Break Away

by Robin Edwards

  “So, Wily isn’t your real name?” Sam broke the ice.

  “No, it’s just what Professor started calling me, and then it caught on, now everyone calls me that. My name is Jamie, and you’re Sam right?”

  “Yeah, it’s Sam. Should I call you Wily also or just Jamie?”

  I suddenly felt self-conscious again, “Well, no one calls me Wily outside of here. So it’s up to you.” I shrugged as he smiled back at me.

  Damn that smile of his!

  “Here you guys go,” Professor Felix appeared thankfully and handed each a bottle of water.

  Thanks, Felix. I better get going, I need to get back home and freshen up. I have a meeting in a few hours.” Sam said as he wiped sweat from his brow and took a sip of water.

  “Alright bro, thank you for coming in. You’ll call me, right?” Felix asked and gave Sam a fist bump.

  “Yeah, I’ll let you know when I can come in for training again. I want that purple belt.”

  “Well, you definitely have been training for it.” Felix smiled.

  “Thank you, I certainly appreciate it. Jamie, it was fun meeting you. Thank you for the loss. I will be utterly disappointed for a long time. I want a rematch.” Sam winked and patted me on the arm.

  Oh, my! Please touch me again.

  Sam put on his slippers, bowed and exited the building. That was it, my time with Sam was now over. Even with the promise of a rematch, it could be for good. I was distracted by the heat of the moment and lost what could be my only chance. If I only had something to keep it going, but I didn’t and couldn’t anyway. He had an important obligation to attend to.

  “Thank you for helping me out, Wily.” Professor Felix broke my train of thought. “I didn’t want to risk getting injured.”

  “Anytime, Professor. It’s good to get an extra practice in especially with someone I’m not used to sparring.”

  “I knew it would be a good match considering his strength and age versus your genius and youth. I was very curious to see who would win in the end.” Professor Felix laughed.

  “Me, of course.” I joked back as I watched Sam pull away in his navy colored pick-up truck. “So, that’s Sam.”

  “Yeah, great guy.” Professor Felix agreed. When he noticed I made no attempts and replying, he added, “Wait, don’t tell me Wily likes what she sees?” Felix asked in surprise.

  “Well…” I shrugged.

  “Hell must have frozen over!”

  “What do you even mean?” I laughed.

  “So, that’s it huh? I would have never guessed you sprung on a guy like Sam.”

  “Why wouldn’t I like Sam? Something wrong with him?”

  “No, he’s a great guy. It’s just…”

  “No, tell me,” I asked.

  Well, to be honest, I thought you played for the other team.”

  “What?” I choked on the water I just sipped. “Why would you even say that?”

  “Well, because you never talked about anyone you were seeing and well you enjoyed rolling around with guys and never giggled about it like the other girls,” Felix explained.

  “That made you think I liked women?”

  “Well, since you always took Jiu Jitsu so seriously and avoided the other girls, I figured you were doing it so you wouldn’t get distracted by them.”

  “I avoided what little women we had because they never took it seriously enough and we both know they were never a match for me anyway, they always whined.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I misjudged you. Now I know.”

  “Does he attend the morning sessions? I never see him in the evening ones.” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Sam. Does he attend the morning sessions?”

  “No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t have time to attend. He mostly does private training sessions with me when he can. He has a very busy schedule, and if there is anyone here also, I usually have him roll around with them or me if there’s nobody else. He has attended classes once or twice before, but it’s rare. He just doesn’t have the time.” Felix explained before heading back into his office.

  Interesting.

  I wasn’t quite sure when I would see Sam again, but I was determined to find a way to do it. I wondered at the possibility of asking Professor Felix for Sam’s number, but I decided against it because that would violate his privacy. I could tell that Professor Felix respected Sam a lot in such a way that if you didn’t know any better, the roles were reversed and Professor Felix was the student.

  Besides, getting Sam’s number would be considered stalking as well, and that was illegal. It would be of no use coming to morning sessions because not even Professor Felix knew when Sam would have time to train again.

  I also couldn’t keep grilling Professor Felix more than I already have. He probably assumed it was just a passing fancy, but I was serious about Sam. He was the first man in a long time that had me feeling this way, and I wasn’t about to let it go that quickly.

  Chapter Two

  SAM

  I LIVED A VERY BUSY LIFE, but it was a life that I chose for myself very early on. I had a very unusual childhood being the son of a very famous musician and local celebrity. My father, Jerry Ellis was well known in the rock scene for decades, and in the summers he would take the entire family with him whenever he was on tour, performing at local venues and interviews.

  So much so, I was completely unaware how lucky I was to not only be financially well-off but to have a father that was loved by millions. I didn’t know any different until the day my father let me help him carry the bags of fan mail he would get from his management company because he insisted on personally writing back to each and every one.

  My father was a good man and there for us despite traveling a lot during the school year. The rock lifestyle eventually caught up with him – the drinking, exhaustion partying was partially responsible for his death. I was in college and had decided to fly home during Spring Break because my mother said his health had deteriorated. He had retired from the music industry at this time but still traveled occasionally to do interviews and other events his management company asked him to do as part of his contract.

