Rivals and Lovers

"Oh, I bet you did," Alyse said, sliding a hand over her crotch. "Ooo, baby, you almost made me come. Seriously, where did you learn to do that? I mean, you're not a, well, um, a--"

"Lesbian? No. Not even a closet lesbian, although I have to admit that I think you're cute. But no, I just wanted to relieve your pain, if only temporarily." Nicole saw no point in telling her about that adventure in the shower years before. Nor did she dare tell her that what just happened went beyond simply wanting to relieve Alyse's back pain. Even Nicole didn't understand all the emotional and psychological reasons for doing what she did. She enjoyed it and wanted more. That much was as clear as the soft skin on her friend's adorable face.

"Take care of that back," Nicole said after Alyse got dressed. "Remember, don't push it. Apply ice, then heat. And rest."

Alyse stood with her equipment bag slung over her shoulder. "Thanks, doc. But besides the ice and heat, maybe you could apply more of what you did here? If that's okay. I mean, talk about the ultimate pain reliever."

"Apply a different kind of heat, you mean," Nicole said, chuckling. "Sure, that can be arranged. Only don't tell Jim about it." She meant Jim Sparks who had coached both women for the past couple years. "Meanwhile, I've got a workout to complete."

After Alyse left, Nicole took a detour into one of the stalls to relieve herself. In her over-heated, erotically-charged state, it didn't take long.

*****

What took place in that locker room had Alyse Hutton wondering about her own sexuality, as she drove home in her Honda Civic. She was no lesbian either. Unlike Nicole, she'd never had that sort of encounter with another girl. Like Nicole, she also had a boyfriend. What was going on? She wasn't quite sure. But, as she told Nicole, she looked forward to more "pain meds." The seats in the Civic, never that comfortable to begin with, were even less so with her kind of injury. She felt a sharp pain, as if she had an icepick jabbing into her back.

Home was a garden style apartment complex that she shared with another college girl, Lacy Ward. The complex was a de facto college dorm located about a mile from the college. Maybe after college she'd be living and training at the USA Olympic Training Complex in Colorado Springs. She felt confident she'd get there. Since that last contest, she was ranked the number one female weightlifter in her weight division in the country. As a teen in a lower weight class, she had held all the junior national records, snatch, clean and jerk and total. By next year, if she stayed healthy, she expected to hold all the senior records as well. She sensed that Nicole wouldn't exactly be thrilled with that. Alyse wouldn't be if the roles were reversed.

She struggled to exit her car, then walked stooped over to her apartment door and turned the key.

"Oh my, what happened to you?!" Lacy gasped, seeing Alyse in obvious discomfort.

Alyse dropped her bag on the carpeted living room floor, then tried to straighten

up. "A training injury. I'll be okay once I get on a cold pack."

"I'll get one for you," Lacy said, and then hurried into the kitchen, opened the freezer and took out a cold pack, a bluish substance wrapped in thick clear plastic. Thin, with short, dark-brown hair, Lacy was in her third year of college. The green sweats she wore hung loose on her small frame.

Alyse was already in her room, lying down when Lacy entered with the cold pack. "Here, I'll take that," she said. She tucked the pack under her back and then bent her knees over a couple pillows.

Lacy sat on the edge of the bed. "So, what the hell happened?"

Alyse told her the story, about snatching 114k and then feeling the pain. "That's what I get for showing off in front of Nicole."

"Nicole, your training partner..."

"Right. She was good enough to curtail her workout in order to help me get my clothes back on. She, well, being a physical therapist, she knew something about pain relief. She helped me with that also."

Lacy drew a curious, open-mouth smile, watching Alyse break up. "Must have been a pretty funny procedure from the way you're giggling," she said. "What did she do, stand up there in the gym and tell you jokes?"

Alyse clamped her hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the laughter, the vibrations of which aggravated her pain. "Not exactly. She gave me a massage. It took all the pain away until she stopped." More laughter.

