When she got home around nine thirty or so, Emmy found Angela at the kitchen counter, working on her laptop, and me doing the same with mine.
“Oh, no!” Emmy exclaimed upon seeing us. “I have missed all the fun! I shall go get my computer and join you two!”
Emmy’s sparkling laugh never failed to get a smile from me, and Angela couldn’t help but laugh, too.
I held out my arms and Emmy snuggled in for a hug and a kiss.
“It looks as if you two are hard at work,” she said, glancing at the report I’d been reading.
“Hey, have you eaten? There’s still some Jidori chicken left,” I said, indicating the to-go container on the counter.
“Yes, Jen made dinner tonight. It was a lovely salad with bits of braised lamb. I would have brought you some, but it was so good it all got eaten,” Emmy said, apologetically.
“That’s fine,” I said, patting my lap so Emmy would sit. “You said you guys had a big breakthrough today?”
“Yes! It was enormous,” Emmy said, her face lighting up enthusiastically. “We had been struggling for so long with this problem, and in one swift stroke, Lee came up with the perfect solution! You see, we…” Emmy explained, slipping into her musical jargon that may as well have been Russian for as far as I understood it, but I just nodded and said “uh huh” at the right moments and that was enough.
Eventually, she stopped. “I am boring you, I think,” she said, ruefully.
“No, I just don’t understand half of what you’re telling me,” I said, leaving out that the other half was incomprehensible, too.
“Trust me, then, when I say that yes, it was a very big deal today, and quite an immense relief.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said, and I really was.
“I am quite tired, though, and I think I will take a bath and then go to bed,” Emmy said, getting up off my lap.
“I’ll join you in a moment. I just need to finish reading this,” I said, indicating my computer.
“Join me in bed, or in the bath?”
“The bath. I probably have ten more minutes and then I’m done.”
“See you in a few,” Emmy said, giving me a little kiss. “Good night, Angela,” she said, giving a little wave as she headed to the bedroom.
“Night,” Angela said in response. Once Emmy had disappeared, Angela confessed, “I didn’t understand any of that musical stuff. The words, sure, some of them, but what does ‘drop G’ even mean? Or Aeolian rhythms? Burundi mode?”
“Beats me,” I said with a shrug. Deciding that I didn't really need to finish the report that night, I closed up my computer and said good night to Angela, following Emmy’s path to the bedroom.
Emmy was just getting in the tub when I arrived, so I took a few minutes to light the candle, turn off the lights and strip off my clothes, throwing them to the side.
Of course, the water was still way too hot, necessitating a very slow entry into the tub, but that was par for the course.
Once I’d settled in, Emmy turned around and leaned back against me, using me as a human back rest. I wrapped one arm around her ribs below her breasts, the other on top of her upper chest. Sighing contentedly, Emmy just seemed to sink into my embrace even more.
“I am so tired,” she murmured. “It has been a very long day.”
“Sounds like a productive one, though.”
“Yes, tremendously so,” Emmy agreed. “How did it go on campus today?”
I told her about the place, and the whole thing with Sammy, including the end when he turned out to be homophobic.
“That is too bad, but he is only causing himself to miss opportunities with that sort of mindset,” Emmy said.
“Yeah, it is… unfortunate,” I agreed. “I actually really liked the guy up until then. I guess I still sorta do, and if he ever got over it, I’d be happy to have lunch or something with him in the future.”
“What did you do the rest of the day?” Emmy asked.
I told her about helping Angela with her pictures, not leaving any of it out, even the part about being concerned Angela might be trying to, well, seduce me or something.
“She really has her vagina pierced?” Emmy asked in disbelief, focused on the detail i thought was relatively unimportant.
“Well, her vulva,” I corrected. “The vagina is the inside part. Her piercing is right about here,” I said, reaching down and giving her tiny little bit of hood a gentle pinch.
“That must have hurt so very badly,” Emmy said, wincing at the thought.
