by Cassie Cole
“Hi Babs!” he said each time he neared me, and then, “Bye, Babs!” as he passed. As silly as it was, it put a smile on my face.
Another thing I couldn’t avoid while sitting there was their scent. Sure, it was a little sweaty, but it wasn’t gross. There was more musk in it, along with the pleasant smell of deodorant. A strong, sexy smell. Like the distilled essence of powerful muscle.
Get a hold of yourself, Roberta, I told myself as I made tick-marks in my notebook each time they passed. Eight laps each, which was a full mile on the small indoor track. That was interesting. Something to talk about later.
By the time they finished and disappeared into the locker room downstairs, I was almost late for my actual class. I packed my notebook and rushed across campus to the Biology building.
I had been looking forward to this class—Human Anatomy 405—but once I took my seat and the professor began the lecture, I found myself losing focus. I pulled out my notebook and reviewed the exercises of the morning, and spent the rest of class daydreaming about ways to tweak it. A lot of it depended on what the guys themselves said when I talked to them, and what the following days of resistance training would entail. A one-day snapshot wasn’t really indicative of the whole thing. But lacking that information, I wrote down potential workout routines that might be beneficial for the guys. Feña especially.
The rest of my classes that day were like that, spent daydreaming about workouts and nutrition. I grabbed a turkey wrap from the campus cafeteria at lunch while researching different macro-nutrient ratios of athletes and the benefits people espoused. My one afternoon class was a long biology lab, which required my full attention, but as soon as I left I was back to thinking about the three men whose bodies I was now in charge of.
After that I went back to my dorm to try to take a quick power nap, but I was too excited to shut my eyes.
Football practice took place over on the secondary field, which wasn’t far from the house Danny and the others shared. It was also used as one of the soccer fields, so it had bleachers on both sides. I wasn’t the only girl there to watch the practice; there was a gaggle of sorority sisters clustered together at one end, pointing and whispering about the men on the field.
I chose a seat as far from them as possible, but I could still hear their whispers.
“…Armstrong,” I heard one of them say. “He’s the quarterback. Number six.”
“Number eight,” one of the other girls corrected. “Jesus, Melissa. You’re blind.”
“Eight and six look similar!”
I rolled my eyes and pulled out my notepad. Right now the football players were arranged in a grid on the field doing stretches while Brett gave directions. I recognized all of them. First the piriformis stretch for the internal hip rotator, which was the muscle on the outside of the butt. That segued into the butterfly stretch, with feet pulled inward and the knees bouncing out. Then the frog stretch, which showcased their sexy little butts nicely. The sorority girls all got quiet during that one, and even I paused to admire how the guys looked on their knees wearing tight football pants.
I recognized the circuit. It was the kind of static stretches that every high school coach from the past 40 years had their athletes go through prior to practice. I scribbled furiously in my notepad. Brett was definitely an amateur.
Coach Mueller wasn’t paying attention though. He was on the other side of the field helping set up dummy sleds for tackle practice. Brett the freshman had full control over everything happening with the stretches.
Once they were adequately stretched—or so they thought—they split off into different groups. Linemen joined the coach for tackle drills, while Danny and Lance and the other wide receivers stayed on this side of the field for throwing drills with Coach Mueller. He called out a play, and a receiver shot down the field. Danny stepped back, twisted, and released the football smoothly. The ball flew through the air in a perfect spiral, arcing down and into the waiting hands of the receiver while at a full run.
Coach Mueller clapped his hands excitedly. To my annoyance, so did several of the girls on the bleachers.
“Danny is my favorite,” one of them said. “He’s so hot.”
“He doesn’t date anyone during the season,” another girl said.
“Who said anything about dating? I want to suck his cock.”
They erupted into another fit of distracting giggles.
Yeah? Well I already got to fuck him, bitch.
Coach tossed Danny another ball, and then another receiver shot away. This time it was a button hook route, where the receiver ran straight down field and then suddenly stopped and curled inward to receive the ball. Once again Danny’s throw was perfect, hitting him square in the chest.
On and on practice went like that, with the coach calling out different plays while Danny made his passes. After 20 or so, Danny stepped aside and one of the backup quarterbacks took his place for a while. He was smaller than Danny, but had a cannon for an arm and was every bit as accurate as Danny. The only time he messed up was when Coach called for an out route, which was when the receiver abruptly made a 90-degree turn and ran toward the sideline. The backup quarterback was anticipating a post route, and hurled the ball into empty space.
Coach chewed him out for it and made him run a lap around the field. Poor kid was still probably learning the plays.
I watched with wide-eyed interest. I wasn’t the kind of girl who worshiped football players. Down here in Texas football was a religion and its players were gods, but back in Arizona where I grew up it wasn’t a big deal. But I knew enough about the sport to understand what was going on, and I had to admit: it was sexy. Danny Armstrong was a master at his craft. They weren’t wearing helmets for practice, and Danny’s blond hair flowed around him as he stepped back for a pass. Occasionally Coach would switch the play before he’d made his pass, and Danny had to tuck the ball under an arm and sprint on a post route. Even then, he seemed to glide across the field with ease.
