Running
by Cole Parker
Chapter 8
"We're going to do this?" Jensen asked me. We were walking toward the school whose team we'd just whipped. They were all boys, and being a somewhat exclusive school, they were mostly rich boys with pretty healthy egos. They hadn't liked losing to us. That just made the win sweeter for us. We were a very happy bunch.
The boys at that school would do what they always did as the home school. They'd wait to shower till we were done and out of the locker room and headed for our bus. Jensen and I were walking slightly apart from the rest of our team, talking privately.
"Yes, we're doing it, unless you want to back out."
"Nope." She looked excited, more than I'd have expected from just the win. "I want to be one of the guys. I'm entirely okay with this."
I still had reservations but said, "All right. Now this is how I want it to go down. Right now, you need to ask me if you can shower with us and remind me that the law is on your side."
"I already did that."
"I know, but do it again."
She did, and I smiled. "Now, one more thing. Go into the shower with your bra and panties on. Whether you leave them on or not is up to you. But wear them going in."
She looked at me funny. "That'll seem strange. Basically, I'll be undressing in front of everyone. Worse than walking in naked, which would be the natural way to do it."
"Yeah, you're right, but if you're okay showering with a bunch of horny, naked boys, this should still be in your wheelhouse. Besides, some of us will be partly dressed at first, too."
She didn't like it but saw I was serious about it, so finally said okay.
In the locker room, there was some tension that wasn't typical after a win. We were usually all loosey-goosey. Today, we were much more reserved. Tension.
Scott was next to me as usual as we undressed. When he was down to his jock, I told him to leave it on till we were in the shower. "You can take it off in there if you want, but wear it going in. I'll do the same."
"Why?" he asked.
"Survival," I said and grinned at him. He didn't get it, but then, I didn't expect him to.
That shower was something I'll probably always remember. The seniors and Devin and Brian stripped down as usual before going in. The only thing they did differently was that they undressed much faster than usual, and when they walked to the shower, they let their towels dangle strategically in front of them. But they hung them in the anteroom, then stepped into the shower room entirely naked.
The sophomores watched, and when they saw the upperclassmen walking into the showers naked, they looked at each other, saw acceptance, and they followed suit, looking uneasy but brave.
Cary was undressing very slowly. When he saw Scott and me leaving our jocks on, I saw relief on his face, and he did the same. He walked to the shower room and began showering with his jock still on, but still looking like a freshman: uncertain of what he was getting into.
That left Jensen, Scott and me still in the locker room. She'd been watching us before even starting to undress. Now, she did that but left her sports bra and panties on as agreed. She scowled at me, but I just nodded back at her, then gave her a half smile.
She walked with us to the shower room and got under a shower still wearing her undergarments. I did the same, wearing my jock. Scott took off and hung his jock on the hook with his towel before coming in and getting wet.
Everyone was watching Jensen. She was looking back at everyone else. The room was silent until she spoke up. "Did we kick some rich-kid ass today, guys?" she said, her voice loud and excited. I jumped in right behind her. "Did you see their captain? He was going to run with me and Scott and stayed with us for a time, working hard. You could see it in his face. Then he started lagging, and by the halfway marker he just ran out of gas. Then you passed him, Jensen. The look on his face!"
That set everyone off, and the room became what was normal for us after a win. Well, mostly normal. The guys were all talking, but they were all ogling Jensen, too. She wasn't shy. She looked around at the guys she was speaking to. But she didn't spend time focusing on dicks. She glanced at them, but that was all. Then she spent her time meeting eyes. Not long after entering, after looking at the naked guys, she took off what she was wearing with a satisfied gleam in her eyes.
As soon as she did, I followed suit. That left only Cary. Jensen shifted her gaze at him, then smiled. "Come on, Cary. Let's be a team together, all the same."
That did it. He blushed but shucked off his jock, and everyone cheered. That was the loudest we'd been since getting in the showers.
