The Girl At The Gym - Pt. 08

The Girl at the Gym Part 8

She told me on Tuesday.

My stepdad Marcus is here until Thursday. Mum is still in Warsaw. He wants to take me out. I really want you to come. Tequila. London. Then mine for a glass if we are not wrecked.

I read it in the office cubicle. Marcus. I had never heard the name. A man who had married her mother. I typed okay because it sounded like a night out with Anya and a relative I would be polite to. Wear something nice, she sent. Buy something new. Surprise me. Not the black lace.

I smiled; she was right I needed to expand my options.

Thursday lunchtime I left the office and went to Victoria's Secret because that was the kind of surprise she meant. Bright, loud, pink. I am so bad at this shop. I stood too long at the pretty lingerie sets, and a girl I had not seen before came over as if she had been waiting for me to need rescuing.

Her name was Tia, twenty, Victoria Secret name badge. Pale skin with gorgeous pale freckles. Auburn hair in a loose knot, a few strands stuck to her mouth. Those freckles across her nose and the tops of her shoulders where the staff T-shirt slipped. Green-grey eyes. Slim in the way some girls at the gym are slim, the kind of bum you recognise from the squat rack even in jeans. Pert young breasts under her T-shirt. I found her attractive before I had decided to. I went a little red and shy. She did not.

'Looking for something special?' she said.

'A night out,' I said. 'Someone asked me to buy something new.'

'Lucky someone.' She tilted her head. 'Come on. Come with me to the changing room. I won't make you hold six hangers in the shop like a helpless victim.'

She picked a dusky pink set for me with a dusky pink thong that was prettier than I would have chosen, a little bow, tiny.

She walked me to the cubicle and hung the sets on the hook next to a large mirror. When I hesitated with the curtain, she said 'I can stay if you want. I am not being weird.'

I said, 'Sure, stay. Thank you,' quieter than I meant.

The cubicle was small. Her perfume, cheap and nice. I took my sundress off and I felt her look and not look. The dusky pink sheer balconette first. I saw in the mirror my breasts sitting high. She stepped in behind me fastening the back. Her fingers brushed my spine, then the side of my rib, an accident that was not quite one. I breathed in. She said, 'Breathe out, there, look.'

I adjusted the fit a little, I looked, my slightly darker pink areola visible above the balconette as if my nipples were ready to pop out. I looked at her in the glass too. Pale and pretty, beautiful auburn hair. That gym bum in skinny jeans. I thought about Anya's slow smile, and I thought Tia would not survive Anya's kitchen.

I took my white 'office' knickers off and left them on the floor. Tia glanced down briefly, I could feel the heat in my bum cheeks.

The dusky pink thong of my set was very pretty and sheer at the front. I put it on. She crouched down my smoothness at eye level, to straighten the strap at my hip and her knuckles brushed the crease of my inner thigh, and we both pretended that was the strap. I was already warmer than a changing cubicle allowed.

'You have a lovely bum,' she said. 'Whoever asked you to buy this is going to lose their mind.'

I went red. 'Thank you.'

She laughed, fond, not cruel.

'Want to see the pink one on me?' she said. 'So you know what they will see. I can do it. Same size.'

I should have said no. I said, 'Yes, please,' a little too politely.

She turned her back pulling her jeans down. Her tiny store knickers off resting next to mine. For a second or two the mirror gave me a flash I was not supposed to have. Her pale smooth curve, a tidy landing strip, neat and tucked. Then she stepped into the dusky pink thong I had been holding, still warm from me, and the flash was gone and not gone.

She faced the mirror. Twenty, flat stomach. The pretty thong on her, a bow at the centre. She gave a slow twirl leant forward showing a faint tan line from shorts, the curve of her unmistakable bum and the disappearing string between her cheeks. She looked over her shoulder at me. Flirting, but contained by the badge on her shirt and the curtain.

I couldn't speak.

Then she lifted the staff T-shirt, almost shy herself, and she was wearing the matching pink bra, thin, her pert B cups in it, very light pink nipples showing through the mesh as if the shop had designed the accident. She held the shirt up with one hand and turned so I could see the back.