Some people were such experts that they made it look effortless.
I couldn’t help but remember the way he’d expertly eaten me out, fingers and tongue moving on my pussy and clit with skill. Reading my moans and squirms the way an expert quarterback read an opposing defense, finding the vulnerabilities and exploiting them. And then the way he’d moved inside me, with a slow passion that even now gave me chills despite being out in the heat…
“Excuse me?”
I glanced over. One of the sorority girls was looking at me like I was an idiot. “Uh. Yes?”
“I asked, are you in Sigma Sigma Beta?” she said. I got the impression she was repeating it for more than the second time.
“No, I’m not,” I said. Like I would join a sorority.
“Something funny?” the girl demanded.
“No!” I quickly said. I hadn’t realized I’d been smirking. “I’m just not in that sorority, that’s all.”
One of the other girls—the one who’d said she wanted to suck Danny’s cock—jerked her head. “You know one of the players?”
Yeah. I know the captain of the team, who you could only dream of being with.
“No, I don’t, uh, I don’t know any of them,” I stammered.
“Then what are you doing here?”
I wanted to turn the question around in her face, but I restrained myself. I might be seeing these girls out here pretty often, and being an asshole would make it difficult. Besides, making enemies of sorority girls was never a good idea. They roamed in packs and played dirty.
I held up my notebook. “I’m taking notes for my sports medicine class.”
“I wish my homework involved watching cute hunks bend over in tight football pants,” another girl said. They all devolved into giggles and turned their attention away from me.
I glanced back at the field. Danny was staring up at the bleachers—at me. Even though I was too far away to tell, I felt like he was smiling at me. My stomach did a little backflip.
<
br /> After a moment, Coach tossed him a ball and he snapped back to attention to make a pass, arm whipping the ball through the air.
I smiled to myself. This is going to be a fun semester.
13
Roberta
The first week of the fall semester was pretty much a repeat of that first day. I woke up early and took notes on the football team’s strength training, and did the same during football practice in the afternoon. Mixed throughout the day were my own mix of graduate and undergraduate classes, though it took some serious willpower to make myself focus on those.
When I told Aly about my deal with the three football players, she acted like I’d won the lottery. “You get to watch them all day? And hang out with them? And maybe even touch their bodies? I’m going to drop my art history degree and switch to kinesiology.”
But as lucky as she made me seem, I was busy. Up first thing in the morning, and returning to my dorm late in the afternoon. My sleep schedule began shifting ever so slowly, to the point that my respectable college bedtime of 11:00 p.m. was closer to 9:00 p.m. by the end of the week.
Danny and I texted throughout the week, too.
Me: Your passes were sloppy at practice today. That’s not going to fly against Austin College this weekend.
Danny: Coach had me working on a new drill to get rid of the ball quicker when I see a blitz coming
Me: Excuses, excuses
Danny: Well, yeah. That’s why it’s called PRACTICE ;-) Practice makes perfect, right?
Me: Well, at this rate you’ll be perfect by next year!
Danny: Next year I’ll be on an NFL team, baby.
Me: Not if you keep throwing like you did today
Danny: Shit, did you see the size of the linebackers rushing me today? I bet you’d run away screaming if you were in my position!
Me: But I’m not in your position, which means I can happily criticize from the sidelines without ever having to prove anything myself.
Me: Being a trainer rocks!
Danny: (middle finger emoji)
Our friendly banter was nice, but it only made me wonder about us. Or if there even was an us at all. I was swamped with classes and being their physical trainer, and Danny’s schedule was even worse. He hadn’t mentioning taking me out again, and I hadn’t asked.
So when Friday night rolled around and he texted me to meet them at Haskins Library to go over their workout routines, I was excited to finally see him up close.
When I got to the library and went to the room he’d sent in his text, I was greeted with a sight I didn’t expect. Over 100 students seated in chairs at various tables, all with their heads bent into books. Athletic study hall, I realized. Danny said it was mandatory for all the athletes.
Danny waved at me from a table in the corner where he was seated with Feña and Lance.
“Are you sure it’s okay that I’m here?” I whispered as I approached. The entire room was quiet except for a few murmurs here and there.
“Of course,” Feña said, gesturing around the room. “There are many others here tutoring the athletes.”
“You can be my tutor any time, Babs,” Lance said with an impish grin. I found myself grinning back as I sat down.
Danny elbowed him in the ribs and said, “How’s your first week of classes been?”
“Busy! Between my own classes and observing all your workouts, I’m exhausted.”
A concerned frown slid onto Feña’s handsome face. “Is this too much for you? We would understand…”
“Definitely not,” I quickly said. “I’m good, just adjusting. You know how the first week is. Ready to see my notes?”
Lance gawked at the notebook I pulled out as if it was a miniature alligator. “You take notes? Like, with your hand?”
“I like a physical copy,” I said defensively.
“They have these things now… What are they called…” Lance snapped his fingers when he thought of it. “Computers. That’s what they’re called. They’re even small enough to carry around wherever you go.”
“Please excuse our enigmatic wide receiver,” Feña said. “He believes he is much more amusing than he truly is.”
