by Cassie Cole
I tingled with anticipation as we walked into the Rejuvenation Lounge. Aside from one cyclist dipping his legs in a bucket of ice, it was empty. Finn led me over to the private massage rooms, then closed the door behind us. Inside was a flat massage table covered with a thick white towel.
“Go ahead and lay face-down on the table, so I can work on your upper back first.”
“I keep my clothes on?” I said.
He smiled politely. “Correct. This isn’t that kind of massage.”
I felt my face turn six shades of red as I climbed onto the table. The towel was plush and felt good on my skin. I positioned my face in the donut cushion at the end, which gave me an oval-shaped view of the floor directly below.
Seconds ticked by without anything happening. I breathed steadily, in and out, while waiting. My anticipation grew. Then Finn’s two tennis shoes and his chiseled legs appeared within my view.
“I’ll start with medium pressure,” he said. “Let me know if it’s too much.”
I felt his fingers press into my upper back, just below the shoulder. Just like during our weight-lifting, it was as if electricity passed through his touch.
Then he pressed harder, and pain shot through my shoulder.
“Ahh!” I sucked in my breath. “That’s the sore spot, right there.”
Finn let out a deep, rumbling chuckle. “I can feel the knot. It will hurt a little bit more as I work it out, but let me know if it’s too intense.”
Once again he dug his fingers into my flesh. It was incredibly uncomfortable as he pushed against the sore spot, and I winced on the table. I couldn’t believe I had thought this might be erotic!
Then the knot suddenly disappeared.
“Ohh,” I exhaled the breath I had been holding.
“There goes the knot,” Finn said. “Sorry if that hurt. You really went to town on the speed bag yesterday.”
“I had a lot of stress to let out.”
“I warned you to take it easy your first time,” he lectured.
“I know. I’ll listen next time.”
“Damn right you will.”
His fingers worked across my back, moving in small circles. Slowly I began to relax on the table as he kneaded my body.
“Your hammies too, you said?” he asked after a few minutes.
“Mmm hmm.”
“Which leg?”
“Left.”
Finn’s feet disappeared from my view as he walked around to the side of the table. He pressed his palm into the back of my thigh, just underneath my butt. I tensed again when I realized where he was touching, then he smoothed his palm across the back of my leg down toward my knee.
He did that three times, then began digging his fingers into my thigh.
“I can already feel your quads tightening up,” he said softly. His voice was tense as he focused on what he was doing. “The deadlifts will do that to a person. Same for the glutes, flexors, and erector spinae.”
“Yeah, those are all sore,” I said absently. I didn’t know what any of those were.
At first I was self-conscious about being sweaty, but Finn’s fingers felt so good that I quickly stopped caring. He massaged around the back of my leg, then along the tendon on the inner part of my thigh. With every passing minute, I became more and more relaxed. I could lay here all day being touched by him…
I tensed. His fingers kept climbing up my inner thigh, closer and closer to my crotch. I could practically feel the heat from his hands on my pussy! An intrusive thought leaped into my head: what if he did it? What if he kept massaging upward until he reached my pussy, then began rubbing it too? The fantasy took hold, and then it was all I could think about. Being held down on the massage table by his massive arms as he took advantage of me, pleasuring me in all the dirty ways I desired…
But just before reaching my sensitive places, his fingers massaged back down toward the knee.
“Want me to work on your erector spinae?” he asked.
“Mmm hmm, erector spinae and glutes,” I said.
His hands left my leg, and reappeared at my lower back. He pressed his thumbs on either side of my spine and leaned into me.
“Ohh yeah, that’s the spot,” I said. I hadn’t realized those muscles were tight until he touched them, but it was exactly what I needed.
He worked on those for a few minutes, then asked, “You said your glutes, too?”
I didn’t want the massage to end, so I responded automatically, “Yep, they need some attention too.”
Finn paused. For a moment, I wondered if I was being too demanding of the personal trainer. But then he said, “Okay,” in a weird tone.
The moment his hands touched me, I realized why.
One second everything was fine, and then the next there were two hands on my ass cheeks. I managed to keep from yelping with shock. He leaned his weight into his palms, pushing my butt cheeks up and down. Then his fingers began kneading into the muscles of my ass.
Now this massage was erotic.
“You didn’t know what the glutes were, did you?” he asked.
“No, I did,” I said. “Mine are, um, sore. From the deadlifts, like you said.”
“There’s no need to be embarrassed,” he replied. “Glute massages aren’t abnormal. Most of the weight-lifters I work with get their glutes worked on.”
“Sounds like a good time. I usually need two or three drinks before I’m ready for butt stuff.”
The joke came out of my mouth automatically. Jokes were my defense mechanism when I was embarrassed. Uncle Jon’s funeral last year was an especially bad example of this, although Darryl had laughed uproariously.
A long silence stretched where Finn said nothing. Then suddenly he laughed out loud.
“That’s funny,” he said. “I usually need a couple of beers before I’m ready to start playing grab-ass too.”
