It was only late June and it was hot. Stepping from the heavily air-conditioned computer lab to the black pavement of the sidewalk was a shockwave of heat on my skin. By the time I crossed the campus to the gym the sweat was beading across my face. It felt good to strip off my clothes and pull on my one-piece swimsuit in the deserted locker room. The comparatively cool water of the pool was a welcome relief. I slid into a lane and began a gliding sidestroke. With the last spring semester over, and summer semester not yet begun, I practically had the pool to myself. My mind slipped away into the routine of swimming. One of the reasons I prefer swimming to a treadmill was that I never was able to zone out on a treadmill with people walking around, music playing, and the college gym meat market in progress. When I want to exercise, I wear a swimsuit that is made for swimming. When I want to look sexy I'll get out one of my barely-there bikinis. But I get ahead of myself.
When my arms and legs were pleasantly tired I headed home. The other advantage of the unsexy swimsuit is that all I needed to do was rinse quickly, pull back on my shorts, slip on my Birkenstocks and throw my backpack over my shoulder without getting too many stares on the walk home. I knew the heat would soon again glaze me over, and I was already looking forward to a shower. My friends and I live on the top floor of a triple-decker near campus: spacious at a reasonable price as long as you can get several people together who can get along. While we'd only been in the place a few weeks, I felt everything was working out great. We were three girls and one guy, which Brian's friends joked was either hell or heaven. Looking back, I think he'd say it was closer to heaven.
As I headed down the front steps of the gym there was a familiar holler from behind me. Brian had apparently just finished his own workout. Brian is a pretty big guy, over six feet, with a build that had been muscular enough for him to play football in high school but not make the team in even our small college. Unlike many other football players I had met, Brian was a friendly and gentle guy. A smile crossed my face as he jogged a bit to catch up. His bare chest was certainly nice to look at, without being the over-muscled mass that turns me off. My boyfriends had been exclusively thin geek types, which perhaps made sense at the time since I am not exactly a curvy sorority girl myself. And after all, I’m pretty much a geek myself, both then and now.
“How was your swim?”
“Not bad. Better than the lab, at least the way my project is going right now.”
We talked for a bit about the frustrations of computer programs that won’t compile, and then I sympathized with him as he talked about mechanical tests that refuse to return consistent results. We were a couple blocks from home when he interrupted our academic conversation, a grin on his face.
“First one home gets the shower!”
I paused for a moment, letting a thoughtful look settle on my face. Then I looked past his shoulder, smiled and started to wave. When he turned to see what friend I was greeting, I took off at a sprint. I could hear his laugh, and his footsteps picking up behind me.
I led him up the hill, past an old man at the laundromat who I’d like to think was cheering me on with a wave of his pipe. Around the corner onto our street I could hear he was pretty close, and I made the mistake of glancing back. His long arm reached out and gently pushed my right shoulder, throwing me off my pace quite effectively. I stumbled a few steps and he was past me. I tried lunging to give his shorts a quick pull to his knees, but he was just a few inches too far ahead. He zipped up the front steps to the foyer of our building and tagged the door.
“Oh yeah! The shower is mine!” he chortled as he pulled out the front door keys.
“Aw you cheated.”
“Yeah, like that look-the-other-way trick was fair.”