It doesn’t look like there’s any way Anchor’s going to make it. After all, he’s far, far behind.
From my perspective, it looks like all the other teams are practically at the finish, at the end of the pool already. Of course, I’m forgetting that they have to do a couple more laps. I’ve completely lost track of how many laps they have to do.
Dave, though, looks like he’s counting laps on his fingers.
I don’t dare ask Dave right now, since he seems like he might snap if someone breaks his concentration. I’ve always seen Dave as just a complete idiot, an arrogant prick but without the muscle and brains to back it up like Anchor can. But now, I see him suddenly as a really good friend. He obviously really cares if Anchor wins. Although, then again, he is on the same swim team, and maybe he just wants his team to win.
Beaumont doesn’t seem to be able to concentrate, and I can understand the feeling. If I don’t have a seriously vested personal interest in Anchor, I doubt I’d be interested in following these swimmers at all.
Anchor dives incredibly far into the water, hitting it with little resistance, very little splash.
His long arms are swinging like wind turbines, and his body seems to be sliding forward through the water without any effort. He’s cruising alone, obviously going faster than the others.
He’s already overtaken one.
Now another.
“Holy shit,” exclaims Dave, jerking his body back in excitement, knocking his crutches to the floor as he does so. But he’s too excited to pick them up. “I’ve never seen even Anchor swim like this.
“He’s going fast, then, is he?” says the clueless Beaumont. He should really stick to what he knows best, although to his credit, this is pretty much what he does.
Suddenly, Anchor has overtaken everyone but one swimmer, who’s about a foot in front of him.
They’re both rushing towards the end of the pool, and this is the last lap in the whole race.
With furious kicking, water going absolutely everywhere, Anchor suddenly pulls ahead.
He’s won.
“Holy shit, he won!” screams Dave, jumping up, and nearly toppling over again.
“He won!” I scream, jumping up myself, and giving Dave a big hug.
I catch Beaumont’s eye, and he gives me a curious look, that says, “Why do you care so much, Allison? Is something else going on?”
But I’m not about to tell Beaumont what Anchor and I have been up to.
17
Anchor
I get out of the pool. I feel kind of numb for some reason, as if the shock of winning hasn’t hit me yet. This was one race that I actually didn’t think I’d win. I don’t know what I was thinking pulling Chucky in after I knocked Spellman out.
Someone hands me a towel, and a few people are clapping me on the back, but overall, the atmosphere is subdued and quiet. My own team hasn’t rallied around me or anything like that. In fact, they’re all standing far away, not looking me in the eye. Obviously, they’re worried about what coach is going to do. After all, it’s unheard of to race against your own coach’s orders.
I don’t know how I convinced the officials to let me race. But it’s done now.
Glancing around, I don’t see coach anywhere. My only thought is to get the hell out of here before coach gets to me and really kicks me off the team.
If he can’t talk to me, he can’t really kick me off the team, right? I mean, sure, he already told me I was off the team, but that was in the heat of the moment, when he was furious. Maybe it won’t stick. Maybe if I give him a couple days, he’ll change his mind, especially considering this improbable victory I just pulled off.
I’m already through the locker room. I haven’t even bothered to change into my regular clothes, or even pull my pants on over my swim briefs.
“Anchor!” screams someone, a high pitch voice that sounds familiar, but the heat of the race is making everything seem a little foreign and unfamiliar.
It’s Allison, and she’s running towards me.
She gives me a huge hug. It seems like she’s about to kiss me, but she turns around nervously and looks behind her.
She takes me by the hand, and pulls me away, towards the door.
“Let’s get out of here,” she says.
We don’t talk as we rush back to her dorm room. She seems a little frantic, and I can’t read her yet. Is she mad about me punching out Spellman, and pulling that shit with the last race?
A minute later, she answers my question herself. And it’s not what I was expecting.
“That was so hot the way you raced anyway, the way you defied authority,” she says, almost breathless, giving me a huge kiss, her tongue coming all the way into my mouth. She tastes sweet, and her mouth is warm and wet. Her body is comforting, with her breasts squished up against my naked wet chest.
“I thought you’d be mad about that,” I say.
She shakes her head and kisses me again, her hand unexpectedly working its way down my swim briefs, and grabbing my cock, which is already swelling up, coming completely erect in a second.
I’m still out of breath from the race, and my heart feels like it’s pounding. I was expecting to kick back and relax after the race, like I normally do, but a new type of excitement overtakes me, and it’s all because of Allison and her hot body, her body that wants mine.
She wants me, like nothing else in the world, and nothing else has ever seemed hotter to me.
“The sheets are going to get wet,” I say.
“I don’t care,” she says, pushing me down onto the bed.
I kick my swim briefs off. Her sheets are already soaked from my body.
She falls down on top of me, pulling her shirt off over her head in one swift motion.
She’s wearing a plain white bra, but no pair of breasts has ever looked sexier, or hotter to me, or more inviting.
I try to grab them lightly, to massage them, but she’s pushing her body right against mine, and I don’t even have a chance to reach them.
