The Lifeguard Bet

My name is Collin Parson, I'm twenty-eight, and I've been lifeguarding at the Merritt Falls municipal pool for six summers now. People in town assume I peaked in high school. Honestly, some days I wonder if they're right.

It was a Tuesday in July, hot enough that the asphalt on Main Street got soft under your shoes. Edgar Phlox and I closed the pool together. Edgar is thirty-four and has been a lifeguard longer than me, and his main talent in life is talking other people into doing dumb things.

"Drinks at The Griddle," he said, locking the gate. "You owe me. You covered my Thursday shift."

"I covered your shift twice in June."

"So we're even and drinks are friendly. Come on."

So we went. The Griddle is a diner on the dusty end of Main Street, and at eight in the evening it empties out except for a few old guys drinking coffee and arguing about the price of hay. We took the corner booth and Edgar ordered two beers without asking me.

"Here's my question," he said, tapping the table. "Sierra Martens."

I'd seen Sierra around. Everyone in Merritt Falls has seen Sierra around. She's twenty-nine, works at the feed store, and sells her pottery at the church fair every July. She's also famous for telling people exactly what she thinks of them, which is usually not much.

"What about her?"

"She's the only woman in this town who's never gone out with you."

"That's not true. Half this town has never gone out with me. I'm not that busy."

Edgar grinned at me over his bottle. "You know what I mean. You've dated your way through the diner girls, the bank girls, even that woman from the vet clinic. Sierra wouldn't give you the time of day. I bet you can't even get one date out of her."

I should have laughed it off. That's the mature thing. But there was beer in me and Edgar knows exactly which of my buttons to push, because he's been pushing them for six years.

"One date," I said. "That's it?"

"One date. If she says yes, I buy your beers for a month. If she says no, or if she laughs in your face, you wear the chicken costume at the pool's family day."

"The chicken costume?"

"Full suit. Chicken dance on the deck. In August."

"Edgar, it's ninety degrees in August."

"Then don't lose, chicken man."

Here's where I admit something dumb. I didn't like Sierra as a challenge, not really. I'd always thought she was interesting. She came into the pool concession once to buy ice for the feed store and she argued with the manager about the price for ten minutes and won. I'd watched the whole thing from my chair like it was a movie. But I let Edgar think it was about the bet, because saying you actually like someone is scarier than a chicken suit.

"Fine," I said. "Tomorrow. Feed store. One date."

"Attaboy!"

The next morning I showered at the pool and put on an actual collared shirt, which my sister noticed immediately when I texted her a photo for moral support. She replied with nine fire emojis, which was not the support I needed.

The feed store smells like seed and sawdust and leather. Sierra was behind the counter, ringing up a farmer buying chicken wire. She's got dark hair she keeps tied back and hands that look like they've done real work, because they have. I waited my turn like a civilized person.

"Help you?" she said when the farmer left. Flat. Polite. The voice you use on strangers.

"Yeah, hi. I'm Collin. I lifeguard at the pool."

"I know who you are."

"Right, of course. Small town." I cleared my throat. "So, I was wondering if you'd want to get dinner sometime. With me. There's a bet involved, actually, my coworker Edgar bet me I couldn't get a date with you, and I know how that sounds, and I..."

Stop. Rewind. I said the bet part out loud, unprompted, like an idiot, because apparently my mouth operates independently when I'm nervous. I'd been planning to leave that part out.

Sierra set down her pen. She looked at me the way you look at a bird that flew into a window.

"Did you just admit to a bet?" she said. "To my face? In my store?"

"I panicked. I was going to be honest eventually, I thought, why not be honest immediately."

"Wow." She crossed her arms. "So this is a game to you. Some contest with your little buddy."

"It's not a game to me. The bet is real, but it's not why I'm here. I've wanted to ask you out since the ice argument. I watched you bully Dave over ice prices and I thought, that's the most impressive thing I've seen all summer."

She stared at me. Then something shifted, some decision happening behind her eyes, and I could not tell you what it was even now.

"Okay," she said. "Here's what's going to happen. I'll go on one date with you. One. But not because I like you. Because I've decided I'm going to make you quit. You and your bet and your collared shirt. By the end of it you'll be begging Edgar to let you do the chicken dance."

"That's... a very specific revenge."

"I'm a very specific person." She pulled a receipt pad toward her. "Saturday. Church fairgrounds, they're doing the church fair. I have a pottery booth there anyway. You'll show up at noon and you'll do what I say. Deal?"

"Deal," I said, and I meant it, God help me.

She wrote her number on a receipt and slid it across the counter like a poker chip. "Don't text me anything cute. I hate cute."

"Understood."

"And Collin? If you tell Edgar one word about how this goes before Saturday, it's off."

I didn't tell Edgar anything. He spent all of Wednesday and Thursday trying to pry it out of me at the pool and I just smiled and blew my whistle at children. He was losing his mind. It was great.

Saturday came, ninety-two degrees, not a cloud in the sky. The church fair takes over the fairgrounds every July, all folding tables and bunting and a dunk tank run by the men's group. Sierra's pottery booth was near the west gate, a long table of mugs and bowls in blues and greens, prettier than anything else at the fair.

She looked up when I walked over, and I watched her make a show of checking a watch she wasn't wearing.

"Noon on the dot," she said. "Well. You can follow instructions at least."

"I have other skills too."

