Muscular Maidens Pt. 01

"Go up to his room and get it now!" Her voice was firm yet calm, but to Jake, it sounded muffled, like she was underwater. His chest felt tighter, his lungs rattled, and panic seeped in. He knew better but couldn't stop the fear from rising to the surface and overwhelming him. As if a constrictor had wrapped its body around him with whip-like speed, pressure mounted around his midsection. Shallow noisy breaths quickened as his body unwittingly sank into a familiar rabbit hole-- one that was foreboding and always felt like a place from which he might never return. His windpipe, like a broken straw, failed him, resulting in a creaking sound reminiscent of an old door slowly closing.

"Now!" Her voice interrupted the impending gloom as another hazy figure raced from the room.

"Relax, Jake. You'll be okay. Lie down, put your shoulders back, and open up your lungs. You'll be okay." Gasping for air in panic, her words were soothing like a warm blanket and somehow so familiar. She seemed so certain, cooing, "Slow down. Deep breaths." She stretched his hands to the side, palm up, opening his shoulders.

"Slow... slow." The words came unhurried, convincing him by their speed as well as their meaning. Staring up, his eyes followed a long crack that ran across the length of the ceiling, his brain recalling his tools of distraction. Would it be enough?

His lips tasted the coolness of steel beneath them, and a puff of air expanded his chest like a great push from a bellows. An inhaler, yes, that's what that is. His mind seemed to reboot along with his body. Blood rushed to his face, reddening his cheeks, and carrying the needed oxygen to his brain, and then, almost as if it hadn't happened, it was over.

"You, okay?" she breathed, her voice tinged with concern.

He nodded and smiled wanly. "Haven't had one of those in a while." He paused and caught his breath once more. "I almost forgot what they're like and how tired they make me."

As the haze began to clear he looked up at Jessica. His mom had told him umpteen times about how he'd stood for the first time and then leaned down and somehow encouraged her to do the same. She'd lived across the street from him for as long as he could remember and had been akin to a sibling. She was undeniably attractive, but he'd never considered her that way. Hair golden like the sun, blue eyes reminiscent of a cloudless sunny sky, and delicately featured with a small, upturned, pixie-like nose-- what wasn't there to like? Perhaps that was the problem. Thinking of her that way might jeopardize their friendship.

"Well next time, try not to eat while you're laughing," she scolded, somehow managing to balance a frown and a smirk at the same time.

They had doted on and protected one another for as long as he could remember and were virtually inseparable. With his severe childhood asthma and frequent bouts of illness, she was the one who came over and reviewed the school day with him when he missed class. She spent hours recounting the day for him and helped him imagine how things would be different in the future. They even played a 'secret game' where the stuffed animals were superheroes and had an entire world of their own. The idea of suspending disbelief and being able to imagine a body without weaknesses had always had a special appeal for Jake.

At school, Jake and Jess were in the advanced class together and in what they called 'the nerd pod.' She was the only girl in their group but seemed to fit right in. As they aged, he overcame his asthma-- at least until tonight, when a laughing spell combined with choking on a peanut had brought it rushing back.

Even though he had, for the most part, overcome his childhood asthma, he remained frailer than his peers. Tall and lanky, he could be described as good-looking, with intense eyes and a grizzled countenance, but his chest was nearly concave. Physicality wasn't necessarily in his nature, and so he was determined to make his path in life through studying and learning.

Though Jess remained in their group, her swim practices took up more and more of her time. Each time he saw her she seemed to have wet hair and to be clad in an oversized sweatshirt. It became like a uniform for her. They were a collection of oddballs-- so she fit right in.

Perpetually late for their appointed Saturday D&D nights, Jess became the butt of many of their jokes-- most of them prepared. By the time she'd arrived only five minutes before the group broke up the previous evening, they'd devised several.

Craig, the group's grungy surfer boy representative, his perpetually floppy hair bobbing as he moved, pulled up his sagging pants and began. "Hey, Elvin."

Elvin, a bespeckled tall, skinny Asian kid with short spiky black hair, winked in response. "Yeah, Craig?"

"That's the third time Jess has been late this month. Do you know what that means?"

"It must be the third Saturday of the month?" Elvin snickered.

