Page 2 of Good Graces

There’s golfing, swimming, tennis, brunches. All sorts of ways for a rich, legacy kid to occupy his time. But Liam’s more interested in soccer and Birdie than schmoozing over overpriced mimosas. And I like that about him.

But it still makes him oblivious to half the shit he was born into. Like how places like Sycamore weren’t built for guys like me to work at—they were built for guys like him to belong to.

I don’t dignify his willful ignorance with an answer, just scrub my bowl, set it on the drying rack, and grab my keys. I still hear him rambling behind me as I push out the door and head to work.

I pull out of the driveway and onto the main road, the engine of my dark blue 2008 Toyota 4Runner rumbling under my hands. It’s old, a little banged up, but reliable. The kind of car I don’t have to think about—just turn the key, drive, done.

I bought it when I was sixteen and haven’t had a reason to trade up. That’s the way I prefer things. Trustworthy, reliable. Not prone to sell you out or steal from you at the first opportunity.

The Sycamore Club is only about thirty minutes from campus, tucked into a stretch of rolling green that smells like fresh-cut grass and money. I’ve made this drive hundreds of times, though not in the last two years.

I worked there the first summer my mom and I lived with Daniel. He got me the job. Said it would be “good experience,” a way to earn my own money instead of “sitting around the house.” Not that I had any intention of doing that. I was already itching to get out of there, to stop feeling like a guest in what was meant to be my own home.

So, I took it. Lifeguarding is easy enough. Made sense, given I’d been swimming my whole life.

I don’t come from the same world as most of the club’s members, but I can hold my own in the water. My old coach used to joke that I was born with gills, the way I moved through a pool. But the truth is, swimming is one of those things that quiets my brain. The rhythm of it, the repetition. The way you can push yourself to exhaustion without saying a single word.

The Sycamore pool isn’t like the ones I train in during the school year. Those are cold, cracked, built for grind. The club’s lap lanes are practically spa-like. Heated, clean, surrounded by umbrella-shaded loungers and expensive sunglasses. Everything here is meant to look easy. Effortless.

I didn’t work at the club the last two summers, though. I needed space. Last year, I stayed in Dayton to train and knock out a few summer courses, and the year before that, I did construction with my uncle—long hours, shit pay, but honest work that kept me away from here.

But I came back this year. Needed the money. One last stretch before senior year starts. Four more weeks of shifts before I head back to school.

The drive is smooth, the kind where you don’t have to think much. It’s early enough that the sun is still working its way up the sky, but the heat is already pressing down—thick, humid, the kind of North Carolina stickiness that turns asphalt into lava and melts a popsicle in under ten seconds.

I don’t mind it.

Some of the staff complain, but I’d rather bake under the sun than be stuck inside. Sitting there with my sunglasses on, silent, scanning. It’s meditative, in a way. Letting the world move around me, being still, being watchful.

When I pull into the club’s parking lot, it’s already filling with luxury cars—Range Rovers, Mercedes, the occasional Tesla. I park in the staff lot, away from the pristine lineup of the members’ “weekend toys.”

The walk from the lot to the staff entrance is lined with white rosebushes and perfectly manicured hedges. I push through the side gate and into the employee check-in area, where a handful of other lifeguards are already gathered, some sipping coffee, some staring dead-eyed at the time clock like they’re willing it to fast-forward.

I swipe my ID, clock in for my shift, and then head toward the pool deck.

There’s an Olympic-sized lap pool on one side and a more casual family pool on the other, complete with a waterslide, a shaded splash pad, and a shallow end where toddlers scream like they’re being actively murdered.

I grab my rescue tube from the equipment shed and make my way to the lifeguard stand. The seat is high, perched over the pool like a watchtower. I climb up, settle in, push my sunglasses down over my eyes.

From up here, everything looks smaller. The members, the kids, the perfectly laid-out lounge chairs, the expensive umbrellas shielding people from a sun they paid good money to vacation under.

It’s still early, so the crowd is light. A couple of kids paddle around in the shallow end. A woman in a wide-brimmed hat is reading a paperback by the cabanas, her toes perfectly pointed like she practiced the pose before sitting down.

At the far end of the lap pool, a guy in his forties is doing a slow, methodical freestyle. Probably someone who used to be an athlete and refuses to let it go. I can see it in the way he moves—determined, stubborn, not ready to surrender the rhythm.

I could see myself like that someday. Still swimming laps at eighty, chasing the calm of the water even when everything else starts to fall apart.

I watch his form out of habit, noticing the inefficiencies, the drag, the way his elbows are just a little too low on his stroke. He’d get smoked in a real race, but there’s something admirable about the effort.

A few other guards are stationed around the deck, chatting in between scanning the water. The job is equal parts boredom and hyperawareness. You spend ninety percent of it waiting for nothing to happen and ten percent responding the second something does.

Most of the time, it’s nothing serious. A scraped knee, a kid who forgot they don’t actually know how to swim. But the second you let yourself get too comfortable, you miss something.

So, I keep scanning. One side to the other, slow, deliberate. The heat wraps around me, but I don’t move. Silent, still. Resting asshole face in full effect. Some might call it brooding; I call it waiting.

A kid in floaties clings to the edge of the shallow end, his dad scrolling his phone instead of watching him. A group of teenagers splashes each other, pretending to flirt while pretending not to flirt. A woman in a high-cut one-piece and a floppy hat orders a frozen cocktail from the poolside bar, tilting her sunglasses down to scan the deck like she’s looking for someone worth noticing.

I keep scanning. Keep watching. Keep not thinking.

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