The Randy Romance Novelist(49)
Good for you guys, I complimented in my head.
“Brunette in the back with the handkerchief in her hair who is pedaling like a grandma carrying her dog in a bike basket, pick it up, or I’m going to keep the entire class a half hour later. Move it!”
I looked around for the brunette who was ruining everything for us when Delaney smacked me in the arm from the side. “Hey, idiot, she’s talking to you. Move your effing legs, I have a date with Derk after this.”
“Is she talking to me?” I pointed at myself.
Over the speakers, the instructor’s voice boomed. “Yes, I’m talking to you. Now, get moving.”
Embarrassment seared through me.
I pedaled faster, ignoring Virginia’s protests. You know how people wear shirts that say, “Sweat is just fat crying?”
Well, in my case, sweat was my vagina crying out to all other vaginas for a lifeline, for help in any kind of capacity, even it was a * tap from one lady to another.
“Well, she’s rude,” I hissed at Delaney.
We could barely hear each other over the music, but what I did hear fly out of Delaney’s mouth was, “Want that love chub forever?”
She knew how to hit me where it hurt. Therefore, I spent the last ten minutes of class pounding out my crotch until I didn’t think there was anything left. Every full rotation of the pedal was a knife up my core, slowly disintegrating any sexual organ I grew myself.
After the music stopped and Lance Armstrong took off her clip-on shoes, she smiled at everyone and told them to enjoy their day. From beneath the towel I dried my face with, I flipped her off. There was a special place in hell for people like her and Marta.
“You know, if you’re going to go to that class, you should really try to work out,” Delaney chastised me, as we walked down to the locker room.
“Excuse me for wanting to save the nerve endings in my crotch.”
“It doesn’t hurt that bad; you just have to get used to it.”
“I don’t think I will ever get used to having a bike seat eat me out.” I spoke the words, just as an elderly woman was heading off to water aerobics.
Her look of disgust barely affected me. I was feeling too delirious from Satan’s spin class.
“Speak a little louder about your sexual acts with a bike next time, Rosie. I don’t think the kids in the play area heard you.”
I huffed and followed Delaney into the locker room.
Locker rooms were weird. There were some women in this world who had zero regard for keeping their bodies private, and it was always the women who had string beans as boobs hanging off their chests and grey bushes that would make the goliath, Marta, faint.
I was opening my locker when I leaned over to Delaney, “What’s with the old ladies in here not wearing clothes?”
“It’s a locker room, Rosie. They don’t need to wear clothes.”
I pointed my finger at the ground. “This is America; we wear clothes in public.”
Delaney rolled her eyes at me and shut her locker. “I don’t know why I drag you to the gym . . . all you do is complain.”
“It’s really not my kind of place. I found that out rather quickly when the man next to me on the first day of spin class was spewing sweat all over me. How does salty water drip off someone at that rate, and then fling about the room? It was like he was trying to give the entire class a shower with his bodily fluids.”
“I can’t handle you right now. Are you taking a shower?”
“I have to. I have that meeting with Jenny.”
Delaney perked up. “Where are you going?”
I stuck my chin in the air and headed toward the showers, not forgetting a towel this time. First go around, I had to dry off with my sweaty clothes; it wasn’t a productive showering time. “That is none of your business.”
“Does it have to do with male strippers and their dicks hitting me in the face?”
I paused, and so did everyone else around us. I whispered to Delaney, “And you thought I was too loud about the bike. Jeeze, Delaney, everyone probably thinks we are a couple of pervs.”
“Let them; maybe they’ll keep their dangling boobies away from us.”
“One can only hope,” I laughed.
I took a pretty quick shower and got dressed in the stall. l was a prude and I was okay with that. I worked quickly because, just like Delaney, I had a date to make.
***
“Thank you so much for coming with me, Jenny. I didn’t want to pick out strippers by myself, and there was no way Henry would go with me, plus he’s working late . . . again.”
Third night in a row he’d stayed late at the office, and every time he’d gotten home, he’d been too tired to fulfill my sexual needs. If I thought my vagina felt heavy back then; she now felt like fifty pounds slung around in my underwear. I’m surprised my underwear hadn’t snapped in half from the weight. I needed to get laid . . . badly.
I told myself every night not to overreact, not to lash out irrationally at him. He was working hard, and I should honor that. But there was a nagging voice in the back of my head that kept saying he was hiding something.
My insane imagination tried to tell me that instead of working, he was banging Tasha on the conference room table, but I knew that couldn’t be the truth. I continued to tell myself that over and over again. He told me, to my face, I was all he ever needed. But maybe he’d changed his mind since I couldn’t fit in my jeans anymore.