The following story takes place in 2018, two years before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, when the Games were expected to commence as scheduled.
Alyse Hutton and Nicole Lindstrom were Olympic weightlifters and teammates in the Rock Ridge Barbell Club. Both young women hoped to lift in the next Olympics. Tokyo was two years away, not exactly around the corner but close enough. They both competed in the 76-kilo class and were among the top female lifters in the country in that weight division. Nicole, twenty-five, had been top dog at Rock Ridge in her weight class until twenty-two-year-old Alyse came along, the "upstart" as Nicole said behind her back. Even so, she knew on some level that being challenged was a good thing. Competition in anything pushes one to be better, to reach heights greater than they would standing alone.
Nevertheless, in her more self-examining, honest moments, Nicole recognized that she was struggling with feelings of envy bordering on jealously. Alyse was eclipsing her and she didn't like it one bit. After all, nobody appreciates being knocked off their pedestal. In a recent major contest, Alyse went six for six, snatching 111k and hoisting 138k in the clean and jerk. Nicole snatched 109k and clean and jerked 136k, missing her final two attempts at 138k. It was the first time that Alyse had beaten Nicole. The fact that Alyse hadn't been lifting as long made it particularly galling.
Nicole Lindstrom, once called a "hot new lifting talent," wasn't used to losing. In fact, she'd been successful when it came to just about anything she tried. She did well in college, making the dean's list every semester and then got into a highly selective grad school program for physical therapy. Besides gymnastics, she'd been a top CrossFit athlete before devoting her full energy to Olympic lifting. On top of all that, muscle guys found her hot. She stood five-foot-seven, had the requisite large quads and solid arms, though the arms of a female Olympic lifter, not the ripped, vascular arms of a bodybuilder. She had a fair complexion, with lovely skin, skin to match her face, soft and pretty, so pretty. When lifting, she often set her light brown hair in braids, looking like some sexy Teutonic fraulein.
Alyse Hutton drew her share of male attention also, if you were a guy who liked her body type and many muscle guys did. She stood a stocky five-foot-four, with big, curvy female quads, strong enough to back squat 170k and front squat 150k. She wore her dirty-blond hair in a ponytail when training, loose, in waves and below her shoulders off the lifting platform. And she looked so cute the way she alternatively puckered and pursed her pouty lips when she spoke. Nice skin also, too nice, she believed, to ruin it with tattoos, which she found hideous.
Both women had thousands of followers (mostly male) on Instagram. And that's another thing that irked Nicole, because she once had more followers than anyone else. She still did but Alyse, her lifting star rising, was catching up. The thing is, she liked Alyse, knew she was a nice person as well as fiercely competitive and goal-oriented. She just couldn't get used to the idea of no longer being numero uno, not in the prime of her lifting career, not as long as she was chasing an Olympic dream.
Then there was Nicole's weird sexuality that contributed to her angst. She considered herself mostly heterosexual. Mostly, because she had had a lesbian encounter when she was nineteen and still involved in CrossFit. She and Sandra Worley had been casual friends on the CrossFit circuit. Nicole had a boyfriend at the time, and so her attraction to Sandra, a brunette built along the same lines as Alyse, had caught her off guard. She kept it to herself, thinking that Sandra, who also had a boyfriend, would slap her silly. What she didn't know was that the attraction was mutual, something that Sandra revealed one day when they were showering after a training session. "I like you too, honey," Sandra had said, noticing the suggestive way Nicole was looking at her. Under jets of warm water, they began to fool around. Nothing too heavy, soaping each other off, then light kisses and touching in private places. But that was it because neither of them felt comfortable enough to take matters to a more serious level.
