Summer Heat: A Pool Boy Romance

The summer I turned twenty-one, I took a job cleaning pools because the money was good and the work was mindless. Skim the leaves, check the chemicals, scrub the tiles. Rinse and repeat at fifteen different houses across the wealthiest zip code in the city.

I'm Jake Patterson, and I was supposed to be saving for my senior year of college. Pre-law. Good grades. The kind of future my single mom had sacrificed everything for. The pool gig was just a way to make money without having to think too hard—four months of chlorine and sunshine before real life started again.

That was the plan, anyway. Before I met Marcus Chen.

His house was the last one on my Wednesday route. A modern architectural marvel set back from the road, all glass and concrete and sharp angles. The pool was massive—Olympic length, infinity edge, heated because of course it was. The kind of pool that cost more than my mom's house.

My first day there, I thought the place was empty. Most of my clients were—these were second homes, vacation properties, status symbols that sat unused for months at a time. I let myself in through the side gate, got to work with the skimmer, and almost had a heart attack when a voice came from behind me.

"You're the new pool guy?"

I spun around, nearly dropping my equipment into the water. The man standing on the patio was in his late forties, Asian, wearing linen pants and an unbuttoned shirt that revealed a chest that had clearly seen the inside of a gym. His dark hair was threaded with gray, and he was holding a coffee cup with the casual authority of someone who owned everything he could see.

"Jake. Patterson. Clean Pools Inc." I managed to string the words together despite my suddenly racing heart.

"Marcus Chen. I own the pool you're about to drop that net into."

I looked down. The skimmer was indeed hovering dangerously over the water. I pulled it back, feeling my face heat.

"Sorry. Most of the houses are empty."

"Not this one. I'm here all summer." Something flickered across his face—something that looked almost like bitterness. "Recently divorced. The house was part of the settlement."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be. It was a long time coming." He took a sip of his coffee, watching me over the rim. "You don't have to stop working on my account. I'll just be inside."

He turned and walked back toward the house, and I absolutely did not watch the way he moved. I absolutely did not notice the way his pants fit. I absolutely did not spend the next forty-five minutes hyperaware of the floor-to-ceiling windows and whether he could see me.

When I left, I told myself it was just nerves. New client, unexpected interaction. Nothing more.

I was lying to myself, and I knew it.

Wednesday became my favorite day of the week.

Marcus was always there. Always watching from the kitchen window or reading on the patio or swimming laps while I worked around him. He'd bring me water without asking, cold bottles that he'd press into my hand with a comment about the heat.

"You're going to get dehydrated. The sun out here is brutal."

"I'm used to it."

"Used to it or martyring yourself? Different things."

He'd sit and talk to me while I worked. I learned he was a tech executive—had sold his startup two years ago for an amount of money I couldn't comprehend. He'd worked eighteen-hour days for fifteen years, missed his daughter's childhood, watched his marriage crumble in slow motion.

"And now I have all this." He gestured at the house, the pool, the manicured grounds. "And no idea what to do with any of it."

"Must be nice to have that problem."

"Is that what you think?" He looked at me with genuine curiosity. "You think money solves things?"

"I think it solves a lot of things. Rent. Tuition. My mom's medical bills."

He was quiet for a moment. "Fair enough. I forget sometimes what it's like to worry about that stuff." He stood, stretched in a way that made his shirt ride up. "What are you studying? At school?"

"Pre-law."

"A lawyer. That's ambitious."

"That's expensive, mostly. Hence the pool cleaning."

"If you need a tutor for the LSAT, I know people. I could make some calls."

The offer caught me off guard. We'd known each other for three weeks at that point, and he was offering to call in favors for a kid who cleaned his pool.

"Why would you do that?"

"Because I remember what it was like to be young and hungry and working twice as hard as everyone around me. And because you're smart—I can tell from the way you talk. You just need opportunities." He smiled, and it transformed his whole face. "Besides, I like you. Is that so strange?"

"A little," I admitted.

"Get used to it."

Week five was when everything shifted.

It was brutally hot—the kind of day where the air shimmered and even the pool water felt like a bath. I'd been working for two hours, shirt soaked through, and I must have looked as wrecked as I felt because Marcus appeared with a towel and a concerned expression.

"You need to take a break. Seriously. I don't want you passing out on my property."

"I'm fine—"

"That wasn't a request." He pressed the towel into my hands. "Come inside. Air conditioning. Cold water. I won't take no for an answer."

I followed him into the house because arguing seemed like more effort than it was worth. The interior was as impressive as the exterior—open floor plan, designer furniture, art on the walls that was probably worth more than my education. He led me to the kitchen and poured me a glass of water, watching me drink.

