"Uh, okay," Jack said cautiously. He didn't want to offend her again, but this wasn't going to work, no way, no how. The sun baked down on the pool, creating a glare that made them both squint. He put away his phone, which he'd used to record her from the deck.

"How about if you watch me," he suggested. 

At her nod, he jumped in; he noticed in passing that the pool was over chlorinated, and made a mental note to check the levels himself later. He adjusted his goggles and pushed off from the wall, trying to go as slowly as he could, shorten his streamline, and over exaggerate the elements of his freestyle so Kelsey could see everything he was doing. He kicked very slowly, bending his knees slightly, reached out in front to pull, making his body as long as possible, turning his head to the side clearly so she could see him breathing without lifting his chin. He pulled his arms out, elbows first, making sure his hand stayed close to his ear, not straightening the elbow, rolling a little bit as he carefully placed his hands. Even with this ridiculously slow pace, he still reached the opposite wall in five strokes, and he did a very slow flip turn, again, taking care not to streamline at all so she could see the actual stroke. He stopped at the wall in front of her and lifted his head, shaking the excess water out of his hair as he looked up at her.

"You were doing so many things at once, and it was so fast," she complained. "You're going to have to do it again, okay? And I'll record you this time. That way I can watch again, slowly, to see everything you did."

Wow.

Kelsey was aware of how she looked to Jack from the pool. She knew that being seen from the ground at an upward angle was not the optimum way for her body to be viewed. It made her look foreshortened, made her legs short, her breasts look little, made her look dumpy. She took a step back to lengthen the angle from which he saw her.

Not that she really cared how she looked to him. There were people who mattered and people who didn't, she knew this, people whose opinions counted and people who were just there. Jack was definitely one of the second group. He was her coach. Spectacular body notwithstanding, he himself wasn't particularly handsome, and he wasn't in the business, either. 

But he was a man, and Kelsey also knew from experience that all men could be useful under the right circumstances. 

She took another step back and shook her head before she remembered that her hair was in a pony tail. 

Well, shit.

She recorded him on her phone as he did two more laps, then got in the pool with him. He grabbed his kick board out of his bag, which made her smile.

"What?" Jack asked, seeing her grin.

"I don't know, I just associate those with little kids, with wading pools, you know?" she replied.

"Well, you shouldn't," Jack responded. "I use this at nearly every workout. And you're going to need one, too." He showed her how to hold it, and how to kick properly, without scissoring her legs, or bending her knees too much. He swam next to her as she traversed the pool, encouraging her. He held his palm out behind her so she kicked out of the water the correct amount, and she was happy and proud when she felt herself moving faster than before through the water.

She was also surprised at how tired she got.

"Oh my god, I'm already so out of breath," she gasped. "How do you guys do this for so long? I mean, didn't you say you work out for five or six hours a day?"

"Well, we don't do it all at once," Jack said. "And I did build up to that, too, remember. But yeah, this is why you need flippers, fins, okay?"

"Really?" Kelsey looked quizzically at Jack. "Like scuba divers?"

Jack shook his head. "Scuba divers use really long ones, a whole different style. You need training gear. Tell you what, you tell me your size, and I'll order everything you need, or just grab you a few pairs from the UCSM pool, because we really need to get going."

"Get going?" Kelsey sounded surprised. "I thought we had? Gotten going, I mean?" She blinked at Jack. "I'm exhausted."

"I don't know how long you planned to spend doing this," he began, "but it's barely been half an hour. I mean, I guess we could stop for today. No need to kill you on your first day out. But It's already late May, and filming for your movie starts in September, you know?" He looked at Kelsey, hazel eyes serious. "That's barely four months."

Kelsey sighed and nodded. "You're right. Okay. I do need a break, but just a break." She smiled at Jack. Give me fifteen minutes to drink some water and regroup, then let's do some more, okay?"

He smiled back at her. Maybe she wasn't going to be a completely petulant baby.

She pressed a thumb into her skin and watched the color change, making a face at how dark she was. "I'd better get out of the sun for a bit, too," she added.

Maybe she was.

Jack tried to get in a little exercise in the limited space her pool provided, and realized that, as far as private use pools went, it was actually a decent size. And it did have a diving board. He did some laps, no breathers, and managed four lengths before he had to come up, which was not bad, considering he had to turn at every wall.

Kelsey was amazed. Watching Jack swim was really incredible. He was fluid and graceful, without a wasted movement. He somehow covered the entire pool without seeming to exert himself at all.

He trod water and looked over at where she was. "You ready to get back in?" he called.

She nodded and rose, walking over and sitting on the edge of the pool.

