Chapter 55: Lydia’s Swansong

Meri

Jenny had of course clued me in on the fact that uncle Mark and auntie Nadja wanted to make a baby and she had already adopted that child as a sibling before it was even conceived. Frankly, it were the least surprising news ever.

Mark was to love what Fort Knox was to the American gold reserves, he had lots of it in him.

“They already practicing?” I asked Lydia and Regina as I came out to the pool. Although it was already evening, I would at least catch an hour of evening sun and stripped down.

“What do you think?” Regina said with a giggle. “And get this, she’s also teaching him how to give Jenny a goodnight peck.”

“Whoa girls, how have you done this?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “Did you put a gun to his head or what?”

“A rhetorical one, yes,” Lydia explained. “He overthinks everything. Jenny isn’t his, so he considered any close contact with her highly inappropriate. Like always he had to have the obvious rubbed in his face before he overcomes his stubbornness. Once Regina had gotten it through to him how happy Jenny is to have a dad and a big family now, I could almost hear the proverbial penny drop.”

“You say it,” Regina agreed. “I’m pretty sure from now on she’s his daughter – period. He accepted that role instantly. I bet I’ll face him at the next parent-teacher meeting.”

“Finally,” I sighed. “So it was basically just down to the fact that Mark didn’t know that Jenny has been calling him daddy when she’s alone with us for at least a year now?”

“Yup,” Regina confirmed dryly. “It was perhaps our own fault. After all, we asked her to call him uncle Mark to prevent him from feeling uncomfortable.”

I snorted. “Well, its not that our lifestyle comes with a manual. She grows up with now four mothers, because I can tell you she adopted Nadja as well today, and her dad has three wives.”

We all chuckled.

“You are aware though that we have to make our lifestyle public now? Three of us are international athletes in the public eye. Jenny will call Mark her daddy at school at some point and the media hack who finds out that he’s also Lydia’s official boyfriend and will have a child with Nadja already has legs. So we can either wait until some rag posts a concocted story about Sodom and Gomorrah in the Wild East, full of made-up juicy details, or we tackle this head-on.”

“Damn, you’re right. In all this euphoria about the baby and daily breast massages we didn’t think of that,” Lydia admitted.

“Did I miss something?” I asked her.

“Well, there is one detail that Jenny couldn’t tell you, because we didn’t tell her, obviously,” Regina said with a giggle. “Nadja can’t breastfeed due to a medical condition, and Lydia and I are looking forward to Mark and you helping us with relactation.”

“Both of you?” I asked with a chuckle. “What are they planning on making, a grizzly bear?”

Regina shook her head. “Since Lydia couldn’t properly feed Mark, Frank theorized that Mark’s boob fetish comes from his deprivation as a baby. I still remember how much Jenny vomited when she went from breast milk to formula, and that poor boy had to drink that stuff from day one.”

“Ah, I get it,” I said. “So you’re not only going to feed a small child, but also a rather hunky one.

“It was only a theory until two hours ago,” Lydia said. “It ain’t anymore – the way he looked at me when we told him Regina or I would be going to feed our child. That boy will empty my tits several times a day. I’ll probably breast-feed for the rest of my life.”

“Wouldn’t that wreck your career?” I asked.

“We’ll work something out,” Lydia said. “But we should perhaps concentrate on the other plan first. Anyone with an idea?”

“I would have one,” I offered. “But it’s a rather radical one and it could have consequences for all of us.”

“What is it?” Regina asked.

“The Playboy offer for Lydia and Nadja has expired, because she couldn’t pose with her road rash on the leg. Why don’t we offer to pose?”

“All of us, including me?” Regina asked. “Have you any idea what it would be like to teach a class that has passed a Playboy issue around, with me in it, in the break before the lesson? My authority would be shot.”

“That’s what I meant with consequences,” I continued. “You teach 7th to 10th grade, so, assuming no 4th-grader gets his hands on a Playboy magazine, you could take a hiatus of 5 years and all those who have potentially seen you in all your gorgeous glory will have graduated by then. And I wasn’t thinking about the Playboy anyway.”

“The German magazine we posed for with Femke?” Lydia asked.

“Eaxctly,” I confirmed. “The Playboy wants tits and pussies. Those guys were after an interesting story they could illustrate with a bunch of tasteful nudes. We could tell our story, and I bet those guys won’t be shy to include Mark. And they don’t have to pay us a gazillion bucks. I think we’re all past the penny pinching.”

“I like the idea,” Lydia said.

“Now we have to convince Mark and Nadja,” Regina chipped in.

“Well, here they come,” I said and doubled over laughing when I saw Mark. “Boy are you cross-eyed!”

“You weren’t here to see her shake her hips earlier today,” he said with a grin that could only be described as deliriously happy. “Trust me that’s not the only part of her musculature she has an amazing control over.”

We all laughed and Nadja blushed with a happy smile.

John

“Mate, what happened?” Bill O’Connor asked me when he came into my office.

“I’m having a decision to make and since it involves people you are sponsoring, I thought you should have a say in it.”

“Now you make me curious,” he said as he sat down across the desk from me.

I took a copy of that German magazine from a few years ago out of my drawer, opened the correct page and shoved it over to him. He looked at the story for a while, and unlike most men, he actually read it instead of just scanning the pictures.

“Strewth mate, those three girls have ridden for my team. Two still do! Why are you showing me that years late? I would have promoted the hell out of it at the time and provided some funds for that charity. And what kind of Magazine is it? Normally something that has naked women in it doesn’t include such brilliant articles with it.”

“It’s translation of an East German magazine,” I explained. “It’s literally called ‘The Magazine’. Back then I wasn’t really keen on my athletes selling their skin, so to speak. But when I read that article, I changed my mind about the idea. Now they want to do it again.”

