Chapter 38

IT WAS AN INTENSE TWO WEEKS getting to Opens. After that incredible birthday party, when Kate joined us in the big bed, we spent Sunday drifting in and out of the bedroom, getting food, presents, and drifting back to bed. It was such a dream. Kate was ... just Kate. Every time I thought of her, my eyes started to water.

But Monday morning, three of the four of us had to go to school. I had to go first since I had that god-awful seven-thirty Human Anatomy course. Not that anatomy is awful for me. I’m pretty good at it. But who gets up at that hour?

When I woke up to the screeching alarm on my cell phone, it was all I could do to drag myself out of bed. My three unbelievable lovers rolled together and held each other as if I’d never been in the bed at all. My sweet, frisky playmate, Melody. My toned and muscular partner, Lissa. My ... my? Oh my! Sweet Kitten. I don’t know what you are yet, but you are so important to us!

I figured my best bet at seeing my lovers awake before I left for school was to make coffee. I took a last look from the bedroom doorway and then headed to the kitchen.

Wendy handed me a cup of coffee when I walked into the kitchen.

“Wow!” I said. “I wasn’t expecting this. Thank you.”

“I thought I’d try to extend your birthday a little.”

“You’re sweet, Wendy. I need to make coffee for the other women in my life, okay?”

“Can I help? I’ve got the knack of this new machine down pretty well.” In fact, she was making better coffee with the fancy espresso maker than I was.

“Wendy, you know how much I appreciate all your help?”

“You do?”

“I do. But you aren’t a servant here. Why don’t you make your cup and then I’ll make coffee for the girls.”

“I couldn’t, Tony. Not before they have theirs.”

“They are still asleep and will wait until I bring their coffee before they wake up. I’ve got twenty minutes before I have to leave. That’s plenty of time for you to have a cup of coffee with me.”

She smiled and shook her tiger-striped locks as she made coffee. As much as I wanted to get back to my lovers, I sensed it was important to take a little time with Wendy. She was still awfully vulnerable.

“Was it good?” she whispered.

“You make much better coffee than I do,” I answered.

“I meant ... you know ... with Kate?”

“Oh! Um ... yes,” I said. “I really don’t know what to say, Wendy. We don’t talk a lot about what goes on...”

“It was dreamy. Every time I heard one of you scream out, I came. I couldn’t take my hands out of my panties the entire last thirty hours. So beautiful.”

“I’m sorry if we disturbed you. We should have been more considerate.”

“It’s your house. And it was beautiful. She’s beautiful.”

Now I was beginning to get it. I think Wendy had a crush on Kate. Well, who could blame her?

“Maybe we should make their coffee and go wake them up before I have to leave for school,” I said. She grinned at me and started turning out three more cups of perfect espresso, just the way the girls each liked theirs.

School was good. Hell, that’s new! Bree plopped down next to me in Human Anatomy, glanced over at me and got an incredibly smug look on her face. She actually snorted.

“What?”

“You, birthday boy.”

“What about me?”

She shook her head, looked at me and just grinned again.

“Shh,” she said. “Doctor Dennis is here.”

That’s all it took. As soon as Dennis entered the room we were off at a pace of about a hundred miles an hour and I was scribbling down notes as fast as I could. I mean, I’m pretty damn good at human anatomy, but he was hitting it at a whole new level. This was not going to be the breeze I thought it would.

An hour and forty-five minutes into the lecture—just five minutes before the end of class—he stopped abruptly.

“Now! If you thoroughly understand everything that I’ve said in the past two hours, know and understand it all, you may stay after class and take the final exam. I’ve just given you the quarter in two hours. If you don’t think you’d do well on the final today, then I’ll expect you ready to go to work tomorrow morning. We’ll take things at a slower pace, but it will still require your complete attention. If you can’t live with that, pick up a pink slip at the front of the class and go withdraw. The class is over-booked. Dismissed.” With that, he closed his notes and walked out of the room. We were stunned. When people left the classroom, I saw several pick up pink withdrawal slips.

