Gym Lad

"Rupert didn't seem quite so pleased." I smiled back at him. "I'm Chris."

"Martin." He replied, counting out the bills. "I knew you'd be back. Needed a day to soothe the aches, yeah?"

"More than a day, man. Reckon I need a month." I laughed.

"We're all like that in the beginnin'. See that guy working on his traps in the corner?" Martin said, nodding his shaved head at a guy who looked more like a gorilla than a human being, "Well, he was no bigger 'n you when he first came here three years ago. He took one day off in his first week and then came right back next day. You reminded me of him."

Jesus, I hoped I was too pretty to end up looking like the bald ape that Martin had indicated to me. I was going to have to be careful not to get addicted to this game if I ever started to notice the differences in my musculature.

"So why did you come back so quick?" He asked.

Did I give him the truth, that I was stalking some blonde female health nut that I had seen here and was developing an unhealthy obsession toward, or lie and risk being caught out which would irreparably damage my standing in this man's eyes? In the end I figured it was better to bury a lie in a healthy dose of truth.

"There's this girl," I began, but he held up his hand and cut me off.

"Say no more, my friend." He grinned. "Its always a girl. Except when its a guy, of course." He added, winking with an exagerrated tilt of his head. "They say that size doesn't matter, and that may be true for the size of the dick you be swingin', but when it comes to getting noticed a decent body is way better than a pigeon chest in gettin' you outta the starting blocks, know what I'm sayin'?"

"That's exactly why I'm here." I admitted.

"Well you best get on with it then if time is such a factor that you gotta throw yourself back into this shit before the tears is repaired. Anythin' I can help with, you need a spot sometime, just ask, okay?"

"Thanks man." I said shaking his hand again as we parted. The joints that Rupert hadn't crushed finally agonisingly burst apart in Martin's fist. I hoped he didn't see me wincing as I headed off to the leg press and set it for a nice relaxing sixty kilos, wondering if my hand was dripping blood and leaving a crimson trail on the hardwood floor.

Needless to say I overdid it. After an hour my thighs were burning and my worn out calves trembled with the effort of holding up the slight weight of my slender upper body. If the regulars were going to hold another sweep when they noted my failure to turn up again tomorrow then I was putting a ten on myself for two weeks hence and not a minute sooner, and fuck the blonde goddess.

And no sooner had the thought of fucking the blonde goddess crossed my mind, than the woman entered through the staff only door and the screwing aspect took on a whole new meaning. I had a feeling that the one organ in (on?) my body that wasn't yet aching, and my right hand, might be suffering some serious friction burns come morning.

This time the object of my secret desires was wearing a baggy T-shirt and jogging pants that totally concealed everything except her face and forearms. Martin waved at her as she scanned the room, holding up the money that he had won and pointed in my direction. I must have looked like a rabbit caught in headlamps when she turned to me and frowned.

"Darn it, " She said, shaking her head as she stride past. "I had you down for next Wednesday."

"Honey, you can have me down any time you like." I quipped, hardly believing that the words had come out of my mouth. She turned around, her eyes widening and eyebrows raised, then she threw her head back and laughed out loud, showing me a set of perfect white teeth.

"Good one." She said, making a gun shape with her fingers and mimicking blowing me away. "Good to have a quick wit on board. I do like a guy that can make me laugh."

"You should watch me working out, then." I told her. "That'll really crack you up."

She nodded and gave me a toothy smile. "Perhaps I will." She said, tipping me a lewd wink, or at least one that I took as lewd, then she turned away and disappeared into the changing rooms.

For some reason I found my heart racing alarmingly, and I doubted that it had anything to do with my workout. I had been planning on calling it a night and changing myself, but following her into the changing rooms would have put both of us in an awkward position and I didn't want to make things too obvious. Instead I moved onto an available rowing machine, dialled the resistance down, and punished myself for a little longer.

Martin came over after a moment and took the machine adjacent to mine. "So, there's this girl, right?"

"You didn't give me a chance to say that I didn't even know she existed until I walked through that door."