"Doubtful. First task." She pointed across the fair. "Two fairgoers have been circling my booth for twenty minutes, touching everything, and the man is eating a churro over my bowls. Go deal with it."

"Deal with it how?"

"Creatively."

So I walked over and struck up a conversation with the churro guy, and somehow it turned into me explaining glaze firing for fifteen minutes, which I learned about from Sierra's own signs, and by the end he bought two mugs out of guilt and wandered off. I came back to the booth and Sierra had her chin in her hand.

"That was passable," she said.

"I have a whistle and authority. It transfers."

"We'll see. Sit there and hand people bags. Don't talk to them unless they talk first. You're decoration."

I sat there for an hour and bagged pottery and it was weirdly nice. Sierra works fast, wrapping bowls in newspaper, taking money, making change in her head. Customers she liked got dry jokes. Customers who haggled got flat stares. One woman asked if Sierra had a shop anywhere and Sierra said "my garage, come back never," and the woman laughed like it was the best thing she'd heard all year.

Around two she stood up and stretched. "Enough work. I have a reputation to uphold and you have a bet to lose. Skee-Ball."

There's a skee-ball machine at the fair every year, run by the youth group, five bucks for a bunch of tickets. Sierra paid for herself without looking at me.

"Three rounds," she said, rolling a ball back and forth in her hand. "Best single round wins. If you win, I'll concede you're not completely useless. If I win, you have to win me the biggest stuffed animal on the midway."

"And if I lose that too?"

"Then you're on your own for dinner."

She went first and scored a 260, which is apparently just a casual Tuesday for her. Her form is real, elbow up, follow-through, no wasted motion. She sells pottery with those hands.

I went second and scored a 190. Then a 170. The machine ate one of my balls, which I took personally and said so, loudly, to the machine, and a little kid next to us looked genuinely worried about me.

"You're mad at the skee-ball machine," Sierra said, delighted.

"It cheated! It bounced it off the rail!"

"It's a machine. It can't cheat."

"Then the universe cheated and the machine is the universe's representative."

She was laughing. Not polite laughing, actual laughing, bent over the lane. And I noticed, standing there in the heat with my 170 on the scoreboard: I'd made her laugh for real, and something in my chest went off like a struck match, and I wanted to keep doing that for the rest of the summer and then the rest of everything.

"Round three," she said, wiping her eyes. "Need a 270 to win, they only go up by tens. Good luck, decoration."

I rolled a 250. Two rings short. I stood there staring at the score like it had personally insulted my family.

"Twenty points," I said. "That's a rounding error."

"Pay up." She pointed down the midway at a booth with enormous stuffed animals, a yellow dog the size of a couch cushion. "That one. The dog."

"That dog is bigger than some dogs."

"Then you'd better start rolling."

I lost seven dollars and some dignity at that booth, but I won the dog. Sierra took it from me, hugged it once, quick, like she was embarrassed to enjoy it, then handed it back.

"You carry him. I have a booth."

"Yes ma'am."

"And Collin?" She looked at me sideways, and for the first time her voice wasn't sharp at all. "You lost the skee-ball on purpose, didn't you."

I opened my mouth to deny it. Then I closed it again, because I had not lost on purpose, and somehow that was the better answer.

"No," I said. "I'm just genuinely that bad."

"Huh," she said, and walked toward the booth, and I followed her carrying a giant dog in ninety-degree heat, grinning like an idiot.

Gia Larson caught me Monday at The Griddle. I should have known she would. Sierra tells Gia everything, and Gia is a waitress, which means she has access to coffee and unlimited eavesdropping.

She appeared at my booth with a coffee pot I'm pretty sure was empty. "Collin Parson. Got a minute?"

"Sure. You want me to order pie? I feel like this is a pie situation."

"This is not a pie situation." She sat down across from me, which waitresses don't do unless it's serious. "Word around town is you made a bet about Sierra."

My stomach did a thing. "Word travels fast here."

"Merritt Falls. Population gossip. You know what I mean."

I stirred a coffee I hadn't ordered. "It was stupid. Edgar dared me and I was drunk and it was a joke and then it stopped being a joke."

"See, that's the part I need you to explain." Gia leaned in. "Because Sierra told me you two went on a real date. A real, good, hot-as-blazes date where you lost skee-ball to her. And she knows about the bet, because Edgar ran his mouth about it at this very counter and I told her. So which is it?"

"Can I be honest with you?"

"Please. It's the only thing I'm interested in."

"I think I like her for real." The words came out before I'd finished arranging them in my head. "I know how it started. I know it looks bad. But somewhere around the churro conversation it stopped being about Edgar and started being about her."

Gia studied me for a second. "Sierra's dated guys here. She dated that Brandon fella for a while, back when she was twenty-three, and he told his buddies about her like she was a story he was telling at a bar. It wrecked her. She built up walls you could hang shelving on. She's sharp on purpose, Collin. It's armor."

"I noticed the armor."

"Then hear me. If this bet thing is a game to you, quit now. Quit today. Because if you make her the punchline of a bar bet, I will personally ruin your life, and I'm married to a man with a boat and a grudge, so I have resources."

"I believe you."

"Good." She stood up and refilled nothing. "And if it's real? Then you'd better tell her it's real, before she hears it some other way and decides it isn't."

She walked off and I sat there with cold coffee, thinking about how everyone in this