Even

Three weeks had passed since the night in the shower, and Melissa Pettinger had not been right since. She had woken every morning of those three weeks with the bruises Rachel's teeth had left across her breasts and shoulders fading a shade lighter, the swollen ache in her labia easing a fraction more, the burn of the other blonde's pubic fur scoured across her own slowly cooling. None of it had healed quickly enough. None of it had healed at all in any way that mattered. The body she dragged into the bathroom mirror every morning was the same body Rachel had bent over and pinned and ridden down until Melissa's back hit the wall, and every morning she stood there and stared at the tan-lined breasts and the flat stomach and the broad sculpted shoulders and replayed the moment Rachel had stood up over her, dripping wet, and walked out of the shower without a word. The look on the other blonde's face, victorious, sneering, certain that Melissa would never come at her again, that look was burned into the inside of Melissa's skull and it would not let her sleep. She had done what she always did when she didn't know what else to do. She had gone to the gym. The first night back she had done a full hour on the cardio floor without looking left or right, then forty-five minutes on the heavy machines, then dragged herself home and showered alone, and Rachel had not been there. The second night, the same. The third night, Rachel had walked in around ten-fifteen and the moment those piercing icy blue eyes met Melissa's in the mirrored wall the air had gone out of the room. Melissa had held the stare without faltering, kept pumping the cross trainer with her muscular thighs, and watched Rachel walk straight to the machine three down from hers and climb up onto it like nothing had happened. Neither blonde said a word. Neither blonde looked away. Within a week the routine had reset and quietly intensified. They were back at adjacent machines. They were back to checking each other's stats. They were back to letting their soaked sports bras and the long, hard rods of their nipples and the pelvic gyrations of their broad, womanly hips speak the dirty private language two months of mutual study had taught them how to read. Beth and Whitney saw it and traded a look once and went back to their own bag. The two big-busted blondes at the back of the cardio room glared at each other in the mirror and burned matching pink shafts through their wet bras and matched each other rep for rep, mile for mile, calorie for calorie, and a third reckoning began to gather like static around them. Tonight Melissa came in armored. She had spent two hours after work on her hair and makeup and her gym bag, and she had pulled on the most aggressive outfit she owned: a pure black cotton sports bra cut low enough that the milky white tan-line patches across the front of her heavy breasts disappeared into a deep, thumb-wide valley of cleavage; black stretch pants painted on so tight they cleaved the firm round of her buns and outlined the V of her labia under the fabric; her dark blonde hair down loose on her shoulders for once, lifted off her neck only by a single thin elastic band. She had looked at herself in the bedroom mirror for a long minute before she'd left and she had not been a shy retiring girl in that mirror. She had been the woman who had pinned Rachel Myer to a locker bank three weeks ago and put her ass on the floor, and the woman who had been pinned to a tile wall three weeks ago and ridden down by the other blonde's pelvis, and tonight, she had decided, she was going to be the woman who walked out of the Y with the ledger flat. One round each. One round to settle it. Rachel was already at her locker when Melissa walked into the back row. The tall blonde looked up once, and once was enough, her piercing blue eyes raked Melissa from her down hair to her painted-on stretch pants and her face went a little hard, a little hungry, and a little careful. She had her own outfit on tonight: a low cut white sports bra that turned her tanned cleavage into a brazen wet dream and stretch pants that flared off her broad muscular ass as eye-catchingly as Melissa's. Her honey-blonde hair was loose for once too. She straightened slowly, hands at her hips, breasts thrust forward in instinctive challenge, and looked Melissa up and down the way Melissa was looking her up and down, both blondes silently taking the measure of the body each of them had worn herself out trying to break. "Ten o'clock," Melissa said quietly. It was the first time she had spoken to Rachel out loud in three weeks. "What about it?" Rachel said, just as quietly. "You and I are getting on those cross trainers at ten o'clock. We're going to do an hour. Then we're going to come back down here and we're going to settle this in the showers and then in the ring like we did before, and we're going to settle it tonight or we're going to settle it on a slab. I'm not going home with this hanging over me one more night." Rachel held her gaze without blinking. The corners of her sharp mouth