The Jock

Gail shields her eyes from the hot Alabama summer sun, remaining calm but sometimes giving furtive glances over at her son and his friend, who are moving all her son’s worldly possessions in neat, cardboard boxes. They heft two over each shoulder, using the leverage from their legs to hoist the weight — both athletes and in the prime of their lives. Her son, Matthew, is embarking on the University of Alabama on a tennis scholarship. His best, and perhaps athletically inferior, friend, Scott, crosses the lawn to move his own things into the guest house out back, filling the void. But there shouldn’t be a void to fill — and besides, nobody on earth could do it. She would be lying if she said she wouldn’t miss her son, not even a single bit, even though she would try like hell to convince anybody otherwise; even though Matthew is her son, she can’t hold on to him forever, can’t rely on him for her emotional shortcomings, and she knows that anybody within a half mile could catch her crack at any glimmer of emotional distress.

Even under her gardening hat, the sun coats her hair and shoulders with a sickening warmth. Pale and redheaded — with a few splotches of grey — she tries to avoid direct exposure as much as possible. Irish skin, her father would always say, makes you tough as clay. She always resisted the thought of herself as hard as clay, but oftentimes she had to act it out as a child. Without a mom, three older brothers hovering over her, she learned quickly to hold on to whatever you could, or else somebody’s going to take it from you. Her dad was the easy part — it was the rest of the world that shook her. Matthew walks over, his blue trainer shirt stained dark with new sweat. “You’re never going to get rid of me,” he smiles.

Scott runs up behind Matthew, drumming his back furiously. “I’m gonna make you go.” “Watch it,” Gail says, probably with a fervor she didn’t intend, “you’re still month to month with me.” Scott holds up his arms, backing away slowly in mock fear. Gail forces a smile to make up for her harshness, but it feels strained and fake anyway. “I’m going inside. Don’t hurt yourself,” she yells back at them.

Inside the house, she puts up the shades, takes off her gardening hat, and takes off her shoes. She throws herself on the couch in the dark living room, overtired and worked, burnt beyond belief. It’s hard to think of her Matthew as an independent man — strong-willed and boastful, able-bodied, carrying his weight not as a burden but as a sign of confidence. He will always be that tiny boy, though, dark-haired and fair-complected, shy, simple but highly intelligent. It’s a miracle he grew into the athlete he became today, given Gail’s emphasis on academics and musical study — Gail herself an accomplished cellist in the Alabama Philharmonic and not one to throw a ball; it was most likely her late husband, Rick, who molded Matthew. Every bit of free time available — after homework, chores, and dinner — he had him in the backyard with two mitts, calling out pitches that Matthew threw with increasing acumen and strength. Gail can’t face the image, so she blacks it out of her mind. It is for Rick that Gail supports Matthew in everything he accomplishes.

She must have fallen asleep because she wakes up to Matthew standing over her, shaking her shoulder. “Mom, I’ve got to go.” It takes a moment for her to register. Her son’s face, darkened by the shadow from the window behind him, only registers as he speaks. She gets up and meets him and Scott at the end of the gravel driveway. From his new Buick, Matthew kisses his mother. “I’m only a couple of miles away,” he says. She knows he will be back. After all, she wouldn’t be alone — she had Scott, that muscle-headed oaf, more of a walking fitness ad than a person.

After waving goodbye from the front lawn, Gail and Scott continue to look down the street as Matthew’s car passes out of sight. Suddenly, Gail is entombed by two massive arms, her head pressed against a chest more like a concrete wall than flesh.

“It’ll be alright, Miss C,” he says, chuckling as if it were a secret. He tightens the hug.

Gail can only remain silent, unable to give in to this rare show of intimacy; it’s not as if the contact is unwanted or abhorrent, but it is unexpected, surprising, and rare from Scott. She lets herself give in to the enveloping of his arms — both slabs of muscle squeezing but intimate at the same time. Something tells her to stop it. She starts to wrench free, but Scott lets go.

She reels around and puts a hand on her forehead; she is blushing. “As I recall, you still have stuff to move in. I’m not helping you, so you better hurry. I still need to go over the lease agreement with you later.” Gail continues to berate herself for the way she talks to younger people. Matthew always says that she sounds like an old grandma, even though she’s forty. Scott stands there with his hand on his hips, smiling. His dark hair is wet as if just out of a shower, his shirt tight against bulging, well-toned muscles. He picks up his leg and pulls it behind him, stretching as if for a run. “Take it easy, I got it. I’m going to batting practice here in a little bit, but I’ll find the time.” His smile widens, two rows of ivory behind full, elegant lips. Something in the grin prevents Gail from believing him fully. Scott has a way of sarcasm that is so vibrant that it comes across as sincerity all over again.

