Chapter 9

Paul’s calloused fingers hovered over the navy-stitched name “Gemma” on the cheer uniform. He smiled, recalling Gemma’s accidental brush of her stocking-clad toes against his when she’d shown off her routine—soft fabric whispering along his ankle. He smelled the fabric for the last time before putting it in the washer.

Paul’s mind drifted back to the past two days, his body responding to the memory of Gemma’s uniform against his skin. He could still feel the smooth fabric beneath his fingers, the scent of her—sweet and slightly sharp—lingering in his nostrils. He thought of how he had pressed it to his face, inhaling deeply, his heart pounding as he tasted her faint traces, a salty-sweet tang on his tongue. His cheeks burned with shame, but his body hummed with relief, the tension that had been building for days finally ebbing away. The desire that had been gnawing at him, keeping him awake at night, was sated. For now.

The shame had burned itself out, and in its absence his mind was suddenly, almost cruelly, clear—like a fever breaking in the middle of the night, leaving the body cold and alert and alone with itself. He could think about the girls now. He could think about them plainly, without the static.

He pictured Gemma during her last visit, her cheer skirt flicking up as she spun. He watching her feet and toes pointed like a dancer’s. Pointed to him.

Then came Mia, “tripping” by his belt buckle the other day, leaving her floral perfume clinging to his shirt long after she’d steadied herself. And Jess, perched on his worn leather couch under the pretense of reaching the remote, her hips shifting just enough to make his throat go dry.

Three girls. Three consecutive days. Three not-so-subtle invitations. He had never enjoyed such female attention, not even when he was young. Then a thought came: each girl had come with Sophie, but at the crucial moment, she had not been present. She had managed to drift somewhere nearby—her bedroom, the bathroom—and to return seconds after the scene ended. What a coincidence.

And now, Sophie brought back the wrong uniform —a uniform that radiated Gemma’s distinctive scent. And instead of putting it directly into the hamper, she had told him whose uniform it was and asked him to put it into the wash. And the more he turned over the facts, the more it agitated him. Sophie, who was so fastidious with her personal things, had somehow managed to grab another uniform at the meet, and it had to be Gemma’s.

What were the chances? Paul tried to reason with himself: maybe the swap was innocent, a true mix-up at the locker room, one uniform blending into another in the fluorescent after-practice haze. But now, with his head clear, every instinct told him otherwise.

There had to be an explanation. Maybe he was reading too much into it, giving the girls too much credit for orchestration. Still, he couldn’t shake the sense of conspiracy, the feeling of plays being run just out of view. He needed to check his thinking, to ask someone outside the swirl of these girls.
Paul’s thumb trembled over “Mike Donovan” in his contacts—Jess’s father, the only other dad whose number he had after buying a life insurance policy. The call tapped in; on the third ring, Donovan’s voice bloomed with forced cheer. “Paul! You never call unless something’s wrong. What’s up?”

Paul exhaled, recalling the tickle of Jess’s hair. “Hey, did Jess maybe take Sophie’s uniform by mistake yesterday? Sophie ended up with a different set...”

A laugh crackled on the line, light but strained. “Funny you ask—Jess did bring home the wrong uniform, but it was Mia’s, not Sophie’s. Our girls had a blonde moment.”

“They really have been swapping things lately,” Paul said, voice tight.

“Yeah,” Mike continued. “They’ve all been over for math help—Mia Monday, Gemma Wednesday, Sophie yesterday. Big exam coming up.”

Paul’s grip on the phone tightened. At least he wasn’t alone in this mess, yet every detail thickened the fog. He imagined all four girls around Donovan’s kitchen table—no, Donovan said they’d come separately. Clearing his throat, Paul forced a laugh. “Well, at least they’re hitting the books. Talk soon.” He hung up.

He set the phone beside a half-sanded pine dowel on his workbench. He recalled every girl’s visit. He turned the dowel over in his hands. Donovan had said it so easily, like a schedule, like a thing that made sense. Paul tried to arrange the facts into something innocent—four girls, one exam, mixed-up uniforms—but the facts kept arranging themselves back. Something was happening. And Sophie was in it.

After school, the girls met in the echo chamber of the empty locker room. Whispers snapped against metal, conspiratorial and electric. Their uniforms hung side by side on the open lockers, each girl remembering what their dads had done with those.
“The uniforms test was a success,” Sophie said. “Now it’s time to take our turns solo.”
“I suggest us to be direct,” Sophie said. “No more ‘oops, I dropped something’—just ask. I want to see what they do.”
Gemma whistled. “Bold. What if they say no?”
“They won’t,” Mia said, voice soft but sure. “They’re dying for it. They made love to our uniforms, they won’t say no to the chance of make love to us.”
A hush, then laughter—a little frantic, a little feral.