  Worried about my father, I came home to spend the week with him before I had to fly back and prepare for upcoming finals. He had been bedridden for days and refused to go to the hospital. I think he had this uncanny belief it made him feel the age that he was. That night he was repeatedly coughing, I tried to walk with him to my car so I could rush him to the hospital, he ended up dying in my arms.

  The doctors called it Bacterial Pneumonia. It was a terrible loss to the music industry and an even bigger loss to my family. He was my best friend, and I missed him terribly. As time passed, I accepted the fact that he was no longer around but it didn’t change how much I missed him. A couple of years later, my father’s business partner approached my older brother Mark who had both an MFA and MBA. He wanted my brother to assist him and lead the foundation he started with my father before his death that promoted the arts.

  He also pitched an idea to Mark that he wanted him to set up a company that maintained our father’s legacy through entrepreneurial pursuits. Mark loved the idea and agreed instantly. After a few years, Mark had to step down to support his new wife’s career and asked if I wanted to take over in his place with the promised he’d help now and then. I agreed and have been responsible for my father’s legacy ever since.

  In the past thirteen years that I’ve been the head of the organization, it’s grown more than billions of dollars not only with the for-profit side but also with the foundation. If I wasn’t traveling doing interviews about my father’s music career, I was promoting products that represented things that he liked. Partnerships with music companies, guitar manufacturers, the scholarship fund, books documenting his life and promotional DVDs. Anything that positively represented my father and what he did for the music industry and anything that he loved or wanted to do, the organization pursued it.

  We were
growing rapidly in both revenue and operations but also in public awareness. We were getting to be so widely known we received thousands of inquiries a day asking when we would be doing this or that if we were going to sell any memorabilia, where they could find XYZ product, and while I loved it all for my father, it left no time for a social life.

  In my younger years, I took advantage of the constant attention the organization received, and I would spend time with the women that paid close and personal attention to me. I would typically choose one that day, and I’d take her out to the best clubs and restaurants in Los Angeles and then take her on my boat and go sailing at night. It always ended up getting me laid. Hell, I didn’t even have to take them out, they would have fucked me anyway. They wanted their fifteen minutes of fame.

  It was a great period in my life – the women, parties, traveling, drinks and I had a great time. It eventually got to be tiresome, and I came back home to settle down and take being the head of the foundation and the enterprise seriously which I can associate its growth with. If I hadn’t made the intelligent choice at growing up, I would have failed the company and my father.

  Now, on the rare occasion, I had free time, I would spend time surfing, training with Felix, on my boat sailing on the bay, hanging out with the family or playing with my dog, Owen. The drawback of being part of a well-known company and having a famous father was that I was constantly approached by fans, a lot of them female. While I appreciated the fact that the public loved my dad, it often times got to be exhausting dealing with the women flashing me their puppy dog eyes or boldly touching me.

  During my wild days, I partied and drank so much I got this crazy notion that me and this woman I had regularly been seeing Gina, should get married in Vegas at this chapel. It was a stupid idea, and we were far from being ready for marriage let alone a relationship with each other. We got an annulment less than a year later.

  Ever since then and especially the day I decided to stop all the nonsense and settle down, my social life disappeared too. While I had a great group of friends and acquaintances, I rarely dated anymore. If I wasn’t spending time with my family, I was focusing on the Foundation. When I had free time, I just wanted to be alone. Even if it wasn’t by choice, it naturally happened that way.

  I developed a guarded lifestyle, and I was careful about who I interacted with. I was far too busy to take the time in getting to know someone and find out whether they were someone who just wanted their fifteen minutes of fame. Plus, I didn’t have the time to focus on anyone in particular, and it wouldn’t be fair to them. My current circle of friends knew where they stood in my life and understood that I wouldn’t always be around for special events in their life, as much as I wanted to.

  I would always try my best to be there for those in my life, but because I was always out of town 90% of the time, I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. Thus, I found it better to just keep to myself.

  “Beep! Beep!” my phone rang through the speakers of my truck. I looked at the display on my dashboard, it was my admin, Tobias.

  “What’s up?” I said as I pressed the answer button.

  “Hey, Sam I just called to check in and make sure you remembered that you have a meeting at noon here at the office.”

  “Thanks, Tobias. I’m just going to drive home and freshen up. I just got out of my training session, but I should be there in time.”

  “Great. I’ll see you soon.”

  “Bye,” I said and hung up the call.

  I pulled out of the Animus Training Center parking lot and got onto the freeway to head back to my home on the north end of the bay in Sutton Hill. I hit ‘redial’ on the dashboard display, and Tobias picked up immediately.

  “John Ellis Foundation, this is Tobias, how can I help you?”

  “Tobias, this is Sam.”

  “Hey, Sam.”

  “Can you do me a favor? Can you go into my office and pull the NSK file. There should be a 2-page spreadsheet in it. Can you make about 5 copies of it and give those copies to Amy? She was looking for them. Have her call me if she needs anything.”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Bye,” Tobias had said before he hung up.

