9. Dottie
9
DOTTIE
Sweat beads at my brow as Kira and I make our eighth pass around the Meadow Methodist High School track.
It feels insane to be sweating even with a chill in the morning air and grass that’s still coated in frost crystals from last night. My cheeks and the tips of my ears are flushed red, a hot contrast to the cool air. If it were up to me, I would have opted for sunrise yoga by the lake with Keith as my morning workout. But Kira wanted to burn some real energy and looped me into running with her in circles like a hamster on a wheel.
I am huffing and puffing as I try to keep up with her on this final lap, watching as my breath forms fog in front of my face. I'm not out of shape by any means, but the woman next to me does cardio for a freaking living. She's an anomaly of human nature, and I'm proud of myself for not having tapped out already. We round the last bend, and Kira grabs me by the hand and drags me out into the middle of the turf .
"Two miles in sixteen minutes. A lot slower than I'd like, but not bad!" She says, checking the watch on her wrist and pressing two fingers on the other hand to her pulse point. I've got both hands on my knees, hunched over as I try to catch my breath.
"C'mon," she says, nudging my hips. "We gotta stretch while we're still warm. You don't wanna be all locked up when you're older, do you?"
I try to sigh as I drop to the ground and spread my legs, reaching over to my right side and grabbing my toes. My chest hits my thigh, and I breathe into the stretch. This is the area where I excel. I've always been incredibly flexible, and I can't pretend I don't feel the tiniest bit smug watching my less-limber friend struggle to hold onto the tip of her sneaker.
"How come two miles on a stationary bike feels like nothing, but two miles on foot feels like I'm going to fall apart at any moment?" I groan as I inhale, reaching up and over to my other side.
"Because cycling is a lower-body sport and running is full body. Also, the bike has a wheel, and your cute little tootsies do not," Kira answers, reaching over and tickling my ankle. I jerk as I laugh, accidentally kicking her right in dead center in her boob in the process.
She grabs her chest dramatically and falls backwards onto the grass as she cries out, "My tit! My poor tit!"
I laugh even harder, my sides splitting at the exertion. I didn't mean to kick her, but it does feel like an appropriate payback for making me run. Kira starts to laugh through her shrieks, and I fall back onto the grass next to her.
"I'm sorry I kicked you, Keeks. I didn't catch the piercing, did I?" I ask through my chuckles, referencing the silver barbells she has in each of her nipples. She got them done on her eighteenth birthday. I went with her, dead set on getting my own nipples pierced as well, but as soon as I saw the blood dripping out her tit and the needle sticking through it, I chickened out.
I opted for a nice, sensible stud in my nose instead, and I have no regrets.
"The piercing is fine. You'll be getting a bill from my plastic surgeon, though. I think you deflated it," she whines, still rubbing her hand over her decidedly flat chest.
"Bullshit. You can't deflate what was never blown up in the first place," I say, then grimace when she lifts her leg and hits me right in the shin with the heel of her shoe.
"Payback, you bitch," she sing-songs, sticking her tongue out at me, and we devolve into another fit of chuckles.
We lay like that for long moments, smiling at nothing and staring up at the sky. I watch as clouds float across the endless sea of blue . They’re all the perfect, white fluffy kind that lie low and don't block the light from the early morning sunshine.
I throw my arms over my head and arch my back, stretching from head-to-toe like a cat. I close my eyes and breathe into it, embracing this supine position and the way it allows me to feel the stretch in my legs, lower back and arms.
When I open my eyes, I nearly scream. Kira is leaning over me, one hand on either side of my torso, her messy honey-colored curls a millimeter from being sucked up my nose on my next breath.
"What the fuck, Keeks?" I yelp as I try to swat at her face. She's quicker than me, though, and she snatches me by the wrist before I'm able to make contact. She straddles me, planting herself on my thighs and pinning me to the ground. I thrash and wiggle as I try to get out of her hold, and for a moment I think that if we had a kiddie pool and Jell-O, we might be able to make some serious money right now.
"This will go down a lot easier if you stop struggling ," she grunts out as she manages to get my hands over my head.
"I'll stop struggling when you tell me what the hell you're doing to me!" I lift my knee, thinking I might be able to get in a good crotch shot, but it ricochets right off her tight, firm ass cheek instead.
Bitch has the glutes of a Greek goddess, I swear.
I suck in a breath, wondering how it's physically possible that her butt muscle hurt my knee on contact, and then I admit my defeat. I go limp, becoming nothing more than an overcooked spaghetti noodle under her strong grasp.
"Good girl, was that so difficult?" Kira coos, and I roll my eyes.
"Honey, you better watch the praise shit because you're in a perfect position for some serious dry humping right now," I say, and Kira wiggles on top of me.
"Don't threaten me with a good time, baby girl," she purrs, and then we both laugh. I can only imagine how ridiculous we look right now, but there's no one around to care.
