PREVIOUS “MOUSE” POSTINGS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

Mouse Does the Gym–Again!

Somehow Tom persuaded me around midday that a workout would do wonders for me. I doubted it. I still doubt it as I finish running a mile and head back into the gym. The air is crisp with scents of autumn, wood smoke, moldering leaves.

To say that I am caught unaware as I enter the gym and then immediately feel an arm lock around my throat would be a huge understatement. Instinct kicks in. My elbow flies, jabs into a hard stomach, but it’s enough to loosen the man’s grip around my throat. I rotate, knee up into the agony-zone, which must have been unexpected because Joe falls to the mat, his body curving in, his arms hugging himself. While I’m assessing him, wondering what that was about, from the corner of my eye I notice movement. I spin around. Tom’s advancing on me, his eyes glittering dangerously.

He blocks my first shot, my second, my third, with the fourth he grabs my arm and then I’m lying flat on the mat with him straddling me holding my arms above my head with just one hand. I’m breathing hard; he’s hardly breathing at all. Despite the violence of a moment ago, this feels erotic, sexually charged, and yet he seems oblivious. Can’t he see the desire in my eyes? I know he’s all about the job, but is he totally unattracted to me?

“Nice job with Joe, Mouse. But we need to work a little more on this,” he says.

I raise my hips suggestively. “I agree.”

If he were the eye rolling-type I have no doubt he would have done it. Instead, he sighs and gets up.

His blunder is turning his back on me. I whirl my leg, hitting his knees, which, make no mistake about it, hurts, sending him crashing to the mat and I am on him, straddling him as he was straddling me just moments ago. I try to raise his arms, but it’s like moving tree trunks. With a quick blur of movement, he’s regained dominance and I’m looking up into his blue-green eyes again. This time he grins.

“Nice, but still I finish on top,” he says.

“I’m sure you always do. You should let me be on top once in a while.”

He tweaks my nose just like I am a five-year old or a Mouse. Then he’s up, walking out of the gym while I’m still lying there staring up at the ceiling and its tangle of steel supports.

“He’s a lost cause, Mouse,” Joe says.

I look over at him. He’s sitting up now, his face still pale, his knees pulled up, his arms resting on them while he stares at me. I think I see pity in them.

“It’s alright. It’s not like I Iove him or anything.” But I have been crushing on him for over a year. And those kisses a few months back, even if it was just part of Tom’s job, they had left me wanting more, a lot more.

“That’s good. It would suck if you did,” Joe says.

“No kidding.” I am pretty sure it does suck.

end 2/20/2017

S. Darlington