Manservant

by Shari J. Ryan

  “Don’t pretend to be my friend,” he tells me.

  Moving forward, a few steps closer to him, I glance around, hoping to get a better idea of who he is and what his interests are, but his room is practically barren, with just a few professionally hung pictures of ocean waves. The only pop of color in here is a neon blue surfboard mounted above his bed. “Do you like to surf?

  He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says, sharply.

  I continue looking around, finding a designer-like buoy on the opposite wall. “What about swimming?”

  He shrugs his shoulders again. “I like summer.”

  “Well, it’s summer and it’s just about time for your training. Do you want to head out?” I notice one of his drawers is partially open, and I head over to close it.

  “Don’t touch my stuff,” he snaps.

  I lift my hands before closing the drawer. “Okay, no problem. Do you want to close it?”

  He shakes his head. “I like that drawer open.”

  My chest feels tight and heavy as I desperately try to understand him, wanting to be a good person in his life, but I get the sense it takes time with him. “Okay, I understand,” I tell him.

  “No, you don’t.” He takes his towel from the bed and leaves the room. Like I’m sure I’ll be doing all day and week, I follow behind him . . . watching, and analyzing.

  Before I leave the room, though, I look at the drawer once more because my OCD really wants to close it, but I keep my hands to myself, getting the idea that anything could set him off.

  As I head down the stairs, Liam meets me at the front door with Dylan by his side. “You’re going to need a towel and a bathing suit,” he tells me.

  “Oh . . . I—” He couldn’t have mentioned this twenty minutes ago?

  “Just in case. Guardians need to be prepared to help the child in the water.” I want to ask him if he would be doing that part today since he seems to be doing everything else, but I keep my thoughts to myself for the time being.

  I scramble back upstairs, trying to hide the mild limp I’ve been fighting against. Tearing open my bag that I should have unpacked yesterday, I find my bathing suit—bikini—that I didn’t intend to wear in front of a child, but it’s all I brought, so let’s hope he doesn’t drown today—not to mention the fact that if he starts to drown, we’re likely going down together since I can’t swim. I’m sure the training is in shallow water, though . . . it has to be. I mean, it’s the ocean. How far out could they go? I close the door and quickly strip down, slipping into the small pieces of material. I grab my cover up and flip-flops then head for the closet where Samantha told me I would find towels.

  I’m back downstairs in less than two minutes, now prepared for drowning. As if I were a nuisance to wait for, I find Liam and Dylan outside, already heading down a cobblestone path toward the back of the house. “We’re not driving there?” I shout ahead. My ankle wants to know.

  “Training is just down there. You can see the pool of water they use from the breezeway upstairs,” Liam explains.

  Still following in their trails, I watch them having a conversation even though I can’t hear what they’re saying, but Dylan is laughing and Liam wraps his arm around his shoulder. It’s sweet to see how well they get along, but that thought ends quickly when Liam glances over his shoulder at me with that damn smirk again. They’re probably talking about me. I’m not sure why I should expect anything else.

  At least Liam wasn’t lying about the distance. By the time we reach the bottom of the trail, which takes less than a few minutes, there is a group of a dozen or so kids who are all Dylan’s age, in matching red board shorts circled around their instruct— You have to be freaking kidding me. Okay, I’m moving home tomorrow. That’s it. Sterling is the instructor? That explains how Sterling and Liam know each other.

  “Dude, did you recover from that killer swell this morning?” Swell? What are they talking about?

  “Oh, check this out,” Sterling holds up his rope-like muscular forearm, showing off what looks like a burn and a gash.

  “Oh man, you hit the rocks?” Liam asks him, taking a closer look.

  “Eh, I didn’t realize I did damage until I got out. It’ll be fine.” I forgot they met up this morning, which makes no sense. Wouldn’t Liam have already known I didn’t spend the night with Sterling? I’m going to go with the thought that my ego is going overboard and I’m not important enough to discuss because the thought of Sterling making up a story would cause an unpleasant scene. Besides, I don’t know him well enough to assume he’d be a jackass.