tightened. Her broad chest rose and fell slowly under the white bra and Melissa watched the long, hard pink shaft of one nipple lift the cotton outward by a clear half-inch. "Ten o'clock," Rachel said. "And you're going to be sorry you ever came back, Melissa." "You said that last time," Melissa told her. "Get up there." They walked up the stairs side by side without speaking, two heavy-busted blondes in matched stretch pants drawing every set of eyes left on the floor. They climbed up onto the two end cross trainers with the row of mirrored wall in front of them and started in. The other patrons cleared out in twos and threes over the next hour and neither blonde noticed, and neither blonde slowed. Melissa pulled in her slow, deep, paced breaths and watched the readouts crawl up on her own machine and on Rachel's and let the burn in her thighs and the weight of her heaving breasts in her sweat-soaked bra steady her into the rhythm she knew. Rachel did the same. Tonight neither one of them was going to make the mistake either of them had made the first two times. The numbers crawled up. Eight miles an hour. Eight and a half. Nine. The sweat ran down between Melissa's bouncing globes in a slow continuous sheet and she watched Rachel's tanned cleavage glisten the same way in the mirror and watched Rachel's nipples poke the white bra into two stiff cotton-tented spikes that mirrored her own black ones. The whole gym went quiet around them as the late stragglers gave up and headed home. Beth raised an eyebrow at Whitney as the two of them passed by carrying their bags; Whitney just shook her head and kept walking. By the last fifteen minutes there was no one on the floor but the two blondes and the soft whirring of their two cross trainers grinding in lockstep and the sound of two hard, paced sets of breathing. Melissa watched Rachel's readouts the way Rachel watched hers. Cal/cal. Mile/mile. Heart rate within a beat of each other. With three minutes left she put her head down and pushed, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Rachel put her head down and push at the exact same moment, and the whole last stretch became a private, silent, screaming fight for one number of advantage, anything, just one calorie, one hundredth of a mile, one beat per minute. The buzzers tripped within a hair of each other and Melissa flicked her eyes to Rachel's machine and Rachel flicked her eyes to Melissa's. Same calorie count. Same mileage to two decimal places. Same average heart rate. Even. Rachel stared at the numbers on Melissa's display for a long moment. Melissa stared at the numbers on Rachel's. Then both blondes looked up and met each other's eyes in the mirror, and neither one of them said a word. There was nothing to say. The cardio floor was exactly as it had been three weeks ago when Rachel had nipped her by half a mile, and three weeks before that when Melissa had nipped Rachel by the same. Tonight neither one of them had given the other so much as a hundredth. Melissa got down off her machine, wiped it with her towel without looking away from Rachel's reflection, and walked toward the stairs. She heard Rachel's machine power down behind her and the wet padding sound of the other blonde's track shoes following. They went down the stairs in single file, with Rachel two steps behind, and Melissa felt the heat of her behind her on every step. The locker room was dead. The overhead lights had already dropped to the after-hours low and the only sound was the slow drip of a far showerhead. Both blondes walked all the way back to the back row without breaking stride, dropped their bags, and turned to face each other across two yards of locker bench like they had three weeks before and three weeks before that. "Same as before," Melissa said. "Yes," Rachel said. Melissa stripped her black sports bra off in one motion and shook her bare, sweat-drenched breasts free, arching her back and giving Rachel a long, brazen look at the two heavy globes Rachel had bitten and squeezed and pinched in the showers three weeks ago. The triangular tan-line patches across the front of them where her own bikini top had blocked the sun were as milky white as ever. Her aureoles stood out, silver-dollar-sized and flushed dark with arousal already, and her two nipples lifted off her chest a clean inch into the dim air. Rachel watched her in cold silence for a moment and then peeled her own white bra off her ribs and tossed it in her gym bag, mirroring her exactly: arched back, head tilted back, the same brazen jut of two heavy, slightly-larger-tanned globes with their identical silver-dollar aureoles and their identical inch-long pink shafts erect and aching. They walked toward the dead center of the aisle the way they had three weeks ago, the way they had six weeks ago, hands at their own hips, breasts thrust forward, eyes locked. They came in at the same speed, on the same line, and their bare globes met dead center between the two locker banks with a wet, heavy slap that echoed down the empty aisle. Melissa caught herself; Rachel caught