The Coach and Me

Note: This is the continuation of The Coach and Me.

As the plane descended into the Sonoran valley, I marveled at how a landscape given so little sustenance can be so beautiful. While the things that grow there might be oddly-shaped, sharp-edged, even strange, there is a strength in a desert's austerity that always resonated with me. I leaned over Jackson and peered at the khaki hills surrounding Phoenix. The setting sun bathed the Superstition mountains in crimson light. I pulled one of Jackson's Beats off his ear. "Barca Academy is somewhere out here, right?"

"Yeah, out in Casa Grande, why?"

"I was just thinking how nice it'd be to live out here. No snow, no mosquitos, sunny days all year. Maybe we should send you to one of their ID camps."

"You're just trying to get me away from Dad," he snapped, and put his Beats back on.

Stung, I sat back in my chair. While Jackson and I were in Phoenix for this tournament, my husband would be moving into a condo a couple miles from our home. Seeing his dad packing boxes had made the divorce real to him. In the first few days after we told him, his reaction had been muted, and we were keeping pretty close tabs on him. I had started to see some cracks in the façade. In the days before we left for this tournament, he'd been sniping at me, asking me what I'd done to make his dad want to leave, telling me I must've done something awful to make his dad think life would be better without us.

His father had told him that I'd asked for the divorce but had, of course, not told him why. I would never tell Jackson about what had happened with his piano teacher--ever. I would not let him carry that burden. He only knew that his piano teacher had stopped seeing students because she "wanted to focus on her performance career." But in being unable to tell him why I could no longer be married to his father, I was left with absolutely no defense to his claims that I had "kicked Dad out."

I lay awake the night before the trip worried about how I could make this right without telling him the truth of what had happened. Would he resent me for the rest of his life? When it came time for us to decide on custody arrangements, would he tell the judge that he wanted to live with his father? The thought made me physically ill.

The plane lurched a little as it made its final descent into Phoenix. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on how good it would feel to step into the warm Arizona night.

By the time we got to the team hotel, the parents were already in the lobby bar. Jackson went straight to Brad and Mary's room to join the other boys, who were playing on an Xbox that Brad had packed in his carry-on luggage. Kayla waved me over. "Come back down when you're all settled. I'll order you a drink. Scotch?"

The team had been assigned rooms on the same floor, and all along the hall the doors to the rooms were decorated with handmade posters bearing each boy's name and jersey number. It made me smile--Kayla and Ellie had been doing this since the boys were six. I was thrilled to discover that our room was at the very end of the hall, next to the emergency exit. At least there was a chance of a decent night's sleep.

As I was fumbling with the room key, the emergency exit door swung open, almost hitting me. "Fuck, sorry--I mean, oops. Sorry about that. You okay?" It was Sam, another coach from the club, the young one I'd used to fantasize about from time to time when I wanted to get off to the idea of being soundly fucked by a young guy who took all his cues from bad porn (in other words, when I wanted to imagine totally mindless and emotion-free sex). But, of course, that was back when I had a functioning libido. He was late twenties, your typical bro in a baseball cap, another former soccer player, nicely built. You wouldn't be surprised to see him on a fraternity lawn clutching a red cup. Over the years, Jackson had trained a little with him, and though he was insouciant and cocky to the point of absurdity, I had always noticed he was a little nervous around me. I was sure it was because I wasn't as sociable as the other parents. As an introvert, I tried to live by the creed "just because I feel uncomfortable doesn't mean I have to make other people uncomfortable," but I wasn't always successful in living up to that. So I did my best now to seem cheerful and approachable. "Hey, Sam."

"You good?"

"Yeah, you didn't get me. I'm fine." I glanced at the emergency exit. "Practicing the evacuation plan?" He stared at me uncomprehendingly--he was a decent coach but he was about as sharp as a marble. "I mean, why are you coming out of the emergency exit?"

"Oh, because it's quicker than taking the elevator. The coaches' rooms are one floor up."

I laughed. "In an undisclosed location--good idea."

"No, we're easy to find--just up one flight of stairs." He had no idea what I meant. Whatever. I opened the door with my keycard. "Well," he said, "I'll let J. know you guys arrived. He was asking."

