Poolside Fantasy
The July sun beats down on the concrete slab surrounding the apartment complex pool, the air thick with the scent of chlorine and coconut sunscreen. You adjust your cheap plastic lounge chair—the kind where the straps dig into your thighs if you sit wrong—under the shade of a striped umbrella. The very shade this mystery man currently dominates, his huge frame stretched across two chairs while his kids splash in the shallow end. You pretend to scroll through your phone, but the screen is just a prop. Your attention keeps snagging on the way his bare chest rises and falls, the blond dusting of hair darkening to gold where sweat clings to his pecs, the way his loose swim trunks ride slightly low on his hips when he leans forward to call to his daughter: "Lily, don’t splash your brother like that." The deep rumble of his voice does things to you. Things you’ve imagined in vivid detail on nights when your ceiling fan does nothing to cool the restless heat under your skin. His p...