herself. They leaned in, and slammed forward again. Slap. The dense mounds of breast tissue flattened into mushrooms against each other and rebounded with a slapping crack. Slap. Slap. Slap. Each woman's hands went to her own hips. Each woman's broad strong thighs spread for traction. Each woman's spine arched to bring the heavy front of her chest into maximum contact with the heavy front of the other's. Aureole crushed against aureole; two hard pink shafts ground against two hard pink shafts; the dense breast tissue of each woman piled up against the dense breast tissue of the other and refused to give first. "You stuck-up bitch," Melissa said softly into Rachel's mouth. "Big-titted little tramp," Rachel said back into hers. Melissa drove forward six inches, and Rachel gave six inches, and Rachel drove the six inches back, and Melissa took them and gave them up and reclaimed them, and the two blondes locked into the slow grinding press they had locked into six weeks ago, only this time neither one of them was kidding herself anymore that the other was going to fall first. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. Both bare-chested blondes pressed forehead to forehead, bare belly to bare belly, the soaked stretch pants on each of their pelvises grinding hot crotches against hot crotches through the wet fabric. Both heavy bras of breast tissue mushroomed and rebounded, and mushroomed and rebounded, and mushroomed and rebounded, and the dead-center line in the aisle did not move one inch in either direction. "You're not pushing me anywhere," Melissa hissed into Rachel's open mouth. "You're not pushing me anywhere either, you blonde cunt," Rachel hissed back. Their teeth came together. Their nostrils almost touched. Their breath blasted hot down each other's throats. Melissa felt Rachel's muscular thighs tighten in front of her and felt Rachel's pelvis grind a slow, deliberate cunt-bump up against hers, and Melissa ground her own pelvis a slow deliberate bump back against Rachel's, and the two of them stood there in the dead silence of the empty back row with the full firm weight of their identical-feeling pairs of breasts bulldozed flat between them and could not move each other. "The showers," Rachel breathed. "The showers," Melissa breathed back. They unstuck slowly, the dense tissue of their pressed chests peeling apart with a long wet sucking sound, and stood half a step from each other, two big-busted bare blondes glistening with sweat in the dim light. Melissa peeled out of her stretch pants without taking her eyes off Rachel's. Rachel peeled out of hers without taking her eyes off Melissa's. Two pairs of black stretch pants hit the floor. Two thatches of trimmed dark blonde fur stood revealed above two pairs of broad, muscular thighs. The naked aisle smelled of sweat and sex and cold metal lockers, and neither blonde was making any pretense of going up to the ring without crossing through the showers first. The shower room was dead empty and tiled and echoing the way it had been three weeks ago. Rachel walked in first and started a head; Melissa took the head beside hers and started her own water. Within seconds both bodies were wet and slick and lathered with white sheets of soap sliding down broad muscular backs, off heavy quivering buns, down the strong curving length of two pairs of identical thick thighs. This time Rachel didn't bother with the soap-on-the-floor game. She reached over without warning and slapped a soaped-up palm flat across Melissa's left breast, and Melissa returned the soaped-up open-handed slap to Rachel's right breast in the same beat, and a wet flurry of slipping sliding open-handed breast slaps cracked back and forth between them under the hammering of two showerheads. Slap. Slap. Slap. Two heavy soaked globes rocked sideways under the assault. Rachel reached for Melissa's hair; Melissa reached for Rachel's. They dragged each other into a soaped-up clinch with their wet locks tangled in each other's fists and crashed bare-chested into the corner of the tile wall. Rachel's breasts mushroomed flat into Melissa's; Melissa's breasts mushroomed flat into Rachel's. The four soaped globes slipped and slid and locked and slipped and locked, and the four hard pink shafts stabbed and dragged and bent and stabbed again under the spray. "You whore," Melissa snarled into Rachel's wet face. "Slut," Rachel snarled back. This time Melissa was ready for the bite. When Rachel's mouth closed on her lower lip she let it close, then twisted her head and clamped her own teeth on Rachel's upper lip with exactly as much pressure, and the two blondes hung there nose to nose with their mouths locked into a slow biting deadlock as the spray ran into their faces. When their mouths broke apart it was into a dry roaring tongue duel, the two long thick organs ramming and corkscrewing together as the spray ran into their open mouths, and neither one of them broke first. They tried every angle they had tried three weeks ago. Rachel got Melissa's back to the tile and ground full-length down into her, broad