  Sterling looks past Liam and over to me, offering a quick wink. There’s no smile for show but his dimples deepen enough to hint at a questioning thought running through his head.

  “Alright, lifeguards, follow me,” Sterling shouts to the kids.

  Dylan tosses his towel over to Liam and runs along with the other kids. They each grab one of the red, plastic floating devices that were pre-dug into the sand, and run into the water.

  Now, standing here alone, I assume it’s safe to take a seat on a rock a few feet back while I watch the training. I guess this isn’t so bad. Pulling my sunglasses down over my eyes, I see Liam stand up from the rock he was sitting on and cross his arms over his chest, watching the class intently. Let me guess . . . now I look lazy. Why does this have to be so complicated? I’ll just get up and join him. “So, what should I be doing right now?” I ask him.

  “You can go back to where you were. I got this.”

  “No, this is my job and I’m trying to figure out what I should be doing.” I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry for so many different reasons at one time. My blood feels like it’s boiling within me, and there is absolutely nothing I can do but keep taking this crap from him.

  “Okay, then stand here and watch the kid you’re being paid to watch,” he says coldly.

  “Did Sterling tell you I slept with him?” I can’t stop the words from pouring out of my mouth. I need to know if he said it.

  Liam looks over at me and pulls his sunglasses down over his freckled nose. “No.”

  “Then why did you assume we slept together?”

  “To piss you off.” He pushes his sunglasses back up his nose and redirects his attention to the ocean.

  My breaths are heavy and my pulse is racing faster than it needs to in this heat, but he’s testing every one of my last undamaged nerves, and I have no idea why he’s acting like this. There’s no reason. I’ve done nothing to piss him off. He isn’t giving me a chance to prove I’m not one of the other nannies who were obviously chased away.

  “Look, I won’t talk to you, and you don’t have to talk to me. That way you can put a stop to your agenda,” I tell him.

  “I don’t have an agenda, Julia.”

  A muffled scream comes from the water and we end our conversation, frantically looking out to see what’s going on.

  Sterling is holding onto a kid but I can’t see which one. “Shit,” Liam grunts.

  “Is it Dylan?” I ask.

  “Are you going in or am I?” he asks me. I’ll take that as a yes.

  “What’s going on?” I ask while totally freaking out because I can hardly see anything with how far out the kids all are.

  “He’s either having a fit about something, a crab got him, or he got stung by a jelly fish. I don’t know, obviously.”

  I step out of my flip-flops, pull off my cover-up off and over head into the water. It doesn’t look like they’re in too deep right now, but they are pretty far away from the shore. Walking through the knife-like cold water feels like it’s taking forever, and I think my muscles all locked up on the way. This is fucking cold as shit.

  “Oh God,” I hear Liam groan from behind me. A splash surprises me from behind and Liam soars through small waves, swimming quickly out to the group. He makes it there quickly, leaving me in the wind, still at least a hundred yards away.

  The closer I get, the clearer Dylan’s voice is. He’s
not crying, but he’s yelling, groaning, and splashing a lot. It takes me another long minute to get out to them, and when I do, I’m barely able touch the bottom. The kids are all treading water, and I’m about to lose my balance if one small wave hits me. “What happened?” I ask, breathlessly.

  “A crab got him,” Sterling says, keeping his calm like I would never be able to.

  With a ferocious growl, Dylan screams, “It’s still there.”

  Liam dives under the water toward Dylan and stays there for a long thirty seconds while I watch Dylan grit his teeth and clench his eyes in pain. I tiptoe closer, so I can wrap my arm around him, but he immediately shoves me away. “I don’t want you.”

  The look on Dylan’s face relaxes, telling me the crab must have detached, and Liam simultaneously comes up for air and embraces Dylan to swim back to shore with him.

  “Guppy,” Sterling calls over to me. “You gotta get yourself some swim lessons if you’re gonna be taking care of him all summer.”

  I’m truly beyond the point of mortification now. “Okay,” I tell him.

