Raising the bullhorn to my lips I called out through it as the surf washed around my ankles, "That's far enough. You two over by the rocks you need to get back in and closer to the shore. There are dangerous undertows over there."
The two tourists I had directed my amplified voice at reacted with the typical surprise of someone being called out and quickly made away from the rocks.
"Thank you." I called out with satisfaction through the bullhorn. Letting the bullhorn fall down to brush against my thigh I ambled back along the beach to my lifeguard station.
My summer job, as a lifeguard, wasn't all that overly rewarding except for one thing. I got to be in a continuous relationship with the ocean.
Ever since growing up as a girl in Cape Town, South Africa to now studying to be an oceanographer at a university exchange program here in Oregon I had loved anything to do with the water. My parents said that I had spent more time in the water than out of it and they might just be right on that one.
I climbed up the steps to my lofty seat cast in shade by an umbrella and commenced to oversee the domain of Oregon beachfront that I was responsible for. Summer vacation had started a month back and I had wanted to go back to South Africa to visit, but one of the professors had asked for my help on a research project and so I had stayed behind.
Right now though I wish I hadn't. So much was going strangely these days and I had the innate desire to be with my friends and family as opposed to being by myself on these foreign shores of America.
I had friends here, but to them I was just the slightly odd South African Christian girl with a funny accent. If it wasn't my accent it seemed to be something about my refusal to join the party lifestyles of my fellow classmates that seemed to set me apart from the status quo of the current liberal times here in America.
I wasn't changing, however just to suit them, but I did feel very much alone and once more I regretted my decision to stay here for the summer. Speaking of being alone he was back.
I leaned forward on my perch to study the silent individual who sat about a hundred feet further up the beach in his usual spot. This man was a complete enigma to me.
He was always alone. I never saw him arrive, but suddenly he would be there sitting on the beach, staring out at the crashing waves as if wanting to be a part of the action, but apart from it as if bound by some invisible hand.
He never went into the water, but he stared at it for hours. It was the only thing that kept his attention, except for one other thing, me. He stared at me.
The way he stared at me was alarming, because I knew what he was thinking. He wanted me sexually and he did nothing to hide it, but gazed at me with a frank forthrightness that had caused me to come to silently fear just the sight of him.
He was big in a way that was more than just being tall and muscular. He had an ingrained intensity and discipline about him that said he had the ability to seize a giant twice his size and break him in half over his knee.
The degree of coldness about him was perhaps the most off-putting of all. He seemed devoid of emotion other than the urge I saw within him to be swimming in the ocean and to sexually have me.
It had gotten to the point that I hated to even walk past him, because of the way his eyes seemed to stalk after me. I did not feel safe around him at all.
Truly many men, mostly tourists, openly lusted for me in the course of my duties as I made my rounds along the beach. It was unavoidable as it seemed that most men anymore didn't seem to have any manners and in general it was easy for me to pray for them and just move on and disregard their open lust for me, as well as their called out whistles and comments engineered to spark further communication, as if I existed as some sexy playmate for their desires simply because I was a lifeguard and too many of them had grown up watching Baywatch.
YOU ARE READING
The Longest Drive
RomanceHe watched me. He wanted me. He stalked me. I asked him to leave me alone, but does a tiger leave its prey? In the end though it was my choice to go with him. Jolana really didn't know why she'd decided to stay for the summer in Oregon, instead of g...