Chapter 11: Chapter 11

My first closing shift at work.

I've literally never had a shift this late at work before, and when it's over I can just go to bed. I can sleep.

I've really been enjoying the extra sleep, even if it's in an unfamiliar place, in a new bed. It's so nice. It's been three days that I've been moved into my new apartment, it still doesn't feel like it's mine yet. That urge to ask permission before using the kitchen or to be in the living room creeps in all the time and I have to remind myself that this is my place now too.

I've been extremely tidy, worried about them hating me for making a mess. So I always clean everything up after I'm done, I don't leave anything out in the bathroom when I get ready in the mornings and I sweep the whole apartment regularly.

It seems like they like me well enough, but I can't really tell. We haven't hung out much since my first night, hell, I've hardly seen Kent since that night. He's always in his room with the door closed or out somewhere.

"Hey Juls?" I hear and I look up from my place in the pool office. I was on break right now, my supervisor Oliver was standing in the doorway.

"Yeah?"

"Can you cover for about five minutes, I've really got to piss." He begs and I laugh, standing from the chair.

I pull my whistle back on my arm and he passes me the tube as I grab my water. Lifeguarding is really not the glamorous job people think it is, it's not sitting around in cute swimsuits and flirting. It's a lot of reminding people to walk, dealing with confused old people, occasionally bandaging cuts and sweating to death because of the humidity inside the pool.

The pool, as far as pools went, was relatively nice. It was a lane pool, no separate shallow pool, no waterslides or crazy things for kids to play with. Just a simple 56 meter pool, it has two bulkheads so we can change the pool and split it up for competitions. It's also insanely wide too so it's the proper width to use it for training.

It's almost 9.45 at night and we close the pool at ten, there's only a couple of swimmers in the pool, finishing up a lane and leisurely swimming. We do some family stuff on the weekends and swim lessons in the evenings and on the weekends too, but right now it was just middle-aged people or ex-swim team competitors getting some exercise.

The first pool I worked at was way worse than this one, it was very much designed as a family pool versus the Coleman competition pool. It was so much more dangerous because parents wouldn't watch their children, you'd have kids having breath holding contests, splashing each other and doing dangerous things. Not to mention the facility wasn't as nice and neither were the staff.

It wasn't really any harder to work here than at my old pool, so I transferred here. They needed the guards and once I got hired, I stayed.

We usually give the swimmers a warning at the ten minute mark and that was coming up soon. Then I had to actually close the pool which I wasn't familiar with at all. That's what Oliver was here for, to show me.

My lifeguard outfits were never attractive. I wore a pair of gym shorts, my pinnie with my sports bra underneath. Sometimes I wore a swimsuit to work, sometimes I couldn't be bothered. Part of our work policy was once a week, you were supposed to swim five-hundred meters so on those days, I usually wore it.

9.50 p.m

I roll my whistle down my arm and blow it twice quickly. The swimmers all poke their heads up and I sigh.

"Pool's closing at ten!" I call and they all nod or shoot me a thumbs up, finishing their laps.

It was also our policy that we weren't allowed to guard completely alone, that meant that if there was only one guard on the deck, then another had to be close-by in the event of an emergency. Our aquatics coordinator Micheala was still here though in her separate office finishing the pool schedules.

I feel relatively lucky that I've never had an actual emergency at the pool. The worst thing I've ever dealt with was a dislocated shoulder. And all you can do for that is just make them as comfortable as possible until paramedics arrive. The man that did it said he'd done it a bunch of times before so he was actually really calm.

"Have a good night!" I smile at one of the women going off to the change rooms and she waves with a smile.

Oliver comes back to the deck with a thankful wave and I nod, waving back. The last of the pool-goers clear out and he walks back over to me.

"Alright, that's the end of it." He sighs and I smile. "You've never closed the pool before have you?" He asks and I shake my head. "Okay, what we'll do is you go around, do a sweep of anything left behind and do a spot mop, I'll do the chlorine and then we'll meet up again."

I was just thankful we weren't responsible for the change rooms, that was the university's job, we were only responsible for the pool.

Once I moped the pool deck and dumped all found items into the lost and found bin, I met back with Oliver.

Together we moved the bulkheads for aqua-sise this next morning. This also left it possible to swim lengths in the other end. Then we packed up the equipment and pool deck signs, locked up the storage room doors and went back to the office.

I pulled on my hoodie and started to put on my socks and sneakers while we clocked out. All-in-all, not a bad shift.

"Where's your massive backpack?" He teases and I roll my eyes.

"I moved closer to campus so I don't need that big of a bag anymore." I answer and he raises his eyebrows.

"Really? Where are you?"

"About a fifteen minute walk." I answer, tying up my other shoe.

"How long have you been there?" He asks and I swap places with him, leaning over the computer to put my time in.

"Only a few days."

"You like it?"

"Yeah, it's great." I assure him, finishing up on the computer. "Is it cool if I shut it down?"

"Go for it, let's hit the bricks Juls." He assures me and I log out of the desktop.

"Hey kiddies!" Micheala says, popping her head into the office. "Pool looks good, solid day's work."

"Thanks Mickey?' Oliver says easily and we both grab our bags.

"I have next week's schedule." She announces, stepping inside and pinning it up on the bulletin board. We both looked at it and I read down the list looking for my name. "Oh Juls, I know you said you could keep working the close shifts now, is that still alright?"

"Yeah, that's cool." I assure her, pulling out my phone to take a picture of it.

"Perfect, well I know we talked some about putting you in more of a position of leadership. So, we'll train you with some supervisors over the next few weeks and then you'll be one of our head guards. How does that sound?" She asks, looking hopeful.

How did that sound? I wasn't sure I could handle this, my biggest problem with lifeguarding was that I didn't trust my instincts. I questioned if I was doing the right thing all the time and it was a problem, someone in charge should seem knowledgeable.

"Um....I'll give it my best." I tell her and she smiles.