She’s reaching down, her hand in a fist around my cock. But she only jerks it for a moment, before she’s shoving it, quite indelicately, inside herself.
“Oh yeah,” she says, letting out a moan, as she starts to ride me in a fury. Finally, her body is far enough away from mine, as she arches her back, enjoying the sensation, that I can massage her breasts. This just makes her moan harder.
It feels perfect inside her. She feels tight, wet, warm, and delicious.
“This is just what I needed after a hard race,” I say.
“I hope you’re not too tired, you don’t seem to be that enthusiastic,” she says. I’m pretty sure she’s just messing with me, or wants to see what I’ll say.
“I like the way you’ve completely come out of your shell,” I say, as she rides me, thrusting her hips forward and grinding down against me.
“It’s more than that. I’ve cast it aside and burnt it to the ground,” she says.
“I like the way you talk,” I say.
“You sure you’re not too tired?”
“I’ve never been tired in my life,” I say.
To prove my point, I grab her around the sides, pulling her down close to me.
Now I shift my weight, suddenly reversing our positions, so that she’s underneath me and I’m on top, pushing my wet body down against hers. I love the way her breasts feel against my chest, like delicious sexy cushions for fucking.
I ride her hard, thrusting like I’ve never thrust before. It’s just like a continuation of my race, only this time it’s a fucking race rather than a swim race.
She arches her back. She’s not going to last long—I can tell. She’s not going to hold it in much longer.
She lets out a tremendous noise as she comes, her stomach rising as her back curves, her hips shaking wildly. She bites me on the shoulder, not too gently.
I duck my head down and take the erect pointed
nipple of her right breast in my mouth, sucking on it. I suck gently at first, then hard, and now I bite it ever so gently. She lets out another moan.
“I’m going to come, too,” I say, beginning to buck my hips in a series of hard and rapid thrusts.
Soon I can’t contain it any more. I’m about to come. I can’t even start to think about anything else, in order to delay coming. I’m way past the line. I’m way over the edge, and now it’s unleashing itself, pumping and pumping, my cock spasming inside her.
Shit, I think, did I put on a condom?
Then I remember—I did put on a condom. Somehow I did it when we were just starting, right before Allison pushed me on to the bed. What luck, I think to myself. What a fucking relief.
I’m deep inside her, and she’s still moaning. I push my hips forward, hard, pushing the tip of my cock just a little farther inside her, as I continue coming. It seems to never end, and neither does the pleasure.
I finally pull out of her, giving an unintentional little moan as I do so. It just feels so… I don’t know how to describe it.
I look down at my cock, and sure enough there’s a condom on it, stretched tight at the sides. The end of the condom looks like a water balloon, completely stuffed to the brim. Shit, I hope this thing doesn’t burst. I roll it off and tie it up before putting it in the trashcan.
We snuggle up against each other, her head nestled in the crook of my neck. Looking down, I admire her body once again, this time from a slightly calmer standpoint. Why is our sex so frantic? It was the same way in the locker room, although at least then we had a time constraint. I guess we’re just so eager to feel each other we can’t help but racing towards the goal each time.
“You know this is the first time we’ve cuddled?” she says, practically whispering into my ear.
“I like it,” I say.
“You seemed like such a tough guy, staying so calm, when the coach was in your face. I wouldn’t have guessed you were the cuddling type. After all, you ran out the last time.”
“You know good and well I had a race to get to,” I say.
“I know, I’m just kidding,” she says.
She seems sweet and innocent again, despite the intense sex we just had. It feels like I can’t really get a read on Allison. Sometimes she seems shy and bookish, and other times, she seems wild and free, ready for anything. I guess that’s how it is getting to know a person—slowly different parts of their personality start to unveil themselves to you, and in the moments before these separate parts cohere together in your mind, finally merging, it seems like you are getting to know multiple people at once.
“So you really love me?” she says, in the sweetest voice imaginable. “I wasn’t sure if it was just something stupid we were saying, you know, in the locker room during the meet, but I want you to know I really meant it. And I mean it now.”
“Yes, I really meant it,” I say, and in this instant I really know that it’s true. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I almost say this to her, but for some reason the words don’t come out. I do manage a, “I love you,” though.
“I love you, too,” she says.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, lightly running my fingers up and down her arm. I love the way her skin feels so smooth and silky. In comparison, my own body feels rough and hardened, purely practical. She, on the other hand, is a thing of beauty, as if nature worked incredibly hard just to make her in the most perfect way possible.
“Sure,” she says, smiling up at me, as if nothing I can say will bother her in the slightest. We’re completely surrounded and enveloped in the after glow of sex, and the current-glow of exchanging our second round of “I love you’s.”
18
Allison
Anchor spends the night for the first time. I can’t believe we said we love each other. I pretended to be asleep, with my eyes closed, until he drifted off. Now I’m lying here awake. We hadn’t even turned the lights on when we came in the room the first time, so all I see is darkness, now that the night has fallen.