All I could say, much quieter than I wanted, was, 'Beautiful, I will take it.'

'If I did not work here,' she said, and left that hanging as she let the shirt drop. She stepped out of the thong and handed it to me and did not make a joke of the damp.

I bent down picking up my dress and our knickers from the floor. I wanted to keep hers as I found myself reluctantly holding them a little too tight as she took them from my hand.

The mirror gave me another flash as she leant forward collecting her jeans, her pale tight hole pretty and tight.

'Good I am glad you approve; that's the one,' she said grabbing my attention back. 'They will think of me for three seconds and then they will only think of you.'

Nothing else happened, no kiss, no hand except the brush of her fingers on my spine, my inner thigh and my hip. I was shy and soaked and I paid for the dusky pink set, and thong Tia had worn for a minute.

I sat through two meetings thinking about auburn hair and light pink nipples through mesh and a landing strip and hole I was not meant to see. Anya had asked for new. She had not asked for Tia. Tia came with me anyway, in the bag, and in my head.

I thought about tequila, lime and small talk and a man from Warsaw by marriage. I did not think about Anya's sofa with three people on it. I thought about being the girlfriend at he bar. That was as far as the shy girl went. Under my sundress the new thong now sat like a secret that already had a name.

Anya and me met him at a bar in Soho that was all low light and salt rims. Marcus was fifty-two, tall, dark hair going silver at the sides, a good coat. The kind of face that belonged on a first-class flight. He kissed Anya's cheek and shook my hand. The look lasted a second longer than a handshake needed. I felt it and filed it under manners.

'Esme. The girl from the gym.' Anya has mentioned you.

'Yes, I said.' Quieter than I meant. 'Nice to meet you.'

Anya was in a black dress that did nothing to hide her 34Cs or the legs. I was in a sundress over the new dusky pink set, and I felt underdressed next to both of them in a way that was about money, not sex.

We drank, three tequila bars, lime, music, his card every time because he insisted and Anya rolled her eyes and let him. Her accent thicker with each round. His hand on the back of her chair. Then, later, on the back of mine when he leaned in to hear me over the music. Polite, I could have pretended it was noise. I did pretend, for a while.

What I noticed, because I notice everything when I am nervous, was how he watched her mouth when she spoke about the hotel. How she watched him back with that slow smile I usually got in her kitchen. How sometimes the smile included me. I could see they were close. I thought Warsaw had made a habit of evenings like this. I did not think I was this evening.

By the second place I was warm from the tequila and from her knee against mine under the table. I was drunk enough to lean into her in a booth because she was Anya and I always leaned into her. He watched us smiling. I assumed he was being kind about his stepdaughter having a girl. She kissed me, quick at first, then not quick, and I opened my mouth because that is what I do when she kisses me. When I came up for air, he was looking at his glass as if he had decided not to look at us. Something in my stomach turned over. I put it down to salt and lime.

For a second in the booth, I thought of Tia in the mirror, pale, auburn, the dusky pink thong in that gym bum. Then Anya's mouth wiped the thought out. The night was not Tia's. I still felt the strap.

In the queue for the third bar, he asked what I did and I told him the office version. He asked how I had met Anya and I said the gym, which was true and also not the whole truth. Anya laughed and said she stared first.

He said, 'I can believe that.' Nothing in it had to mean the flat. Everything in it could as I filed that under tequila as well.

The taxi back was quiet in the way that is not quiet. Anya's thigh was against mine. Her fingers laced through mine on the seat. Marcus sat on her right looking out of the window. London lights sliding past.

I thought we would have one glass at hers, and I would get a second taxi. I thought about tomorrow's alarm. Her thumb drew a circle on my palm, and I thought it was for me, which it was, and I did not ask whether it was also for him.

I watched his reflection in the window and thought he looked like someone's father, which he was, and then I looked at Anya and thought she looked like the reason I had put the dusky pink set on. I did not think about his coat on her peg. I thought, briefly, of Tia holding her shirt up, light pink nipples through mesh, saying they will think of me for three seconds. Then I thought of Anya's kitchen and let Tia fade.