“She said that she and Antonio couldn’t have sex for a month after she got it done, so I’m guessing it was painful, yeah.”
“It seems that what Andy said was true,” Emmy mused after thinking for a moment.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Quid pro quo,” Emmy said with a laugh. “Quid pro quo.”
“Har de har har,” I said as she laughed.
“It was the same with us,” Emmy said. “You saw me nude before I got to see you.”
“Remember Andy’s story?” I countered. “Who did he say took off their clothes first?”
“His cousin Beth,” Emmy replied, still giggling.
“You know I meant between Andy and me,” I said, tickling her sides. Emmy tried to wriggle free, but resistance was futile.
“I give up! I surrender to your mighty onslaught!” Emmy play-shrieked.
“I don’t think you’ve fully atoned for your sins,” I said.
“Oh, no! How must I perform my penitence?”
“I’m thinking… Sex. Yes, definitely sex,” I said.
“The things I must do for love,” Emmy moaned, putting the back of her hand to her forehead. “Oh, the humanity!”
I lifted her up a little bit and set her butt down on my thigh, nuzzling the back of her neck. She sighed and leaned back into my embrace, wrapping my arms tightly around herself.
“I love this,” Emmy sighed. “I love you, Leah.”
I held her tight, kissing behind her ear, the back of her neck, and under her cheek as she tilted her head to give me better access.
“I love you, too, Em. More than I can say.”
“Try saying it anyway,” Em teased. “I like to hear you tell me you love me.”
What could I do? I blew a raspberry on her shoulder, eliciting a shriek of laughter.
Emmy wriggled free, and turned around to face me. She shook her finger at me, but all I could say was, “You totally deserved that.”
“I think that you should treat your wife a little better than that,” she scolded, teasingly. “Especially since you spent the whole afternoon ogling another woman’s naked body.”
“I only did a little bit of ogling,” I protested. “Not nearly as much as I ogle you, babe.”
“I want you to ogle me now,” Emmy demanded, standing up in the tub so I could get a better view. “Or do I need to get my pussy pierced, too?”
“Hmm… let me see…” I said, moving in closed for a better view of said body part. “A little ring would be pretty sexy,” I said, gently stroking the little bit of hood that peeked out. “But it looks perfect now, and why would we want to mess with perfection?”
“Good answer,” Emmy said, approvingly. “Now dry me off and take me to bed.”
My alarm woke me at four the next morning, and it took me a moment to remember why it was set so early. It was going to be my first workout at the new gym, and I wanted to give myself time to get there without needing to rush. I got up, threw on my fighting outfit and a pair of sweats and a hoodie, grabbed the bag I’d packed the night before, and within twenty minutes I was on my way to the gym. On the way, I stopped at a twenty-four hour convenience store for a Coke. I’d downed a bagel and a protein smoothie back at home, but a little bit of boost from the caffeine and sugar was welcome.
I got to the gym about five minutes early, but when Eddie saw my car, he opened the gate to the parking lot, pulling it closed after I’d entered.
“I’ve gotta be crazy, agreeing to this,” he muttered as I handed him a crisp C-Note.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“Is Jody here?” I asked, seeing the two other cars already in the lot.
“Yeah, he’s inside,” Eddie said, tucking the money into his jacket pocket.
I followed Eddie inside, and he said, “Last time you were here, I didn’t really get a chance to talk about the gym membership, so after your workout with Jody, I’ll need you to come to the front desk so we can get everything squared away.”
“Sure, no problem,” I said. “Where are the lockers?”
In less than five minutes I was ready for the ring, but Jody waved me over to where he was sitting on the mats.
“Look, I know you said you wanted to get right into the training, and that’s cool, I understand it, but we need to talk about what we’re doing here, and what you want to get out of it, right?”
“Sure,” I said, sitting down, facing him. “Let’s start with us telling a little bit about each other. I tell you why I want to improve my street fighting game, and you tell me why you’re the guy I should learn it from.”