pelvis driving against broad pelvis, and Melissa rode it for two minutes and reversed her by the hair, slamming Rachel's wet round buns against the tile in turn. Rachel reversed back. Melissa reversed back. Their soaped slick labia kissed and parted under the spray; the hot soft mound of one cunt rode up against the hot soft mound of the other and the two trimmed thatches tangled and squelched and parted; their two slowly-emerging clits met for the first time of the night and lit them both up like one match touched to another match. Both blondes jerked at the same instant. Both blondes gasped at the same instant. Both blondes drove pelvis in against pelvis at the same instant and bit down on the same word. The full naked length of Melissa's body was pressed against the full naked length of Rachel's and Melissa could feel that every part of Rachel was pressed against every matching part of her and was holding her off as exactly as her own body was holding Rachel off, breast for breast, belly for belly, thigh for thigh, cunt for cunt. There was no part of the other blonde that was harder than her, no part softer; no part stronger, no part weaker. The two of them were the same body shoved bare against itself. "The ring," Rachel gasped against her mouth. "The ring," Melissa gasped back. They peeled apart, rinsed the soap off in two perfunctory passes under their respective spray heads, and walked dripping wet and bare-footed and bare-chested and bare-everything-else out of the shower room and up the stairs to the pilates room without bothering to towel off. The boxing ring stood empty under the dim overhead lights. Two naked blondes climbed up over the ropes one at a time, the same broad muscular round buns flexing in the same arc as each one swung her thighs over the top rope, and turned to face each other in the dead center of the mat. "No rules," Rachel said. "No rules," Melissa said. "Same as before. Anything goes." "Anything." They circled. Their wet feet padded on the canvas. Their hot wet breath blew small clouds in the cool overhead air. Rachel went first this time, rushing Melissa with her arms low and her head ducked, and Melissa caught the rush with her own shoulder and the two heavy bare bodies slammed together and went down to the canvas in one tangled wet roll. They wrestled. They slapped. They bit. They clawed. They tore at each other's hair until both wet manes hung loose around their grunting faces and ended up half-tangled together. Each woman fought her way on top, then was reversed, then climbed back on top, then was reversed again. They pounded each other's heavy breasts with open palms and with clenched fists until both pairs of globes throbbed and both pairs of nipples stood out swollen and raw. Each woman dragged the other through the same bites Rachel had given Melissa in the showers three weeks ago, the same bites Melissa had given Rachel six weeks ago. Each woman scoured the other's labia with the same brush-hard pubic fur that had scoured hers. Each one's strong fingers slid inside the other one's vagina and felt the hot slick wellspring of arousal there and pumped, and each one's strong fingers were pumped right back inside her own vagina by the other one's hand at the same depth and the same angle and the same speed. For an hour they fought everything they had. Melissa's whole body was a single exhausted ache and she knew Rachel's was too. Every position she reached the other blonde reached. Every weapon she pulled out the other blonde matched. Every bruise she put on Rachel went onto her own body inside the next minute. The fight wore them both down in lockstep, and somewhere during the long slow grind of it the ferocity bled out of it without bleeding out of either of them, they were too far gone to dredge up any more rage at the other body, but they were not too far gone to keep pressing it, keep trying it, keep hunting for the angle that was going to break the dead level and finally, finally tip a winner. The angle never came. Eventually they ended up on their sides facing each other, one of Melissa's thighs hooked over one of Rachel's, two pairs of soaked breasts crushed flush, two foreheads pressed dead together, two pairs of wet blonde manes tangled into one mat on the canvas. Melissa's clit was pressed full-length against Rachel's. Rachel's was pressed full-length against hers. Each one was a hot hard slick rod nesting in the slick split of the other one's labia, each one twitching with the same overstretched arousal, each one ready to detonate. Their pelvises moved. It was not a fight. It had stopped being a fight a long time before either one of them had been willing to admit it had stopped being a fight, and it was not a fight now. It was the slow paired roll of two broad strong sets of hips locked clit to clit on the mat, two hot wet snatches grinding slow and deep into each other in the dim light, two heavy bare chests sliding their soaked aureoles back and forth across each other in time, two open mouths breathing each other's hot air. Melissa's eyes were open the whole