Her front door, the lock. The oatmeal sofa, the print, the plant I could not name. He hung the coat like a guest. Anya poured wine from the fridge, three glasses. We sat. I answered gym questions with my knees together. Heard stories Marcus told of his travels and some of the people he had met. The wine went down easier than the tequila. My heart was going faster than the conversation deserved.

'How long? ' he said, looking at our legs.

'A few weeks,' Anya said. 'She used to only look at men. Now she looks at me.' Her hand found the back of my neck.

'Lucky you,' he said, and it was not only to her.

I felt that. I looked at my glass. I thought I should finish this and go home.

She did not kiss me.

She stood, walked around the low table, and sat on the arm of his chair as if she had always sat there. I barely had time to think, oh, before her mouth was on his.

It was not a peck for my benefit. It was the slow smile made into a kiss. Her hand on his jaw. His hand on her waist as if it knew the dress. I sat on the sofa with my wine, the new thong already a problem, a ghost of auburn hair and a pink bow at the edge of the afternoon, and watched Anya seduce her mother's husband in front of me, and I was surprised, and I was not surprised, and both things lived in my throat at once.

I thought about my own Dad.

Not the polite version. The Cotswolds version. Stone and linen and a four-poster and the way a good coat looks on a peg when the lie has already expired. The shower. His hands in my hair. The rule that shook. I had not put that weekend in the same room as Anya before.

Sitting there, watching her tongue in Marcus's mouth, I did. Silver at the sides. A man who should not have been kissing the girl in the dress. A girl who had not left. My stomach went tight and my knickers went wet. I hated that the two pictures stacked. I didn't look away.

The Cotswolds had been stone walls and a weekend that was supposed to be a secret from a different kitchen. Dad in the steam, Dad in bed, Dad saying good girl into my neck. I had put that chapter in a drawer and then Anya had opened a door in Soho and now a man with silver at the sides was kissing her in her flat I knew the smell of, and my body could not tell the two stories apart even when my head could.

I was wet watching them. I was a little scared of being so wet, but I didn't leave.

I watched her bite his lower lip. I watched his hand find the back of her thigh under the black dress. I thought about my mother's voice asking what you two have been doing, and I thought about Anya's mother in Warsaw not asking yet. I drank; the wine did nothing to the pictures.

She kissed him until he made a sound I had not heard from him in Soho. Then she looked at me over her shoulder, forehead still close to his, that slow smile wrecked at the edges.

'You can watch,' she said. 'You can go. You can come here. There is no test.'

I did not go, so I watched. Her firm breasts against his shirt. His hand sliding up her back. The plant I could not name. I thought about the boutique hotel breakfast and answering a door. I thought about salt and lime. I thought, I am not eighteen in a stone room. I am on Anya's sofa, and she is showing me a door.

She pulled his shirt loose. She put his hand on her breast over the black dress and then under it. Seeing it happen in front of me was different. He thumbed her hard nipple and she breathed out into his mouth and I pressed my knees together and felt Tia's thong stick. I thought of another thumb. I stopped the thought and it did not stop.

Anya stood and took his hand and led him to the sofa I was already on. Beside me, she sat across his lap facing me so I would have to see her face while she kissed him again. She ground down once, slow, and his hands went to her bum, and I made a sound I had not meant to make.

'There she is,' Anya murmured, not looking away from me. 'She stayed.'

I had stayed, wine forgotten, sundress too warm. She kissed his throat. She unbuttoned him. Silver in the trimmed hair on his chest. Athletic under the good shirt. She did not put my hand on him, not yet. She let me look. She let me hear him say her name into her hair.

Anya knows I am shaking.

She knows, she always knows. She reached across and tucked my hair behind my ear, fond, as if we were still in her kitchen, and then she went back to his mouth. Soft and slow. Loving in a way that made the filth worse. This was not a performance for a stranger. This was a habit she had not told me about, or a want she had decided I could survive seeing.