"And, just for fun, would you please, please put on my extra pair of goggles?" Jack requested. "Your pool has so much chlorine in it, it's no wonder you don't want to put your face in, but you're going to have to, and the sooner you do it, the sooner you can master the free style and we can move on to back stroke, okay?" He reached into his bag and pulled out a pair of goggles.

Kelsey took them from him. What the hell, it's not like anyone she knew was going to see her. She pulled them over her head and adjusted the straps. 

"They're going to feel a little strange at first," Jack warned, "and they don't cover your nose, so be careful, okay?"

She put her head under, and of course the hair in her pony tail fanned out immediately and got all over.

"Could you put your hair in a braid or something?" Jack asked.

Kelsey nodded and quickly braided her hair, and Jack noticed as she was doing it how soft her arms looked. He was used to the girls on the team, whose arms looked like guns at their sides. Some of them were more ripped than he was. Kelsey was woefully out of shape, almost scrawny. And, thumbprint to the contrary, she was pale to Jack's eye, almost anemic.

They spent the next hour working on getting Kelsey to swim with her face actually in the water, and turning her head to the side to breathe. 

"I am," she said, exasperated. 

"You're not," Jack contradicted her. "You think you are, you feel like you are, but you're lifting your whole head. Look, do it again, and this time I'll push down the part of your head that you're lifting, okay? Then you'll feel it."

She nodded and did it again, but when Jack placed two fingers on her head, just above her ear, to keep her head in the water, she spluttered and came upright in the pool, turning on him, gray eyes furious.

"What the fuck are you doing, trying to drown me?" she spluttered, shaking her hair out of her face.

"Whoa, hold on, hold on, you weren't going to drown," Jack replied. He was shocked. They were in four feet of water, how could she feel like she was going to drown? And did she really think he would try to hurt her?

Kelsey waded over to the steps of the pool and sat down, glaring at Jack, cupping her elbows with the opposite hand as if protecting herself. 

They just looked at each other for a minute, as Jack tried to figure out what to do.

"Okay, how about if I record you again?" was what he finally came up with. "Then you can see how high your head is coming out of the water, okay?"

She looked at him suspiciously, then finally nodded reluctantly and slowly waded back to where he was as he retrieved his phone from the deck. He recorded her as she breathed "to the side" four or five times, then showed it to her.

She watched wordlessly, lips sucked in, hand shading the screen from the glare.

She looked up at Jack finally, and he could see she still had drops of water on the tips of her eyelashes. "I'm sorry," she said. She took a deep breath. "I guess it feels different from how it looks, huh?"

Jack nodded, looking away. He didn't really know what to say.

"Okay," she said. "So show me again?"

He looked back at her, surprised. She continued to look at him, eyebrows raised expectantly. 

He reached out and touched the top of her head. "Well, like I was saying, ideally, this part of your head would never come out of the water, and the ear in the water shouldn't come out, either. And once you've really developed your stroke, you'll kind of have a scoop in the water, near your shoulder, where you can kind of just tuck your chin to get some air, so you won't even really be turning your head to the side, you know?" He nodded at her, and she nodded back. "You'll kind of be trying to touch your shoulder with your chin almost, and you'll just grab some air real quick."

"When do I exhale, though?" Kelsey asked. It seemed to her that all of this happened so fast that there wasn't enough time for everything that needed to happen to happen.

"You have to exhale under the water," Jack said matter-of-factly. 

"Oh." Kelsey thought about this. "That just doesn't sound safe, you know? I mean, what if you accidentally forget and inhale or something?"

"What?" Jack burst out laughing. "How would you do that?"

Kelsey put her hands on her hips. "Jack LaGuardia, you are not laughing at me, are you?" She decided that he could almost be handsome when he smiled.

So Kelsey put her head back in the water, and tried to keep that point on the top of her head wet, even when she turned to the side to breathe, and tried to keep her ear in the water, and tried to touch her shoulder with her chin, and within another half hour was able to manage all of it while kicking at the same time and holding on to the kick board. She even did a few laps without the kick board right at the end, which made her inordinately proud.

"Yeah!" Jack whooped as he watched from the pool deck. He gave her a round of applause as she climbed out into the late afternoon sun. "You look like a different swimmer already! Good job!"

Kelsey smiled, chest heaving for breath. "Oh my god, it's been a million years since I've been this tired," she said. She flopped down into a patio chair, wiping her face with a towel. "Or this hungry." She smiled at Jack. "I can't decide if I want to fall down in my bed or have a cheeseburger, you know?"

Jack smiled back. "I know."

They sat together in easy silence, enjoying relaxing in the warm afternoon, the most comfortable with each other they'd been all afternoon.