Chapter 1

As I unlocked the door to my apartment it occurred to me that today marked three years here. Three years. Over a thousand days. Three years since I realized that my wife of ten years was gone for good, taking our daughter with her, running off with a high-school flame that rekindled on Facebook. Two states away. I straightened my back and shrugged it off. Water under the bridge. I counted my blessings. I was forty, healthy, had a good job, friends, family. Those were positives.

The negatives. Women. It took me a year after the divorce was final before I even thought about dating again, and I found that it wasn't what I wanted. A thirty-odd year old engineer is a FIND to a lot of women, and I can't count how many I ducked and ran from, women who thought that a couple of dates and a couple of bounces in the hay could be parlayed into marriage, and I found enough baggage being dragged along to fill the belly of a 747. I guess the fact that I wasn't ready to buy that load was a sign that I had baggage of my own.

For the last year or so, I was celibate. Yes, I enjoyed sex, but I guess Mom and Dad ruined it for me because I couldn't separate it from love, even little bits of both, and I wasn't ready to sacrifice my deeper feelings for one-night stands, nor was I going to start up with somebody I wasn't planning on finishing with.

That left me as the guy who'd go out with whoever, do the dinner and a movie, but the bedding wasn't going to happen, and if the dinner and a movie didn't lead to another, well, there was always the next one. And I had a couple of female friends who finally saw what I was doing and we'd go out and have good times together, but that was the extent of the relationships.

My life consisted of working a job that was as much hobby as anything else, and travelling on weekends and vacations, and socking money away while I lived in a two-bedroom apartment in a pretty nice fourplex in my small home city.

And it was a springtime Saturday, a good laundry day, and according to a notice posted by the mailbox, it was also the day the apartment swimming pool opened for the first time after the winter. I surmised that at 9 AM I could go down and swim a few laps while my laundry was washing, so I grabbed the laundry bags and headed down the walk to the laundry room, adjacent to the pool. I tossed my towel onto a lounge and flipped backward off the pool edge into the water.

After the initial shock of the coolish water, I began to stretch my muscles in a slow crawl, a couple laps just to get things going in the right direction, then I sped up a bit, bumping up my heart rate and did a few more laps. I was in my own little world, feeling my muscles contract and relax, my lungs expand and expel, just minding the rhythm of my body when my reverie was interrupted by a splash and surge. I finished the lap and threw an arm up on the edge of the pool and turned to see who'd joined me.

Girl, Teen, I dunno, maybe fifteen or sixteen, in a decidedly un-revealing one-piece swimsuit. Her hair was darkened by the water, so it could've been brunette.

"Hi," she said. "D'ya mind if I join you?"

"Nah," I said. "I figured that somebody'd show up sooner or later. I didn't want to dodge kids when I was swimming laps."

"Oh," she said. "I'll stay out of your way."

I smiled, "Oh, I don't mean it like that. Besides, I'm finished with my laps."

"I'm Jan," she said. "In "D".

That was the other end of the building. "Hi, Jan," I said. "I'm Dan. I'm in "A"."

"Oooohhhh," she said. "I wondered who lived there."

"Just me."

She smiled pleasantly, her shoulders just above the water. "Wife? Kids?"

"Nope. Divorced. Wife's two states over with my six-year old daughter. Just me." I climbed out of the pool.

"Are you leaving?" she asked. "I'm sorry if I was askin' too many questions."

"No, I'm doin' laundry. I need to go put my clothes in the dryer. You're okay..."

"Oh, okay..."

I was back in five minutes, having performed essential laundry functions. I flopped backward into the pool at the end opposite her and surfaced, wiping the water from my face.

"You swim like you know what you're doin'," she said.

"I had lessons in high school, a long, long time ago," I said. "I still remember some of it."

"I never had lessons," Jan said. "I sorta learned enough not to drown, though."

"That's how most people do it," I said. I watched her swim the length of the pool. It was a decent crawl. She hung onto the pool wall beside me. "Well, I did take swimmin' at the YMCA for a couple of weeks."

"You're doing just fine," I said.

She smiled. A nice smile, too, even white teeth, pink lips, a nose that turned up just a tiny amount, blue eyes, a scattering of freckles across her nose and on her shoulders. "Thank you," she said. She got out of the pool and turned to me. "I gotta go do the laundry thing, too," she said. "I'll be back if you're still here."

I went back to swimming laps until I felt the splash. Jan was back. "Race?" she said.

I'm sorry. It wasn't much of a race. The pool wasn't very big, and I could accelerate easily and I was a body length ahead when I hit the wall.

She surfaced a couple of seconds after me and looked at me. "You didn't hold back, did you?"

"Nope ... Should I have?"

"No," she said. "I just thought you might, though."

"Why?"

"'Cuz a lot of guys would do that."

"A lot of guys might, but they'd be tryin' to play with your mind. I figured you wanted to see how your swimming was."

"You're right," she said. "They would. And I did. I'm gonna have to watch you and learn how you do that."

"It's not that hard. A couple of points on your form, and then it's a matter of building strength, and you'd be as fast or faster than me."