'Come here,' she said, after a long time. 'Only if you want.'

I moved closer on the sofa, my thigh against his. Her knee against mine. Three people too close. She took my hand and put it on her waist, not on him. Feel me, she said. I am not disappearing. I felt her breathing. I felt how tight her nipple was under my thumb when she guided me there, over the dress, then under. I looked at Marcus. He did not grab. He waited. Anya kissed the corner of my mouth, light, checking.

'Still yes?'

'A minute,' I said.

'Take it.'

I took it. I watched her roll her hips in his lap. I listened to the music. I thought about the A40 and a hand on my thigh at the lights. I thought about Anya saying your room tonight. I thought, I can leave. I did not leave. I leaned in and kissed her while she was still on him, and that was the first time I was fully in the night instead of beside it.

She kissed me properly then. Slow and loving. Her hand in my hair. His hand stayed on her breast. I opened my mouth and tasted wine and him on her tongue and I made that small sound again. When I pulled back, she smiled like I had passed nothing, only arrived.

'Do you want to kiss him,' she asked.

I looked at his mouth faint stubble. Salt and Lime somewhere still. I thought of another mouth I should not compare. I leaned in and I kissed Marcus. Tequila and wine, slower than Stu, more certain, stopping if I stopped. I did not stop. Anya's hand stayed on the back of my neck as if she were holding a glass she did not want spilled. I thought, I am kissing her stepdad. I thought, I have kissed worse secrets. I thought, I want her to keep holding my neck.

We swapped, her mouth, his mouth. My throat. The sundress and bra came off because she asked and I lifted my arms. He made a sound as her dress went next. Perky breasts, pale, nipples tight, tiny thong. I looked at her while I got used to being half-naked in front of him. She put my hand on her breast. She put his hand on my waist and left it until I did not take it off. When he asked if he could touch me, I said 'yes' after a breath. His hand was between my legs over the new thong.

'You are already soaked,' he said.

I was, yet I hadn't decided to be. The Cotswolds girl in me recognised the sentence. The gym girl let him feel it.

'Let's go to the Bedroom,' Anya murmured, 'or we ruin this sofa.'

White sheets, the familiar long mirror. I walked between them, choosing to stay. He asked about the phone before his belt came off. 'Film, photos or no, and it stays in the pocket.'

Anya looked at me and I thought about being watched. I thought about a phone through a gap in the blinds in another life. I said both. Just for us. Not the internet. A pause in the middle so he would hear it.

'Just us,' he said.

I needed Anya first. That was how I found my nerve. She put me on my back and took my nipples in her mouth while he photographed my 34Ds, my shy face, the new thong she hooked aside.

I ate her first as she knelt over my mouth facing him and I pulled the tiny thong aside and put my tongue on that smooth neat pussy, sweet underneath, my hands on her bum. This part I knew, this part is mine. I licked her the way I do when I want her to forget there is anyone else in the room, and then I remembered there was, and I did not stop.

She came on my tongue with that soft fuck, fuck, fuck and he filmed my name in her mouth. I stayed through the shake. I wanted the room to stay hers.

Then she went down on me while he watched. Precise and mean when she wants an audience. Two fingers curling into the place she owns. The pad of a third at the tight hole, asking, not in. I held onto the sheets and came on her face with the camera to the left and I looked at her until she whispered look, and then I looked at the lens. I thought of being filmed once before, for a different man, and the thought made me throb again on her tongue.

Only after that did she undress Marcus deliberately. Athletic, silver on his chest. His cock smooth and perfect, shining at the tip. I went to my knees slower than I had for Stu. She came down beside me. We took him between us, passing him from my mouth to hers. I learned the weight with my heart still stupid. Her hand in my hair not steering. I looked up at the lens once and hid against her shoulder because I was still shy with her stepdad's cock on my tongue. She laughed, filthy and fond, kissing my hair. Good girl, she said, and I felt it in my clit.