“And where’s the problem? One of them isn’t riding in my team anymore, and the cause is a worthy one.”

“Well, this time their cause is a bit more personal,” I said. “You know Lydia, right?”

Bill rolled his eyes. “She’s a three time Olympic winner. Of course I know her.”

“Well, you also know her boyfriend – the guy who took us to watch Jenny Marx race three years ago.”

“I remember the lad. He’s the only American ever to out-Brit me on the accent. He works for you doesn’t he?”

“He did, but he’s busy otherwise these days. The thing is, he’s also the boyfriend of Jenny’s mother and the boyfriend of the Russian girl who came second behind Lydia in the Olympics and also rides for your team now. And the reason why Meri left your team is, because she wanted to live with her girlfriend, which is also Jenny’s mother, and she also ends up in Mark’s bed occasionally.”

Poor Bill looked at me as if I had just told him the moon was made of cheese and that the earth was flat. I leaned back into my chair and waited for him to process all the information I had just dumped on him.

“That’s one bloody lucky sod,” he said after a while. “If the media get hold of that, they’ll be in all kinds of trouble. The authorities could even take that kid out of that household.”

“That’s my problem,” I said. “They want to bring the mountain to the prophet. They want to go to the media themselves to out themselves as polyamorous.”

“Crikey. I’m not so current on Germany. How will their public take it?”

“East Germans will probably mostly not bat an eye. They had decriminalized homosexuality when you guys were still throwing Alan Turing into jail for being gay. So the fact that the girls are all bisexual to varying degrees shouldn’t be much of a problem. It’s the polyamory I’m not sure about. It’s not illegal as they aren’t married, but how the public will react? Your guess is as good as mine.”

“The bible thumpers over here will have a bloody conniption, for sure,” Bill said. “But as far as I’m concerned – all power to them. It takes serious guts to go public with something like that and also ditching the frock to tell the tale. To hell what they screech about in the bible belt. They live in Europe now, and they’re old enough to know they will face some headwinds.”

“So you’re not concerned about your team? Three of them are riding for you.”

“I’ll handle the media, or better our German management assistant I hired last year. Brilliant woman.”

I hid my grin.

“What’s her name?” I asked him.

“Beatrice Karass,” he said.

I leaned back in my chair again and waited for the penny to drop. Suddenly Bills eyes got wide.

“Yep, she’s Lydia’s sister, but don’t worry she isn’t part of Mark’s harem.”

He chuckled.

“Okay, Bill, if you have no reservations concerning your team, I’ll have their backs too. Hell, if it all goes to hell in a handcart we could just sell our client base to a different company and continue with Lydia, Meri and Nadja as our only remaining clients. That lot has a way to create interest.”

He laughed with me.

“By the way, Bill. Why do you start to sound like an Australian lately?” I needled him.

“Damn and blast, I knew I shouldn’t have hired that bloody ozzie as a personal assistant.”

Meri

It was one of those days when I had that sliver of regret to have left my old team. I could have been with them riding the Tour de l’Aude in France right now. We had ridden that tour for the first time as a very small team four years ago. Now the team wasn’t small anymore and they were rocking it!

Katrijn had won three stages in the sprint. Femke had netted a hilly stage with an audacious solo breakaway. Lydia had caused an upset when she beat Femke in the time-trial. Well, our muscle babe had probably shot a bit too much of her ammo by riding out front for nearly a hundred kilometers on her own the day before.

I had to admit, I was looking forward to today’s stage. It was the one that ended with the mountain top finish up the Pic the Nore, the only highlight of our debut year when Lydia had won the stage. It had come at a cost though. Some drunk Spanish spectator had body-checked her off her bike and she had to finish the stage half topless, with blood dripping down her exposed boob, because most of her jersey had been atomized by her sliding along the tarmac after the fall.

What we all remembered though was Lydia still giving her victory salute despite her less than complete clothing. Unfortunately that was also the last we saw of her in that tour. Her road rash had just been too bad.

Today though, a repeat was not to be feared. After that incident four years ago, the UCI had begun to come down like a ton of bricks on organizers for any spectator incidents, so these days they tended to be rather safe than sorry and didn’t allow spectators on the road on climbs anymore. It made it a bit more sterile on TV, but also a lot safer. They were still allowing it in men’s races though. That was an incident waiting to happen.

It was a good thing they only showed the end of the stage though. When the broadcast began, 26 kilometers from the finish, the whole bunch was still together, not even the customary breakaway group of hopelessly distanced riders was out front. The team had ruthlessly controlled the pace to keep everything together, pretty much in a reversal of what they had done to us four years ago.

As soon as the final climb began, it became pretty clear that my old team was adamant to dictate terms. Nadja attacked as soon as the road started to go uphill, forcing all favorites and riders with hopes for a stage win to follow her. It weren’t too many. A group of nine riders formed, quickly riding away from the exhausted main peloton.

Nadja, who had instigated the attack was drilling it like a woman possessed upfront. Amelie was sitting on her rear wheel, dragging Lydia along on hers. Behind our three girls were six others who struggled to keep up, knowing they had wasted a perfectly usable day of their lives. None of them had a team mate for help in the group, while Lydia, wearing the yellow jersey of the overall leader, had two of them.

And boy did Nadja drill it. She set a murderous pace for another six kilometers, which was basically half the entire climb. It looked like the prospect of having a baby had given her a massive boost. But now even that boost had run its course. Nadja was totally spent, but the job was done. Except for two Colombian girls there was nobody left to challenge Lydia for the win, and those two were already running on fumes. She dropped back. As Lydia overtook her, she leaned over and planted a kiss square on Nadja’s lips.

We heard Jenny giggle.

Regina chuckled too and leaned in, whispering in my ear. “She’s going on a farewell tour like none before, isn’t she?”