I was watching everyone. The seniors and sophs and Cary spent most of their time looking at Jensen. She was a sight to behold for me. Thin but strong, built like a girl with wider hips than we had and only a slight swelling of breasts, leaving no doubt she was a girl, as did the lack of a penis. Even so, there was indeed something feminine about her, and as everyone was watching, she began soaping herself sensually, sliding her slippery hands all over her body. She wriggled a bit as she did this, and the touching became even more sensual. Especially as she ran them over her breasts and between her legs.
It was obvious we all noticed. Well, everyone but Brian and Devin and I were showing signs we were very normal hormonal males. Everyone was chubbing up. Some more than chubs. Some were full erections. Both seniors were hard. One of them turned his back on the rest of us. The other made no effort to hide it but just acted like it was normal. Which indeed it was. Getting hard when naked and in the presence of a girl is as natural as bacon with eggs and milk with cereal. Very normal. The way things work.
Both sophs were about halfway hard and nervously, bashfully fighting it. I guess you're more inclined to be embarrassed about people seeing you hard when you're younger. Cary was blushing so hard he was red all over. He too turned his back.
Neither Devin nor Brian were affected by having her there. Just what I expected. Neither was I.
And Scott? I'd delayed looking at him, wanting to give him time to react if he was going to. Now I looked at him and frowned. He'd plumped up some from his flaccid state, that was for sure, but not all that much. Just some. Maybe half. What the hell did that mean?
Okay. I'd learned nothing. I'd set all this up just to see if a naked girl would get him hard. That would certainly tell me he wasn't gay if he boned up. And what did he do? He got a little excited. Not all that much. A little. What did I learn? Nada!
So, there I was, still uncertain of Scott's sexuality but with bigger fish to fry. Now I had an explanation to make to the coach. I decided not to mention anything on the bus to him. He'd be certain to hear about what we'd done and ask me about it, but I thought it might be better for him to approach me. Play the innocent. That seemed best.
There was no relaxed, easygoing congeniality on view when I walked into Coach's office on Monday. He stayed seated behind his desk, and while he wasn't glaring at me, he wasn't smiling, either.
"You wanted to see me, Coach?" I asked, acting as nonchalant as possible. Inside, my nerves were jangling, and I was hoping it didn't show.
"Yes, Xander, I wanted to see you."
I wasn't used to hearing sarcasm from him. I decided he was trying to rattle me. He didn't need to make the effort; I was already rattled.
As his response didn't need a response, I didn't provide one. I just stood there looking at him. He looked back, and finally just sighed. "Sit down, Xander," he said, sounding tired.
I sat down and remained silent. This was his game, not mine. He had to make the moves. I had to work with what he gave me. I'd planned this out—I always had a plan—but I didn't know at this point if it would be effective or even sufficient.
"Okay, here it is," he said. "I heard today from a couple sources that something went on after the race Friday. How about you tell me about it without my having to question you? That would be the best way to do this."
Okay, should I play the innocent or talk openly about it? This was Coach I was talking to, and he was a friend if I had any at all, and I could trust him. But he was also a school official, and what I'd done had obviously been wrong any way the school wanted to look at it. So I was in a bad spot. Tell him the truth, the entire, nothing-held-back truth, and I'd be in a world of hurt, and probably so would the others on the team. No, I couldn't just spill it out and let the chips fall where they may. I had to finesse this. Not something I was good at, but I had to at least try. And the finesse was what my plan had been all about all along.
"Well, yes, something unusual happened, I guess, but nothing that you need to get upset about. I just handled an awkward situation the best I could. That's all."
He was watching me closely. I was trying to stay calm. Hard to speak calmly when your heart is beating hard and fast
"Well, tell me what was awkward."
"Okay. See, after the race, Jensen told me that Brayn Academy didn't have a place she could shower, and she didn't want to ride back on the bus all sweaty, and she asked me if she could shower with us. That sounded a little dicey to me, but I could see her point. So I asked the other guys if they objected. Had any of them done so, I'd have apologized to Jensen and told her that no, she couldn't. But they all were fine with it. So I told her she could."
