“It’s okay, Kayla. There are a lot of other things you can do”, I tell her in a hushed tone, trying to comfort her. “I know what it’s like to lose someone close to you. It’s terrifying and it sends you down a spiral of thoughts that go nowhere. A negative feedback look. You just focus on what you could have done differently, and what you could do to prevent hurt like that from happening again but--”
“No”, she abruptly states. “There’s nothing I could have done to save Dad. I wasn’t there. And I’m not trying to prevent any future pain by enrolling in the academy. I just want to honor him. I want to be a daughter he could be proud of.”
“You already are”, I tell her as I wipe some tears from her face. “He’s always been proud of you, Kayla. There wasn’t a single moment of his life where he wasn’t proud of you.”
She grabs a napkin from the table to wipe the remaining tears and to blow her nose.
“I want to do this”, she proclaims. “You could help me. But you can’t stop me.”
After giving it some thought, I come to the conclusion that she’s ultimately right. Kayla is nothing if not determined. That determination would be enough to get her enrolled without me, so I might as well write her a recommendation and make sure that she has me to thank for her acceptance.
“I’ll help you, Kayla”, I announce. “I will. I’ll do everything I can to help you. For Dad. And for you.”
Kayla bounces from her seat and onto my lap, hugging me as if it was the only thing she knew how to do.
“I know what it’s like to lose someone important. I’d be a real piece of shit to not help you”, I say with a weak laugh followed by a prolonged sigh.
“I’m sorry about Arria. And that I wasn’t at the funeral. I--”
I shake my head and hold both of her hands in mine. “Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry about. It’s in the past.”
“I should have been there for you”, she sighs. “I didn’t want to see you in pain, but… I should have been there. I didn’t try to be there and I should have. If I had been there, you wouldn’t hate me. You’d have had someone to talk to.”
Another sigh escapes my body. “Look, Kayla. I’ll admit, I wasn’t too happy with you missing the funeral. And I did resent you for that. But I can’t hate you. I can be disappointed. I can be resentful. I can be foaming at the mouth with rage. But I cannot hate you, Kayla.” I place both of my hands on her face and look into her eyes. “I just need you to try more. In everything. In our relationship, in moving on from Dad’s death, and especially in The Academy. Do we have a deal?”
Kayla sniffles and nods enthusiastically. “Deal.”
Chapter Six - Kayla
“Good. Because you can be great if you just applied yourself”, Zach assures me. “When you want something you take it. Like the many times you came to see me to ask me for help even though I didn’t really want to see you. You sure didn’t care about what I thought, you just stopped on by and tried to get what you needed.”
Zach doesn’t pick me up from my apartment. He shows up to the restaurant before me and doesn’t even wait for me to order his food. He agrees to help me but goes on to bring some low moments of my life. He wipes tears from my eyes but admits that he disliked me and ignored me for a long time because of something I did, or rather didn’t do, during a hard and emotional moment in his life.
“You could have come to see me any day the of the week for any reason, but every time you came to my door it was because I had something you wanted”, Zach states in a morose tone.
To say I’m receiving mixed signals is the understatement of the goddamn century. I’ve watched Korean soap operas without subtitles and felt less confused then than I do right now.
Each point he makes about my actions in the past is like a perfectly aimed dart hitting the bullseye painted onto my heart. He’s bringing up these points mostly as a joke, but I don’t doubt that he feels as though there have been many times where I’ve come into his life just to ask him for something I needed and not because I cared about how he was doing. But I did. I knew he was upset with me and figured that he wouldn’t want to talk to me unless I had a damn good reason to see him.
At this point, there is no reason for tears to continue seeping out of my eyes. Zach agreed to help me and wants me to succeed. This is exactly what I wanted from this dinner.
Half of what I wanted.
“Zach”, I say trying not to choke on my tears, “can we talk about the wedding?”
His body shoots back as if my question was a fist headed for his face. “The wedding? Why? That was so long ago.”
“I know”, I tell him. “But there’s just something I’ve been holding in me that I need to get off my chest.”
“It’s fine”, he says scooting back and away from me. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“I liked it.”
Immediately after my confession, I get up from Zach’s lap and sit back down on my own chair.
He doesn’t reply, so I continue. “I just… I knew it was weird and didn’t want anybody to walk in and catch us so… I stopped it. But I really liked it, Zach. I wanted more, but… I just wanted to say I’m sorry for laughing. I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t know how else to react. I think about that day often and just wish I had done anything but laugh.”
Zach looks paler than I’ve ever seen him. His eyes are bugging out of his head and he’s so stiff you’d think some invisible man was holding a gun to his head. Just say something. Anything. Tell me you want me. Bend me over this damn table and fuck me. Please. Do something.
