Tuesday, September 8, 2020

RELEASE BLITZ, EXCERPT & GIVEAWAY - Splash by J.R. Hart

Title: Splash

Author: J.R. Hart

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: September 7, 2020

Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 60100

Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, Contemporary, romance, new adult, gay, cisgender, swimming pool, lifeguard, summer job, enemies to lovers, father/son relationship, multiple partners

Connor Molina’s summer can’t get any worse. He’s stuck in his college town taking summer
classes, and he’s got a dead-end lifeguard job he’s too old for and a baby gay who’s thirsty for
all the wrong guys.

Even worse? Tristan, a wild patron, won’t leave his section of the pool, splashing him and
pulling stupid stunts to get his attention. When Tristan fakes a drowning to get closer to him,
Connor’s furious, but he quickly realizes that Tristan’s reckless nature isn’t always
infuriating…it’s also intriguing.

Can he let his guard down and let Tristan in, or will he be bound by his own rules and drown in
the self-doubt this summer could free him from?

I overslept. One week into summer, and I’d already overslept. Showering? Not really an option.

Nothing about the summer after my sophomore year of college had gone the way I planned for

it to go, so oversleeping? Yeah, not super unsurprising. That was me, Connor Molina, epic fuck-

up. I knew why I was stuck in that godforsaken town the entire fucking summer, and almost all

of it had everything to do with going to parties more often than going to my 8:00 a.m. classes.

Can anyone blame that on me, though? No. The blame goes to anyone who thought morning

classes would ever be an acceptable thing for anyone to experience. Whoever came up with

that idea should be locked away, key thrown away, all of it.

But summer started all wrong. My ultimate goal had been to go back home. You know, normal

summer stuff. Swim laps in the backyard pool, slack off, maybe hook up a few times. I don’t

know. Obviously, that didn’t happen. I wouldn’t be saying shit about that summer if it had.

Uneventful stories never make for good reflections, do they? But that summer was eventful in

ways I didn’t expect it to be. It’s part of what made my summer so, so fucked.

Instead of being home for the summer, I was there, at the Springdale Aquatic Center and Lap

Pool, sitting in ungodly heat and staring at unnaturally blue-looking water. You know the kind of

blue of skies and oceans and all that? No, this was hyperchlorinated blue, made more intense

by the paint at the bottom until it was an intense cerulean. Instead of swimming in my parents’

greenish lap pool, I was trying to make sure no one drowned in this lap pool. Real upgrade

there, Connor. Awesome.

You’d think that shit wouldn’t get old after a day and a half, but it did. The only perk was not

getting audited in the first couple of days—if no one was checking to see whether I was

watching closely enough, then I couldn’t get screwed over and lose my job if I missed the sign.

Of course, it would have been no surprise if the summer went like that. Considering everything

else that had happened so far, it would have made sense for it to blow up in my stupid face and

leave me jobless too. But that didn’t happen. All I wanted was to make it through the summer

without someone dying on my watch. That shouldn’t have been too much to ask.

Nothing about the job was worth the money. If you’re thinking about being a lifeguard, let this

be your warning. It isn’t worth it. But I couldn’t back out no matter how badly I wanted to. It

was on the schedule before we even had the most terrifying meeting ever, and I had no choice

but to press on. Never mind that they made it clear the job was life-or-death during that

meeting. Never mind that I hated the concept of ever setting foot in the pool again after the

stuff their words stirred up in my mind.

Never mind that I was scared to death someone might drown right in front of me because of

my own fuck-up or inability to keep them alive. Never mind the added pressure when I was

already at my breaking point going into summer. All of it was horrifying, but I didn’t have the

luxury of choice. Everything else was full. Literally every single damn summer job…full.

If I wouldn’t have had to be there in the first place, I could have slacked off and loafed around

on my parents’ couch and watched shitty daytime talk shows, checked out The Price Is Right

and tried to guess the price of a car I’d never own. But no, I had rent to pay. I still do. I had to

have something to do. Every pizza delivery position, every law firm secretary job, every retail

cashier option, all of it was full. I couldn’t even get a job sacking groceries, not that I would have

taken a position clearly made for a high schooler. Any of those had to be better than

lifeguarding though. Every job in town, even that, was for teenagers. I was underqualified for

the good shit, but I was way overqualified for being a lifeguard.

One summer. I promised them I’d work there for one summer, but after that, I had told myself

there was no way in hell I’d ever be caught on that guard stand again. The whole job is

complete and utter bullshit. No amount of SPF in the world could have gotten me through it

either. I still don’t know how I didn’t lose my entire mind being there. Well, I do, but I didn’t at

the time.