“Oh, I’ll believe it this time,” she says and turns toward the house.

It happens when she is alone, wandering in and out of thoughts both old and new, or ones hidden in the back like a letter unopened; she feels a heat rising up her feet and into her mouth, a familiar sensation unfelt for some time — even before her divorce from Rick. With Matthew away, Gail fears that her culminating feelings of sensuality will take her over, prevent her from practicing, prevent her from finally socializing and getting out of the house. She still has her body — a tall, leggy frame, a butt little but full, boobs not necessarily impressive to some but still perky. She stands naked and looks into the mirror at her body in profile: tall legs, a little curvy around the hips, but still adequate in all the right places. Considering that since the divorce — which finalized five years ago — she hasn’t done any regular exercise, unless going to the grocery store counts. She feels confident and sexier than she has in a long time. She pinches her nipples, which releases a tingle up her spine. Her sexual prime is going to begin; alone for the first time, she will find it one way or another.

Or is she alone forever?

She draws a bath, confident and feeling free for the first time in a long time; she never takes the time to look at her body in its true form, and the results are better than expected. She feels wet, so she leans gently against the bed, sucks her teeth, and begins to rub her clitoris, slowly. As her mind races with thoughts of secret places and uncharted situations of physical lust, a warmth rises from her inner thigh into the hidden mounds of her breasts. This isn’t a new sensation, but one she hasn’t felt in a long time. Too long.Gail is in the living room, practicing her cello; the Philharmonic will be featuring her in Beethoven’s 2nd Cello Sonata. She has never had an opportunity like this — her new form continues to take shape in her solitude. Only after three days alone, Gail certainly misses Matthew, will call out his name by mistake, but those moments of whimsy are fleeting in the grand scheme of things.

But oddly enough, no sign of Scott.

She never sees him coming in or out of the house, his sedan parked on the right side of the house as it usually is. Maybe baseball is taking up all of his time. Maybe the jock’s life really is as hard and arduous as they say. Other than an exchange of rent once a month, Scott has no excuse to see her, to talk to her, to even look at her. Somehow, she feels emptier knowing this, but she knows she shouldn’t.

After about ten times attempting the crescendo of the second movement, she gets up, backs her cello and bow away, and finds herself walking out the front door. A goodwill checkup to Scott isn’t out of bounds, is it? Or is it overstepping? Who makes these rules anyway?

She skirts his car on the right side of the house and into the sun of the backyard to the adobe studio in which Scott lives. Gail knocks four times, her heart in her throat, while reaching for the fifth. He opens.

“Miss C!” He drinks an energy drink out of a long can. His body is bare except for a tight pair of briefs; Gail can’t help but notice the calf muscles almost ripping the fabric apart. Most noticeable, though, is his bulge, which is packed to the left side, leaving an unnatural-looking mound.

“Miss C,” Scott is saying. “You want something?” It’s as if time passes on without her. She inspects Scott’s face, focusing on his bright, green eyes.

As if a flip turns on, she scrambles for something to say.

“Matthew,” she begins, forming some tendril of an excuse, “said he left…” She stops, turning her eyes to a potted plant. “His book. His economics book.” It’s the one subject she knows he's taking this semester, as if Scott would have his schedule memorized. Scott smiles like he knows a secret.

“Economics?”

“Yes. And can you please go find it?” “Gail,” he says, putting his hands on her shoulders, “don’t take things so seriously.” He presses his face to meet hers. “Just come in and sit. I’ll try to look for, what was it, an economics book?” He holds the door open, concentrating on the final sips of his drink.

The interior of the studio is much darker and emptier than the tranquil shrine that Matthew kept; gone were the Ottoman and couch, the mahogany bookcases, the dining room table under the canvas-enclosed lamp. Matthew never told her that he was taking so much out. The only discernible things visible within the remaining curtained dusk were a giant HD TV with some sort of war game on pause, and in front, like it came with the TV, a greenish recliner.

“Hey, wanna grab a beer and sit down?” he yells from his room.

She came this far, but before she can decide, Scott comes back, and as expected, holds no book in his hand. “Got nothing,” he says, opening the refrigerator. “I need one of these after my, like, billionth energy drink of the day.” His hands come out gripping two beer cans. He hands one to Gail. She shrugs and slowly takes it from his hand.

“There you go, Gail,” he says. “There’s hope for you yet.”

She jumps onto the couch on instinct, kicking off her shoes. She’s relieved that she remembered to paint her toenails that morning a shiny black.

“Oh, believe me, Scott, I’ve seen and done things that would scare you,” she says, ruffling the back of her hair and smiling.

“There we go — a smile. Shiny.”

“You know, you were a little shit when you were young. As a matter of fact, you’re kind of a little shit now.”

