I give Allison a look, partly to try to gauge her emotional state, and partly to let her know I felt something, even though I’m pretty sure it’s a better idea to keep my desires hidden from her. But I know she must have at least felt something… Even if she didn’t feel something herself, she must have been aware of how I was feeling. There’s just no way a human can experience emotions so powerful and have it not be recognized by someone in such close proximity.
But she doesn’t even meet my eyes. She’s got her head down and jotting notes onto her reporters’ pad with her little stubby pencil.
I can’t help thinking how cute she looks, with the fire of concentration about her. Another part of me, though, feels hurt, which surprises me. When’s the last time a girl has made the famous Anchor feel hurt? Probably never. Well, maybe back in second grade once, when I pulled my crush’s hair, and she told the teacher about it, landing me my first of many after school detentions.
Coach is there, coming out of the locker room behind the guys, who have already dived into the pool.
“Way to go Anchor,” says one of the guys, seeing me standing near Allison. He makes a crude gesture with his hands that I hope Allison doesn’t see.
Coach catches my eye, giving me a look that clearly says, “You better not be putting the moves on her, kid.”
“I’m going to get changed,” I say, to Allison, making sure coach can here me. “I hope you got the details you need. I hope it was helpful.” I’m trying to sound professional, but it comes out somewhat awkward. I’m just glad I don’t already have my swim briefs on, since I still have an erection.
She just gives me a little grunt and a nod, not really looking up from her notes. What happened? Just a minute ago, I could have sworn I felt something from her, some powerful interest. And now, nothing.
8
Allison
Wow, that was intense.
I’m sitting up on the swim balcony again, practically choking on the chlorine smell that’s wafting up. The heat and humidity is intense, and it seems like the pages of my notebook are growing wetter by the minute. Down below, Anchor and the rest of the swim team are splashing around, doing laps back and forth, as both the coach and the assistant coach bark seemingly contradictory orders at them.
I’m not concentrating on the swimming at all though.
All I can think about is Anchor. Anchor’s body, to be precise. But it’s something a little more than that. It’s a feeling. Some kind of magical electrical feeling that felt like it was pulsating through me, pulsing through both of us, binding us together in an inexplicable way.
I wonder if he felt it too.
My plan was just to flirt with him a little. I can tell he’s attracted to me. I can tell he wants me, although I should know better than to think it’s for anything more than another notch, another fuck. He’s probably just turning on his animal charm for me, to draw me in.
I wonder if I can even execute my plan. After all, real reporters don’t hook up with their inside sources, no matter what. I’ll never make it at a paper like The Journal if I’m falling from every guy with a decent body that I try to turn into my inside source.
Can I continue flirting with Anchor, drawing him in closer, in order to extract juicy dirt on the swim team, without actually falling for Anchor?
If I do fall for Anchor, despite myself, Beaumont will somehow find out. I know it. He has a way of finding out everything that’s happening on campus. He was a damn good journalist back in the day for a reason—he seems to always have his ear to the ground, and he can distinguish between the rushing buffalo and the lone detail that he needs.
I look down at the swim team. Somehow, I spot Anchor first. It’s like my mind is zoomed onto his body.
He’s doing the freestyle, moving powerfully through the water.
He does seem graceful on land, but it’s nothing compared to how he appears in the water, as if he can move through it without any effort at all.
His muscles are moving in perfect unison. It seems like he’s doing what he was made to do, what he was destined to do.
I can’t help admiring his body and his muscles, his chiseled face that’s turning just slightly to the side to come up for air every other stroke or so.
But I catch myself.
How can I be admiring this idiot?
He may be good at swimming. He may be good at moving through the water, but that’s probably the only thing in life he’ll ever be good at. When my damning article eventually comes out, and attaches itself like a plague to the swim team, I doubt Anchor will even be capable of reading it or understanding it. No matter what I write about him, his head is so swollen, that he’ll probably take every word as a compliment. He doesn’t seem to understand that people might not like him, or might not think he’s God’s gift to mankind the way he apparently does.
I’m spending too much time staring at Anchor, and not enough time writing or watching what’s going on with the swim team. Whatever, I think, these aren’t the important details anyway. I really don’t care what the swim team’s tactics and strategies and training practices are. What I care about is exposing their dirt, the dark underbelly that I know exists.
Better just to get started writing, I think.
I get up and leave, walking down the stairs, hoisting my heavy bag as always.
I go home to my dorm room, walking through the campus dusk by myself, like I’ve done so many times before.
I open my laptop and open up a blank word document that I stare into for a good twenty minutes, my mind racing with possibilities. But I have the feeling that it’s impossible to actually commit a word to the page. After all, I think to myself, I don’t really know anything yet about the swim team. The only things I know are that Anchor is an arrogant womanizer, and that he stole a famous campus statue, seemingly without any repercussions.
My phone buzzes on the desk next to me. It’s a text message. The vibrating buzz breaks me out of my trance.
I take my phone. It’s a text message from Anchor. We exchanged numbers earlier today.