He had me first because I nodded when she asked. No rush. He rubbed the head through my wet until I lifted my hips, then pushed in thick, hot and bare and I gasped into Anya's mouth. The stretch I knew from other rooms. She told me I could look at her instead of him. I did both. Long strokes I could feel in my stomach. Wrists loose so I could pull away. Her mouth on my nipple, sucking. Her fingers on my clit above where he went into me. I came around him, saying Anya because I needed the room to stay hers.

He held still, he did not finish. I thought, I can still say stop. I did not say stop. I thought of a four-poster and a rule that shook and I held her hand harder.

She did not let the moment go cheap; she kissed my face. She told him to wait and she told me to breathe. I breathed.

Then she nodded and he started again, slower this time, rubbing my clit just right and I came a second time, smaller, shaking, my breasts in her hands, his mouth on my throat. I was crying a little and it was not sadness. Anya wiped my cheek with her thumb, kissing me softly.

I sat on her face so I could watch him go into Anya, that neat pussy stretching taking him, her perky tits moving gently, her accent breaking on his name and then on mine. Jealous three seconds. Then heat. I ground down on her tongue. Cupping my breasts for Marcus. She came, shaking with him inside her and me on her mouth. He looked at me as if I had to say the next sentence. I said more, after a breath.

I asked her, very quiet, 'Is this what you wanted when you texted?' She said, 'I wanted you in the room. I wanted him to see you. I wanted you to be able to leave. You have not left.'

'I know.' I said, 'I am still deciding while I am doing it. I said there is a hotel I have not told you about.'

She kissed me as if that sentence were safe here. I didn't name my father; I didn't need to. The feeling sat in the crowded bed and made everything slower and worse and better.

I rode him facing her so she could kiss me and touch my clit, 34Ds in his hands, her 34Cs against mine when I leaned down.

She rode him while I held her hips and felt him move through her stomach, my mouth on her nipples. He had me from behind while I ate her, coming back with her taste, his hand in my hair gentle.

He had her from behind while I lay under her and sucked her clit and watched him disappear into her, the wet, the slap, her breasts hanging toward my mouth, and I thought, this is allowed because I am still here, and also, I have been this girl before in a different place.

At one point I held the phone so he could use both hands. I filmed her cumming with my name in it. I filmed my own hand on her breasts. We drank some water, we laughed. Anya's ruined thong on the floor, and I thought of the pink one Tia had modelled somewhere in this bed.

He turned me onto my side so Anya could lie facing me, our breasts together, nipples dragging, while he pushed into me from behind and she put her fingers on my clit and her tongue in my mouth. I came like that with both of them on me. He pulled out and went into her in the same position so I could watch her face change from an inch away.

I held her and I told her she was beautiful because I needed something that was not only filthy. She came hard with her forehead on mine.

Anya wanted him to finish in her mouth after he pulled out of me so she would have both of us on her tongue. I watched as I sat against the headboard with my legs open and my pussy still pulsing. I watched her take her stepdad's cock into her mouth with my wet still on it. He fucked her mouth gently and deeply, Anya's cheek pulsing with each thrust, her eyes on his on mine. He leaned back and cried out, unleashing a deep expression of completeness, his cum filling Anya's throat, seemingly never ending. Anya's breasts moving in rhythm until he slowly bit by bit pulled out of her wet lips. Leaving a trail of shiny cum on her bottom lip and chin, connected briefly to the tip.

She crawled up and kissed me so I would take it too. I thought of strawberry jam on a tray and a door I had answered naked and I kissed her harder so the thought would have somewhere to go. We shared it all together mixing with tongues and kisses and sticky chins we both swallowed. This was a delicious new taste in another bed.

He filmed that kiss and he filmed my hand between her legs, two fingers, then three because she asked. He filmed her fingers spreading me for the lens and said, quietly, she is beautiful, as if I were not in the room, and Anya said 'she knows,' and I hid my face in her neck and came on those fingers anyway, shaking, saying 'please' at nothing.