  We were in the middle of pursuing a distribution relationship with NSK and have our liquors division place on retail shelves. This was a new venture for our company, but my father was an aficionado, and this was one of the things he wanted to pursue, so we did this for him. I have no doubt he’d be proud of us if we landed a distributor.

  Due to traffic on the roads, it took longer than expected to get home. I needed a long shower, and I lived close enough to the office to where I could probably fit in a short nap. I had been up since dawn finalizing my speech for the Hall of Fame ceremony I was attending next week in Ohio. They were inducting my father in, and I was accepting the award on his behalf.

  Convinced I had a well-written sentiment honoring my father, I went to my training session with Felix which turned out more eventful than expected. I was always up for sparring with different people at the center because Felix was right about me plateauing. While I learned more advanced techniques in private sessions with him, I was hindering my progress by sparring with him solely. I learned what his typical strategies were and it wasn’t preventing my brain’s capacity to evolve and think at the moment.

  I was surprised when he asked me to practice with Jamie, I never grappled with a female before, at least not in that sense. After Felix had invited me to do so, I could see why he claimed Jamie was far more talented than anyone I’ve ever seen. Looking at her you wouldn’t think that she was aggressive as she was in Jiu Jitsu by the way she spoke and carried herself but she was a feisty one and a little spitfire on the mat.

  When we first started grappling, I wanted to take it easy on her despite hearing about her talents because I didn’t want to cause her any physical harm or injuries but when she quickly got me into a hold despite me having the advantage the entire time, I knew I underestimated her. She could definitely hold her own and then some.

  Then before I realized what she was doing, she had me in a chokehold in a blink of an eye, and I had no choice but to tap out. She had me completely exhausted, but I thoroughly enjoyed the training session. I looked forward to getting the opportunity to train with her and Felix again but the way that my calendar looked, I don’t know when that would be.

  I turned the shower on to the warm setting and let the steam rise before stripping out of my gym clothes and letting them fall to the floor. Once the steam filled the room enough to fog up the glass, I stepped into the shower and let the rapid stream of water hit my chest and the rest of my body.

  The water felt good, washing away the salt from the dried sweat on my skin. I splashed the water on my face breathing in the steam to clear my sinuses and let the water land on my head, drenching my hair. I exhaled deeply before grabbing the shampoo and body wash and lathered it all over my hair and skin. Despite my exhaustion, I was still pumped with adrenaline enough to want to still jerk off.

  I grabbed the moisturizer from my medicine cabinet next to the shower and as quick as I could snap open the top, I poured some on my hand and wrapped my fingers around my cock and groaned in response. I tried to think about all of the usual things that would typically expedite what I was doing, but for some reason or another, it wasn’t helping.

  I searched my mind, trying to be creative and all I could do was think about how my day was going so far. While I stroked, my mind kept going back and forth between writing the speech, grappling, stuck in traffic, the meeting I had to go to and then it went back to the grappling. I didn’t want my thoughts to go into that direction, but I wanted to climax desperately.

  Unsure of what to do, in the end, my horniness won, and I gave in, “Oh, what the hell.”

  My mind started thinking about more tame things at first - the way she smiled and how she kept playing with her hair and then I started thinking about her tight pants
that showed her curves underneath. The way her chest bounced when she breathed heavily.

  “Yep, that did it.” I groaned. I arched my back and started pumping eagerly, reveling in the thoughts of what it would feel like if I touched her. Better yet, if she touched me and where.

  “Yeah, that’s it…” I muttered to myself and stroked faster knowing my climax was very close to coming.

  “Fuck!” I grunted as my thighs clenched, body tensed and then I shuddered in release. “Ugh…God.”

  In the moments that followed, everything was silent. I was completely aware again that I was by myself in my bathroom. I couldn’t help but think that for the first time in a long time that this would have been better with someone in here with me. I didn’t mean to use Jamie as bait for my thoughts, but I couldn’t help it. I would have rather used others in my life at the moment but my mind went in that direction on its own, and it worked. Can’t blame me for that.

  I had to promise myself that I wouldn’t go in that direction with her again. Once I did, it was hard to see them any other way after that. I finished washing up and shut off the shower. I was hesitant to get out, but I knew the longer I stayed in there, the shorter nap I would be able to take, and my body definitely needed the rest. I definitely needed to be well rested and on my game at the meeting with the distributors today. We needed the win.

  Chapter Three

  JAMIE

  “JAMIE? HELLO, JAMIE? CAN YOU HEAR ME? WAKE UP!” John said as he snapped his fingers in front of my eyes.

  “God, what?” I shouted, clutching my chest in annoyance. “You scared the shit out of me!”

  “Sorry, I was trying to get your attention. You kind of tuned out there for a sec. I was just getting to the good part of my date last night.” John grinned.

  John and I were members along with three others in his band called Plus One. We had arrived at the studio his father owned where we practiced and recorded all of our demos and EPs. John’s father worked in the music industry as an audio engineer and producer for the past twenty years and believed that we were talented enough to make it but was disappointed to know that it wasn’t what we wanted out of life.