  “I’ll help you, okay?” Bad idea, Julia. Bad, bad, bad.

  “Heads up!” Sterling hollers.

  I look around for whatever he’s referring to and see a decent wave coming for us. With my toes barely touching the sand, I am totally at the ocean’s mercy right now. I hold my breath and wait for the water to do its worst to me.

  The gush feels like a linebacker knocking me off my feet, taking me with it and running as fast as possible. Still holding my breath, I try to reach the ground while being carried by the wave, but I can’t feel anything, even with the tip of my big toe. I wave my arms around and kick my legs because that’s about all I know when it comes to swimming, but it’s clearly not working as I sink deeper below the water.

  With the wave still carrying me, it’s impossible to get the momentum I need to push myself up above the water, and my lungs are giving up on me.

  The moment the wave eases, I gasp for air, finding that I’m incredibly far from the shore. It looks like a mile away considering how blurry the beach is right now. I still can’t touch the bottom, and my arms are getting tired from trying to paddle my way in.

  I’ve seen nothing and no one near me in a few long seconds. Shit, I’m in trouble.

  As if the jaws of life came out of nowhere, arms lock around my midsection and pull me toward the shore. If I were lucky, it would be a merman coming to my rescue as he offers me a beautiful happily ever after. But, I’m not lucky. Nope. I turn toward the “lifesaver,” finding Liam. I’m surprised he didn’t just let me drown. That would have been another checked off nanny on his list. Easy.

  “Just relax,” he tells me. He flips onto his back and pulls me on top of him, using his body like a float as he paddles us in. My nearly bare back is against his hard chest and his . . . okay, wow . . . clearly, he’s a little happy to see me. I mean, I guess I’m happy to see him too, considering I’m no longer about to drown in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but I’m not that kind of excited. Wowza. Here I was thinking the cold was supposed to make things smaller . . . but that can’t possibly be the case here.

  This is me; the Julia I’ve always been. I’m the girl who just almost drowned, and twenty seconds later, I’m thinking about this guy’s dick—a guy who has, ironically, been nothing but a dick to me.

  He pulls me up onto the sand and drops me down as he catches his breath. “I thought Sterling was joking when he said you didn’t know how to swim. Didn’t Sam ask you about your skills during the interview? It’s sort of an important part of this job.” And he’s angry. Of course, he’s angry. Why wouldn’t he be angry at someone who almost just drowned?

  Peeling the salty hair out of my eyes, I struggle to look up at him as the vibrant rays of sun illuminate his face. “You know, instead of defending myself and telling you she didn’t ask me that question, I’m just going to say thank you for saving my ass.” The adrenaline from my fear is getting the best of me, and tears are burning the back of my eyes as realization and shock set in. What the hell? I don’t cry. Stop.

  “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. Is it the fear and hurt in my eyes bringing him down a notch, or is something else? I don’t want him to feel sorry for me just because he thinks I had a moment of weakness where I couldn’t tolerate his assholism. Whatever. While I’d like to think I see a slight weakness within his domineering eyes, it’s probably only because he just figured out how to get me fired. That means the president of the Julia-hate-club can finally relax.

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” I tell him. I sit up and pull my knees into my chest, needing a moment to rest so I can catch my breath.

  “You okay over there, little man?” Liam calls out to Dylan.

  “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m ready to go back in,” Dylan says.

  “Just give me a minute, and I’ll take you back out.”

  Liam places his hand on my back. “You okay?” his voice has sweetened and it’s far from the way he’s usually talked to me. He’s definitely getting me fired. There isn’t a doubt in my mind. That’s the only explanation.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He runs his hand up and down my bare back a few times before standing up, leaving chilling spots where the warmth of his hand just was, and I watch him walk back to Dylan. I watch the defined muscles in his back flexing with each step and the way his ass fills up his board shorts a little too perfectly. I should just tell him to get over himself. No one wants to look at your stupid ass. Jerk.

  For the last ten long minutes of my life, I have never felt more helpless. I’ve been consoling myself when I should have been consoling Dylan, as well as tending to his injury. I’m sucking at this job, and it’s the first real day—probably the last, too.