time. Rachel's were open the whole time. Each blonde stared into the other blonde's icy or smoky blue eyes and watched them go heavy-lidded, then almost lose focus, then squeeze shut at the same instant her own did, then crack open at the same instant her own did. Melissa felt the hot tingling spread across her back the same way she had felt it spread across her back in the shower three weeks ago, only this time she felt the same tingling spread across Rachel's back at the same instant under her hands. Their breath caught. Their thighs flexed. Their pelvises ground in one last slow synchronized roll, clit grinding clit, and the climb up the inside of Melissa's spine became the climb up the inside of Rachel's, and the gasp that broke against her own mouth was the gasp breaking against the other blonde's mouth, and they came in one mutual seizure that bowed both of their muscular backs off the mat at the same instant and locked their open mouths into one panting, sucking, wide-eyed kiss. Neither blonde won. They lay there afterwards for a long time. Their wet hair was mixed together on the canvas in one indistinguishable tangle. Their breath came down in long, slow, paired sighs. The hot wet length of Rachel's labia was still pressed against the hot wet length of Melissa's, soft now, no longer at war. Melissa's hand was resting on the broad slick curve of Rachel's flexing waist. Rachel's hand was resting on the broad slick curve of Melissa's. Neither blonde moved. "I can't keep doing this," Rachel said quietly. Her voice was shredded. "I can't stop doing this," Melissa said. Hers was the same. "Neither one of us is going to win." "No." "Then we stop fighting." Melissa was quiet for a long moment. The thought had been pressing on her for three weeks. She had not been able to put it into words, in or out of her own head, but Rachel had just put it in front of her and there was nothing to argue with. She was thirty-two years old. She had been straight her whole life. She had a perfectly fine boyfriend who lived two neighborhoods over and called her three times a week and would have been horrified to know that for two months his girlfriend's whole inner life had been built around sizing up the heavy round breasts of another tall blonde at the Y. She was looking now into the icy blue eyes of that other tall blonde and her body had spent the last three weeks aching for what was now pressed all the way down the front of her body, hot and flush and matching her inch for inch. "Yes," Melissa said. Rachel's wet head moved a fraction of an inch closer. The hard line of her sharp Nordic mouth softened by a degree Melissa had never seen on it before. Rachel kissed her. Slow this time. No teeth. No biting at lush trapped lips. Just one open hot mouth resting on another open hot mouth in the dim light with the spray of the showers in their hair and the canvas of the ring under them. Melissa kissed her back the same way. Their tongues moved against each other in something that had nothing in common with the dry savage tongue duels they had been waging for an hour, for six weeks, for two months. When they broke apart they didn't go far apart. Their foreheads stayed pressed together. Their breath kept mingling in the small space between them. Melissa's hand on Rachel's waist slid up her broad muscular back and her fingers tangled gently in the wet honey-blonde hair at the nape of Rachel's neck, and Rachel's hand on Melissa's waist did exactly the same thing in answer. "My place is closer," Rachel said. "Okay," Melissa said. They climbed back down out of the ring slowly, helping each other over the ropes the way enemies didn't help each other. They walked back down to the showers and rinsed off the salt and the bruises in silence, and this time Rachel's hand soaped Melissa's broad back and Melissa's hand soaped Rachel's, and neither one of them said anything about the fact that their hands were touching each other for once without trying to break anything. They dressed in the empty locker room three feet apart, both of them stiff and aching in every muscle, and neither one of them embarrassed about being naked in front of the other anymore. The cotton tee Rachel pulled on stretched across her broad chest and the pink rods of her two big nipples stood out clear under the white fabric, and Melissa's stretched the same way across hers, and neither one of them looked away. They walked out into the parking lot together. The orange sodium lights painted the asphalt the color of a sunset Melissa hadn't seen since high school. Rachel unlocked her car, looked at her over the roof for one long beat without saying anything, and got in. Melissa got in beside her. In Rachel's apartment they did not fight. They had emptied the fight out of themselves on the canvas of the ring under the overhead lights and what was left in the both of them, two thirty-two-year-old straight women who had each been showing up at the Y alone for over a year, was something neither one of them had a name for and neither one of them was going to need a name for to know it. Rachel