"Are you gonna tell me why you have me on my back in the middle of the turf?" I ask her, and despite her power position, her eyes soften.
"I've given you all weekend. Are you going to talk to me about this Stephen thing or not?" She asks quietly.
Well, quietly for Kira, anyway.
"I will, if you get off of me," I answer. Kira just shakes her head, but she does let my wrists go.
"I'll give you your hands back, but my booty is staying planted right here where it is. I don't trust you not to bolt."
Fair. I shake my wrists out and then fold my arms across my chest. It’s an awkward way to hold them with a person on my chest, but I don’t know what else to do with my hands. She did let me get away with ignoring the Stephen topic for the last few days. She knows about the texts I sent him last night, but that's about it.
"I don't know, Keeks. I mean, I came all the way here. I didn't have to. It's not like I have family here. You didn't even bother me that much about the whole thing. I think there was a part of me that was ready to face it all again. I was eighteen when I left. I didn't know anything back then. I didn't know it would all feel so haunting. Even after all this time. And I mean think about it, you're here in town all the time. You said you've never seen him around, not once, and I run into him within the first few hours after nine whole years? That has to mean something, right?"
I take a deep breath, swallowing back the rest of what I was going to say before I word vomit all my feelings. Like how fucking handsome he looked. How I could practically feel his skin on mine, even if we didn't touch. How I've thought about it more than a few times over the years, whether I made a mistake. I should have never left him behind as I ran.
"So, you're going to meet him for coffee today and then what? Have a holiday fling?" She asks, and I shake my head almost violently.
"No, Keeks, I'm not going after a holiday fling with Stephen. I just want to talk. Hang out. See if…" I trail off, because who am I kidding? I don't know what I want. I just know that now that I'm here, I can't not be near him. My heart won't allow it.
"You should. It's been far too long since you've had a good dicking," she says, and it's the understatement of the century. It's not like I've spent the last decade dating and sleeping around. No boyfriends for this gal. I've had a hookup or two, in the most 'clothes on, hands under my sweater' sense of the word. I haven't – ahem – gone all the way since…
"Actually, have you ever had a good dicking? You and Stephen only did it a couple of times back in the day. There's no way it could have been enjoyable," Kira continues, her face pinched up like she's thinking way too hard about my teenage sex life. She never understood why I wanted to wait back then. My virginity wasn't something precious I was holding on to, but sex still felt like a really big deal. My mom had me too young and she was miserable. I wanted to make sure that I was at least an adult when I did it. I wanted to be old enough to handle any consequences of my actions, and Stephen respected that.
Besides, just because Stephen and I waited until we were eighteen to go all the way doesn't mean we were total prudes. Kira might have been having sex in high school, but I was the one having orgasms.
"Shut up. We had plenty of fun in our own ways. Now can you get off me? This is a really weird conversation to be having with you straddling me."
She snickers and wiggles around some more in my lap.
"Do I make you horny, baby?" she asks in a terrible Austin Powers voice, and I bark out a laugh. What else is there to do but cackle like an idiot when your best friend is this ridiculous? We're both chuckling as Kira dismounts me, but our laughter is cut short by someone very impatiently clearing their throat.
I look up, and there are three women who look like they're in their fifties, dressed in tracksuits with matching head and wristbands. They stand over Kira and I, leering down at us in the grass .
"Can we help you?" I ask the ladies, who stare at us with pinched expressions on their faces.
"Are you the aerobics instructor?" The middle one in the purple attire asks, raising an eyebrow. I look at Kira and sort of shrug as if to say, 'I don't fucking know'. They're likely not talking to me, not when Kira’s laying there in bike shorts with her muscled calves and thighs on display.
Kira starts as she sits up from her position in the grass, "I'm a fitness instructor, but I'm not your aerobics instructor-“ but Purple Tracksuit cuts her off.
"Good. We've been waiting here for five minutes. We'd like to get class started. Now."
Kira and I both look around, but there are only two cars in the parking lot. Assuming the other one belongs to this group of women, there isn’t an aerobics instructor in sight. We could try to make a run for it. But if there is one thing that I remember about the middle-aged Bitties of Fox Hole, it's that when they put their minds to something, there is no telling them no. If they want Kira to lead them in aerobics, they will find a way to get her to lead them in some damn aerobics.
"Fuck it," Kira mutters, then pulls her phone out of the zippered pocket on her cropped hoodie. She quickly pulls up an ‘80s pop playlist and turns the volume up as high as it will go.
"Alright ladies, let's start with some marching in place," she says, and the women line up, swinging their arms and marching their feet. I look up at Kira from the ground, giving her an impressed look at her ability to roll with the punches. She glances down and shoots me with a piercing glare, and just like that, I'm shuffling to my feet and falling in line with the Tracksuit Bittie Committee as Keeks leads us through an impromptu and surprisingly thorough low-impact cardio routine for the next thirty minutes.