His response instantly made me relax. I hadn’t fucked things up with my stupid joke. Which was good, because I was thoroughly enjoying his fingers massaging my ass.
“Your name is Finlay?”
“Huh?”
“Your nametag says Finn,” I pointed out, “but when you texted me yesterday you introduced yourself as Finlay something.”
“Finlay Hadjiev, yep. I go by Finn, but text messages always feel formal the first time, I guess.”
“What nationality is that?”
“Bulgarian,” he replied. “My father came here during the cold war. He was a weight-lifter on the Bulgarian National Team, and was in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Then he sought asylum, and stayed. He met my mom at a ski lodge in Colorado, and then they had me and my brothers.”
“That’s so interesting! How many brothers do you have?”
“Two. I’m the baby of the family.”
I scoffed. “I doubt you’re the baby of anything.”
“I know you’re joking, but I’m tiny compared to my brothers. They’re always joking about how I need to eat more.”
I laughed at how ridiculous that sounded. Someone like Finn probably had to eat ten thousand calories a day just to maintain their current weight.
Before I could think of a joke about that, Finn’s hands left my body. “You should feel pretty good, now.”
I twisted and sat up on the table. “I feel great.”
Finn was smiling, but he was standing at the end of the massage table. He was leaning against it strangely, like he was trying to cover his crotch.
A thought occurred to me: was he trying to hide an erection?
Certainly not…
I hopped off the table. “Thanks for the workout. And the massage.”
“Any time.”
He high-fived me, then carefully removed the towel from the massage table. The way he held it in front of him concealed his crotch, but for a split second I thought I could see the outline of a long, thick cock against his grey compression shorts…
It’s probably my imagination, I thought. He’s been perfectly professional to
day. I’m the one imagining things.
I gave him a final smile before heading to the bar to get a smoothie.
I thought about Finn while I was in the shower. No, not like that. Just normal thinking in the shower. Innocent thoughts.
It had been a long time since I had been in a serious relationship. Or any kind of relationship, for that matter. I’d been pouring all of my time and energy into my store, building it up from nothing. And it had paid off.
At least, it had until Pacifica Vinyl showed up…
I passed my store and walked to the end of the block. The Pacifica Vinyl sign was now affixed above the large entrance. In addition to that, there was a huge three-by-two foot poster in one of the windows:
COMING IN APRIL
Great. So the construction worker was telling the truth. Now it felt like there was a clock ticking in the back of my head, counting down until the death of my own business.
I was in a foul mood all day at work. I plugged headphones into my record player to start listening to the stack of demo albums on my desk, but my heart wasn’t in it. What was the point when a competing business was opening down the street in three months?
Eventually I pulled the headphones off and walked around the store looking for piddly work to do. Tidying up the rows of records in each genre section. Coiling the cords to the headphones on the demo players scattered throughout the store. Running my fingers along the edges of the vinyl album covers, feeling the crisp paper underneath my fingertips.
“You okay, boss-lady?” Paul asked.
“Not really. I’m in a mood.”
Paul shook his head. “I thought exercise was supposed to let out all the good chemicals in your brain.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been at the gym so much this week. Like five or six times since the new year. Shouldn’t you be filled with, like, dopamine or whatever?”
“It’s been helping.”
He gave me a reassuring smile. “I’m glad you’re all amped up about it. You’ve been talking about it for years, but always found excuses…”
“They weren’t excuses,” I protested. “I had the store to run. There’s always some kind of administrative work to do.”
He narrowed his eyes skeptically. “Like what?”
“You should see the stack of demo albums on my desk. Going to the gym this week has put me way behind on them.”
“Then listen to the demos at the gym.”
I laughed at the mental image of me carrying a record player into the gym and holding it under my arm while jogging on the treadmill. “Very funny.”
“Naw, man. I’m serious. You looked at your spam folder recently?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Paul waved me over to the computer by the register. “A while back, you flagged all the demo companies as spam.”
“Because they were spamming me twice a day to ask if I would carry their music. I was sick of them emailing me huge file attachments.” I’d created an auto-reply that instructed them to mail any demo albums directly to the store. That way I could weed out the companies that weren’t serious.
Paul opened the spam folder and gestured. “Yeah, man, but they still send a digital copy of each album. There’s, like, two hundred email attachments in here. You could download them all to your phone, or a cloud share, and then listen to them digitally while you’re doing yoga or whatever at the gym.”
I blinked. “Paul, that’s actually a really good idea.”
“Why do you sound surprised?”
I spent the rest of the afternoon sifting through the spam folder and unzipping attachments. I found the corresponding physical copy on my desk, categorized them based on genre, then dropped the digital music into a folder in Google Drive. By the time I left the store that night I had over five-hundred hours of music waiting to be reviewed.
Even with Pacifica Vinyl’s grand opening looming over me, I was feeling motivated again.
11
Katherine
The next few weeks were amazingly productive.
I woke up every morning and spent at least an hour doing cardio while listening to demo tapes. It was the perfect way to take my mind off things while exercising. It was easier to run three miles while thinking about the horrible trombone solo on a jazz album rather than watching my total distance increment a tenth of a mile at a time.