“Bro, I’m funny as hell.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “So. What’s the verdict, Roberta?”
I opened to the first page of the summary I’d written. “Well. First of all, Brett is… not a great trainer. To put it kindly.”
Feña smiled darkly. “We could have told you this thing.”
“Right. Well, I just wanted to say, for the record, that now that I’ve seen him in action I’m extra pissed off he got the job over me.”
“Me too,” Lance said with a wink. “Brett’s not even a little bit cute.”
“Now that that’s out of the way,” I began, “let’s start with the morning strength training. There’s no warm-up at all?”
“Yeah, not really,” Danny said. “I try to do jumping jacks or something to get the blood flowing.”
“A jog around the track would be better,” I said. “Eight laps, just like you do after the workout. Come in early if you have to.”
“Really?” Lance asked, crossing his arms. “Our trainer last year said to always do a cardio cool-down after weight-lifting, not before.”
“That’s an outdated methodology,” I said. “Your goal should be more than just warming up your specific muscle groups prior to heavy lifting. You want to get your heart rate up too. Something around 60% of your heart rate max. Which, while we’re on the subject, is something we need to test. You guys have a day off after game days, right?”
“Unless we play poorly, in which case Coach might call a practice last minute,” Danny explained.
“Then we’ll test your max heart rates this Sunday.” I made a note in the margin to put it on my calendar. “Back to the subject of cardio after weight lifting. That’s something I want you to stop doing altogether.”
Feña blinked. “Stop entirely?”
“Modern studies show that it’s detrimental to resistance training,” I explained. “When you perform anaerobic exercise—like lifting weights—your body goes into EPOC: Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption. For up to 24 hours your metabolism increases, your body produces natural human growth hormone, and a whole bunch of other good stuff. But when you perform aerobic exercise immediately after, even something light like a jog around the track, this EPOC state is diminished. You’re canceling out all of those awesome benefits.”
“Huh,” Lance said. “So we do nothing?”
“You should be eating after your resistance training,” I said. “Shift your schedules around so that you’re lifting first thing in the morning while fasted to deplete your muscle glycogen, and then eat your huge breakfast right after. Lots of protein, too, though I doubt I need to tell you that.”
“I can crush a post-workout protein shake,” Lance said, flexing his arm. “That’s how you get these bad-boys.”
Danny ignored Lance’s comment. “That’s really interesting. I’ll give it a try. What else have you found?”
I flipped to the next page. “I don’t like the stretching Brett has you doing before football practice. It’s all static. You need to be mixing in some dynamic stretches, especially you Lance, since you have so many stop-and-go sprints during practice.”
“The problem,” Feña said quietly, “is Brett requires us to stretch together under his direction. We cannot ignore him and do what we want.”
“Then do your own stretching after,” I insisted. “You’ll be less likely to sustain an injury during practice that way. I’ve got a list of specific ones for each of you. Frankensteins, side-shuffles, lunge walks. I can text you guys the list.”
“Text?” Lance teased. “You sure you don’t want to write it down in a notebook for us?”
“Ha ha.”
“I should be able to make it work,” Danny said to himself. “I always have a couple minutes to myself while Coach Mueller goes over the game plan with the
assistant coaches. Lance does too, even if he’s busy making jokes.”
“Me as well,” Feña agreed.
I nodded and flipped another page. “Nutrition time. I appreciate you guys taking the time to record your food consumption in the tracking app I sent you. It’s good data.” I pointed at Lance. “Except for you.”
He leaned back defensively. “Woah, what’s wrong with mine?”
I spun my notebook around and tapped a line. “Yesterday you said you ate a bunch of pizza for lunch?”
“Well, yeah, I did.”
“How much is a bunch? Three slices? Four? Are they large slices? Is there pepperoni?”
“Well…”
“And the day before that you said you ate 12 burritos from the cafeteria. That’s 7,800 calories!”
“Oh. That must be a typo. I only ate two.”
I gave him a patient look. It wasn’t easy. “I can’t hone in on your current macro ratios when you’re guessing.”
“Our trainer last year tracked all of that for us,” Lance complained. “I didn’t have to do anything.”
“Your old trainer was with you around the clock,” I pointed out. “I’m not even allowed in the athlete cafeteria. Plus I have my own classes to go to during the day.”
Feña gave a firm nod. “I will personally ensure our friend tracks his food better.”
“Thank you,” I said, giving him a sweet smile. Lance pursed his lip but didn’t complain further.
“What about our nutrition?” Danny asked.
“Honestly, everything looks pretty good,” I said. “You’re lighter on the protein than I’d like, but your carb to fat ratios are solid. What about supplements? Does Brett—” I couldn’t say his name without making it sound like a Disney villain, “—have you guys on anything I should know about?”
“We’ve been waiting for him to set up a supplement plan, but I don’t think he’s going to,” Danny said.
I sighed. “I figured as much. Well, that’s why I’m your handy-dandy kinesiologist. I want to put you guys on a daily regimen of supplements. Some extra protein shakes with BCAAs. Also some fish oil and glutamine for recovery. Have you tried creatine before, Lance?”