That was Nicole's first and last lesbian experience, filed away and kept secret to all except Sandra, who she had lost touch with years ago. Nicole chalked it up to some sort of aberration, a one-time thing. But was it? Because, for all her jealousy, she couldn't deny what she also felt for Alyse. It was so baffling, if not disturbing, that she considered seeking therapeutic help. She didn't think of herself as a lesbian. She had a boyfriend--she had always had boyfriends. And she was tight with her current boyfriend, tight enough to where she could see them getting engaged in the near future. Maybe she was bi. But that didn't ring true either. She liked guys, she loved her boyfriend and she didn't go around checking out or fantasizing about girls. Except for Alyse. Except for that one time in her life years ago. She pondered this thing. Maybe by seducing Alyse, if she ever could, it would be a way of gaining the supremacy that she felt was slipping away. A way to dominate this amazing athlete, perhaps more gifted than she. The old power thing, in other words. That DID have the ring of truth. But so did the physical part of it. She admired Alyse's body, curvy, compact, strong but also feminine. And that face, so cute, the face of a little girl, one that could hoist heavy weights. Being naked next to Alyse, being on top of her, getting her hot, turning her on...Oh, my, she got wet just thinking about it.
What an outrageous, crazy idea. It made her question her own sanity. Maybe she should seek therapy. Then again, maybe not. Sexual attraction, even to one's own gender, didn't make one crazy, did it? But to actually move forward, putting fantasy into action--now that might be kind of crazy. Alyse could charge her with sexual harassment, get her kicked out of Rock Ridge, not to mention what it could do to her wholesome, All American-girl-next-door image. She tried to repress all this, with little success. Some thoughts just won't go away, no matter how hard one tries to make them.
*****
Rock Ridge Barbell was located in a big garage that stood next to a Goodyear Tire/full-service automobile outlet. The garage had stood empty for years until new owners purchased and renovated it into a well-equipped, climate-controlled gym, geared toward the needs of power lifters, CrossFit athletes and Olympic lifters. Three lifting platforms lay across the concrete floor. There were power racks, Olympic bars, racks of dumbbells, kettlebells and stacks of bumper plates of various colors. There were dip bars, chinning bars and rings and ropes that hung from the ceiling. This was a "serious" gym, where athletes trained for serious competition.
Nicole and Alyse usually trained at the same time, in the late afternoon, after Nicole had gotten off work from her physical therapist job and after Alyse had finished her college classes (she was in her last semester) for the day. They were training partners as well as rivals, although the rivalry was more of Nicole's making.
Nicole greeted her with a hug in the small locker room adjacent to the gym. She wore what she normally wore for work, khaki pants and a loose-fitting, blue short-sleeve sports shirt. Alyse dressed like the college student she was, jeans, a V-neck pull-over and sneakers.
"Front squats today," Alyse said. "Ugh."
Nicole could empathize. Front squats were uncomfortable but necessary. "I hear ya, but we gotta do 'em."
"Yeah, I know," Alyse sighed as she bent over and began to peel off her jeans.
Nicole couldn't help watch while she began to take off her own street clothing. "Hmm...mint-green panties today, huh?"
Alyse straightened up and grinned. "Um, yeah. You look surprised."
Nicole shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. In fact, she was becoming aroused at the sight of Alyse in those mint-green panties and no bra. Unlike herself and many athletic women, Alyse had boobs; size C would be Nicole's guess. "I just never saw you in mint-green panties before."
Alyse drew a confused look while she focused her blue eyes on what Nicole was wearing. "And if I'm not mistaken, I never saw you in red panties. So I guess we're even." She giggled.
"Guess we are," Nicole said, pulling up her tight blue training shorts that weren't much longer than her underwear.
Alyse wore a similar outfit when she was training, which included a sports bra and bare midriff. The pants were an alternative to the long spandex pants she sometimes wore both in training and in competition. The shorts drew more male attention, something that both Alyse and Nicole had mixed feelings about. Yes, it was nice to be admired, but they also wanted to be taken for the serious, elite strength athletes they were. It was a way of keeping their feminine image in a traditionally male-dominated sport.
No surprise, a few of the guys looked up when Nicole and Alyse came into the gym. They didn't even try to be discreet, gawking at that luscious female muscle, flexing with every step.
After a few minutes of stretching, Nicole placed an empty, 20k Olympic bar on the squat rack. She did a set of twelve warm-up reps, then rested while Alyse did the same. Both women had good shoulder flexibility, which allowed them to rack the bar high on their shoulders. They worked up to 140k for three reps, a relatively light weight for Alyse, not so light for Nicole who struggled to stay with her.