"You told her it was all right for her to shower with a group of naked teenage boys? Is that what you're telling me?"
"That's why I said the situation was awkward. But I did the best I could. She went into the showers with her underwear on. Boys did, too. There was nothing really wrong about it."
"You still had what, your jock on?"
"Yeah. You didn't think we'd shower naked with a girl in there, did you?"
"Uh, well, why didn't you come get me and let me make the decision? Why didn't you let her shower alone, then go in there yourselves? Why didn't you do most anything other than shower with a girl?"
"Well, I did think of all that. But I didn't want to get you in trouble."
"Huh? Me in trouble? You're saying you did this to protect me? How? For crying out loud, how?"
"Well, I thought about what you'd told me, that it's against the law to deny a girl something boys have if there's no separate way for the girls to participate on their own. There was no girls' shower. So by law, she had to use ours. We didn't have time for two showers because the other team was waiting to shower themselves. It wouldn't have been fair to make them wait while she undressed, showered, toweled off, dressed, then cleared the locker room for us to do the same. That's why we didn't shower separately. And protecting you? Had I told you about it, I was pretty sure you'd say no to the idea, and I was thinking of that law you'd be breaking, and that you'd have no choice but to say no and then maybe be sued and lose your job. No way did I want that. I love having you as our coach and didn't want you put in that position. I avoided all that simply by making the decision on my own."
His face was going through all sorts of contortions as I said all that. When I stopped, he continued to look at me and I had no idea what was going through his mind. He was silent for a couple of minutes before he spoke again.
Then he asked, "She had her underwear on, and so did the boys?"
"I swear to you, we had jocks on, and she had both panties and her bra."
Okay, that might have been fudging a little, but no way could anyone call it lying. By 'we' I meant me and Cary and Scott, and by 'had on' I meant when we first walked into the showers and then for at least part of the time while we were showering. So what I'd said was the absolute truth because that was what I meant with my answer. No question about it: it wasn't a lie at all.
"And you found out about this right after the race?"
"That's right. That's when she asked, and when she mentioned the law you referred to. Which is when I started worrying about you. Anyway, you were still talking to the officials and the other coach when we were going to the locker room. I had to make a decision on the fly, and I made it. If it was a bad one, well, I'm sorry, but I thought I was doing the right thing."
"Why didn't you come tell me about it afterwards. On the bus—or today?"
"It was all over by then. I don't see it happening again because we don't race another school that's an all-boys school. Anyway, if she does ask again, I'll have her talk to you. This sort of thing seems more your area of expertise than mine. I'm only 16."
Okay, that was laying it on a little thick, but it seemed the best play right then.
He was silent again, thinking, and finally said, "I have to tell the principal about this. He has to hear it from me rather than from someone else. He can't get to looking at this as something we're trying to cover up—that I'm trying to cover up."
"No one's covering anything up," I said, thinking as I said it about no one covering anything up in the shower, either, "but if that's what you have to do, you'd understand more about that than I would. I'd suggest, however, you stress that law and the possibility of a lawsuit when you talk to him. Jensen did mention the law when asking to shower with us. She's certainly aware of it."
"I'll do that," he said, and I could tell it was time for me to leave.
So I still wasn't sure about Scott. I could look at it either way, that he'd chubbed up a bit, meaning he wasn't gay, or that he hadn't become fully hard, so he probably was. I was still in the dark, and I still wanted more than anything to know. I had strong feelings for him.
I decided then and there I'd find a way to ascertain the truth. If I could figure out how to get a girl into our boys' shower and get away with it, I probably could work out a way to get Scott to tell me he was gay without any more beating around the bush.
First, though, I had something else to do. So, I made it a point to run with Jensen during that week's training runs. I needed to talk to her. I told Scott to run with someone else, maybe Cary, because I needed some alone time with Jensen.