“That’s… Alright. Thank you for telling me that. Water under the bridge, really”, he says clearing his throat repeatedly. Zach regains his composure for the most part, but still looks shaken by my confession. “I really appreciate the apology. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t upset me that you laughed in my face.”
“Did that make you hate me”, I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, no, no, Kayla. I swear, I’ve never hated you. I don’t think I can hate you.”
I nod my head and the two of us sit in an uncomfortable but tolerable silence. I don’t have much of an appetite after sitting through all of that emotional turmoil, so I take this chance to try to excuse myself from the table.
“Thank you, Zach.”
“No problem.”
I stand up but before I can bid him farewell, one of his hands reaches for my arm. “So before applying, we should probably train.”
“Train?”
“Absolutely. I can’t be too sure that you’d pass the any of the physical trials in the shape you’re in right now. You’re like a toothpick with big boob-- uh.. You’re thin. I promised I’d help you and I intend to. Let’s go for a run tomorrow morning. At 6 o’clock.”, Zach insists.
I nod my head triumphantly, excited to have plans to see him again, and so soon.
“You don’t want to stay and eat”, he asks as I push my chair in.
“No, that’s alright. I know you invited me for a dinner, but I was actually expecting to just talk. I’m not really in the mood for food”, I lie.
“My treat”, he asserts.
I turn away from him. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning. 6 AM.”
The walk from the table back to the car feels eternal. I could feel Zach’s eyes burning a hole in the back of my head. Or ass. None of this feels real. This feels like some some of dream. Nightmare, maybe. I get in my car and take some deep breaths to compensate for the lack of proper breathing I was doing the entire way over here.
Could I consider this dinner an accomplishment?
On one hand, I have Zach’s blessing and hands on help on achieving my goal. On the other hand, I’m left clueless as to where Zach and I stand. I was hoping he’d tell me how he feels about me after I confessed to him that I enjoyed our five second romp in the bathroom way back when. Instead, he brushed it off and I allowed him to change the subject instead of prying further.
H
e claims I get what I want, but I just want some damn answers. Some certainty for a change. Zach nearly mentioned my tits, so is he thinking of me sexually the way I think of him, or did I just make an ass out of myself?
As I insert the keys into the ignition, I spot Zach walking out of the restaurant and into his car. I could go confront him now and get some answers. Just so I don’t have to spend another second wondering whether or not there’s any chance that he’d want to pursue me romantically. I waste too much time going through these mental gymnastics and am left watching him drive off.
I’ll see him tomorrow. I’ll get some answers then.
Chapter Seven - Zach
6:02 am. No sign of Kayla. Not a single text, or phone call.
She’s probably still asleep. I’ve never known her to be an early bird. Every summer, she’d go to sleep at midnight and wouldn’t get out of bed until noon. Now that she’s not in school, I find it very possible that that’s one habit she hasn’t grown out of.
Shrugging off the expected disappointment of Kayla’s absence, I put on my earbuds and hit play on my workout playlist. I do some stretching to the musical stylings of Lou Rawls. Not exactly what some would call workout music, but I’ve never been fond of the deafening electronic music, or hard metal others listen to when they exercise. After my stretches, I jog slowly to warm up properly but two beams of light break through the fog and land right on me, followed by some honking. I take my earbuds out and squint through the light to ensure it’s not some weird asshole that’s ruining my concentration.
Once the lights turn off, I see Kayla step out of her car wearing some revealing clothes. A pair of tight short shorts with seemingly no underwear underneath, and a training bra that makes her cleavage twice the size it normally is. She ties her hair in a ponytail as she walks over to me.
“Sorry I’m late. My alarm didn’t go off, I got here as quickly as possible”, she explains.
6:06 am.
What an asshole I am. Punctuality is important but I didn’t even give her the benefit of the doubt enough to wait a mere six minutes for her. The few times my mother had talked to me about Kayla previous to this week’s phone call, she criticized me for never giving her enough credit. I suppose she’s not wrong.
“That’s alright. You’re here and that’s what matters. Let’s get started!”
Typically, I run five miles around the community park which amounts to nine times around the perimeter. Before hitting my first mile of the day, I noticed that Kayla was far behind me, holding onto a tree for balance. I run to her as quickly as possible and hand her my water bottle. She wheezes a quick thanks and drinks all of my water in a few swallows.
“What happened”, I ask.
“Running… sucks…”, she tells me between breaths.
“Kayla, I can still see your car from here. How are you this out of breath?”
“How? ‘Cause... running… sucks.”
Kayla wants to be a cop but can barely hit a mile. It’s hard to get a read on her these days. She has goals she chases after intensely, but not in any practical ways. She seems to have just decided that she wanted to honor Dad without once taking into consideration the work that she would have to put in.