"Yeah, sorry about that--I waited until the last second to book the tickets, hoping the prices would go down, and then they didn't and I could only get the late flight."

Sam chuckled. "J. was pretty anxious--the team kinda needs Jackson like a car needs tires." I could tell he was proud of that analogy, so I kept myself from rolling my eyes. He snuck a look at me from under his baseball cap. "A bunch of us are down in the lobby--you planning on coming?"

I waggled my room card at him. "I just need to get into the room and get settled and then I'll be down." As I talked, his eyes watched my mouth, as if he were lip-reading.

After a beat, he said, "Cool. See ya' down there."

In the room, I unpacked and hung Jackson's uniform up in the closet, then walked over to the window to see if our view was of a brick wall or the parking lot. Instead, when I opened the curtains, I saw the shimmering lights of Phoenix nestled against the dark shadows of the Camelback mountains. The sun had disappeared hours earlier, but there was still a dusky, rose-colored band at the horizon. I glanced over at my hiking boots. I hoped I'd have a chance to take a hike between games.

I decided to take a quick rinse before heading downstairs to get the grime of a day of travel off my body. My antiperspirant had clearly given up the fight. I pulled my hair up into a loose bun and stepped into the large glass shower. I could see myself in the mirror above the sink, and felt the urge to turn away from my reflection, but stopped myself. I was not going to spend this entire weekend feeling like a troll. There were ways around these feelings, I knew, little things you could do to trick your mind. "Act as if you are, and you will be." That was something I'd been taught by a fellow introvert in college. "Act as if you're confident and comfortable," he told me in the dorm cafeteria, "and, eventually, you will have played the role long enough that it will become who you are. At least for the period of time when you have to be that person. After that, you'll crash for, like, two days."

I'd taken his advice many times in the years since college. Time to do it again, starting this very minute. I would act as if I were attractive, even if I felt the opposite. I would pretend I cared about how I looked. I would try to again be that person who got dressed up for J.. Whether he noticed or not was immaterial.

Once the water got warm, I stepped under the stream and poured the hotel's lemon verbena body wash into my palm. After working up a lather, I scrubbed my arms as if I were scouring away my listlessness. I ran my soapy hands over my breasts. My skin was slick, and I was surprised to find that the feeling of my hands sliding over my body was sensuous. I grabbed the detachable shower head and let the water run down my body, over my breasts, the curve of my hips, the insides of my thighs, and watched myself in the mirror. I tried to conjure J. in the shower with me, his hands sliding down my body while the water coursed down his shoulders but just I couldn't quite get the buy-in from myself I needed.

I decided to try Sam instead. I pictured him leaning against the sink, watching me as I showered, his arms crossed, his hat pulled low over his face. To my surprise, this worked. I could feel my body responding, so I used the shower wand and let the fantasy unfold:

As I let the water course down my body, he grabs at his cock through his track pants. I can see the outline of his hard-on and the thought of him using it to fuck me is such a turn on that I grab the shower head and direct the pulsating stream between my legs; its intensity jolts my body wide awake, bringing me from zero to sixty in an instant. Keeping my eyes on him, I put one leg up on the little marble bench for better access and steady myself by leaning against the emerald-green tiles. Sam grips his cock harder, tilts his head back and whispers, "Fuck, that is so hot."

I adjust the setting on the shower wand so the stream is a little gentler and began moving it back and forth across my clit. Watching myself in the mirror is like watching someone else, and that turns me on even more. "Oh my god," I groan. Sam takes this as a cue and pushes himself off the sink. He pulls off his shirt, revealing a stockier build than I'd imagined, but still muscular.

But as he starts taking off his track pants, I tell him to stop. I don't want him in the shower with me. I want him to watch me--and I want to watch him stroking himself to orgasm as he does so. At this moment, I can think of nothing hotter than that.

He walks over to me and pulls his cock out of his pants. "Get me wet, then," he says. I take his cock in my hand and grasp it gently, wrapping my fingers around its girth. The touch of my hand causes his cock to jerk a little, as if he's been anticipating it. I move my hand up and down its length a few times, not making full contact with my palm but letting the water run between my fingers and onto him. He sucks in his breath and steadies himself by placing a hand against the wall of the shower. He reaches over and palms my breasts, tugging at my nipples until they're stiff. I love the way he looks at me as I get to my knees and encircle his taut thighs with my arms.