"Better?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"Your shirt is soaked. I've got spares if you want to change."

I looked down at myself. He wasn't wrong—the fabric was clinging to my chest, translucent with sweat. When I looked up, Marcus was watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"I should probably just—"

"Jake." His voice was different now. Quieter. More deliberate. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"The way you look at me sometimes. Am I imagining that, or...?"

The kitchen went very still. I could hear the hum of the refrigerator, the distant splash of the pool filter, my own heartbeat thundering in my ears.

"You're not imagining it."

"Okay." He nodded slowly. "And you know I'm... that I like..."

"Men. Yeah. I figured."

"How?"

"The way you look at me sometimes." I managed a small smile. "Takes one to know one."

He laughed, some of the tension breaking. "I wasn't sure. I didn't want to make assumptions, make things awkward."

"Things are already awkward. You're my client. I'm the hired help. This is..."

"Complicated?"

"Yeah."

He crossed the kitchen in three steps, stopping close enough that I could smell his cologne, could feel the heat radiating off his body. His hand came up to cup my jaw, gentle but certain.

"What if I don't care about complicated?"

"Then I'd say you're about to make both our summers a lot more interesting."

He kissed me like he'd been thinking about it for weeks. Which, I realized, he probably had. I had been too—imagining this moment while I skimmed leaves and tested chlorine levels, wondering what his mouth would taste like, how his hands would feel.

The reality was better than the fantasy.

We ended up in his bedroom, which was bigger than my entire apartment. He laid me out on sheets that probably cost more than my car and took his time exploring every inch of me.

"I haven't done this in a while," he admitted, kissing his way down my chest. "The marriage was... we hadn't been intimate in years."

"Could've fooled me."

"Some things you don't forget." His mouth found my hip bone, and I gasped. "Though I might need reminding on others."

"Happy to help."

He laughed against my skin, and the vibration made me shiver. "I like that about you. You're not intimidated."

"Should I be?"

"By the house? The money? Most people are."

"You're just a guy, Marcus. A successful guy with a nice pool and questionable taste in who he sleeps with. But still just a guy."

He looked up at me, something vulnerable in his expression. "That might be the nicest thing anyone's said to me in years."

"Then you've been hanging out with the wrong people."

He didn't answer with words. He answered by taking me into his mouth and making me forget how to speak entirely.

That first time became a second, then a third, then too many to count. Wednesdays became the highlight of my week, but soon Wednesdays weren't enough. He'd text me on other days—casual things at first, then less casual.

Thinking about you. Is that weird?

A little. But I'm thinking about you too, so.

Dinner tonight? I'll cook.

He was an excellent cook, as it turned out. Probably learned it from some expensive class or personal chef. We'd eat on the patio as the sun went down, and then we'd end up in the pool house or the bedroom or once, memorably, in the infinity pool itself as the city lights glittered below us.

"This is crazy," he said that night, floating beside me in the warm water. "You're twenty-one. I'm forty-seven. You clean my pool."

"You said you didn't care about complicated."

"I don't. But other people will. If anyone finds out—"

"Who's going to find out? Your pool? The chlorine?"

He laughed, pulling me toward him in the water. "You're impossible, you know that?"

"I've been told."

We stayed in the pool until our fingers pruned, then dried each other off in the pool house and had sex on the outdoor daybed while the stars came out. It felt like we existed outside of time, outside of real life—a private world of chlorine and cotton sheets and the kind of pleasure I'd never experienced before.

I should have known it couldn't last.

📅 Week Ten

His daughter showed up unannounced on a Thursday afternoon. I was there—I'd started coming over even on non-pool days—and suddenly a Tesla was pulling into the driveway and a woman in her twenties was getting out.

"Dad? Dad, are you home?"

Marcus went pale. "Shit. That's Olivia."

"Your daughter?"

"She wasn't supposed to be here until next month."

We were both fully clothed, thank god, but there was something obvious about the way we were sitting—too close, too comfortable. Marcus stood up, straightening his shirt, and I saw him transform into someone else. Someone more guarded.

"Stay here. I'll handle this."

He went out to meet her, and I watched through the window as they talked. Olivia looked like him—same sharp features, same intensity. She kept glancing toward the house, and I wondered what she saw. What she suspected.

Twenty minutes later, Marcus came back inside. His face was unreadable.

"She's going to stay for a few days."

"Okay."

"Which means we can't..." He trailed off, rubbing a hand over his face. "I haven't told her. About any of this. About being..."

"Gay?"

"Bisexual, technically. But yes. She doesn't know. Neither does her brother. It never seemed like the right time, and then the divorce happened, and..."

He looked lost in a way I'd never seen before. The confident executive, the passionate lover—all of it stripped away, leaving just a man who was scared of disappointing his children.

