The Lifeguard's Last Con

Jenny sat on the floor of her apartment, surrounded by boxes she had not finished packing. Tape gun in one hand. Half a cold coffee in the other. It was Thursday, and tomorrow the truck came.

Twenty-eight years old and starting over. She said it to herself like a slogan. Starting over. Fresh start. New town, new job at the new pool, new everything.

It didn't quite land.

She looked around at the furniture draped in old bedsheets. The couch she and Daniel had picked out together. The lamp he'd insisted was too expensive and then used every single night. Three years, gone in about six boxes of his stuff that he'd already collected, and a breakup text she'd read forty times.

He hadn't even come in person. That was the part that stuck. Not the leaving. The coward's way of doing it.

And the kicker was the money. Her grandma had left her a little inheritance back in the spring, and the moment it hit her account, Daniel got warm again. Interested again. Full of ideas about what they should do with it. She'd said no. He'd left two weeks later.

So. Boxes. Tape. A new town four hours north where nobody knew her name or her ex or her bank balance.

Her phone buzzed on the floor beside her.

Alfred. Of course it was Alfred. He'd been checking in on her every few days since the breakup with Daniel, ever the steady one, ever the friend. They'd had a brief fling back in college when she was twenty-two, ended amicably, ended it easy, stayed friends ever since. He was the rare ex who actually stayed an ex and became something better.

*Hey. Moving day tomorrow. You still doing this alone? Because that's insane.*

She typed back with one thumb. *I have a truck. I have arms. I'm fine.*

*You are not fine. Look. My old roommate Rex is in town, he's between things right now, and he owes me about nine favors. Can he come help? He's good. Strong. Not weird. Mostly not weird.*

Jenny stared at the name. Rex. She knew that name.

Then she remembered. Alfred's party, five years back. She'd been twenty-five, wearing the green dress, drinking cheap champagne out of plastic flutes. There had been a man by the window with dark hair and shoulders that made his shirt look like a design flaw. Rex. He'd made her laugh twice in one conversation, which was a record for a party, and then she'd gotten pulled away to play some terrible game and never got his last name or his number.

She pulled up the old photos from that night. There he was, blurred in the background of one, half a smile, holding a beer he didn't seem to be drinking.

*OK,* she typed. *Send him. Nine a.m.*

She put the phone down and looked at her bare ring finger, then at the couch under its sheet, and decided not to think about either one again.

* * *

Rex showed up at nine sharp, and Jenny opened the door holding her coffee like a shield.

Yep. Still handsome. Thirty now, probably, a few years older than her, same dark hair, same shoulders that should have been illegal in a plain gray t-shirt. He smiled and the whole cramped hallway seemed to get more space somehow.

"Jenny," he said. "You probably don't remember me. We met at Alfred's thing, what, five years ago?"

"The green dress party."

"I was going to say the champagne-in-a-flute party, but sure." He held up a paper bag. "I brought donuts. I was told this was a two-donut minimum job."

"Alfred undersold it. It's a full dozen minimum." She stepped back to let him in, and he ducked under the doorframe, which she noted with interest, because the doorframe was normal height.

He looked around at the sheets and boxes without any pity in his face, which she appreciated. Some people did the sad head tilt. He just rolled up his sleeves and said, "Where do you want to start?"

"Books. They're the heaviest and I've been pretending they don't exist."

"Books first. I like a person with a plan."

They worked. And the strange thing was how easy it was. He didn't ask about the breakup, or if he'd heard about it from Alfred he had the grace to never bring it up. He talked about the new town she was moving to, which he'd apparently driven through once, and about how he'd spent the last few years running a business that had gone under, and how he was rebuilding, taking odd work, keeping his head up. He said it lightly. She noticed he said it lightly.

By eleven they had the books done and the kitchen mostly boxed, and Jenny had noticed two other things.

One, he was careful with her stuff. No tossing boxes, no "this is probably fine." He wrapped her grandma's teapot in three dish towels without being asked.

Two, he smelled warm. That was the only word she had for it. Not cologne. Not laundry. Warm, like a sun-baked deck chair at the pool, like a blanket out of the dryer. She kept catching herself leaning toward it while they taped boxes side by side and pulling back, embarrassed.