“Fair enough,” Jody said. “Fair enough.”
“O.K., me first. Because of certain, um, lifestyle choices, I’ve found myself getting in fights. I mean, real, do or die kinda stuff. I’d been training kickboxing with Ruben Da Silva as a way to increase my strength and speed, and work on my reflexes for my primary sport-”
“Which is?” Jody asked, interrupting.
“Was. I played collegiate volleyball. Top-ranked team, we won the nationals my junior year. So anyhow, I’d been cross-training, doing kickboxing, when suddenly I got involved in a fight in an alley. This scar here?” I said, pointing at my cheek. “A guy’s knife. Anyhow, I surprised the two guys and beat ‘em up. It turned out they were, um, specifically looking to come after my family, and chances were really high that others from their group were gonna try again, so I asked Ruben to teach me how to fight like I really meant it, you know?” I explained.
“Since he used to do the tudo vale stuff in Brazil, he showed you some of their dirty tricks?” Jody asked.
“It goes beyond that,” I said. “A whole lot of what we worked on was the mental aspect of really being willing to hurt another person, really being ready to kill if necessary.”
Thinking for a moment, Jody asked, “You want me to train you to be a killer?”
“No, I’m over that hump by now,” I said. “I’m good on that aspect.”
“So you think you could go into a situation where it’s life or death, kill or be killed?” Jody asked, skeptical.
“I have. A number of times now.”
Jody just looked at me for a while, then said, “O.K. I don’t need to know the details.”
“I wasn’t going to tell them to you,” I said. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Fair enough,” Jody said. “I was a high school wrestler, made it to the state championships my junior and senior year. I was really into MMA, but there was no way for a kid to compete, so all my Muay Thai stuff was extracurricular. I thought I might have a chance at turning pro when I got a little bit older, but the summer after I graduated, my cousin got killed in Afghanistan, so I signed up to kick some Taliban asses. I did a couple of years with the Airborne and then went through the Q, and next thing you know, I was operating all over the Middle East,” Jody said.
“My dad was Marine Recon,” I said. “I know nothing about the Green Berets.”
“Well, more or less the same shit, you know? It’s all the same in the end. Anyhow, I got discharged for punching out my CO, but the board agreed there were circumstances, so it it was kept under wraps, but they still told me to walk.”
“And here you are,” I said.
“Here I am. I’m trying to get my shit together and qualify for a pro license, maybe make that career I wanted when I was a kid, you know?”
“I’m curious how your Army training is going to be different than what I’ve been doing,” I mused. “I’ve been working with a retired Marine SAD trainer.”
“Probably exactly the same,” Jody admitted. “It’s all mix and match in the SAD anymore, anyway, so hell- I might have worked with your guy.”
“Could be,” I agreed.
“I was thinking about our spar yesterday,” Jody said. “You said your ground game is your weak point, right? But the thing is, if we’re talking life or death, chances are you’ll never get to that point. I mean, you’ll have a knife, or he will, and it’ll be ‘game over’ way before you start thinking about leg locks or arm bars, right?”
“That’s been what Ruben and Grant have said, yeah,” I agreed. "It’s why I’ve mostly worked on my striking with Ruben and on my knife work and avoidance techniques with Grant.”
“You know what the single best piece of advice I can give you on knife fighting is, right?” Jody asked.
“Run away,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“You’ve heard that one before.”
“Yeah, and I understand it, but sometimes it’s not an option. The guy that did this to me?” I said, pointing at the scar on my face. “He wasn’t gonna simply leave well enough alone.”
“So how did that go down?” Jody asked.
“Guy came at me, so I gave him a front kick right in the solar plexus, knocked him back against the wall. He dropped the knife, I picked it up, followed up, end of fight.”