"Fuck me...." Martin muttered, shaking his head. "In that case you and I got some major fucking work to do, my skinny little friend. Some serious fucking pain to endure."

I stopped my rowing and stared straight at him. "You offering to coach me?" I asked.

"Man, you sho gonna need all the help you can get with little Sian."

"Little Sian?" Short, yeah, but little???

"Her daddy used ta own this place. She's always been little Sian ta us old timers. And before you ask, I'm not goina help you for your sake. I'm helping you for hers. She's had a hard time since her daddy passed away and it ain't often I seen her laugh like she just did. But I warn you, dude, you fuck her around and people around here will fuck you over real bad, you hear?"

I turned to him, reached across with my hand, and this time I squeezed as hard as he did, though I doubted he even felt it. "Deal." I grinned.

"Jesus," Martin frowned back as we continued to shake on it. "Now I know how they feel at the start of an episode of Mission fucking Impossible."

Over the next few weeks my body began to change, albeit slowly but surely. Curves of musculature were appearing where previously there had been nothing but soft flesh surrounding bone. I could now count my abs by running a finger over them. When I showered water now dripped off my pecs whereas shortly before it would have run straight down to my navel. The sticks that had been my legs transformed into thighs and calves as new muscle build there filled them out, stretching the skin so tight that sometimes after a lower body workout it was an effort to walk the next day. I really did move like a Zombie.

And don't get me started on the pain. There were days when I understood how it must feel free to grow old and arthritic, where every movement yielded an ache, whether it were turning my head while driving or picking up a large cappuccino from the counter at Starbucks. Martin was always there egging me on, cajoling, encouraging, humiliating and threatening, pushing me that extra set of reps or up another five kilos on the bar. There were days when I could have shot him dead without hesitation and happily served my time as the bitch of some shaven headed prison thug, days when I would turn up at the gym hoping that he wouldn't come in so that I could work out at my own pace rather than at his, and there were days when the aches were so overwhelming that I just wanted to stay in bed and forget this seemingly futile pursuit of little Sian.

Then I would look in the mirror after a shower and silently analyse the changes wrought on my frame, when I would pull on a T-shirt and find it didn't fit any more, when at the cafeteria in work I would pick up a bottle of water, raise it to my lips and people would narrow their eyes at my inflating biceps and triceps. I'm sure I saw one woman lick her lips at the sight without consciously knowing what she was doing. Days like that made it worth the effort, even if it were costing me a fortune in new clothes to replace the old stuff that I had outgrown and in gym fees that were coming to almost a hundred dollars a week. The two grande annual pass was looking like a bargain now.

And then there was Sian. After that first meeting we had exchanged little other than nods, smiles and passing pleasantries. She saw that Martin had taken the role of mentoring me and left us to it. If she noticed me as anything other than a customer then I was totally unaware of her attentions, while you would have to be mentally retarded to not notice my obsession with her. Martin would frequently chastise me with a "Concentrate!" or with a rather nasty flick of my ear with his fingernail when my attention strayed away from what I was supposed to be doing and instead wandered toward what little Sian was putting herself through.

She seemed to be spending most of her time on stamina rather than strength, while almost all of the male bodybuilders focused on increasing muscle mass to the detriment of general fitness. I wasn't complaining. If she wanted to jog on the treadmills with her tits bouncing up and down then that was fine with me. If she wanted to test out the rowing machines, stretching the fabric of her shorts and shirts on each stroke then I wasn't going to complain about it, and if she wanted to climb Everest on the step machine with her ass moving in three delicious dimensions simultaneously, then I was not one to bitch about that, either. Unfortunately there were only two nights per week when she deigned to join the sweating masses in the gym, whereas Martin had me working for four or five. The other nights she was either manning the front desk, coaching womens classes in an adjoining room, out working as a personal trainer for women who had their own private gymnaseums at home or doing whatever hot birds do when they don't have to either work or workout.