Lacy narrowed her brown, almond-shaped eyes and flashed a comically clueless look. "Huh huh. She must have been a real scream. Well, look, I've eaten but there's still dinner in the fridge. I'll heat it up and bring it to you if you'd like."

Alyse thanked her but said that was unnecessary. "I'll get it after lying on this for a half-hour or so."

Lacy went to her room to study, while Alyse stayed put. She was beginning to feel the cold, soothing compress against her back, reducing the inflammation she figured was there. She felt anxious, anxious about the training she'd miss and anxious about what had transpired in that locker room. Man, did it feel good, much better than when Caleb, her boyfriend, did it. She was beginning to sense that Nicole's massage had been something more than just an effort to relieve her pain. Making a big tadoo about her mint-green panties and that kiss on the mouth...Did Nicole Lindstrom suddenly have the hots for her? It sure seemed that way. And what if she did? Could they still train together? Alyse knew that it was her own dedication to weightlifting, plus talent, plus Jim Sparks's fine coaching that had pushed her to new heights. Yet she also knew that Nicole deserved some of the credit also. If not for Nicole, she might not have even attempted that 114k. Something else, too. She wanted more of what Nicole gave, and not just motivation to lift more. She was almost ashamed to admit it. 'But I've got to be honest with myself,' she thought. She pictured them going further, doing things they couldn't in the locker room, doing things that would brand her a lesbian, however much she denied it.

Just as she was getting up to get some dinner, her cell went off. It was Nicole, asking how she felt.

"Oh, about the same. I just iced it down and popped a couple Advil."

"Atta girl. Stick with the ice for another day or two, then heat. Wet heat. And look, if the Advil doesn't help, I can, um, provide you with another kind of pain relief. The kind that doesn't come in pill form. Know what I'm saying?" She giggled.

Alyse started laughing again, thinking about Lacy's 'real scream' comment. "All too well, Nikki. I suspect that your kind of therapy and the Advil could make for a great pain-relieving combo."

Now Nicole began to laugh. "Took the words right out of my mouth. Gosh, Leesie, are we like, bad girls or what?"

*****

Alyse took the following week off. Not an easy thing for an elite athlete. In fact, it took just as much discipline, if not more, to rest as it did to follow a strict training regimen. She did the ice and heat thing, did some light stretching and updated Nicole on her progress. The pain eased up enough to where she could return to the gym for light workouts. She didn't need Advil anymore or Nicole's special brand of "therapy." Except that she wanted it, more like craved it, and she felt a twinge of guilt over that. Here she had a boyfriend, and yet the idea of fooling around with Nicole felt incredibly exciting. "I'll try anything once," she was wont to say about a new experience. She had said that about gymnastics and weightlifting and the hang gliding that she had done with Caleb. And now she was saying that about an experience that had not even been on her radar until last week.

And so, on a late Thursday afternoon, following a training session at Rock Ridge and dressed in her all-white warmup suit, she followed Nicole back to her place, a newish, split-level suburban single house with a two-car garage. Nicole had turned part of it into a spartan mini gym, equipped with a platform, a Rogue Olympic barbell set and power rack. She trained here when it wasn't convenient to drive to Rock Ridge.

Alyse was impressed. "I can see that physical therapy must pay pretty well," she said, looking over the equipment and her friend's 2015 green Subaru Outback.

"Not bad," Nicole said. "I got into PT not only because I like to help people, athletes especially, but because it was on the so-called hot careers list."

"You sure helped me," Alyse said, shooting Nicole a wink and gawking at her legs, long and bare. Nicole had not bothered to change out of her revealing workout shorts. Like Alyse, she had big quads. But where Alyse had short legs relative to her upper body, Nicole's proportions were the opposite. It was an anatomical detail that Alyse hadn't focused on until now and one that hadn't produced sexual arousal. Until now.

Nicole draped an arm around her friend's thick shoulders and kissed her on the side of her head. "Let's go inside, Leesie."