“Swim party tonight,” he writes. “Swim house at 11pm. I want to show you the fun side of the swim team. It’s not all boring practices and laps at the pool.”
I smile to myself. Then I catch myself wondering why I’m smiling.
Am I falling for Anchor? Am I smiling just because a hot jock is texting me, inviting me to a party? Or am I smiling because this is what I’ve been waiting for: Anchor might call it the “fun” side of the swim team, but I’m going to call it the demented, perverted side, at least if half the rumors are true, that is.
The party starts at 11pm. I’m a classic night owl, but I haven’t been out that late since I was a freshman. Normally at 11pm, I’m here in my dorm room studying, reading, or writing, living my monastic life style that’s gotten me so far academically.
“Meet you there,” I write, with my fingers actually trembling against the cell phone screen.
I look in the mirror, somewhat nervously. I’m a mess. I’ve got to look better if I want to extract any good information out of Anchor.
As I frantically go looking through my closet, tossing clothes around, trying to find something suitable for the party, something hot, I make mental notes of my plan for tonight. I’m going to flirt a little bit with Anchor again, make him really think he has a chance with me. By doing so, he’ll tell me everything. There’s no way a guy like that, who’s so full of himself, could ever think that a girl is just tricking him. He’s simply not going to be mentally capable of believing a girl isn’t in love with him. And I’m not in love with him. It bothers me that I have to remind myself of that fact.
So, go to the party. That’s step one. I’ll hang around the party long enough to see what it is the swimmers get up to the there, but I doubt it’ll be a big surprise. Then I’ll get Anchor alone, and start the extraction process.
I’m surprised how cold and calculating I’m b
eing. Or at least trying to be.
It’s been a long, long time, since I dressed up and tried to look sexy. I think I’ve lost my knack for it, or maybe I never had it. I normally wear simple clothes and my hair up in a ponytail, walking around campus without makeup or jewelry.
Tonight, I put on mascara, lipstick, and a light layer of foundation, along with a dab of concealer here and there to hide the blemishes and inconsistencies that I’m acutely aware of as I stare at my face in the magnifying mirror my Mother bought me during my first semester at college. I don’t think I’ve glanced at it since she bought it for me, and it’s spent most of its life in the back of my dorm room closet.
Tonight I’m wearing a short skirt that I’d never be caught dead in normally, and a tight top that shows an ample amount of cleavage. I justify this all to myself by thinking of the famous reporters who did similar things to get the story: Erin Brokovich, for instance.
My hair is down, falling around my shoulders. I take one final look in the mirror before grabbing my purse and cell phone and leaving.
As I walk across campus, I take my smallest recorder from my purse and stick it inside the waistband of my skirt. The way my shirt bunches up down there, I don’t think it’s noticeable. I make sure it’s on and running, so that I won’t miss anything from tonight. I also have my pad and pen, but it might impede the flow of the night if I whip it out during the party, or when I’ve got Anchor all alone.
Anchor. I can’t believe I’m calling him Anchor to myself! What an idiotic nickname. I resolve here and now to call him Matt, his real name, both to myself, and to his face, no matter what the circumstances. Calling him Anchor makes me feel more like a fan than a reporter.
Every single light is on in the swimming house. It’s just off campus. It’s kind of a run down neighborhood, but the swimming house is particularly run down. It looks more like a crack house than a house for college athletes.
There’s a hip-hop song blaring from inside, but it can be heard clearly out on the dark street.
I stand there for a minute, surveying the whole thing, the bass line from the hip-hop song practically making my hair move and sway.
Suddenly one of the upstairs windows is flung open, blasting light and more music into the street.
There’s excited yelling coming from upstairs, as a naked man starts to climb out the window. What he’s trying to do I can only guess. He seems to be trying to get on top of the porch roof, but it’s many feet away, and he can’t possibly make it.
The front door bursts open, and swimmers pile out, many of them shirtless, and apparently covered in beer, holding red plastic cups, and shouting up at the guy, who’s half out the window, moving his foot around wildly and blindly as if any second he’s going to touch the top of the roof. It’s clear he’s gone out the wrong window, and is too drunk to realize it.
“You’re almost there, man,” yells one of the swimmers. I recognize as Anchor, I mean Matt’s, friend from a couple nights ago. Dave. He’s the guy who accosted me on campus, the guy that Anchor, I mean Matt, tried to “defend” me against.
The guy who’s half out the window lets out a whoop and goes falling. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but he plummets like a rock. Fortunately, he lands in a huge overgrown bush that hasn’t been trimmed in a couple decades.
The swimmers rush over to him, and pull him out, all laughing and yelling raucously. He seems fine, except for a lot of scratch marks where the branches hit him.
It’s a strange feeling, standing by myself, completely apart from the party atmosphere. I feel nervous and shy, totally separate.
Suddenly someone is putting his arm around me. “There she is.” It’s Anchor. I mean Matt.
“Hi, Matt,” I say. “Thanks for telling me about the party.” My instinct is to push his arm off of me. Or at least I think it’s my instinct. I’m not so sure now, seeing him shirtless again. He is quite attractive, and his chiseled face has never looked more alive and inviting.