Martin also educated me on little Sian's history as well, and while anecdotes on her past boyfriends didn't make my prospects sound very positive, it wasn't all bad news. She was, as far as he knew, single and had been for a while which gave her something in common with most of my past partners. A little desperation always helps to reduce standards. She was 27 years of age and lived alone in an apartment above the gym that she had inherited when her divorced father had died three years ago.

Her life had revolved around the gym from when she was still quite young, her ambition to become one of those professional women wrestlers that dazzle you with their fighting skills in skimpy outfits on WWE, or whatever acronym it goes by these days. Two factors had worked against her in that goal - she had worked so hard on her strength and muscle mass that she passed the threshold where her body became more toned than most television viewers would deem attractive. She had won several tournaments and competitions, both locally and nationally, but the big break never came because her body had been deemed too 'cut' for the television aesthetic. Then an awkward fall broke her shoulder and put her out of circulation for several months and now she was back on the road to recovery and, to my mind, taking it easy and not risking further damage by overdoing things.

Martin was reluctant to go into detail with regard to her relationship history, but did let slip that Sian was also in a period of recovery on that front after a bad experience with a fitness fanatic who let his excess testosterone and a steroid addiction get the better of him while forgetting that it was not socially acceptable to take your frustrations out on a member of the fairer sex. The shoulder injury had, he suspected, not been the result of a bad tumble on a wrestling mat as Sian had claimed it to be.

Which left me with a few glimmers of hope - that she was single, that she had been for a while, and that perhaps her experience at the hands of a bodybuilder had left her wary of another such relationship. While I was, technically, a few steps along the long, long road toward becoming a six foot tall mass of powerful muscle, I was still not much more than a skinny beanpole with above average muscle definition where geeks are concerned. She could still take me down effortlesly if I overstepped the bounds of propriety. With one hand tied behind her back, too. Thinking about it, she could probably kick my scrawny ass with both her hands tied behind her back. Blindfolded.

Then one evening in August Martin invited me to his 45th birthday barbecue at his home. Whilst a little concerned that I was going to be a wallflower at a party where I wouldn't know many people, I wasn't going to insult him by refusing. When I turned up it was carrying two cases of wine by way of expressing my gratitude for his help over the past month or so.

I needn't have worried about having a lonely afternoon. Aside from an overwhelming number of family members and work colleagues, there were a few faces from the gym that I recognised and who recognised me and made me more than welcome. After an hour or so of burgers, hot dogs and beers Sian, who had been indoor helping Martin's wife prepare the salad and the breads, came over to us and settled in. Her eyes lingered on me for a moment, and I thought for a moment that she was wondering how a skinny fuck like me had managed to fit in with a group of half a dozen brawny he-men, and then I understood what had just gone down.

It was just a case of taking the clues and assembling the jigsaw. Sian had just spent a fair while in the kitchen with Martin's wife. Martin's wife would, judging by the apparent strength of their relationship, have occasionally asked how his day had been, and the conversation may, at times, have come around to the little guy that he was spending a lot of his evenings with. If Martin had told anybody about why he was mentoring me, then it would be his wife. Who had just spent an hour or so with Sian. And girls talk. Everybody knows that.

I felt like a fly trapped in a web while its spider entered the parlour. Now would not be a good time to make a dick of myself, or draw undue attention. I clammed up, staying on the fringes of a highly technical to and fro conversational about exercises and fitness techniques, while also trying not to make checking Sian out too obvious. After a while I left without announcing it to take a piss and grab another burger from Martin who commanded the barbecue grill with the authority of a World War Two general.

"Hey, man, how's it goin?" He asked.

"Great party, Marty." I smiled. He frowned, sweeping his hand over the burning meat on the grill. "I'll take a burger, please." I said, picking up a bap from a plate and holding it out for him to slap the meat on. I added some salad and mayo and looked around the garden, watching the kids at play.

"You made your move yet, Casanova?" He grinned.

"Not yet. Your murderous exercise regime hasn't increased the size of my balls to the requisite dimensions for taking on a professional wrestler." I joked.

"You need to get in there, man. No tellin' when a dish like that could get taken off the menu."

"I hear you. Does she know?"

"Know what?"