They entered though the garage side door and into the kitchen. "Before I give you a tour," Nicole said, "how about a glass of wine? Or beer, I've got both. Me, I love beer after a workout."

"Beer sounds great," Alyse said, examining the room, the yellow walls, white ceiling, stainless steel appliances and wood table that sat four.

Nicole broke out two bottles of Coors Light from the fridge and popped the caps. Sipping their brew, they drifted into the dining room and living room, both fully carpeted and only half-furnished. A china cabinet and sofa were "on order," Nicole said. When they got upstairs to the master bedroom, Alyse noticed men's clothing piled neatly on a chair. "Oh, that's Burt's stuff," Nicole revealed. "We stay over at each other's places."

Alyse never met Burt but she knew about him, had seen his pics on Nicole's phone. "A hunk and a half," as Nicole described him and as the pics confirmed. Burt, twenty-nine, was a rugby-playing lawyer and did CrossFit off and on. Alyse had no intention of telling Caleb about her new-found experience and wondered if Nicole had said anything to Burt. So she asked.

Nicole shook her head. "No way, honey. This is between you and me. Besides, he wouldn't get it. I'm not sure if I fully get it. Do you?" In fact, Nicole had a pretty good idea of what this was about, at least from her end, but saw no point in revealing everything; specifically, her psychological motivations.

Alyse reached out and stroked one of Nicole's smooth, bare thighs. "Only that you gave me quite a thrill in that locker room and that I'm an adventurous girl willing to try new things."

Nicole took Alyse's bottle, then set them both down on the night table beside the queen-sized bed that was fully made. Then, taking her head in her hands, she said, "You're really cute. I've already told you that, I know, but I felt like saying it again. And you're also, I'd bet, a future Olympian. Let me kiss you."

Sweet, soft and warm. It was the way Alyse would describe the way Nicole kissed her standing by her bed in the fading sunlight of this early Thursday evening. She'd never in her life kissed a woman this way, never in her wildest dreams thought she ever would, least of all a woman who most likely she'd compete against for a berth on a future Olympic weightlifting team. When they decoupled, she unzipped her warmup jacket and tossed it on the bed. "It's getting warm in here."

"Yes, it sure is," Nicole said. She slid her hands under Alyse's shirt, moved them to the back and unsnapped her bra. "Beautiful. You've got some nice boobies, baby."

Alyse lifted her shirt over her head and tossed it on top of her jacket. Already she was wet and getting wetter as Nicole's tongue roamed over her entire chest, then zeroed in on her nipples. Softly, she moaned, barely standing on knees, buckled and weak--knees that could support close to four-hundred pounds but now were barely holding her up under Nicole's sensuous touch. Breathing heavy, she said, "Look, I'd better lie down before I fall down."

"Feeling light-headed?"

"Kind of, but a good kind of light-headed. Not the kind you feel holding a heavy barbell against your neck, when you're about to pass out." Alyse eased herself down on the edge of the bed, kicked off her sneakers and then slipped out of her warmup pants, dropping them on the floor. "See, I wore my mint-green panties for you."

Nicole pursed her lips and grinned. "I see. And I wore a red thong for you." She wiggled out of her training shorts. "Well?"

"Wow...sexy. I bet you drive Burt wild. Because I know what it's doing for me."

Nicole threw off her top. She wore no bra. She often went braless because she didn't have much to support. "These can't match what you've got, I know."

"A minor detail, Nikki. You've got some great assets, girl. I might be cute, but you're beautiful."

She was, too. She possessed a face that was conventionally beautiful, though understated and classical as opposed to drop-dead striking. She had emerald eyes that seemed to sparkle and a body that some would call the ideal aesthetic for a female strength athlete--if such an ideal actually existed, and apparently enough guys thought so to make her Instagram site the most popular among female Olympic lifters.

Alyse knew that and now she, too, was among those admirers, though one in the same room, far removed from cyber space. She reached out, gripped her hands onto the back of Nicole's thighs, and pulled Nicole toward her. "I'd like to do for you what you did for me at Rock Ridge." She was shy about slipping her fingers inside Nicole's red panties, grinning like a little girl caught doing something naughty. "Sorry, it's my first time doing this with a woman," she said.