I wanted to be under her while he was in me. Her neat pussy on my mouth, his now hard again thick cock in my young tight pussy, the camera somewhere, her pert breasts in my hands when I could reach. I came with her taste and his weight. She came on my tongue a minute later. He still held back, patient, fifty-two and not in a rush. I thought Dad was not in a rush either, and I bit her thigh so I would not say the wrong name.

She asked if I wanted him in my mouth while she sat on his face. I did. I wanted the list complete and I wanted it to feel chosen. I knelt between his legs and took him slow, tasting her, tasting me, while she lowered that neat pussy onto his mouth and held the headboard and looked at me, we kept constant eye contact. That was the loving part. It was filthy and fond. When she came she said my name first. When I pulled off him, she kissed me and said his name second. I can hold both, I am holding both.

She put me on my back and spread my legs with her hands and told him to go in again, slow, and she licked my clit while he fucked me so I had both of them at the join. I came so hard I pushed at his stomach and then pulled him back. She laughed into my soaking pussy. He swore. The camera was on the side table, still recording. I did not care. I was past the shy girl for a few minutes and then she came back and hid in Anya's neck and Anya let her.

We used the mirror.

She stood me in front of it with him behind me and her in front of me so I would have to see my own face. My breasts moving when he thrust into me. Her fingers on my clit. My mouth on hers. I watched myself take him. I watched myself look like the girl from the gym and like the girl from the stone room and I came with my eyes open on the glass, dripping onto the floor.

Then he came the first time in me, deep, his forehead on my shoulder, her hand on his back as if she were allowing it.

I felt the throbbing thick heat. I came again because I felt it. We stayed until he softened.

Anya's shower after, soapy, his hands on both of us, my mouth on her against the tiles. I came on her thigh with two of his fingers in me. She came on my mouth. He got hard again and did not use it yet. I washed his chest and thought about another shower, mug on a sink, and I kissed Anya instead of the thought.

Back to bed wet the three of us in her sheets. As we drifted off, I slept with salt and lime and Tia still a ghost.

Before dawn, he was hard against my bum cheeks. Anya was asleep, mouth open, ponytail a mess. He did not speak. Silently I lay there and he decided.

He spread my cheeks and put himself in, slow, still slick. Long slow strokes, pushing back feeling him fill me completely. I came into the pillow with the slow rhythm. He came in me a minute later, his groan bitten off. She did not wake. I slept with his gorgeous mess on my thigh, her foot against my calf and my hand cupping her breast. I thought, I will tell her. I thought she already knew the shape. But I will not tell her the Cotswolds story today.

Anya was in the kitchen, morning coffee. Her breasts loose and free, cute pj shorts. Sundress and no knickers on me. Toast and his flight. I said very little. My body was sticky and humming, sore, amazed, a little haunted in a way I would keep.

Small talk and tequila the unsaid not needing to be said.

As he stood to leave, it was all smiles and aching everywhere; he took his coat off the peg, placed his phone in his pocket, hugged me, kissing me on the lips.

'I will delete nothing. I will send nothing. That is the deal.'

Anya hugged and kissed him long and hard in front of the lock, they chatted for a while in a language I didn't understand. Anya glanced at me lovingly, smiling.

The door unlocked.

The door closed.

'Still here?'

'Still here.' I laughed. 'Wow, Anya,' wrecked. I can still taste the salt and lime. I did not know that was the whole night.

'I know,' she said. 'Come back to bed. Just us. No lens, just us.'

She took her hand in the hall. I had watched her kiss him first. I had let a dead weekend sit up and look at me. I had stayed anyway. I was not sorry. I said still here, and I meant Anya, and I meant the girl who had typed okay thinking it was only tequila and a night out, and I meant the girl who had watched her lover kiss a man and then climbed into the kiss anyway.

In bed with just her, after the door, I might tell her some of it but not all. The hotel, not the name. The feeling of being drawn in softly by someone who already knew the room.

But that was later, this was her kitchen at eight, Tia's thong still in the bed, salt and lime on my tongue, Marcus in a taxi toward a flight, and me taking her hand because I had hesitated on the sofa and I had stayed anyway, and I was not sorry.