"You do? I thought . . . well, never mind what I thought. Okay, Cary ends up alone a lot. He should like the company."
I'd thought he might complain more, but he didn't, and that cleared the way for me to run with her.
I latched onto her before we set off for a six-mile run. Told her to hold on, and we'd go out together at the end of the pack.
When we were running, I slowed our pace till we were well behind the others. Then I told her that it was very unlikely she could shower with us again; that I thought we'd gotten away with it without my being suspended and Coach being fired, but we'd never have the chance to do it again.
"I understand," she said, loping along with me and not breathing like a pumping bellows. She was a good runner. "I didn't expect to. Showering with the team wasn't what I thought it would be."
"How's that? What do you mean?"
"I really wanted to be one of you guys. Just like I told you. That was much more important than showering so I'd be clean. I wanted to be a full partner out there, and it just seemed to me I needed to be showering with you guys for that to be true. I wasn't thinking about sex at all, just being part of the team. But once I was in that shower room, once I felt the mood in the room my being there caused, I could tell it couldn't happen. No matter what my motive or how everyone on the team liked me being part of it, what it came down to in the shower was that I was a girl and they were guys and we were all naked. I could tell they'd never get past that. Pissed me off, but I've had to handle that sort of disappointment all my life. I like to do boy things more than girl things. And mostly I can't because the boys don't want me there. That wasn't the case here, but they liked me in the showers for the wrong reason."
I wasn't sure how to react to that, so I merely said, "I'm sorry." And I meant it.
"I got my revenge, though," she said, and laughed.
"You mean—"
"Yeah. I made everyone get hard. On purpose. Well, not everyone, but we all know about Devin and Brian. You'd have to've been numb not to know about them. Scott? I had no idea and still don't, really, but he's probably straight. He wasn't staring at me all that much, so maybe that's why he didn't react so strongly as most of them. You, well, that was a surprise.
"Everyone was checking me out while I was checking out boners—just for the fun of it and to see if I could. I've read that girls are supposed to have feminine wiles. I didn't know if I did or not. Now, it seems maybe I do." She laughed again.
We ran in silence again for a spell, then she said, "You know, why I did what I did—all that rubbing myself—was more than just to get you guys hot. I said I liked boy things growing up. When puberty hit, it confused me. I guess I've always been a little uncertain of my sexuality. I feel better about it now. I'm definitely not gay. I was watching you all, and I didn't see any of you looking anywhere but at me, and I found I liked that. You were treating me like a girl, and I felt like a girl. I'd never seen live, in-the-flesh boners before, and seeing them and realizing it was because you guys were looking at me, that was exciting. Turned me on. And when everyone kept looking at me instead of him when I spoke to Cary, I loved it, and I knew who I was, finally. Not gay. Definitely straight.
"But, just so you know, Xander, everyone was looking at me, so it's possible your secret is safe. I won't tell anyone, okay?"
"Okay," I said. Evidently, she hadn't seen me take my eyes off her to glance at Scott. But then, she hadn't seen him look at me, either, so maybe he hadn't, and maybe he didn't know. That made a difference in how I'd go about getting him to admit he was gay. More thought was needed.
A few steps farther along the trail I asked, "So you're okay, then, with not showering with us?"
"Yeah, I wasn't going to even if you'd said it was okay. You had to feel the atmosphere in there."
"Yeah, I did. And I think you're right. This might have worked in elementary school and maybe even in college where the men have to be more mature than here and most of them have had sex; seeing a naked girl would be nice for them, but it wouldn't have been like this. But high school or even middle school? No way. Guys are too horny. I know squat about girls, but aren't girls horny, too?"
She didn't miss a beat and said, "Hey, maybe we should step up the pace a little? I'm going to try to catch Scott and Cary."
With that she took off. I ran with her, keeping up easily, but didn't speak again. I somehow knew not to bug her to answer my question.
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