“Well, I was always scared of you.”

Gail can’t help but come to the realization that Scott is meat, pure meat. He smells, exudes, and hums masculinity in the most rugged and alpha sense. His shoulders, now touching her own beside her on the couch, are massive; it seems a wonder that he can fit through a doorway.

“And if I can get back to a 2.0 average, I can stay in the rotation. I take most of my classes at night because of practice.”

Gail props her bare feet on the coffee table, wiggling her small toes. She nods on instinct, smiling, not at what he has to say but because of the proximity of his shirtless body to her. Apparently, from the little she actually hears, he is a pitcher on the University of Alabama team. A jock, of course, the sweaty, strong specimen of man.

Scott looks at her feet, smiling. “You have wonderful arches,” he says.

Gail stands up. “Oh shit,” she yells. “I gotta go.” The Philharmonic show starts in an hour, and she hasn’t even put on her makeup.

She runs out the door with her sandals in hand. She doesn’t look back.

That night she comes back home after the concert with flayed nerves but a satisfied spark in her stomach. She takes out her keys, thinking about maybe finding another excuse to talk to Scott, when she hears his car door shut and a female laugh under the scuffle of gravel.

“Hey, Ms. C, this is Donna!”

“Hayv-lo murk see,” Donna utters, falling into Scott’s long legs. The poor girl is more than faded.

Gail gives a curt wave back and continues through the doorway.

  For a week or so after, Gail would look out her window to see a wide variety of college girls stumbling into the studio with Scott: all were blond, thin-boned, unable to move given their own faculties, and loud with a shriek that could render one insane. Inevitably, they would scurry down the driveway, looking back and forth like frightened deer, clutching their handbags and shoes.

It’s not as if Gail is threatened or jealous — she feels too old to waste such emotion — but it all seems a waste of a good physique, a body they don’t deserve.

One day, she gets a voicemail from Scott about the air conditioning, something about needing her to look at it during the day, anytime during the week. After a short rehearsal with her quartet the next afternoon, she comes back to the house, finding Scott’s car gone. Although she is clueless as to how internal cooling units work, she uses her spare key to enter the studio. Finding the place darker than before, and not wanting to disturb anything, she walks carefully and slowly to negotiate her path. The bedroom is on the right down the hallway, so she uses her hands to feel for the door, almost frantic in the fear that any time spent in the place would be trouble. Under the door, light radiates through the crack from the open blinds in the room. Confident she can get in and out with the light there in quick time, she grabs the doorknob and turns.

At once, she doesn’t look at the bed to the left in the corner, heading straight for the unit in the closet. Movement to her left causes her to turn; she stops still.

On the twin bed with the covers askew, Scott lies nude, legs spread, his right hand whisking away at his tall, growing erection. His testicles, proportionally hefty, sag and rest on the bed between his legs.

“Gail, perfect,” he says calmly.

Gail stands perfectly still, and it takes all she has to turn the other way and hold up her palm.

“Jesus, Scott, what the hell?”

“What?” He stops stroking and looks at her.

“I thought you were gone. Where’s your car?”

“In the shop. Rode my bike here after practice.”

Gail covers her eyes and turns around. The resulting silence in the room is broken only by the smack of flesh on flesh, continuing at a rapid rate.

“Oh God, are you still doing that while I’m here?” Her voice cracks — the adrenaline in her veins accumulates into a poison that shuts her body and mind down. Her arms begin to shake, then her legs. She feels as if she’s in an accident, that horrifying stab in the pit of the stomach as the vivid images in the mind come out in a harsh, fleeting moment.

“Gail, c’mon. Just play with it. You’re not very good at hiding your horniness.”

Gail turns around, stone-faced and still. She crosses her arms and continues to watch, thinking of her next move. Her body continues to function on autopilot: she can feel the moisture between her legs as she shifts, her nipples hardening, her mouth warm and pulsing.

“Look at you. Pig. You’re just a nineteen-year-old kid. Show some respect.” Although her voice quivers, she pulls it off, complete with the head nods to accentuate.

Scott looks petrified, the blood drained from his face. He stops, propping himself up on his arms. “But I thought, I can’t…”

Gail walks to the side of the bed, resting her elbows on the mattress, her head in her hands.

“You can’t what? Hear the truth?”

“You can’t just do that. You’re in my fucking room and you can’t say that.”

“Oh?” Scott’s eyebrows furrow in concentration or anger or both. His lips tighten. “Come and suck my huge cock. Right now. Make me cum.” He reaches down to touch Gail’s face, but she bows, and his hand goes through her hair. She guides him by hoisting herself on the bed between his legs, his fingers tightening onto a clump of her hair.