I let his arm stay there. After all, I’m supposed to be flirting with him.
“What happened to calling me Anchor, like everyone else?” he says, pretending to be insulted.
“It’s a stupid name, isn’t it?” I say, but I bat my eyelashes a little bit at him. Even though I’m out of practice, or never have been in practice, with flirting, I think it still works, and has the desired effect. It seems like I can say anything I want, however harsh, as long as I accompany it with the right body gestures. Maybe this is a way to stay in character while still saying some of what I want to say.
“I’ll show you around, come on,” says Anchor, leading me by the hand into the party.
The house is completely overwhelming. I think the last time I’ve been to a frat style party, I was a freshman, and I had convinced myself that I needed to explore, at least once, everything that the campus life had to offer. I soon realized parties aren’t for me, though.
The music is so loud I can barely hear anyone. There are swimmers all over, accompanied by one or two sorority type girls each, their faces completely covered with makeup.
Matt gets me a drink from somewhere. It’s some kind of cheap gin mixed with fruit punch, probably just so they can get all the girls drunk.
Matt is yelling something in my ear, but I can’t hear what it is he’s saying.
People are playing beer pong all around. The rest are cheering, and dancing wildly. The lights are low, mostly off, leaving the darkness illuminated almost entirely by strobe lights of all different colors.
“What’s that they’re taking?” I say, pointing to a shady looking guy who’s distributing pills to a group of swimmers and their girls.
“Ecstasy,” yells Matt. It’s the first word he’s said that I understood since coming inside.
I make a mental note about the ecstasy. I know it’s illegal, and, in a situation like this, with dancing, and alcohol use, possibly very dangerous, causing serious dehydration. This is a little gem of a juicy detail, exactly the kind I’m looking for.
Trying to act casual, I take a survey of the house, or at least what I can see, given the lights. The place is in really horrible shape, and practically everything I see is a real safety hazard, not to mention some sort of health code or zoning regulation violation.
“Can we go somewhere private?” I yell to Anchor, I mean Matt. It seems too weird to call him Matt. Anchor seems to be his natural name. I really should be observing the party more, taking mental notes (because I know my voice recorder isn’t going to get anything salvageable with all the background noise), but I’m overwhelmed and really can’t take any more of this.
I turn to look for Matt, who hasn’t yet responded.
Somehow, in just a few seconds, he’s become the center of everyone’s attention. He’s hanging off a chandelier, that looks like it might fall down any second, as it creaks under his weight. It’s little glass bulbs are breaking, being crushed by his wildly-moving hands which are moving like he’s on the monkey bars.
I can’t help but admiring the agility with which he moves. His body is so big, and his chest is so bulky, but he moves just like a gymnast, doing little tricks with his hands and body.
The crowd is equally impressed, and for a moment, all the beer pong games and dancing have stopped, so that everyone can cheer him on.
He’s clearly the king of the party, not to mention the swim team, and he’s loving every second of it.
9
Anchor
I’m loving the party. Aside from the feeling I get during a swim race, this is one of the best feelings in the world. I feel like I’m at the top of the heap, king of everything. Everyone loves me, that’s for sure.
I haven’t even had to fight anyone this time. That’s just because no one’s been looking for trouble tonight.
“You want to get out of here?” Allison asks me. “Somewhere more private?”
I give her a big grin. “Sure,” I say.
Sure, there are plenty of other girls here I could hook up with easily enough. Hell, the last time we had a party this big, about a month ago, I slept with one girl, came back down to the party from my room, and then took another one up. Two in a row, not bad. There was nothing to it. At least not for me. Even Dave got laid that night, so it was a good night for everyone.
But there’s something… special about this Allison. I like the way she’s shy as hell. I like how she’s not like the sorority girls that always flock to our swim parties.
She doesn’t look like them either. There’s something different about her body. Normally she dresses in a really boring way, though, but tonight she’s dressed like I’ve never seen her before. She’s really showing off all her assets. Shit, I can’t take my eyes off her. And I think she wants me, too. She’s doing this kind of secret flirting thing. She keeps accidentally brushing her body up against mine, and then holding it there for a second, before pulling away, to show me she doesn’t mind in the least bit.
I lead her by the hand out the back entrance and we walk through the night, with the stars sparkling overhead.
I didn’t take any ecstasy tonight, although I bet half the swim team is flying. It’s not that I have a problem with drugs, but I just don’t normally need them. Being the king, I pretty much feel like I’m on ecstasy whether or not I’ve taken any. I am a little buzzed though, and I barely even notice when I put my arm around her waist as we walk away.
“Where do you want to go?” I say.
“What about the pool?” she says, giving me a special look.
I was thinking she might suggest we go back to her dorm room, and I’m a little disappointed at first. But then I think about it for a second, and realize the pool where I’m the absolute best. Hell, my name’s written on over half the walls there, and I’ve got more than a dozen trophies in the cases. How can she resist me there?
“We’re not supposed to go there,” I say, giving her a wink.
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