My first year of uni didn't go how I expected it to go: I made new friends, explored new places, lived with my best friend, had my first experiences with group sex, and fucked my best friend's girlfriend with him. Twice.
The first time was good; we had both had sex with her and everyone enjoyed themselves. Unfortunately, the second time we tried it, my best friend had not been quite up to task. He had finished before he had a chance to start, and then
again
while I was still going. So, obviously, his pride must have been hurting, as he was extremely distant with me for the next few weeks. Things got awkward.
This wasn't
entirely
new. After the first time, as good as it was, he'd run away home. That only lasted for a short while, and his girlfriend had been fine with me, thankfully. This time, she was distant too.
To make matters worse, since we had all moved into flats in the same house, there was a near constant bombardment of sex. Before moving here, that would have sounded great, but it wasn't. I would be woken up in the middle of the night by the unmistakable noises of one of my friends, or I'd bump into a dishevelled stranger looking proud of themselves at the front door, and so on. Not to say that I wasn't contributing to this mess, but that's beside the point.
It had been around a month since I had slept with
her
and I could count the number of words that either she or my
best friend
had said to me since, on like... three hands.
***
"Look, Sam, your ratings are great, but we're seeing alarming patterns in your work," Phil was saying.
He had dragged me into his office at the gym where I 'worked' as a 'fitness instruction guru' as soon as I had walked through the door.
"I know that university has started up again and we expect you to focus on your studies so allow a level of productivity decrease," Phil continued, smirking from behind his desk. "But I'm afraid you're going to-"
"-Wait, so are you telling me off or praising me here? You just said my ratings are great," I cut in, impatient to destress with some exercise.
"If you would just let me finish," he sneered across at me. "I'm giving you a warning. You need to take on more clients."
"Look, mate, I know things work differently here as it's a uni gym and you pay me rather than the people I help, or whatever, but I'm not doing that," I stated.
This job had been advertised to me as something easy; I could just go to the gym and occasionally help people out as I was doing my own thing. It
had
been lucrative, and an easy way to pick up girls though, until now. Something clicked in my mind.
"-keep up then we will have to-" Phil was still looking proud of himself across the table as I cut off whatever he was saying.
"-This is about that Korean bird, isn't it?" I asked.
His smirk faltered, "Japanese. Yuki is Japanese, and no, it's not about h-"
"-Yuki, yeah. I saw you giving her an induction as if you owned her. Of course, she chose me over you. I wasn't creepily staring at her on the-"
"-Yuki was my girlfriend!" Phil snapped back; his smirk vanished.
'Was'. That may have complicated things here. She had started coming here a few weeks ago, just after term started. She seemed to fall into a pattern that overlapped mine; starting her workouts as the gym began to empty, late at night. She tended to focus on cardio, but eventually asked me for help with something simple, like how to use a kettlebell.
It made sense that she would have started working with me, as I was the one around when she needed it.
That naturally led to what we started doing in the showers after a set, or at my place, or that one time... Oh god, on the desk that Phil was leaning over right now. How was I supposed to know she had a boyfriend?
"Well maybe if you had been here for here when she needed it, then she wouldn't have come to me," I replied, immediately kicking myself at the phrasing.
"Get out," Phil said quietly. "Yuki said the same thing..."
"You can't do that," I replied coolly.
"Actually, I can. Obviously, it's in your contract: 'no inappropriate relationships with clients'."
"That's a stupid rule, what about Sh-"
"-Sam, in case this isn't getting through your thick head: you're no longer employed here."
The colour was returning to Phil, but his smirk had morphed into a maniacal grimace.
What was I supposed to do now? I needed the money, but more than that, I needed the outlet that the gym afforded me. Without this job, I would have to start paying to use the gym
and
I would need to get another job.
My best friend and current roommate, Carl, had mentioned that his girlfriend, Jess, had been making money online by selling pictures and videos of herself. If things weren't such a shitshow at home, I would have considered asking her how to start; it sounded easy enough.
"Cheers, mate," I smiled cheerily at Phil. "Oh, and if you see Yuki again, tell her she left a bra at mine."
I turned and walked out the door as Phil starting muttering behind me. Three steps into the room and I heard the door slam against the wall as it was flung open behind me.
"Get the fuck out!" Phil shrieked. "You're not welcome here at all anymore. Your membership is revoked too."
The gym wasn't busy, but there were still more than a handful of people who had turned to stare at the commotion. I smiled with exaggerated cheeriness at a few of the familiar faces as I turned to face Phil.
"Look, mate," I began. "I don't know why you're taking this out on me. It was
your
girlfriend, and how was I to know?"
Phil was a big man. Probably a recent graduate or something, so, young, but older than me. He was muscular and tall, but just a little smaller than me, and I think that hurt his ego. He stepped forward, as if to square up to me, his face red and blotchy.
"I'm sorry," I lied.
"If I had known she was your girlfriend then I wouldn't have fucked her," I continued, smirking, but facing away from the silent onlookers so they could only see his reaction. "She never mentioned you."
There were a few gasps from behind me, but Phil had stopped advancing.
"Oi, Phil," a familiar chirpy voice chimed in from the other side of the room. "As shitty as he is, you can't stop a student from coming here just because he's a dickhead."
Phil looked past me, then slowly turned his face back to me, jaw clenched in rage. And then his shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before turning and walking back to his office without a word.
"Come on big guy," I felt someone's arm on my shoulder and turned to look down at a familiar face. "You've ruined my session, let's go before you ruin anyone else's."
Abby looked up at me with an expression that somehow conveyed both pain and humour. She had become one of my closest friends before things had gotten weird this year. She was one of Jess's best friends and I'd met her through Jess and Carl. We'd established a friends-with-benefits relationship as we both thought we were mature enough to be fine with each of us sleeping with other people. That seemed to have changed since we had moved into the same house.
There was a pang in my stomach as I looked at her in her gym gear. Her skin was the colour of caramel, looking smooth and uncovered by sweat, meaning she hadn't been here long. She wore a tight-fitting grey and black top that entirely exposed her toned stomach, and even tighter matching shorts that did nothing to conceal her tight, round bum.
Her dark eyes were, unusually, unobscured by her wild red, purple and black hair that had been tied back to hang down her back in a mass of curls. Her wide, thick, lips curved upwards in a reassuring smile.