It also allowed me to combine my motivation for my store with my motivation to exercise. When I was sitting in my office, I was thinking about exercising. When I exercised, I felt guilty for not getting any work done. Doing both at the same time made me feel superhumanly productive.
My brain also felt sharp while I was working out. Like the increased blood flow through my body supercharged my brain. For each album I listened to, I took detailed notes on my phone. Some were for Paul to look at later, and other notes were to remind me of how many copies I wanted to order of each album, and why. Armando Calrizzi’s jazz album was fine, but not amazing, so I only wanted to carry five copies in the store. But the newest synthwave album from Lazerhawk? That was going to fly off the shelves, so I ordered fifty copies.
The first few days were still tough. I could run for a mile or two, but then needed to slow down and walk for periods at a time. But by the third week in January I was able to run non-stop for five miles!
Granted, it was at an eleven minute pace. But give a girl a break.
One day, Brody hopped onto the treadmill next to me. “I feel like you’ve been here as much as me,” he said with a smile.
I waved my phone. “I found a way to work and exercise at the same time.”
He held up his small tablet. “That’s my trick too. Two birds, one stone.”
I paused the heavy metal album I was listening to. It was terrible, so I was happy for the excuse to stop. “What do you do, Brody?”
Brody turned on his machine and started jogging lightly. “Data analysis. Looking at graphs and spreadsheets all day and then writing reports for what I find.”
“Sounds interesting.”
He laughed and tossed his blond hair. “It’s not. But thanks.”
Rather than ask me what kind of work I did, he put in his own AirPods and turned his attention to his tablet. I grudgingly hit play on my crappy heavy metal music and went back to my own work.
It was tough not to glance at him out of the corner of my eye as we jogged. He wasn’t overwhelmingly buff like Finn, but he was extremely fit. Broad in the shoulders and muscular in the arms and chest. I wondered if he had been in the military. He looked the way I envisioned Navy SEALs looked under their uniforms.
When my hour was up, I slowed to a walk and did a fifteen minute cool-down before wiping off my treadmill with an antiseptic cloth. “See you later,” I said with a friendly wave.
Brody smiled but said nothing.
I glanced at the scoreboard on the wall on the way to the locker room:
25-29 AGE GROUP
BRODY F:_____4,212
JONNY K:_____3,801
KATHERINE D: 3,722
JAMES P:______3,299
Even though I’d been running for an hour straight without stopping—a new personal best!—I felt guilty leaving so soon. I was within striking distance of second place, and Brody wasn’t that far ahead after that. But Finn had warned me about running too much too quickly, and insisted I needed to ramp up my activity gradually. Over-straining myself was a good way of getting a stress fracture or other injury.
I had gotten into a good groove these past three weeks. Cardio in the morning before work, which was when I listened to demo albums. Then I came back for a second workout around lunch. Every other day that meant weight-lifting with Finn, but on the days between that I did more cardio. Usually on the bike or elliptical, since the mornings usually left my knees a little sore.
I was still a little intimidated to go back to Max’s spin class, though. Finally one day I decided to leave work early an
d go shopping for some new exercise clothes. Aside from extra shorts, tops, and sports bras, I bought two pairs of cycling shorts with padding built into the crotch and butt. It felt weird, like I was walking around with a pillow in my pants. But when I looked in the mirror it didn’t appear unusual at all.
On the way home, I swung by the grocery store. They sold pre-made packages of salad with little bits of chicken and hard-boiled eggs. I bought five. Enough to last me the next week.
Then I hurried past the ice cream aisle to avoid temptation. I was going to become more disciplined with my eating if it killed me, damnit!
That night was Friday, which meant movie night in the spin room. Knives Out was playing—the murder mystery that was just in theaters last month. I showed up ten minutes early with a water bottle, and picked one of the bikes in the back row.
Max entered the room and announced that the movie would be starting in two minutes. His eyes locked onto me, and he smiled. Then, rather than jump on a bike at the front of the room, he walked around the side of the room toward me.
It was tough not to appreciate the way he looked. Max strode on long legs, and walked with the confidence of someone befitting his physique. He wore a Colorado cycling jersey with the zipper pulled down to reveal a few inches of smooth, muscular chest. His golden-brown hair was dark with moisture, but not from sweat. It was consistently wet, like he’d just gotten out of the shower.
He hopped onto the empty bike next to me. “I hope you signed up for the class this time.”
I feigned confusion. “Wait, I have to sign up ahead of time?”
The brief moment of surprise on his face made me giggle with happiness. Then he glared at me. “Ha ha.”
“I can’t believe I got you.”
He looked around, then lowered his voice. “You joke, but there are seriously some gym members who consistently show up to classes they haven’t signed up for, no matter how many times I tell them.”
“Lucky for you, I’m not that dense. You’re cycling back here tonight?”
“Well, I would drink back here, but the last time I brought a flask to movie night they threatened to fire me. So I guess I’ll just spin.”