“That’s how quick it goes, all right,” Jody said, imagining the situation. “Alright, well, we know you can strike with the best of ‘em, so we don’t really need to work on that except to maybe keep you sharp. Traditional wrestling is gonna be of little use to you, since you aren’t going to be competing, and we can assume that any knife work I could teach you, this other guy has already worked on with you,” Jody said, leaning back and resting his weight on his hands.
“So the obvious is that we should work on your escape and counter techniques. If we imagine a situation where the enemy gets you in a situation where they have you in a hold, either standing or on the ground, you need to get loose and turn the tables. This is almost pure wrestling stuff, with maybe a bit of Judo and BJJ in there for good measure.”
“I’ve done some of that, but like I said, it’s my weak game.”
“Well, let’s get on it, then, and shore it up. A lot of what I’m gonna teach you is, like you said, ‘unsanctioned’, so be careful using it in the ring if you spar with any normie.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Half of what Ruben taught me began with, ‘Now, don’t do this in the ring’. And of course, nearly a hundred per cent of what Grant has trained me on is down and dirty, stab and go.”
“Have you ever?” Jody asked as we did a few stretches.
“Ever what?”
“Stabbed and gone,” he said.
“Yeah, a few times.”
Since we were going to be wrestling and striking was not on the menu, we skipped the protection and just wore our bare minimums, Jody in shorts and me in my sports bra and bike shorts. I’d gotten over being squeamish about close contact in the ring, but was still grateful that Jody was professional and didn’t ‘accidentally’ cop a feel.
We worked on body position and dynamic angles, not doing anything strenuous, just practicing everything soft-contact. At the end of the session, I didn’t actually feel as if I’d even actually gotten a workout, but I did come away confident that Jody had things to teach me.
As I handed him cash for the morning’s work, he said, “Um, if it’s cool with you, I’d rather not have a bunch of cash in my gym bag every couple of days. How about we make the payment weekly, and you, I don’t know, PayPal me or something?”
“I’d be happy to set up a direct deposit, so the money just gets zapped into your bank automagically every week, if that’s what you want,” I said as we walked to the front desk area. “That way no fees will get taken out.”
“Fair enough. So, uh, do I just give you a check stub or something?”
“Yeah, I’ll need the bank routing number and account number that are on the bottom of a check.”
“Cool, cool. I’ll bring one on Monday.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to stick with the all-cash, myself,” Eddie said, handing me the gym membership paperwork.
I got a few looks from the guys there working out early when I left the gym fifteen minutes after they opened, wearing my skirt suit for work, but I didn’t care. Of course, that meant that even with a stop at the Starbucks for coffee and a breakfast sandwich, I was still the first one to the office.
It was nice to have almost two hours of peace and quiet before anybody showed up, giving me time to finish some of the things that I’d been hoping to get done before the weekend. In fact, I managed to get all my work done by eleven, so I skipped out early, making it clear that I was going to be out of the office all the following week and I would still be able to return emails, but no calls.
“Hey, babe,” I said to Emmy when she answered my call as I left the parking garage. “Are you home? Any chance of having lunch together?”
“No, Jackson and I are over here at Lee’s, working. We wanted to build on yesterday’s momentum.”
“Bummer for me, great for you guys,” I said, wryly. “Give everybody my love, but keep most of it for yourself,” I added.
“I had plenty of it last night!” Emmy giggled. “I am surprised I can even walk today!” she said, putting a smile on my face that lasted the whole way home.
Pulling into my spot in the parking garage, I eyed the Aston, considering what to do about parking.
When I walked in the door, Angela was out on the balcony, catching the late-morning sun before it disappeared over the building and left our side in the shade. I walked over to say hi, but saw that she had on a set of over-ear headphones, her head bobbing a bit to whatever music she was listening to while she lay on her belly, engrossed in her phone.
Of course, those headphones were the only things she had on. I decided to not disturb her, so after a moment or two (well, O.K., maybe three moments) of ogling her butt, I went to get changed. I threw on a pair of comfy jeans and a long-sleeved Cardinal T shirt, got myself a sparkling water from the fridge, and took my laptop out to the balcony, where I settled down on one of the couches.
