They were both covered in sweat. Their breaths laboured.
Exhausted.
Exhilarated.
With blood pounding through their veins, they could only see one another. Everything else faded away.
Janie's leg swung around in a sloppy roundhouse kick, her padded foot sailing past Jason's shoulder with just a fraction of an inch to spare. He saw an opening and rushed in, a flurry of punches meeting a desperate series of blocks.
Like everyone else in the taekwondo class, their movements weren't nearly as strong and crisp at the end of the hour as they were at the beginning.
Their eyes were tired and easily lost focus. Which is how Jason found himself on the wrong end of Janie's snap-kick which landed squarely just above his belt.
He doubled over in surprise more than actual injury, and found himself pelted with a combination of blows to his chest, their sting mitigated by the sparring pads.
Janie smiled triumphantly, making Jason's heart skip a beat.
They had started taking taekwondo classes as white belts together. He was a sophomore in high school at the time. She was a single mother with two kids and a nurse for a cosmetic surgery clinic.
After a year, her kids quit, but she kept going. For the exercise. For the camaraderie. For the chance to kick and punch something—or someone—when she needed to blow off some steam.
After another year, of the forty or so white belts who started out together, less than a dozen were left.
A year later, only four remained together: Janie, Melissa, Jason and Steve tested for and received their black belts. Some of the others who had started with them were still training. A couple left and came back. A handful missed a belt test or three due to an injury, but the four of them were the best of friends and sparring partners.
Steve Placilla worked for an accounting firm and Melissa Cavanaugh owned a print shop. Like Janie, they were adults taking martial arts lesson to stay in shape and for a couple of hours' respite from their jobs and young children.
Jason graduated from high school and started at the local community college in town. He was a smart kid, and his parents helped him out with his bills as best they could. They continued to pay for his taekwondo classes because his grades were good, and it kept him in shape and (mostly) out of trouble.
He was well-mannered and shy. Tall and scrawny and uncoordinated, taekwondo helped bring Jason out of his shell as he grew into his lanky teenaged body. The lessons gave him confidence and self-esteem when he needed it most. By the time he started college, he had filled out and grown into a very nice young man.
It was an open secret that Jason thought the sun rose and set around Janie. She was fifteen years his senior, and could have had him at her beck and call if she wanted.
To be fair, Janie Collins was on the list of pretty much every man (and some of the women) who ever met her. You know "the list": it's the 5 people you'd pick to get a free pass from your spouse to sleep with.
Her body was toned and muscled from three years of regular martial arts classes. Flexible, too. She was slender and moved with a feline grace. Her hair, even after sweating through an hour of taekwondo, was always immaculate, her soft curls often pulled back to keep out of her face when doing push-ups or spin kicks.
Everyone thought she was drop-dead gorgeous. Everyone except Janie. When she looked in the mirror, all she saw was a plain-looking, thirtysomething mother of two. Still, her smile was infectious, and her laugh always joyous. Janie's children were eleven and nine, and she split custody with her ex-husband.
Jason absorbed his sparring partner's weak assault, his own counter attack stopped by the instructor calling an end to the matches. The thirty adults lined up by rank and bowed out of the class, quickly making way for the kids' white and yellow belts.
Most of them left the main floor and made their way to the observation and warm-up areas, a few collapsing on to the carpeted floor. As was their custom, Jason and Janie walked a circuit around the room, keeping their arms and legs moving in a leisurely cooldown.
By the time they got to the water fountain, the line had disappeared. A couple waited on their kids in the current class, but the rest of the adults were already out the door.
"One day I'm going to take your face off with my foot," Janie teased.
"You wish!" Jason laughed. He was a full head taller than she and with his considerable talent, even on a good day, her feet only got near his head if he let her. Which was often.
"Are you going to the Boca Raton tournament next month?" she asked casually. Within their taekwondo organisation, it was one of the larger regional tournaments. Jason was one of the star students at their school; his regular training combined with substantial natural ability usually led to him placing on the trophy stand at most of the tournaments he attended. If he were to go on the regular tournament circuit, he could seriously contend for a national ranking in his age group.
"I doubt it," he shrugged. Money was his issue. He had a couple of part-time jobs, scholarships for college, but was still taking out more in student loans than was good for him. The tournament entry fees weren't too much, but Boca Raton was a couple of hours away and a weekend tournament meant two nights in a hotel plus meals.
Janie smiled knowingly and didn't press her young friend. She gathered up her sparring bag and headed for her car, pausing only to look back over her shoulder and wink. "See you Thursday."
Then she walked off, unaware that Jason hadn't moved, his eyes lingering on her swaying hips.
*********************
"We need to get Jason laid," Heather said.
Cody laughed. "I've been trying to get him to go out with that girl who works at Buddy's all semester."
"The one with the big boobs?"
"Yeah."
Jason rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the Xbox. Cody had been his best friend since second grade, and they had known Heather since middle school. All three had graduated the previous May. Where Jason and Cody attended the community college, Heather was on a scholarship at the state university in town.
The couple lived in an apartment down by the university, and Jason spent a lot of time hanging out with them. It beat staying at his house with his parents.
Ostensibly, Cody and Heather had separate rooms, mostly to ease the conscience of her fundy Christian mother, but everyone with half a brain that wasn't in denial knew what "living together" meant. Jason was the immediate beneficiary of this arrangement because his friends had a second bedroom which they never used. He slept over often, usually after a night of underage drinking.
"She's dumb as a box of rocks."
"And?" Cody smirked, raising a half-empty bottle of beer. "To dumb chicks with big tits."
"Here, here!" Jason laughed, toasting with his own. His buzz was fading and his eyes were beginning to glaze over. If he didn't get to the bed in the back room soon, he might spend another night on the recliner in the living room.
"Hey! I've got big boobs!" Heather's mock pout drew a laugh from both of the guys.
"Yes, you do, baby," Cody threw his Xbox controller on to the coffee table. He slapped his girlfriend across the backside. "Now go get them out!"
