Royal Pain || Stranger Things

twenty-seven || memory lane

The easiest way to collapse the party would be a lack of communication. Several lines of cause and effect not being shared with one another would doom them the quickest.

     And that's exactly where they were headed.

     Doom.

     Of course, they didn't know that quite yet.

     At least for now, Max and El could team up to defeat the stupid boys.

     Tatum, however, had to be the grown person she'd been pretending to be for so long and go to work. She had yet to remove the Jeep's top, but she had a feeling that even if the wind was blowing through her hair, it wouldn't give her the typical joy it had throughout the summer so far.

     Mostly because she would have to see Billy, and she wasn't sure if she could pretend that she didn't mean what she had told him the night before.

     How could you take something like that back?

     Just when it was perfectly set between the two of them, she went ahead and ruined it.

     She happened to be fantastic at ruining things.

     Tatum wheeled into the parking lot of the pool, a handful of families patiently waiting in the cars for the facility to open for the day.

     The staff section was lacking a blue camaro.

     Tatum, already dressed for the day with red swim shorts and a white tank over her suit, headed into the unlocked lifeguard shack that patrons never stepped through. Greeted by her other guards cheerily, she only returned it with half of the pep.

     "Billy coming?" Adam asked from the front desk, the only one not in the process of applying sunscreen and securing fanny packs.

     "How should I know?" she asked as she slipped off her shoes and stored them in her locker.

     Heather and Zoe exchanged short looks; Freddy barely able to hold back a judgmental laugh.

     "No reason, Tate," Zoe hummed as she slid on her sunglasses. "No reason at all."

     "Packs and buoys," Tatum announced, swirling a finger in the air. "Let's go. Pick your stands."

     "Billy was supposed to go up first," Heather meekly added, hesitant to take off a light jacket she'd been cuddling with since her arrival.

     Tatum sighed as she checked her watch. "We can't just wait for him. I'll make him go up whenever he shows, if that happens. I'm opening the doors in two."

     As all the guards except for Freddy, who was dangerously close to sitting on Adam's lap at the desk, scattered out onto the pool deck and to their stands, Tatum took a moment to let out a huff and grab a bottle of water from their mini fridge.

     "Did you two have a fight or something?" Freddy mused, thighs practically bursting from the smallest lifeguard shorts on the planet.

     "What?" Her brow quirked as she slid onto the desk, taking a short sip. "Why would you ask that?"

     Freddy grinned, looking over to Adam. "Come on, Tate. We've been working together for like a month. If you think we haven't noticed, I'm actually a little offended."

     "And we know it's not just a summer thing, either. You guys have definitely been a thing for a while." Adam twiddled his fingers together in thought. "How long?"

     Tatum grabbed her keys as she hopped back off of the desk. "I don't think it matters anymore," she said, wedging the keys into the lock and popping the main gate doors open. Propping them open wide, she waved to a few of the cars still humming in the lot to keep the A/C running until they could leap into the pool.