Beach Lifeguard

Your car rolled to a stop in a small, mostly empty parking lot on the side of the road. This parking lot was positioned directly to the left of a large motel situated directly on the beach. Your job was simple; lifeguard at the hotel's private beach. Given the hotel catered almost exclusively to the more adult crowd, your job tended to be easy. Very few of the guests walked the beach, even fewer swam in the calmingly cool, spectacularly clear water. And only an extremely small, almost non-existent portion required your assistance. Essentially, it was 5 days a week, 7 hours a day of tanning, walking, reading, swimming, and occasionally chatting up some of the guests at the hotel when they needed help, or simply wanted to pass the time. All in all, it was a perfect job for someone who had college courses in the afternoon to manage.

You sighed as you stepped out of the car, and into the cool morning air. After a bit of stretching, you quickly applied some suntan lotion, grabbed your small bag and rescue buoy from the passenger seat, and began your trek up the path. A short two-minute walk later, you found yourself overlooking the coast of the beach. It was a wide, curving expanse of soft white sand glowing in the rising sun, with tiny, calm waves lapping at the shoreline. You breathed in the salty air, and walked towards the tall lifeguard chair positioned directly in front of the hotel.

A look down at yourself confirmed your choice of dress. Given the aquatic nature of the job, all you really needed was your red swim trunks with a white star pattern along the left side and "LIFEGUARD" in large bold lettering, your small first-aid bag, and the rescue buoy. You normally didn't bother with footwear, since the walk to the beach was all soft sand and a short bit of pavement in the parking lot. It was of relief to know that you were indeed wearing clothes, as you'd had a repeating dream where you forgot to get dressed, and showed up for work naked.

After climbing the ladder, you took your seat atop the throne of your coast. A check of your phone from your pocket confirmed the time to be 7 am on the dot. In another 7 hours, you would exchange shifts with the other girl who worked weekdays on the beach during the summer. Gwen was a bit more reserved than you, and often chose the red one-piece outfit instead of the bikini she'd been offered with the job. You two shared a small rivalry over your number of "saved persons" (in reality, in all but two cases the issues you'd each solved were almost always non-life threatening). Other than that, you hardly interacted outside of work.

You waved to a group of older women, who looked to be roughly in their late 30's and early 40's, who smiled and laughed as they waved back. You couldn't help enjoying the view of one of the more curvaceous women from behind, admiring her striped bikini. This was another, crucial benefit your job offered. You sighed with relief, thinking you had to be one of the luckiest guys in the world to land a job like this.

Unfortunately, today was the day your luck ran out, and you would end up naked on this semi-private beach.