I woke up in a hot sweat. I was a mess.
Still in Toronto. The dead of summer. I was hard. I'd been dreaming of the same thing I'd been dreaming of all summer: the woman I met on my run.
It was a few months ago. We were outside the city, in the kind of unshaded park only Toronto seems to produce.
I was running, alone. It was 7am. I had a few nights' 5 o clock shadow on me, and sweat glistened everywhere else. The muscles on my neck, forearms, and calfs seemed eagerly exposed, and were made all the more impressive by the definition sun and shade provide by contrasting each other.
I'd ridden the subway up to the park, and the woman had ridden it, too. The subway was the perfect mix of breezy and balmy, and we were above ground for the final leg.
I watched the woman drink the scenery in: the passing fields, the houses. I noticed she seemed overdressed, and sure enough a few minutes later she was peeling off her long pants to reveal booty shorts, and her cardigan to reveal what she was really wearing: a kind of sports romper made of cotton. One that clung to her breasts and grew taut over her ass, just over where the crease of her butt cheeks began. It was criminal.
And there she was again. Maybe 50 metres in front of me on the park track, under the only shade available: the cement bathroom rest-stop building.
She was bent over, refilling her re-usable water bottle, putting her in the perfect position to cause me to think a lot of awful things.
I jogged up, hoping to meet eyes. We did.
I was struck. Her eyes were as magnetic as the rest of her. The way she found and doubled down on her gaze at me was other-wordly.
She noticed it before I did...
I was hard.
I hoped the thick-ish waistband of my shorts would hide it or capture it, the way a friend who holds his buddy back in a bar before a fight breaks out might, but no such friend arrived, and the shape and size of my cock eventually revealed itself. I was left to talk about it outright... or outright ignore it.
"I've never seen that kind of a Runner's High before". The words somersaulted out of my mouth like acid reflux. I felt dizzy.
What the fuck kind of thing is that to say?
She started laughing, astonished.
"You're lucky I haven't gotten laid in six months... and you're cute. In a Chandler kind of way."
Fuck. She was Italian. I could've guessed but the accent confirmed it.
That realization caused the rest of her to come into sharp focus for me. An olive complexion, long, blindingly reflective black hair, and a romantic, imploring quality to her voice.
We started jogging. My speech was ragged (I don't exactly have a six pack), lurching and choked the way someone comes erupts and spits out of a wave, but hers was strong. She glided, like a boat over a different, gently rolling sea.
Finally we stopped. She'd grown tired. I'd grown tired long before.
We sat off to the side of the path, finally far enough into what had become the Don Valley that there was shade. True brush and foliage.
It felt how summer should feel: sticky, bright, warm; a sense of nostalgia. Grass tickling ankles, faraway sounds for once sounding not like the city but like accompanying timpani, and the air... the air.
"So... what happened six months ago?" I felt emboldened by our awful shared joke by the bathrooms, and by the fact that we'd chatted like eager blind dates on the subsequent run.
"My boyfriend and I had 'We-Aren't-Getting-Back-Together-But-I'll-Miss-This-Part" Goodbye Sex. And it was...! It was good."
I sat there watching her mouth move. Sweat was still on her face and it made her lips stand out. They shone, and grew a dark red - a colour I later found myself wishing was on more women.
I wanted to test the silence that had fallen. Sometimes it gives you the answer to a question you weren't quite sure you could articulate. In this case, the question was, "Are you still thinking about my hard-on?" And it turns out the answer was a resounding: "Yes".
We were eye-fucking each other before I even realized it. My breathing grew just a little more coarse, and in turn, she opened her mouth slightly, betraying her sexual excitement. Once I saw the beginnings of a lip-bite, I decided I was done waiting.
I drew close, just for a moment, and then I kissed her. Our lips were slick and soon they were all over each other. We were nibbling, murmuring.
All I had to do was gently move my hand onto her thigh and squeeze, and she bit into my shoulder. Hard.
"Is this all right?" I asked.
She nodded and with the shallowest of breaths said, "Yes..." And then another part of her added, "Please..."
I paused, taking in exactly how fucking hot the situation was, and then said, "There's a picnic table with a little more coverage just a few metres in around here. Do you want to go there?"
Before I finished my sentence she was up and I had my eyes on her ass cheeks, which bounced against the cotton sports romper. They'd tightened around her ass and the two creases became more pronounced. She'd already begun unzipping the front before I was on my feet.
Everything on the picnic table happened. Everything. Once the zipper was down to her navel, I made the incredible discovery she didn't have a sports bra on. No wonder she wasn't running to often. Her poor tits.