"You think?" she said.

"Yeah. I think. You're young and your body would respond pretty good to the exercise. Me, I need to do this so I don't just fall apart."

"You're not that old..." she said, regarding me with those blue eyes. I could see her hair better and I was betting blonde. Short, barely jawline, even bangs across the front at eyebrow.

I climbed out of the pool and toweled off then stretched out on a lounge in the spring sun. She climbed out behind me and did the same, then took the lounge next to me.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"I won't answer that unless you tell me how old YOU are," I said.

"Sixteen."

"Forty."

"Okay," she giggled. "That wasn't so hard, was it? How long you been living here?"

"Three years," I said. "And you?"

"Six months. I'm surprised I never saw you at the laundry room, though. I do the laundry every Saturday."

"I don't," I said. "Sometimes I do it after work..."

"Where do you work?" she asked.

I named the petrochemical plant.

"Oh, really ... what do you do there?"

"I'm an engineer. I keep the electrical stuff working."

"Really? You're the first engineer I ever met."

'Yeah, you probably met others. We don't usually make a big deal out of it. It's not like we have tribal tattoos or something."

"Yuck! I hate tattoos."

"Me too." I looked a little longer. Tallish, she was, maybe five-ten, not skinny, not fat, her suit filled out nicely at the hips and the top bulged over a smallish pair of titties, maybe a B.

"You live here with your mom and dad?" I looked and saw her face darken, the smile fading noticeably. I surmised I'd asked the wrong question.

"No, with my grandma."

"Oh," I said. "I didn't mean to hit a nerve."

"Did it show?" she asked.

"Yes, it did. I'm sorry. I guess things're different today."

"No, that's okay, Mister Dan. You couldn't know."

"You don't have to call me "Mister". It makes me nervous. I think there's somebody else here."

"Okay. Dan."

"Better."

She smiled again.

"That's better, too," I said.

"What's better?" she looked at me quizzically.

"That you're smiling again." I heard the buzz of the dryer's cycle ending. I got up and checked it. Clothes still wet. Another handful of quarters and I was back. Jan was still there.

"I live with my grandmother. Mom's mom." She sighed. "It's kinda strange."

"Strange? Stuff happens." I looked at her.

"It did. Not the kind of stuff you want to talk about to other people, you know."

"Then don't talk about it. It's nobody's business unless you make it their business." I looked at her eyes.

She sighed. "I know. But sometimes I just WANT to talk about it. But I sure don't have friends I want to talk about it with."

"What about your grandma?" I questioned.

"It's NOT the same. She already knows. Everything."

"How long have you been living with your grandma, Jan?"

"Six months. She's been here a long time. I moved in six months ago."

"Oh," I said. I could see something in her eyes. I didn't get a chance to see it long, though, because we both heard the dryer buzz. I glanced at my watch. "That would be yours. Mine has another fifteen minutes."

She got up and in a couple of minutes was back, sitting sideways on the lounge, her knees together, her arms crossed, propped up on them, looking at me. "Are you a good listener, Dan?"

"I've been told I was. You wanna talk? I'll listen." Her hair was starting to dry. It was blonde, teetering on the edge of what people wanted to call strawberry.

"Life sucks," she said. "At least it did."

"I've felt like that myself, Jan. But it does get better occasionally."

"Yeah, but it's got a lot of suckage, Dan."

"So what makes a cute blonde sixteen year old girl think that life sucks?"

"Mom's in jail."

"Jail?"

She sighed. "Prison, actually."

"I'm sorry." What do you say to that revelation?

"I am too, but it's not like she didn't deserve it."

"Oooo-kay..."

"And when they arrested her, the only place I could go was to Grandma's."

"What about your dad?" I asked.

"Huh! Mom says she doesn't know who my dad is."

"I'm sorry," I said again. "That's tough."

"Tell me about it." She looked at me, her eyes awfully hard for her youth. "Do you know what "slut" is?"

"I've heard the term."

"That was my mom. Except she did it professionally from time to time. In the same apartment with her daughter. And drugs. She did drugs. And booze. And both. I've seen it all."

"I'm sorry." Wow! I ran through a whole lot of thoughts. None of them seemed to fit her revelations.

"I ... You don't need to keep sayin' you're sorry, Dan. It's not YOUR fault."

"Well, Jan, I don't know what else to say..."

"I told you it sucked."

"And I told you I'd listen." And I listened. My dryer went off again, and I loaded my laundry in the basket and went back out to the pool and listened some more. Finally, others showed up at the pool, an older couple, and Jan stopped talking.

"I guess I'll go bring my stuff home," she said.

"Me too." I got up and we walked to the gate. I let her go first and as we got in front of my apartment, I said, "Jan, if you need to talk any more ... I'll be at the pool about eight thirty in the morning."

She smiled again. Pretty smile. "Thanks, Dan. I appreciate you listening. I may be there in the morning."

I entered my apartment, sat down and folded and put away my clothes, did the domestic thing, vacuuming, straightening. Finally lunchtime came and I ate a sandwich and then kicked back with a book. And made it through Saturday.