think not.
I focus on the hose, lowering it into the water and letting it fill, air bubbling up in lazy bursts. I’m not tempted. Not really. But I know the feeling. The flicker. The way these setups begin.
His name is Patrick. I heard Mrs. Phillips say it once when I came by early and caught her on the phone arguing with him about a dent in the car, his grades, and an overdrawn expense account—standard rich people stuff.
He’s probably nineteen, a freshman at Vanderbilt.
Not old enough to be appreciative, yet old enough to play games.
I glance up from my stare that has lasted too long. Patrick smirks.
Back to work.
I push and pull on the pole as the vacuum glides along the bottom, tracing the same lines repeatedly like I’m trying to remember something I told myself to forget.
Sometimes, my mind drifts to how much happened between Kevin and me that night. I think about what didn’t—how close we got before it started to mean something .
Before I ran.
I wonder what I’d say if I saw him again.
Not across a café with his hand in someone else’s.
I picture us bumping into each other at a bookstore or a bar.
A moment of awkward surprise. I say, “Hey, long time.” He says, “Daniel?” as if he’s unsure whether it’s a good or a bad thing to see me.
If he’s happy or not to see me. Maybe we talk, or perhaps we don’t.
Maybe he looks at me like I’m someone he used to know, and that’s it.
Maybe that’s all I deserve.
The kid stands and stretches again, a long and posed stretch, before walking toward the house like it’s his turn. I feel his eyes on me before the door closes behind him.
Temptation’s just a pattern I need to learn how to outwait.
I wrap the vacuum hose, rinse the deck, and pack my gear.
I don’t say it out loud, not even to myself—but the decision’s already there, settled beneath the noise of everything else.
It’s the way Kevin’s name keeps echoing, soft but constant.
I tell myself it’s just a thought, a memory.
But thoughts don’t linger like this. And memories don’t look back at you across a café window.
Not unless they want something. Not unless you do, too.