"You smell good," she said, before her brain could stop her mouth. "Sorry. That was. I meant, what is that? Is it a cologne?"

Rex's hands paused on the tape for half a second. "Old family thing. Soap, mostly. My mother made it." He smiled. "You're the second person to ask this month."

"Well, don't leave me hanging. What's in it?"

"Trade secret." He tossed her the tape. "Break time. You have anything to eat in this place that isn't in a box?"

* * *

They sat on the sheet-draped couch with takeout containers balanced on the boxes, because the table was already packed. Spring rolls and noodles and two Cokes, and Jenny realized she was having a better time than she'd had in months. Maybe since before Daniel. That thought should have hurt more than it did.

"So Rex," she said, chopsticks in the air. "Is it short for anything?"

"Rexford." He made a face. "My father had ideas."

"Rexford. Wow. Okay, yeah, I'd go by Rex too."

"Thank you. Someone understands." He leaned back, container on his knee. "What about you? Lifeguard to lifeguard, what's the new pool like?"

"You remembered that?"

"Alfred talks. Also you told me, five years ago. You were very proud of the whistle."

"I am very proud of the whistle." She laughed, and it came out real, and something in her chest unclenched a little. "The new pool is supposedly nicer. Bigger. Actual functioning AC in the office, allegedly."

"Fancy."

"Wildly."

He grinned and reached across her for the soy sauce packets, and that was when it happened.

The light in the room did something strange. A flicker, like a bulb about to go, and for maybe one second his face shifted. Just shifted. The jaw squared differently. The eyes went a paler color, almost silver, and older, and tired in a way the handsome face wasn't. Something about the shape of him was rawer. Truer. Like a mask had slipped a quarter inch.

Jenny gasped and the chopsticks clattered into her container.

Then it was gone. Rex blinked at her, dark-eyed and ordinary and exactly himself again, holding three soy sauce packets like nothing had occurred.

"Sorry." He glanced up at the ceiling light. "Old wiring in this place. The fluorescent in the kitchen does that too, right? Drives people nuts."

She looked at the ceiling. The light was steady. There was no flicker happening. But her heart was thudding and her noodles had gone cold in front of her, and Rex was watching her with an easy, patient smile, the way you watch someone decide whether they saw what they saw.

"Yeah," she heard herself say. "The wiring. It does that."

"You okay? You went pale."

"Fine. Just." She took a breath and picked up her Coke. "Dropped my chopsticks. Scared myself."

"Big drop." He handed her a fresh pair from the takeout bag, still smiling, and steered the conversation gently back to the new pool and whether the town had a decent pizza place, and the moment folded itself up and put itself away.

But Jenny thought about it the rest of the afternoon, while they taped and stacked and labeled, while he carried her heaviest boxes like they were empty. She thought about the silver eyes. The tired, honest jaw.

Because here was the thing she hadn't said out loud, not even to Alfred. For one flickering second, that other face had looked more like a person she could trust than any face she'd seen in three years.

And Rex, hauling her book boxes two at a time, telling a story about Alfred's college attempt at making kimchi, watched her from under his lashes and thought, quietly, that the con had just gotten a lot harder than he'd planned.

They kept working until it got dark outside. By nine the living room was mostly boxes, stacked and labeled, and the only flat surface left was the couch.

"Beer?" Jenny asked, holding up two bottles from the fridge. "It's basically the last cold thing I own."

"Can't turn that down."

They sat on the floor, backs against the couch, shoulders not quite touching. The lamp was the only light left. Rex took a long pull and sighed.

"Big day tomorrow," he said.

"Truck comes at eight." She tipped her bottle against his. "To surviving the packing."

"To Alfred's nine favors. I'm keeping count. He's going to hold this over me for years."

"He will. He keeps a list. I've seen it."

Rex laughed and it was a good laugh, honest, and Jenny felt that thing in her chest again, the unclenching. It had been so long. Daniel had been gone two weeks after the text, but honestly the lonely part had started way before the text. The lonely part had started when she stopped being able to say anything real to him.

Rex reached over to set his bottle down on the floor and his hand brushed hers. Just knuckles, barely a second. And the whole room got warmer. Jenny didn't pull away fast enough, and