“Well, that was exciting,” I said.

“I’m depending on you to get me through it,” Bree said. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to Coach Fredericks. He’s your Sports Conditioning instructor.”

“Don’t you have a class to get to?”

“No. My next class is eleven-thirty. I won’t be able to walk you to your Lit class. Think you can find it?”

“That’s one thing Rick and June made sure they did with our cohort. They walked us to each professor’s class that we had on our schedules. I can find it.”

Bree introduced me to Coach Fredericks, a guy who was scarcely older than we were. I guess ‘coach’ is a term like professor. You use it for any instructor until you find out different. He wasn’t a coach of a team, but was one of the guys I’d seen around the physical therapy room. He had sandy hair and as soon as Bree had finished introductions he led me into the gym.

“So, Tony, I understand you’ve been doing conditioning at the racquet club. We’ll be taking over that part of your routine except for the Saturday Pilates that you’ll continue to do there. So we’re not really adding anything to your schedule here. I’ve gone over the notes on your training with John Gilbert and Coach Jacobson. Twice a week, I want you to work weights, but we’re taking the approach of long and lean, not bulky. A lot of reps with lighter weights and every muscle will work with its opposite. If you work on pulling, you’ll work on pushing. Everything in balance.”

He had a clipboard with my expected routine mapped out on a thick pad, one page per day. We headed toward a row of aerobic machines, but he didn’t have me get on any of them.

“Weights on Tuesday and aerobic machines on Wednesday. Mostly your workouts on the court are going to take care of aerobics. But that brings us to Monday and Thursday.” He paused and grinned at me. “Once we get set up, you’ll do your Tuesday and Wednesday routines alone. Just fill out your record on the workout sheets I’ve prepared for you. But Monday and Thursday, you are mine.”

“Sure, Coach. What are we going to do?” I bit.

“Agility training. Also known as Parkour or just PK. I’m going to teach you how to move through obstacles, walk up walls, vault through tight spaces, and roll under your opponents. And you will maintain perfect balance throughout. When you’ve got the basics, we’ll drop the Wednesday aerobics and do PK three times a week. It wouldn’t surprise me if, when you find out how exhilarating it is, you start doing your own on the weekends or join a club. I’ve talked this over with Coach Jacobson and we’ve agreed that the best thing we can do for your racquetball game is to improve your speed and agility. What do you think?”

“I think speed and agility are good things. But my racquetball technique takes me into a zone where everything comes automatically,” I said.

“Which is exactly why we chose this discipline. It will add to your arsenal so your body will have more ways to react. After we get started, I’ll have you carry your racquet and periodically, I’ll throw a ball at you to hit toward a target. We’re really going to have fun. You game?”

“I’m game,” I agreed. “Just try not to injure me before Opens.”

“Not to worry. Just the basics for now. Let’s go.”

He led me to a room with a variety of obstacles. There were pillars a couple feet tall and eight inches across, a balance beam, a ramp, trampoline, stairs, a kids play tunnel about six feet long, and a hula hoop hanging in the middle of the room. It looked pretty bizarre. We walked the course first and he showed me what he wanted at each obstacle. He showed me the pattern he wanted and then said, “Okay, let’s see what you can do. Ready, set, go!” He clicked a stopwatch.

It took a long time. I was running—when I could—following the serpentine pattern marked out on the floor. The stairs led to a short jump to a pillar that I made without a problem. But I was on the wrong foot to make the jump to the next pillar and ended up falling off and having to climb back on. I crawled through the tunnel and figured out how to pull myself up on the balance beam. Walking it was another challenge. I hit the mat at the end of the beam before I figured out how to do a forward roll sort of thing through the hula hoop. I bounced once on the trampoline and almost missed the top of the steps, but managed to hold on. Finally, I ran down the steps and serpentine to the finish line. I was dizzy and breathing hard. It took nearly four minutes.