It was a ridiculous situation, yet Eric couldn't walk away. He'd been caught off guard, standing naked in front of a stranger with nothing but a small, thin towel wrapped around his trim waist, but there was more than mere awkwardness behind his hesitation. This man, who he'd never seen before, approached him out of the blue in the locker room asking if he believed in magic and saying he could give him his heart's desire.
"Look, man, you kinda have me at a disadvantage here," Eric said, looking down at his lean, exposed torso. His wiry muscle still glistened from the recent shower, and his thick, black hair was a damp tangle on his head.
"Sorry, didn't mean to catch you at a bad time," the man said, betrayed by the mischievous sparkle in his bright green eyes. It was clear he knew exactly what he was doing.
"What was it you said? You could give me what I wanted?" Eric was still trying to size the stranger up. He crossed his toned arms over his modest pecs and cocked his head to the side, unable to peg the other man's age. His wavy blonde hair and handsome, unblemished face made Eric think the stranger was in the same mid-twenties ballpark as himself, but there was a feeling of age and confidence about him that usually came with someone much older. He filled out his tight, green t-shirt and straining shorts with the kind of solid, well-muscled body that Eric had been struggling to build for so long, but the dripping, dark haired young man felt like his brain was constantly having to remind itself that it was looking at someone young and not a person of an advanced age.
"Not 'give', exactly. There's always a price to be paid, but the end result is still you getting what you want." The man flashed a charming smile and stuck out his hand. "I'm Jordan, by the way."
"Eric," he said, impressed by the man's grip. It felt like he was squeezing a granite block. "And what is that I want?" he asked, forcing himself to stay on guard even as his body wanted to relax.
Jordan grinned again and looked down at his chiseled torso, flexing a steely arm. "This. Not me, specifically, but the body. You want them," he said, motioning over a broad shoulder to the group of hulking adonises walking out of the showers. "How long have you been working towards that?"
"Forever," Eric sighed before he could catch himself. "But look, that's not exactly groundbreaking insight. So you've seen me busting my ass out there before...how can you get me from this," he said, spreading his arms before reaching out and poking Jordan in a firm, bulging pec, "to that. I don't have the genes for it."
Jordan shook his head, a sympathetic look on his deceptively boyish face. "It's not about genes. It's about time. You want to get from point A to point B without having to do the work."
"Fuck you, buddy," Eric laughed defensively. He flexed his washboard abs and the rest of his whipcord muscle, his lean body breaking out in an atlas of definition. The motion caused his towel to lose it's precarious hold but he let it drop, showing off his wiry thighs and hefty package to emphasize his point. "I'm not huge but don't tell me I haven't done the work." He bent and picked up the towel, holding it in front of his dangling hose instead of wrapping it around his waist.
"Whoa, hey, didn't mean to insult you," Jordan said, raising his hands in surrender. "You've obviously put the time in...that's not what I meant. Twenty more years of that kind of effort and I'm sure you'll be huge. But you want it now, correct?"
Eric took a deep breath and let his shoulders drop. "Of course I do. Who wouldn't? But unless you can..." he stopped, finally realizing he was talking to a crazy person. When Jordan had approached him talking about magic, Eric had just assumed he meant some kind of steroid or growth hormone, but the hunky blonde was being literal. "Alright, uh, this has been....interesting....but I gotta get to work, man." He turned his perky bubble in Jordan's direction and headed for his locker.
"Just think about it," the blonde stranger whispered in his ear, suddenly right behind him even though Eric hadn't heard or seen him move. The wiry man sidestepped to get some distance, but Jordan was already gone when he spun around.
"The fuck was that about..." he muttered to himself, seeing the small card with Jordan's name and phone number resting on the bench next to him.
He looked around again, letting out a sigh of relief when the other man was nowhere in sight. Wanting to avoid any further conversation he slipped into his boxer briefs, pulled on his khakis and dress shirt, and hurried for his car. "How the hell did that get in there," he said when he reached for his keys and pulled Jordan's card out with them. He'd had no intention of taking it. He didn't even remember picking it up, yet, somehow, it found its way into his pocket. "Think about it. Yeah, right."
But as the day went on, he couldn't think about anything else. At first he'd simply mulled over the strangeness of the whole experience. He'd never had someone walk up and offer a magic solution to all his problems before, especially someone who seemed to believe so earnestly in what they were saying. Sitting in his office, unable to focus and falling behind on a massive project, Eric tried to tell himself he simply felt bad for the stranger. The man was obviously delusional. When he thought back on Jordan's sculpted body, handsome face, and piercing green eyes, though, he didn't feel much in the way of sympathy.
It was that appearance his mind kept drifting to. Jordan seemed put together. He was well groomed and clearly took care of himself. He wasn't some disheveled lunatic ranting on a street corner. Try as he might to write him off as someone who needed to up their meds, Eric couldn't get the image of the other man out of his head.
As when they were speaking, whenever Eric thought about him, his mind kept trying to add years to the other man. No matter how convinced his eyes were, his brain refused to accept that Jordan was someone his own age. He'd never felt anything quite like it.
By the end of the afternoon the mystery was too much to resist. He was on the phone with Jordan and writing down the other man's address before he stopped to think about what he was doing. He was relatively confident Jordan was harmless. What did he have to lose?