"I understand," Nicole said. "Take your time. You can feel how wet I am."

Alyse could indeed. Still tentative, she kept her fingers still for a few moments, wading into this novel experience like someone learning how to swim in the deep end of a pool. Then, seeing Nicole becoming more aroused, buckled knees, heavy breathing and all, Alyse got bolder and began to slip her fingers inside.

"Mmm, ahh, yes, you're doing fine," Nicole moaned. She cupped her hand to her forehead. "Now it's me that's getting light-headed. I think we both should be lying down."

After they both stripped bare and slipped under the covers, Alyse got between Nicole's legs. But then, with her mouth just inches from its intended destination, she looked up and shook her head. "Guess I'm not as adventurous as I thought. Fingering I can do. Eating pussy? I'm not quite there yet. Sorry.

"That's okay," Nicole said. "So how about if we continue where we left off in the locker room?"

Alyse loved that idea. She had been looking forward to it even as her pulled back muscles were on the mend. "I'm like, so onboard with that," she said, drawing circles around Nicole's pussy with her index finger. "I was so close to climaxing."

Nicole pulled her up, then kissed her. "This time you will. I can almost guarantee it. But this time lay on your back."

Alyse gleefully complied, then gleefully absorbed Nicole's deft touch on this most sensitive part of her anatomy. Now she could relax and enjoy it without the angst of someone walking in on them. It took only moments before she knew that this had been worth waiting for. What Nicole was doing and the way she felt because of what Nicole was doing, made what happened in the locker room pale by comparison. "Ohmygod, Nikki, you're incredible! Yes! Yes! My pussy's on fire!"

The "fire" did a fast burn. Alyse climaxed in just over a minute. "Ohmygod, Nikki, you're so good, like you've had tons of experience. With girls, I mean."

Nicole finally felt comfortable enough to reveal the shower incident with Sandra Worley. "But that was the extent of my experience. Believe it or not, Leesie, I never thought about doing it with another girl until you came along."

They faced each other propped up on elbows, touching each other with their other hand--fingers alternatively and tenderly combing through hair, massaging breasts, running over lips.

If their relationship had been complicated before--being rivals as well as training partners--Alyse realized that it was exponentially more complicated now. "Nikki, you called me a future Olympian. You think? Really?"

"Absolutely. With the gains you've made in the past year and the steamroller you're now on, don't you think so? Come on, don't be modest."

Alyse lowered her eyes, then looked up. "Yeah, I do, to be honest. But you're just as ambitious about going to Tokyo, and only one of us can go." She paused, groping for the words to express further what she felt.

Nicole had no trouble picking up on her friend's trend of thought. "So now that we've become intimate, where do we go from here, is what I think you're trying to say."

Alyse nodded and Nicole continued. "Look, Tokyo is two years away. A lot can happen between now and then. Jim Sparks has suggested that I might make faster gains moving up in weight, to the eighty-ones. So we might not have to compete against each other after all."

"Okay, but now we are competing against each other and..." She took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts. "I don't know, it feels weird doing this with you and then going out on the platform trying to beat your ass. I mean, there's this huge conflict of interest, it seems to me."

"Okay, so we won't have sex except maybe with our boyfriends the day before the contest," Nicole said, chuckling. "Seriously, Leesie, I don't know, we'll just have to see what develops. Right now, I hope we can be lovers as well as rivals."

"I hope we can, too," Alyse said, not quite believing it. She knew that Nicole's competitive zeal was just as strong as hers, perhaps stronger, now that Alyse was forging ahead of her and even moving close to what the elite Chinese women were doing. She hoped they could remain friends, could maintain their intimacy. But she sensed Nicole's envy of her success, so that might not be possible. But maybe it was--she didn't know at this point. Like Nicole said, a lot could happen between now and 2020.