The Lifeguard Hates You (Completed)

July Chapter 2

"Do you remember the good old days?" I ask Shawn wistfully. I hear him sigh and when I turn I can see that he is nodding but I continue: "Back when one word could shut him up and his temper tantrums were far and few between... and usually completely rational?"

Shawn stood beside me, in fact the whole swim and come to a halt. This is the first day Jay's back on duty and there is really no reason for him to be mad. The guard he is screaming at is the new hire that's come to take Rory's place and she was only a couple of minutes late to take him off. She doesn't deserve the verbal beating of a lifetime, but Jay's giving it to her any way. I wasn't entirely sure what it was Jay was saying as he had lapsed into a screaming fit so loud and so grumbled that his words were blending together, but I knew he was angry. The sheer level of his voice was the first sign, the second was the redness of his face and the third was the vein popping out in his forehead. I swear to you I can see his hair slowly going grey as the fit continues.

In the good old days that I mentioned to Shawn, all that needed to be done to calm Jay down was to say one phrase.

"Why are you screaming?" or some derivative of that and that was it.

Jay would turn that rage onto the questioner, and if the questioner remained completely calm and pinned him with a pair of innocently questioning blue eyes he'd melt, grumble something like: "Forget it!" and storm off. The problem is the only person who could get away with this had quit.

"Your turn," Shawn grumbles to me and I turn a pout to him. True it was my turn but both Shawn and I knew from past experiences that we could not do what Rory did.

You see the first time this happened was after Marnie left and it was horrible. Jay and his broken heart were like a trip wire, the slightest thing could set him off. He once screamed at Shawn for breathing in an annoying way, I mean sometimes I get that because Shawn can kind of wheeze for no reason but there was no reason for him to scream at Shawn about it for twenty minutes straight. Nothing we did could fix him, but then Rory showed up, on her very first day, took in Jay screaming, tilted her head to the side like a confused puppy and asked what he was screaming about. Jay had screamed at her too at first, but Rory hadn't been phased. She repeated her question in a calming tone and Jay was stunned into silence. He apparently has no idea what to do when the person he's screaming at doesn't react, so he just walks away.

Since then it had been Rory's job to calm Jay down, but with Rory quitting and now the reason Jay was having freak outs every ten seconds there wasn't much Shawn or I could do except try to reason with him and get our noses snapped off in the process.

"I don't want to, he's going to yell at me," I cry.

Jay has now started gesturing wildly and I'm slightly concerned he's screaming in Japanese. I know it's his first language and he still uses it sometimes when he talks to his parents but he's only ever gotten that level of mad at Rory. This man needs to learn to enunciate.