He puts his hand under my chin and tilts it up so he can look me in the face. "Suck that fucking cock, you filthy little whore."

The way he says it, you would've thought he was whispering sweet nothings. But this--this is exactly what I want from him. I've put these words in his mouth, because this is the kind of talk I need right now. Empty of emotion, but sodden with physicality. I need an edge. I put the shower wand between my thighs so the stream still hits my pussy just where I want it, then take his cock into my mouth little by little until I have his entire length in my mouth. "That's it," he says, watching me, "take it all."

The relentless stream of water against my clit combined with his cock deep in my mouth is so good that I'm worried I'm going to come too soon. I don't want to come now--I want to come as he strokes himself until cum explodes from him, and let that push me into my own orgasm. So I let the wand slip down so that the water flows against my thighs instead of my pussy, and allow him to push into my mouth a little farther. Soon he's hitting the curve of my throat. He gasps and reaches up to hang on the frame of the shower and begins to pump his hips a little. "Do you like letting me fuck that pretty mouth?"

I look past him, into the mirror, and watch as his hips rock against me. With him filling my mouth, my moaning is muffled, but he hears it and I can feel him getting even harder. I suck him a little longer--a few more downstrokes and upstrokes--until I can feel the vein running along the underside of his cock beginning to pulse. Then I push him away and pick up the shower wand, positioning it between my legs. He immediately starts jerking himself off as he watches me. "You are so fucking hot," he breathes. "I'm going to come just watching you play with your pussy."

Even over the sound of the shower, I can hear the wet sound of his stroking and it heightens my pleasure so intensely that I think I'm going to come right then. His hand moves faster and faster as his stroking gets more frantic, and I feel my cunt starting to tighten in anticipation of an orgasm. I move the stream in tighter circles as my heart thunders in my chest. "Oh my god," I say, my voice hoarse. "That is so good."

"Don't stop," he growls. "Make yourself come right in front of me."

I take my nipple between my fingers and pinch it, hard. It sharpens my pleasure and I throw my head back, and groan, "I'm going to come so hard." That drives Sam crazy and his sounds echo in the bathroom. The way he's working his cock now, I know he's close. "Look at me as you make yourself come, you dirty little bitch. Look at me." I move my gaze from the mirror to his face, and lock eyes with him. I'm shocked by how intimate it feels to gaze into a man's eyes as he's about to climax. With my husband, I always had my eyes closed for reasons I was too afraid to examine. Sam must feel it, too, because he groans again. It's coming, my whole body knows it, and I use my finger to open myself up a little more, letting the steady stream of water hit my swollen clit just so. "That's it," he gasps, "make that filthy little pussy come right in front of me. Holy fucking shit, you're going to make me explode."

He's stroking so fast now his hand is a blur. I am about to fall off the precipice, too. "I'm coming--God, I'm going to fucking come," he growls. I feel the familiar, delicious edges of my orgasm start to take shape as I watch him.

Suddenly, he goes totally silent. Then a sound erupts from deep within him that is as terrifying as it is hot, and a stream of cum explodes from his cock, arcing, and splashing onto the glass of the shower enclosure. That's what I was waiting for and I make a sound halfway between a cry and a scream as I'm pulled under by the enormity of my orgasm. I can barely breathe. It's massive--it seems to touch every part of my body, and it rumbles through me like aftershocks.

I dropped the showerhead so suddenly that it clanged against the glass enclosure. Pulled out of my fantasy, my legs felt like rubber. Sam was gone, having melted away like the specter he was. The glass was steamy and opaque. I leaned against the tile for a few minutes and let the water run down my back. I tried to catch my breath. Somehow, I managed to turn off the shower and step out, wrapping myself in a towel. I rubbed a circle in the fogged-up mirror and saw my face reflected in the glass. My cheeks were flushed and my eyes awere bright. I hadn't realized how much I'd needed that. I felt a part of me that I thought was dead spring back to life, like a cactus blossom after a desert rain.

I felt ready to go downstairs, have a drink, chat with the other parents, and, see J.. For the first time since the team party. I felt sexy.

It was time we had that conversation.