pulled the cotton tee off without taking her eyes off Melissa and Melissa pulled hers off without taking her eyes off Rachel. Two heavy bare bosoms met for the seventh time that night in the dark of Rachel's bedroom, and this time neither one of them was bracing for the slap. They went slow. Rachel slid her broad muscular hand down Melissa's bare flank and Melissa slid hers down Rachel's, and the two of them spent a long time on each other's mouths first, no teeth, and then Rachel's mouth went down Melissa's neck and across the heavy curve of one milky-tan-lined breast and closed soft and slow on the long pink shaft of one nipple, and Melissa arched her broad muscular back off the bed at the touch the way the night three weeks ago had taught her her own body was capable of arching. She returned the favor. She turned the other woman over and dragged her own mouth across the heavy tanned curve of one of Rachel's globes and took the matching pink shaft in slow, and Rachel's broad muscular back arched off the bed in answer, and Melissa took her time about all of it, because there was no fight in either one of them anymore and there was no clock in the room and there was nothing to win and nothing to lose. She slid down Rachel's long muscular body the way Rachel slid down hers. They tasted each other, both blondes, both straight women, both lifelong rivals against all the other women they had ever met, the way neither of them had ever tasted another woman or expected to taste another woman in her life. They came again, separately this time, slow and long, each of them with the other one's hot mouth between her broad spread thighs and the other one's strong fingers laced through hers. By the time they curled up around each other in the dark, Melissa's broad back fitting against Rachel's broad chest as if the two bodies had been carved to nest, Rachel's strong arm draped across Melissa's hip and her hand resting flat on the smooth muscle of Melissa's belly, neither one of them was a stranger to the other one's body anymore, in any way. Melissa woke before sunrise to the same heavy bare breast pressed against her shoulder blade and the same long blonde arm draped across her hip and the same steady warm breath against the back of her neck. She lay there with her eyes open in the gray light and she thought about every woman she had ever sized up at the Y over the year she'd been there and about how none of them had been the woman behind her, and about how for a year she had been showing up at the Y to be alone with herself and instead, all this time, she had been showing up to find the only other body she had ever met that was the same body, and the only fight she had ever been in that had lasted past one round. Rachel stirred against her back. The arm tightened around her hip. The heavy bare breast at her shoulder shifted in. A mouth moved against the nape of her neck. "Stay," Rachel said. Melissa reached back, found the strong familiar shower-warm thigh, and pulled it tighter against her own. "Yes," she said. They were back at the gym that night. They worked the same circuit they had worked every night, on the same machines, in the same order, side by side in matched stretch pants and matched low-cut sports bras and matched loose blonde manes, and their numbers ticked up in identical lockstep with the kind of synchronization the two of them had been pretending was an accident for two months. Beth saw them and didn't say anything; Whitney saw them and raised one eyebrow and went back to her bag. The two big-busted blondes finished at the same instant, wiped their machines down the same way, and walked into the locker room together. They did not fight. They never fought again. Inside of two months Melissa had moved her things into Rachel's apartment, and inside of three months they had each told the man in their respective lives that there was no man in their respective lives anymore, and inside of six months Rachel had stopped sleeping on her own side of the bed at all and her broad bare back fit Melissa's broad bare front the way Melissa's broad bare back fit Rachel's broad bare front, and the two of them woke up every morning with the same hot weight of breast pressed into the same shoulder blade and the same long blonde arm draped across the same hip and the same steady warm breath against the back of the same neck, and the both of them straight women up to the day they had met each other in a locker room, and the both of them never anything else again. But on Friday nights, late, with the building empty and the lights down low and the back row of the locker room theirs alone again, sometimes for old time's sake the two of them met bare-chested in the dead center of the aisle and pressed their heavy round bare breasts together for a minute or two with their eyes locked and their hands on their own hips, just to feel it once more in the week, just to remember that the only woman in the world who had ever pushed back was the one whose key was on her own keychain now. Then they showered. Together. And went home. Together.