Sure, I just happened to sit in a spot that gave me little glimpses between her legs when she wiggled her butt to the music, and O.K., it was exceptionally erotic, but all that was secondary to the amusement I felt in waiting for her to realize I was there.
Really.
After quite a while, the sun had moved enough that Angela realized she was partly in the shade, so when she sat up and reached around to move her towel, she spotted me out of the corner of her eye. She squeaked in surprise, then dropped her headphones down onto her shoulders.
“Leah! What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to calm down from the surprise.
“I live here,” I answered with a little shrug. I mean, why wouldn’t I be there?
“I mean what are you doing here right now?” she asked.
I indicated my laptop (which actually was on my lap). “Shopping online for yachts,” I said.
“Seriously?” Angela asked, wide-eyed.
“No, just kidding. I was actually reading over a work proposal,” I told her, which was at least seventy-five per cent a lie. The sights had been so distracting I’d barely managed to read a thing.
“You should have said hello when you got home, instead of scaring me like that,” Angela admonished.
“I did say hello, but you didn’t hear me,” I replied, making a ‘pulling off the headphones’ gesture.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t expect you’d be home this time of day. Sorry I’m naked.”
“No, it’s fine. If you’re fine with it, I’m fine with it, you exhibitionist, you," I replied, getting my little dig in.
“Hey,” I said, after I shut my computer down, “Feel like lunch? I’ve got the rest of the day off, and I kinda want to go out for a bite.”
“I could have lunch,” Angela agreed, gathering up her water bottle and towel. “What were you thinking?”
“Maybe get out for a little drive? Have lunch in Malibu?” I suggested.
“A little drive? Emmy told me how you drive.”
“What did she say?” I asked, curious.
“She said you drive really fast. Like, really, really fast.”
“Yeah, sometimes,” I said. “Hey, speaking of driving, I was thinking that you probably need our third parking spot. Maybe we can take the Aston up to the new house and leave it there, so you can have the spot?”
“I don’t actually have a car,” Angela admitted. “I’d been driving Antonio’s other one, but the police seized both of them.”
“Well, that sucks,” I said. “So how have you been getting around?”
“Mostly I haven’t. The few times I’ve left in the last few days I’ve Ubered it.”
“What a pain in the ass,” I commiserated. “So- back to the topic at hand. Lunch?”
“Let me get some clothes on. I’ll be ready in five minutes.”
Angela was true to her word, and in five minutes she came out into the living room in a really remarkable outfit. The top was a snug long-sleeved knit thing with a low cut in front, revealing lots of cleavage, only coming to just below her breasts, leaving her well-defined abs on display. Below, she had on a pair of artfully ripped jeans with a slit from the waistband down to the hipbone on either side, laced together to hold the front and back part of the jeans from falling apart. This revealed that there was no sign of panties underneath, since you could see the skin from her midsection all the way down to the outer parts of her hips. To finish the ensemble off, she wore a pair of black suede high-heeled ankle boots.
To me, the outfit screamed, ‘I’m a model and I can wear stuff you could never possibly get away with’. Angela was absolutely not shy about showing off, but I found that a big part of her charm.
I’d changed out of my Stanford T shirt and into a pale gray Oxford shirt, and thrown my Chuck Taylors on- my favorite driving shoes ever.
Walking through the parking garage, I asked Angela which car we should take, pointing out my new red-orange BMW M6 and the lighter orange of the Aston Martin Vantage.
“I’ve never ridden in one of these before,” Angela said, looking at the Aston with wide eyes.
“O.K., but I have to warn you, this car likes to go fast,” I said, only half joking.
“All I ask is that you don't crash and kill us. I’m too pretty to die,” Angela said as I unlocked the doors.
“Fair enough,” I said with a laugh.