Sure, I probably took it a little bit too seriously, a little bit too personally whenever they

mentioned, you know…drowning. None of my other coworkers gave a shit if someone were to

die in their section. The thing is, they’re all basically kids, lifeguards are. High school babies at

best, with a few going into college in the fall. I was the only jackass actually in college when I

got the job, so, of course, none of them took it seriously. It made sense that they didn’t give a

shit if something happened. None of us ever think it’ll happen to us. No one ever does, do they? But that stuff does happen. It does. I had seen it happen before, and the thought of letting it

happen that summer somehow? I was horrified by the entire prospect. Don’t worry, nobody

actually drowned over the summer, though the close calls were enough to make me hate the

job regardless.

The summer didn’t start great, either. We were down two guards on the second day of work.

One of them never bothered to call in, and I’m pretty sure she never showed up all summer

anyway. The other one missed the audit ball and got sent home. Greg, the manager, tossed this

little ball in the water in your section. Each ball represents someone drowning, and if you don’t

jump in and save the ball in time, you get written up and sent home early. I’m not sure why

they think sending you home is the right choice there. It’s not like it gives you more practice. To

me, you should be buddy-guarding until you get it right, but that’s not how it goes, and it left us

shorthanded. Way too shorthanded.

That’s why I scan the water, why I always keep scanning the water. The ball represents a life,

someone she would have just let drown because she wasn’t even watching. Getting sent home

was the least of her worries. Maybe if it had been a real person, she would have understood. We hadn’t been working together long enough for me to even know her name, and by the third

audit she missed in two weeks, she was fired, so I never really got to know her anyway.

I don’t switch off when I’m working. I can’t. You never know who the hell might end up

drowning on your watch, and I wasn’t about to have a death on my conscience. I couldn’t

fathom the idea of telling someone’s mom, “hey, your kid drowned because I wasn’t paying

attention,” or somehow having to deal with the consequences there, the nightmares or

whatever else. It’s stuff like that making the job literally the worst in the world. If I looked away,

who knows what might have happened? Maybe someone would have died. I don’t know.

Maybe I was just fucking paranoid. Maybe I still am.

Or maybe it’s the way my section always attracted the biggest jackasses on the planet. The

entire time I was working the first few days, regardless of the section I was in, there was this

one guy. One damn kid who had to show off, basically. He and his buddies were there to break

every rule, doing flips off the high dive, trying to play chicken. They were old enough to know

better and old enough also to set a bad example for anyone younger—if they could do it, the

younger kids thought it was safe to do too. It was impossible to watch everyone in my section

when he kept pulling my focus, making me watch him and his friends carefully so nobody got

killed.

He was there when I was manning the diving boards, attempting cannonballs and flips far

beyond his skill level. When I moved on to the wide slide typically reserved for kids to slide

down with his parents, he and his friends were shoving each other down and trying to launch

themselves off. I’d tell him to sit on his ass (in nicer words) and not on his stomach, but halfway

down he’d spin, flipping to skid down headfirst.

“He’s cute, isn’t he?” I can still remember James asking me that question and even now, a huge

part of me wants to slap him over it.

“The one with the death wish? No, he’s not.” I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand how half of the

guards at this pool could think he was hot. I was there trying to watch, trying to keep track of

everyone, and it felt like everyone else was simply there to gawk at the patrons. Being the only

one actually there to work sucked, even if I got that they were just kids. You know, whatever,

but some of us didn’t need the added distraction.

“You have to admit he’s at least a little bit cute,” James said, elbowing me in the ribs. I was half

tempted to break his arm over the way he jabbed me.

“I don’t have to. He’s not being cute. He’s trying to crack his head open on the side of the pool.

What are you doing over here anyway?” This wasn’t James’s section right then, not where I

was, and I couldn’t understand why he was even where I was at, to be honest. Last I saw, he

was supposed to be over by the lazy river, not close to me in the deep end.

“I’m on break,” he told me.

“Oh, so you’re over here lurking and trying to stare at him and everything else, getting in my

way when I’m trying to do my job? Cool. Thanks.” I was only half joking. I tried to make myself

seem as pleasant as possible, but a large part of me was really annoyed. The last thing I needed

was James near me, trying to talk while I was taking this seriously. James was the only other

openly gay guard there, and not even a small part of me was surprised he was interested in a

dumbass like that one. I never tried to hide who I was, and if a girl at the pool flirted with me,

she usually figured out she wasn’t my type pretty quickly. But James? He couldn’t hide it.

Anyone could’ve clocked him from a mile away. He wasn’t subtle and it was okay, but it also got

him in trouble. The town wasn’t the most open-minded place ever.

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Meet the Author

J R Hart is a queer 30-something novelist passionate about telling romantic and erotic stories about LGBT+ characters. When J R isn’t writing, you can find her at the science museum with her son, cheering for her favorite soccer team, or at The Bean Coffee Co plotting her next work.