There’s still a little part of me that’s wondering what the hell I see in this jock, and a part of me that wonders whether this is real. But I think it’s only natural to feel like this. After all, no one has no doubts at all. That’d be completely crazy.
Before Anchor drifted off to sleep, he told me all about what happened with Spellman when I was leaving the locker room.
“Aren’t you worried that the coach will really kick you off the team?” I asked him.
He just shrugged his shoulders. Somehow, it all doesn’t seem to be bothering him that much, but I can’t understand how. If I were in the same situation, or even a situation half as bad, I’d be so stressed out I doubt I’d be functional at all. I wouldn’t even be able to dress myself, let alone fall asleep in a new bed without a worry.
As I think about myself being in a similar situation, I feel that pride swelling back up inside me, that pride that he’s my man. This is my man here, lying next to me, his arm up on my side. He’s breathing gently, and now that my eyes have adjusted to the darkness, I take a good look at him, relishing the opportunity to really take in his whole naked body without worrying about him watching me look at him.
All those doubts were crazy. I can’t believe how lucky I am to be with a guy like this. There’s just something special about him. He’s just got some kind of special charisma about him, something that I’ve always felt I lacked myself. But that’s the beauty of lovers—you can find in them what you were lacking yourself, and thus completing yourself, turning yourself into a complete, whole unit.
Eventually I fall asleep. I don’t notice when it happens, but I guess you never do. Falling asleep is like falling in love: one moment you’re awake, and the next you’re asleep, and it’s impossible to ever know exactly take notice of the moment that it actually happens. Sure, there’s a point when you tell each other you’re in love, but when that actually happens is anyone’s guess.
The light is pouring in through the shades. I wake up with my heart pounding.
Anchor seems like he’s just waking up too. Maybe we’re synchronized more than I’d thought, since I haven’t made any movements that would wake him up.
“You’re not worried about people knowing we’re together now?” I say. What a dumb thing to say!
“Glad to see you too,” says Anchor, bending his head and giving me an incredibly sweet kiss.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m just nervous for you, is all.”
Anchor shrugs his shoulders. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Anyway, Spellman already told the coach that we were together, probably. There’s no doubt it’s the first thing he did when he regained consciousness.”
“But you still have to talk to the coach, right?”
“I guess so,” says Anchor, looking like he really doesn’t want to do it.
“I know it sucks,” I say. “But you’ve got to face it.”
“I’ll head over there right now,” he says.
“You think he’ll be there? It’s got to be like 6 in the morning right now.”
“Morning practice,” he says, getting out of bed, and starting to get dressed. I’d forgotten that he came here in just swim briefs, soaking wet. He bends over to get his pants out of his duffel bag.
As he bends over, I can’t help but admiring his body again. He looks like a statue that can move. I can’t believe he’s mine. All mine.
“You’re looking at me like you want another round,” he says, giving me a wink.
“Maybe I do,” I say.
“Sorry, got to get to practice. I’m already late.”
I blow him a kiss as he walks out the door.
As the door closes, all my old worries about getting discovered suddenly seem so silly and trivial.
I lie back and try to go to sleep, but my heart it still pounding. Anchor may not be concerned about what’s going to happen to him, but I am. A
nd for the first time, I realize I’m concerned for him, rather than for myself. I’m not thinking about my future career with The Journal, but for Anchor’s future careers in the Olympics and beyond. If he’s kicked off the team, what will happen to his chances? And besides, what did the Olympic scout think after seeing Anchor disobeying his coach so blatantly? What did he write in his report? Did he capture it all on his video camera?
I can’t sleep, so I get up and start doing some schoolwork.
But flipping through my math textbook gets boring really quickly, so I decide to do a different kind of work.
I open up a new email window on my computer, and start writing a new article. The last one I wrote when I was angry with Anchor for leaving me after sex. Looking back on it, maybe I overreacted. And when I think of what I wrote, I now think I certainly overacted. Why did I have such a burning desire to destroy the swim team in printed words? What had they ever done to me, except not invite me to their parties? But…wait, they actually had invited me to one of their parties. That first night that I “met” Anchor, Dave had actually invited me to a party, hadn’t he? Or had he just invited me back to his room? I can’t remember now, and it’s inconsequential anyway.
This is a completely different type of article than the one I wrote before. Instead of being filled with the nastiest stuff I could think of, all the dirt that Anchor told me, this article is basically a glowing account of Anchor’s performance in the swim meet yesterday. I heavily praise the entire swim team, including the coach. Even Spellman. I make Spellman out to be some kind of injured hero, facing Anchor, a force so much greater than himself that he can’t ever defeat him. I make the swimming team events sound like a Greek epic poem.
Halfway through, I get a phone call. It’s Anchor.
I open my cell phone.
“Shouldn’t you still be in morning practice,” I say. “Doesn’t it last like four hours or something?”
“That’d be too long even for me,” says Anchor. His voice sounds weary and tired. “They kicked me off the team.”
Football Baby: A Secret Baby Romance Page 26