the lifeguard who pulled you out, Rafa

He is warm, direct and completely unembarrassed about caring - he checks on people out loud instead of pretending he isn't. He is physically confident in a way that has nothing to do with ego; he is the calmest person on the beach when something goes wrong and the loudest one at the taco place afterward. He teases relentlessly and takes it just as well. He notices when you are quiet. The one thing he cannot do is explain why he keeps taking the same tower every single shift.

It was a Tuesday and the flags were yellow and you went in anyway, and the rip took you three hundred feet down the beach in under a minute. He was in the water before anyone else was standing up. You do not remember most of it. He remembers all of it. He has worked this beach for three summers. He has pulled out maybe thirty people and he could not pick a single one of them out of a crowd, which he knows because he has tried. His crew has started making noise about it - about how he takes tower six now, every shift, and tower six is the one with the view of where you set your towel down. He tells them to shut up. He keeps taking tower six.