Not for the first time, I am sorely regretting my choices last night. In fact, I hadn’t been able to think about much else for the first half of our dinner after Mum had lectured me about my disappearance. Dad had tried to turn the conversation around by letting me order for everyone, but that only made Maeve moan about not getting what she wanted, even though she hadn’t once looked away from her phone to read the menu. More than once I questioned what I was doing there when I could have been licking my way up Jenna’s leg, from that maddeningly sexy anklet to her inner thigh.
Thankfully, the meal did improve once the food arrived, because the dishes I’d ordered were all excellent. But then Mum had thanked me profusely as if I’d made them myself and it had almost given me a headache trying to ignore the irritation that itched at me as a result. After our dishes were cleared and teas and coffees were ordered, we’d played cards all together and it was almost fun, even if I kept losing concentration because I was wondering where Jenna was, imagining graphically if not confidently that she was in bed touching herself while thinking about me.
But something else also happened last night. After dinner, after cards, after my father lifted his glass of after-dinner whiskey and gave a brief toast to Arnie that made me smile and shed a few tears, I felt proud. Not proud that I’d turned down a beautiful woman, but proud that I’d given myself time and space to let my attraction become just that, a real, genuine, hope-filled attraction. Not that the now sober and celibate man I am has any idea what to do with it.
Part of me knows leaving Jenna alone in the gym now would be the smart thing to do. I probably need to eat something, and I should definitely shower, but then there's the other part of me that woke up – hard, hot, and hungry - thinking about the way she talked in that cute, clipped English accent, how her anklet caught the last glow of the sunset, and that part of me doesn't want to go anywhere.
“You happy if I keep working out?” I say, moving over to the weights section. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her neck turn as she glances back at me.
“You don't need my permission,” she calls out now I'm further away. Her words feel abrupt, but maybe that’s just because she’s a little out of breath from running.
“Not for working out, I suppose,” I say, trying to make light of it because maybe it is a strange thing to ask. Am I treating her differently because I know she's older?
“You crack on,” she says. “And yes, I deliberately set you up with that one.”
When I hear the laugh in her voice, I feel relief. “I can resist temptation,” I say as I choose a set of dumbbells. “Well, some temptation.”
I hear a few more giggles and then somehow, we fall into an easy silence as we both work out. The thumping of her feet on the treadmill changes pace every few minutes and I realise she’s doing a version of circuit training – sprinting for a few minutes, jogging slower for a few more - and I move through my arms, shoulders and back reps, before getting a mat out to start my stretches. Every now and then, I look over at her, sometimes without even knowing I'm doing it, and on occasion, I watch her for a long chain of seconds. I watch the muscles in her butt and shoulders move, watch her calves strain and her short ponytail swing. Sometimes when I do this, her head is turned over her shoulder and she catches my eye and we smile or laugh. One time she sticks her tongue out at me and I like it far too much.
When she's finished on the treadmill, she cleans the machine and then comes close to where I am on the floor, actually doing the stretches I normally skip. I realise she's lining up weights for some lifts and I watch as much out of curiosity as I do for the shine on her skin that the perspiration has created. I want to lick it off.
She does a few sets of squats and lunges with weights in her hands, and there's something about the ease with which she moves and the way her breath slows rather than speeding up that tells me it's easy, what she's doing. Possibly too easy.
“You can lift more than that, can't you?” I say, and I move to kneel up. “You want me to spot you?”
She smiles at me down there in that position and I entertain the possibility she likes this view as much as I do.
“I wouldn't mind doing some deadlifts,” she says, and she stacks up the hand weights before moving to the bar. “Come on then.”
We get her a total weight of 70kg including the barbell which seems a lot for her, if easy for me. She moves over to the ground just outside the concrete platform we’re standing on, and she rubs her hands on the sand and rocks there.
“I forgot my gloves,” she says as something of an explanation and she holds up hands that are now a pinky-grey, dusted with the sandy soil there. “And my barbelt, but I won’t do too much.”
“So where do you want me to stand?” I watch her get into position.
“I think you know,” she says without looking at me. Instead, she gives the ground she's grinding her feet down into a wry smile.
“Behind your masterpiece of an arse, right?”
She looks up over her shoulder at me and her eyes are so golden brown they steal a breath from me.
“Something like that,” she says. “But honestly, you don't need to stand that close. Deadlifts don’t really need a spotter.”
What if I want to?I think to myself, and I would have said it out loud, only she seems so focused on the task in hand right now. Maybe being sober helps me know when there’s a time and place for flirting, and when there’s not.
After rubbing her hands together again, Jenna bends down to touch the bar, and I force my eyes up and away from the curve of her butt. Keeping her knees bent, she slowly pushes up to standing.
“That was too easy,” I say, expecting her to move and get some more plates.
“Five more reps.” She bends down again, and I get back in position.
After those five, she does indeed move to add another 10kg, and after that another 8kg. As she does six reps of each, I don't just get to look at the curve of her backside, but the soft valley of her back, deep and defined even through her top.
I would never call her body muscular, but it's sculpted, it's toned, and it's all feminine strength. And her skin, it's the perfect shade of roasted peach, kissed with syrup-coloured freckles everywhere; on the backs of her arms, across hershoulders and even in a few places on her neck. I wonder if they can be found further up her legs, along her thighs, on her hips...
“You still with me?” She moves to get two 2.5kg plates and attaches them efficiently. “This will be my last round.”
When her second-to-last rep is done, she seems suddenly out of breath and gasps a little.