"You got it. Lucky we're not cannibals or all that would be left is a," they turned in unison as if making to leave and said, "cold shoulder."

Dan, the group's final player, cackled in the background throughout their 'presentation,' before rolling over onto his back and laughing out loud when they hit the punchline. Dan's perpetually overly expressive, freckled pudgy face seemed to drive the point home even more forcefully.

"Ha-ha, very funny-- not!" Jess said forcing a laugh and giving them a withering look.

"It's not my fault. Coach kept us after practice for a team meeting."

"I'll catch her up tomorrow afternoon," Jake said, letting her off the hook.

"Okay, but let's actually move this thing along next week," Dan added. "Last week there was the...uh..."

"The peanut incident?" Jake offered.

"Yeah, and this week, Jess..."

"Was unfortunately detained," Jess finished.

"Yeah, so next week... can we just be on time?"

"And avoid another asthma attack?" Jake winked. "Yeah, I promise. Now get out of here or you'll be late for curfew. I'll catch Jess up with the group tomorrow."

With Jake as the Dungeon Master, he and Jess often spent extra time together to bring her character back into the group. It made more work for Jake, but Jess was his best friend, and time with her was always well spent. When they reached their teens, some in their extended gaming group had dropped out, claiming they were too old for DnD. Others, after some internal friction, had broken off to form their own campaign. But Jess, Dan, Craig, Elvin, and Jake, as the DM, were regulars throughout high school.

Early the following evening Jess and Jake met up in Jake's basement to play 'catch-up' for the thief Jess roleplayed. The atmosphere didn't hold the energy of a traditional DnD Saturday night with food strewn across the room, whooping boys, high fives, and gasps of surprise with new revelations and battles to fight. Yet the room that they'd grown up playing in, even when it was more reserved, held the comfort of home for all of them.

The room itself was like passing through a time warp back twenty years before into the 1980s. There was dark paneling on the walls and an enormous Zenith television that still hummed as the tube warmed up when it was turned on and heated the room like a second furnace. On one side of the room was a solitary bookcase filled with old books which provided a pleasant musty aroma. Along the other side was their gaming table, a solid oak-bumper pool table that also served as their dining table when the need arose. Tonight, neither Jake nor Jess sat at the table. They had forsaken the barstools and, instead, Jake lay on the tacky orange-shag rug, propped up on his elbows behind his Dungeon Master's screen with Jess across from him, seated lotus style against the dark wood paneling.

The two of them squealed in delight as her character sliced through an orc's armor, crippling the opponent. When Jess was absent, the group had decided to enter the dungeon and go into a couple of rooms whilst Jess ostensibly remained behind to pickpocket a wandering merchant. Thus, Jake and Jess's mission that evening had been to get her thief back to the point where she could rejoin her group, but Jake never made the process easy. After successfully stealing six silver pieces she'd been spotted by a roving orc, who attacked her when she entered the dungeon.

"Nice one," Jake announced, as he peered down at the screen. "I think that hit finishes him off but let me check." The room grew still aside from the persistent hum of the single ceiling fan as it spun lazily above them in the middle of the room.

"Jake?"

"Yes, Jess," he responded, glancing up and trying to hide his annoyance about being distracted in the middle of his computations.

Rocking side to side she furrowed her brow and asked, "What kind of women do you like?"

The question hit him like a quarterback being struck in a blind-side tackle. He tried to hide the look of surprise in his expression, but his face literally jerked in surprise, so she must have seen it. Why is she asking? He thought before unwillingly, the actual answer popped into his head. Big breasts that didn't sag and long firm legs, but that wasn't something you normally told a girl, even one who was your best friend.

"Why do you ask?" He had seen some boys sniffing around her at school and while he knew the day would come, he'd tried to bury the idea in the back of his mind that Jessica might be peeled out of their group by some hulking jock.

"Oh, I was just wondering." Why now?

"Uh-huh. Are you referring to personality or looks?"

"What's attractive to you, physically?" she asked, her tone serious. She stood and wandered aimlessly dragging her pointer finger along the wood siding between the pool cues that served as the main decorations on the walls.

He knew it shouldn't have felt weird to discuss the topic with Jess; nonetheless, it did. They'd always been forthright with one another, at times embarrassingly so. But this time the question seemed to arrive from left field and somehow seemed more important.