"You don't owe me an explanation."

"I know. But I want to give you one anyway." He sat down heavily on the couch. "This summer has been... it's been the happiest I've been in years. Maybe ever. And I don't want to lose that. But I also can't—"

"I get it." I sat next to him, took his hand. "I'm not asking you to come out. I'm not asking for anything. This was always supposed to be temporary, right? Summer fling. Pool boy fantasy."

"Is that what you think this is?"

I didn't answer. I wasn't sure what I thought.

I stayed away for a week. Did my pool route, skipped his house. He texted me every day—are you okay, I'm sorry, can we talk—and I left him on read because I didn't know what to say.

The thing was, somewhere along the way, I'd fallen for him. The money didn't matter. The age gap didn't matter. When we were together, he made me feel like the smartest, most interesting person in any room. He listened to my opinions. He pushed back when I was wrong. He looked at me like I was something precious.

And now I was just the pool boy again, hiding from his real life.

It was his daughter who found me. I was at a coffee shop near campus, pretending to study, when someone sat down across from me.

"You're Jake, right? The pool cleaner?"

Olivia looked even more like Marcus up close. Same eyes, same stubborn set to the jaw. I braced myself for something ugly.

"Yeah. That's me."

"My dad's miserable. He won't tell me why, but I can guess." She folded her hands on the table. "I'm not here to threaten you or warn you off or whatever you're expecting. I'm here because I've never seen him like this, and I want to understand."

"Like what?"

"Happy. He was happy. And now he's not. And it seems to have something to do with you."

I stared at her, not sure how to respond. She sighed.

"Look, I'm not an idiot. The divorce happened because my parents were never really in love. And I always wondered if my dad was... if there was something he wasn't telling us. I didn't care. I just wanted him to be happy."

"He thinks you'd be disappointed."

"Then he doesn't know me as well as he thinks." She pulled out her phone, typed something, slid it across the table. "I sent you my number. If you care about him—and I think you do, based on the look on your face—tell him to call me. We should talk."

She stood, grabbed her coffee, and was gone before I could process what had just happened.

I showed up at his house that night. Let myself in through the side gate like I always did, found him sitting by the pool in the dark. He looked up when he heard my footsteps, and the relief on his face nearly broke me.

"Jake."

"Your daughter found me today."

He went still. "What?"

"She wants you to call her. She knows, Marcus. Or she suspects. And she doesn't care. She just wants you to be happy."

I sat down next to him and told him the whole conversation. Watched his face cycle through disbelief, fear, and finally something that looked like hope.

"She really said that?"

"Every word."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he took out his phone and made the call.

I gave him privacy, walking to the far end of the pool while he talked. I could hear fragments—I'm sorry, I should have told you, there's someone—and when he finally hung up, his eyes were wet.

"She's coming back tomorrow. She wants to meet you. Properly."

"Meet me?"

"I told her about us. About how I feel about you. About what I want this to be."

"And what do you want it to be?"

He crossed to where I stood and took my face in his hands, just like that first day in the kitchen.

"I want it to be real. Not a secret. Not a summer thing. Real."

"I'm still the pool boy."

"You're the man I'm falling in love with. The pool is irrelevant."

I kissed him because there was nothing else to say. We stood by the pool in the darkness, wrapped around each other, and the summer stretched out around us—not ending, but transforming into something new.

⏳ One Year Later

I passed the LSAT last month. Not just passed—scored in the 98th percentile, thanks to Marcus's tutoring connections and my own relentless studying. I've got interviews at three top law schools scheduled for next week.

I don't clean pools anymore. Marcus offered to pay for everything, but I took a compromise instead—I manage the client relations side of his venture capital firm, a job that pays well and looks good on applications. He treats me like a colleague at work and like a partner everywhere else.

His kids have accepted me, more or less. Olivia and I get brunch every other Sunday. His son, Marcus Jr., took longer to come around, but we found common ground over a shared obsession with obscure documentary films. It's not perfect, but it's progress.

We sold the big house last spring. It was too much space, too many memories of his old life. Now we're in a penthouse downtown, with a view of the river and a rooftop pool that I maintain myself out of sheer stubbornness.

"You know we could hire someone for that," Marcus says, watching me skim leaves while he drinks his morning coffee.

"Where's the fun in that?"

"The fun is not watching you work while I stand here doing nothing."

"So come help."

He sets down his cup and takes the net from my hands, pulling me toward him instead. The morning sun is warm, the city is waking up below us, and the man I love is looking at me like I'm the best thing he's ever found.

"I'd rather do this."

"That's not helping with the pool."

"The pool can wait."

He's right, as usual. The pool can always wait.

We have time now. All the time in the world.