“There’s no way you’ll get in if you’re not fit, Kayla. You have to be able to complete at least a mile without passing out”, I warn her.
To my surprise, she stands up tall and starts jogging. “Then let’s complete a mile.”
This time, I keep a steady pace behind her, making sure to correct her posture and to breathe properly. Her eyebrows furrow deeper and deeper with each of my suggestions and corrections, but in the end, my advice gets her to complete a mile.
She collapses to the floor, hooting victoriously and laughing while she holds onto her surely sore sides.
“Let’s never do that again”, she jokes.
Afterwards, we go to a locally owned coffee shop/deli Kayla frequents for breakfast. I order myself a Reuben sandwich with a fries and a fruit cup on the side. Kayla just orders “the usual”. A chocolate donut with chocolate sprinkles and a black coffee.
“You’re not going to get anything else”, I ask her incredulously.
“It’s breakfast”, she shrugs.
I do my best to not facepalm and instead offer her some insight.
“You realize that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right? You have to eat more than a donut and some coffee. You need meat, fruit, a veggie shake, but definitely not a donut. What do you normally eat?”
She pauses for a moment to think about her answer. “For breakfast, this. Then just whatever’s in the house. Ramen. Chips. There’s a Chinese restaurant by my place I order take out from a lot.”
“Alright. Then, right after this, we are going to get some shopping done. You need nourishment, Kayla. You need food that will give you enough fuel to complete the workouts we’ll be doing these next few weeks. If you’re going to take this seriously, you’re going to have to follow a very strict diet.”
This will likely be a dealbreaker. Her fast metabolism has allowed her to partake in unhealthy amounts of junk food all of her life, and stepping out of her comfort zone with her diet isn’t something she’s going to want to do. Realizing that she won’t gain much weight or muscle unless she does so, she’ll likely give up on this endeavor. Not that I want her to, but it would likely be for the best.
“Are you paying or am I”, she asks. “Also, how many cheat days would I get?”
“You’re serious?”
“I showed up today, didn’t I? Take your sandwich and fruit cup to go. Let’s go, Zach”, she demands.
On the drive to the hipstery grocery store I do most of my grocery shopping at, Kayla sits quietly while she steals from my fruit cup.
“So you’re totally okay with not eating donuts daily? Or ramen? Just bland, filling meals every day?”
With some pineapple in her mouth, she answers. “I’ll deal with it. If I need to eat spiceless chicken breasts and sandy brown rice for every meal, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything I have to. Besides, I could probably stand to gain a few pounds.”
Hearing Kayla say, “I’ll do anything I have to [do]” is something I’m used to. From ballet, to piano, to going to live in the UK. It’s a phrase she utters often, but for the first time in the years that I’ve known her, I feel that she’s actually serious. Typically, she’d be deterred by the first obstacle that stood in her way.
It’s nice to see her so focused and determined. It’s a new and welcomed change to the Kayla I know.
Chapter Eight - Kayla
The next week of my life is hell. In a good way.
Sticking to my diet was much harder than I expected. I figured shoveling food down my gullet would be easy regardless of what it was but eating the same flavorless meal every single day grew tiresome quickly. Regardless, I persevered, not only with the diet but with my morning workouts with Zach.
The workouts range from a mile run to strength building exercises. Much to Zach’s disappointment, I’m only able to do eight pushups at a time, and the 20-pound dumbbells he brought at the start of the week were too much for me to use without straining myself. All of our workouts end with some cool down stretching. Painful as they are, I enjoy the soreness I end each session with.
Today, Zach pushed me into running two miles. I was able to do it successfully and feel two things. Pride at the lengths I’ve pushed myself to after only a week of training. And soreness. After two miles, I could barely walk properly, making my way towards Zach looking as if my thighs were made of jelly. I collapsed on the grass and called him over to do my stretches for me, half-joking.
Without hesitation, Zach gripped my thighs and started massaging them. I was caught off-guard but I didn’t want him to stop. He raised my knees and spread my legs slightly to properly massage the muscles in my inner thighs. The soreness was no longer existent, I was focused only on the pleasure I was feeling from his manly hands digging into my
slick skin, dangerously close to my womanhood.
I raise my head and see him biting his lip while he rubs my legs. Not only that, but he seems to be enjoying himself maybe more than I am. I see a thick bulge raise his basketball shorts, almost revealing the tip of his cock.
“Hey, Zach”, I whisper, “can we finish the stretching at your place? I’m getting itchy from this grass.”
Zach nods and helps me back on my feet.
Two Bad Groomsmen_An MFM Menage Romance Page 17