  I ignore my pride and look for where I dropped my cover-up, sunglasses, and sandals. I snatch them up, along with a pile of sand, and head back over to Liam. Obviously, I’m seeking another verbal beating.

  With no words to explain my stupidity, I silently stand beside him watching Sterling continue to teach the kids. “You’re coming down here with me tomorrow morning at seven. I’ll give you a quick swim lesson,” Liam states, sounding a bit disgruntled. I suppose I should be gracious, but that would require me to forget all the lovely remarks he’s offered me today.

  He did save my ass, though. God, it’s like he practices professional mind fuckery.

  I decide to swallow my pride, and I nod in agreement. “Okay, I’ll be here.” As I’m accepting his somewhat commanding offer, I recall Sterling proposing the same type of help. Crap.

  “Dylan is a good kid,” Liam says, still holding his focus solidly on the pool of water the kids are doing laps in.

  “I’m sure he is.”

  “He’s had it rough these last few years.” My curiosity is piqued with hopes of insight.

  “How so?” I ask, looking toward him. I notice he doesn’t match my glance, so I shift my direction back to the water, assuming I should also be keeping an eye on Dylan. I have babysat before. I was the oldest kid on my street, and there were four other families with kids under the age of seven when I was fourteen. I raked in the dough for a good four years. Those kids all lived a similar life to the one I did, though, and it was easy to care for them. There isn’t much difficulty when it comes to opening the back door and letting a bunch of kids roam freely until the sun sets—that’s one good thing about living in the country. Putting aside the mention of high-functioning Asperger’s, Dylan seems to have been raised with white gloves. There’s nothing wrong with that, but this lifestyle is very different from what I’m used to and my understanding of it is limited. I have no idea whether Dylan’s behavior has anything to do with money.

  “Dylan’s dad took off a few years ago, around the time he was diagnosed with Asperger’s.” The explanation seems frail and weak. At the same time, it’s like a stab to my heart. I know how it feels to be abandoned by a parent, so my heart breaks a little for Dylan.


  “Oh,” is all I can manage to offer as a response. If I say any more, I might lose the self-control I’ve worked hard to maintain. Over the years, I’ve trained myself to shut off my emotions after Mom left us high and dry. I spent so many days and months crying for her, even as a teenager. I was sure a girl needed her mom during certain times in her life, but I’ve slowly come to realize that I only need what’s available to me, and I only need what people want to give. She isn’t that in my life. She hasn’t been, and most likely never will be.

  Despite my best efforts, my mother’s rejection is part of who I am, and I carry its memory with me regularly, like a vivid photograph, dangling in front of my face wherever I go, a filter I look at life through. Knowing a helpless child is going through that same pain brings forward an emotion I haven’t felt in years. I stare up at the sky, warning away the burning tears threatening to fall. That is the last thing I need at this moment. With a sharp inhale through my nose, I convince myself the tears are staying put and I’ll be okay, but the damn gravity and its force of nature cause a flood the second I tilt my head back down.

  I turn away, avoiding Liam’s attention. I don’t need it, nor do I want it. With my face burning up in the sun as it is, I need some space from him, this conversation, and every thought trying to pry its way into my mind. I head toward the rocks a few feet away where I take a seat and replace my sunglasses over my now likely red eyes.

  The hour crawls by as I battle away thoughts and memories of the day Mom left us. She didn’t apologize or have an ounce of sorrow in her eyes. Just because I was fourteen didn’t mean I was ready to be without her. It wasn’t like we were ever super close, but I loved her unconditionally just like children tend to do under normal circumstances. I think it goes along with the whole, “we don’t choose who we’re born to” ideal. I loved her, but we weren’t close like Jade and her mom, who are nearly best friends. Jade’s mom loves me more than Mom loves me. I can feel it.

  While I’m lost in my own distress, Liam paces over to me while keeping his eyes on the water at the same time. “If you want to head back and start his lunch, I can get him dried off and back home.”