I wrote this just after the Winter Olympics one year. It is an unfinished tale, and probably always will be. Some will complain it ends just as the sauna starts steaming. But after Tara gives in, it just doesn't give me that itch anymore. Without the itch, my mind doesn't play and my fingers just won't frigg the keyboard any longer.
*****
Tara's leg quaked as she came down on it, hard. Ice rasped. She wobbled as she shot across its surface. She twisted, trying to correct the direction of her momentum. Tara whipped her other leg around and sprang; forcing her body into a flying spinning twist.
A double lux, a missed landing and Tara was sliding across the ice on her rump.
"No, no, no, no!" Herbert Von Glotcha cried, walking across the ice to Tara. "Leg too straight! Relax, flex, fly!"
"Yah," Tara sighed, climbing to her feet. "Relax, fly." She rubbed her bruised posterior. "Great!"
"You no fly, you no win."
Her stomach lurched. A sick fluttering feeling churned within, deepening, just as it had every day since she'd arrived at the Olympics.
"Try again!"
"Relax," Tara muttered, fluttering her hands as though she was trying to shake water from them. She pushed off around the rink in a slow elegant backwards slide that gathered speed quickly. Her hair whipped about her face. Her skating skirt rippled in her wake, riding up and flashing her ass. She gathered herself and leapt.
Tara spun through the air, a miniature cyclone of grace and beauty. She came down. Her blade sliced into the ice. Her knee buckled. Her rump protested its second unforgiving landing and the subsequent ice burn as she spun across the rink.
"Eek!" she yelped. Her cry was immediately followed by a solid whump. Frustrated, she kicked the offending wall.
"Relax! I told you relax!" Herbert bellowed, striding over to the tangled mess of arms and legs.
"I tried," she whined.
"You no so nervous at nationals?"
"That was nationals," she said, clambering gracelessly back to her feet. Despite her skill, she wobbled a little. Her posterior burned. "Nationals were never my dream, just a, a, a stepping stone. This! This is the Olympics!"
"Oh, so you get here and then break down. Just like a soloshtovic! A, a, Ugo." He frowned, thinking a moment. "This no good. No point. Just get hurt." He wagged a gnarled finger at her. "You go shower. Get a massage. Get a drink. Get shloppy. Get relaxed! Be back tomorrow. Be better!"
Tara sighed and kicked off for the lockers.
She sighed again. This time a much longer, drawn out and almost contented groan as a few minutes later hot water sluiced off tired battered muscles. Her face tilted into the waterfall of wet heat washing over her.
She arched her back and ran her fingers through her long mahogany hair. Her hands trailed down her backside to come to a rest upon her rump. She massaged her cheeks working bruises and tension from her flesh.
Her thoughts drifted to that last night in Boston. She and Jason had come so close. He'd climbed in the shower with her. He'd touched her. He'd massaged her. She'd almost let him. Just thinking of that made her toes curl. She sobbed her longing.
"That looks good. You thinkin' about a Jason?"
"Sarah!" Tara cried. "Ouch" She rubbed her head where it'd banged the showerhead when she'd jumped. A deep red blush surged across her skin.
"You were! Weren't you!" Sarah laughed.
"Nooo," Tara said, slamming off the shower and reaching for her towel. It did no good. Her blush crawled up her neck and across her cheeks.
"Yes, yes you were," Sarah chided, stepping aside. Tara hurried for her locker and cloths.
"Okay, so I was," Tara said, sticking out her tongue. "What of it."
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe you should have brought him. It might have been fuuun."
"We're saving ourselves for after the wedding. He's Catholic."
"OOOhhh, like you're not a virgin too."
"Yah so, what of it? At least I don't throw myself at every cute boy that looks my way!"
"Hey, why so touchy? Afraid of what you might be missing?"
"Nooo!"
"Yeeeesss!"
"This is childish," Tara groused, wrestling herself into a pair of jeans.
Sarah stuck out her tongue and then strutted away, wiggling her ass like a street walker.
"Hey, Tara," she called from the locker room door. "The girls and I are going over to that disco bar tonight, you know, the one with the unpronounceable name. You ought to come, might pick you up a Russian stud."
Tara opened her mouth to respond but Sarah had already ducked out of the room. She grimaced, tugged her bra over her rather small breasts and slid into a slip. She shrugged into sweater, grappled her bag into the locker and shouldered it shut.
After leaving the locker-room Tara wandered the Olympic complex for a time. There were more than a few little booths and shops hawking souvenirs.
Tara ended up buying a Sochi Olympic hockey puck she thought Jason might like and then headed back to the barracks; as the American Team tended to call the athlete's hotel. She veered off, just before arriving and went to her parent's rental instead.
Her coach, and some cute boy she'd never seen before, was in the little house's living room when she arrived.
"Come, come in," Tara's father said, meeting her at the door and giving her a hug. "It's good to see you. Herbert's here."
"Yah, I can see that," she said, slipping past her dad and throwing her coat over the back of a chair. "Who's the new guy?"
"Who, him," her father almost stuttered. He wrung his hands and took a hurried seat across from her. Tara couldn't recall the last time she'd seen him so nervous. "Elroy, its Elroy, right?" He looked questionably at the young man.
Elroy stood.
"Hi, you must be Tara, he said, "Pleased to meet you." His English was fluid, and only slightly accented. Tara liked the way his muscles moved under his shirt as he stood. She stared, and felt a little weak kneed. He was blond and blue eyed. He looked perfect.
In fact, she thought he looked a little like Captain Kirk from Jason's favorite movie; Star Trek into Darkness, or something like that. Only when she felt the warmth of his hand taking hers in a firm, but by no means painful, handshake was she able to tear her eyes away from his biceps and chest.
Her gaze met his. She blushed. He smiled. It was a warm, gorgeous, completely delightful curve of the lips. Tara felt a little rush.
"Hi, yeah, Tara, that's me," she said, rather lamely.