Gail, with her clothes completely on, including shoes, crawls a little farther and pulls his legs apart some more; they are like canyons swallowing her whole. Gail gently kisses each thigh, making her way upward slowly. Soon she sucks a little more, moving farther up still, as close to his balls as she can. She can already feel him grow — the muscles contract, and with her left eye looking up, she can see his long, thick shaft veer up toward the ceiling. After a loud smack, she lifts her head entirely from his thighs. His finely tuned muscles quiver, aching for more, his cock now fully hard against his chiseled abs. With her tongue flat and wet, she begins to lick the skin between Scott’s balls. He moans softly, placing his hand behind her head, and with her lips, she softly pinches his scrotum around each testicle. She lathers up as much saliva as possible and lets it flow directly on the smooth, bulbous head of his uncut cock. It drips down the shaft and lands at the base and into the sparse pubic hair there. With the tip of her tongue, Gail traces a soft line underneath the shaft to the area under the head; there she teases by lapping up and down as softly as she can. As if turning on a dial, she grabs his cock in her hand and hungrily licks each side, one after the other in rapid succession.

“Take my cock,” Scott says under his breath.

“Want me to?” she asks with her lips against the head.

All he can do is move his torso quickly, indicating yes.

“Good, because I’m going to take it anyway.” She cups her lips around the head and lets it take over the inside of her mouth. Its smooth, raw warmth is enough to make her own thighs quiver. She cups his large sack in her hand as she lowers down on the shaft. Scott’s muscles on his abs and groan quiver like a hiccup, and he moans louder this time, up into the ceiling. Gail bobs her head slowly up and down, taking his cock in her wet mouth, going as far down as she can, which is farther than she expects. She loves the feeling of him inside her mouth, an answer to a craving she always had. After picking up the pace, pumping him as he breathes faster, Gail slurps upward and jacks his shaft with her right hand.

Without warning, Scott stops her with his own hand. “Miss C, get up.”

Breathing hard and without asking why, she puts her feet on the ground and walks toward the closet. She stands still, quivering, her back turned toward him. She feels him walk toward her, his rugged weight vibrating the floorboards. She feels his hands on her shoulders, moving down to where her yoga pants tie off. With two expert thumbs, he grabs the waist and pantie line and pulls them down, baring her ass to him. He takes her left leg and pulls it from her tennis shoe, baring her foot, and after doing the same with the other leg, he begins to lick up her shin to thigh, stopping just short of her throbbing outer labia. Suddenly, he pulls up her shirt with violent force, throwing the light t-shirt across the room. He presses against her; his thick cock presses against her ass. Kissing her on the neck, she tries to turn, but he stops her. Before she can speak, he picks her up with a savage energy and pushes her up against the wall. Grunting, he feels her with his cock and enters her pussy with a piercing stab, sinking in deep before pulling back again. Gail put her hands against the wall in a cloud of delirium, a hot aura engulfing her body, tingling to the point of breaking.

“Use me, Scott,” Gail thumps from her throat.

“Pound me like the little shit you are.”

Scott picks up the pace, slapping his torso against her ass, taking her over as she yields to another euphoria. “Yes, mommy,” he says between breaths. Then, he thrusts his cock in deep, hitting a place inside that forces her to give up; her pussy contracts, expelling Scott’s cock, sending her quivering to her knees. She rasps on her knees while her mind shudders with starry, forceful elation.

When she stands up, she starts to laugh, covering her face.

“What’s wrong?” she can hear Scott say.

She walks to the bed and falls down as the laughter continues, getting louder. She lies on her back, drawing her feet back. “Better make this one count, you little spaz. Let’s see if I can break you.” She spreads her legs, slowly working her labia with a finger.

As he climbs on the bed and grabs her thighs, she spreads her legs as far as they can go. She likes the way they give themselves up, in a way that places the legs in the opposing position they are supposed to be. This time, Scott enters more sensually, almost hesitantly. Gail wraps her legs around his back, crunching her toes as she accepts the buds of ecstasy again. He grabs her tits in his hands. She whispers to him, telling him he’s so young, so fresh. She will always be the older woman, the unattainable even though he fucks her. Soon, with a few thrusts reluctantly stabilizing, his biceps quiver, and his face clenches. She pats him on the back and tells him to finish inside her, and the familiar warmth of cum fills her there. 

After getting up, he hands her a dirty t-shirt to wipe the rest.

She gets dressed as he lies back down. When she finishes, he gets up, grabs her by the waist, and leans in to kiss her. Gail stops his lips with her fingers, shaking her head.

“This is over now,” she says, sternly.

Scott furrows his brow.

When she reaches the door, she seductively slides her arms up the edge, planting herself on her right hip. “By the way, rent’s due tomorrow.”