"You know what I mean. Did your wife spill the beans?"

"What makes you ask that?" Martin said, glancing away momentarily under the premise of turning some sausages. That told me all I needed to know. If he hadn't told his wife then he'd have told me instead that Pearl didn't know anything at all about it.

"She gave me an odd look when she came over earlier," I told him.

"Maybe she was just checking you out, man, salivating over your tight white buns, checking to see how many boxes you tick."

"Well, if there's a box for 'who the hell does this geek think he is trying to hit on a foxy chick like me' then I reckon I got that one a nice big red X."

"Chill, man. If I didn't think you stood a chance I woulda told you so straight up and not spent so long wasting both of us time. Get your skinny white ass back in the game, I'll ask Pearl if she gabbed."

I nodded, told him what a fantastic barbecue chef he was even though my burger tasted more of char than grill, and was headed back to the group when out of left field a bright red Frisbee came speeding toward me. I reached up with my free hand and plucked it out of the air before it hit me in the face and looked in the direction that it had come from.

Three kids were playing catch, one of them Martin's youngest and the others probably extended family. A girl, six years old maybe seven, held out her hand for me to throw it back. I deftly flicked it in her direction and watched as it stalled in the air right over her head and then dropped neatly into her outstretched hands.

"Wow, cool mister! How'd you do that?" Martin's wide eyed son asked, and so I spent the next half an hour teaching the kids how to do various tricks and stuff, coaching them through wrist action and using falling blades of grass to gauge wind direction and strength. By the end of that time I had the girl demonstrating to her mother how to stall the Frisbee right over her father and have it land if not in his lap, then right on his head, a feat met with howls of laughter from the other kids.

"Now I can see why you needed those biceps pumped up." A female voice beside me commented.

"Oh, hi Sian. Nah, all you need for this is a good wrist action."

"Ha!" She laughed. "Best if I don't ask what exercise you get that from, Chris." She said, finishing her own joke.

I have no idea if I turned red, but if I hadn't then the sun had definitely chosen that moment to shine directly onto my face through a gap in the clouds. Martin hadn't yet come back to me with confirmation that Pearl had filled Sian in on my romantic aspirations, but putting two and two together again, I figured that she had done for sure.

I had been in a similar situation before, but on the other side of the coin. A colleague had once let slip over coffee that a woman we both worked with had the hots for me. Not in so many words, however. He'd asked me what I thought of her, if I fancied her, and then when I'd told him that she wasn't my type he quickly changed the subject. I didn't put two and two together on this one until later, when I noticed that Amanda was a little less friendly, certainly less chatty, and seemed quick to escape from me when I chose to engage her in conversation. It was only when I recalled that coffee time chat that I realised that he must have warned her off me, telling her that I wasn't interested.

However, when you learn that you have a secret admirer, and who that secret admirer happens to be, your perception of them suffers a significant change. You begin to notice them, for perhaps the first time, and start to imagine what it might be like to spend some sack time with them. If its been a while since you got laid, as it had been with me, perhaps you even start flirting with them, which must have confused the hell out of the poor woman given that she'd previously been told that I had no interest in her. Unfortunately, in Amanda's case, she had found somebody else to do the horizontal tango with and had moved on from her fleeting, unrequited fixation upon me. Unfortunately for me, that is, as by this time I had grown quite fond of the girl and wouldn't have minded bedding her at all.

Perhaps Sian was in the early stages of this psychological peculiarity with me. Now that she knew I was interested, and having had a little time to come to terms with it, perhaps that interest was beginning to reciprocate. Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking on my part.

"So how are they coming along?" Sian asked, and her fingers touched the skin of my forearm, tracing up toward my elbow. I swallowed dryly. My skin actually, honest to god, burned beneath her touch.

I looked at her and my lips curled into an involuntary smile. "Is milady mocking me?" I asked.

"Not at all," She replied, withdrawing her fingers from a bicep that had tensed involuntarily at the contact. "Call it professional interest. As a personal trainer I'm curious to how you are progressing with a total amateur dictating your programme."