Chapter 6: Cathy and Mark
"Mark, keep it together!" I told myself, but still kept pacing back and forth across my apartment.
There was something seriously wrong going on in my gym and I was determined to find out what it was. But how could everything change so rapidly? It was only three weeks since I introduced Cathy to my crew and then she dumped a ton of work on me. I wanted to reject those tasks, but still got stuck with them and worked my ass off just to submit results on time. Missing deadlines on those would bring me too much trouble. So, I stayed late, slept a little, worked out in mornings and felt like shit most of the time. Cathy was always there to say something encouraging, but then I saw her leaving early, never needing to work overtime. I couldn't figure out how she managed to get her workload done in time.
After the rush finally ended and I had first chance to go back in gym in the evening, everything became incredibly awkward. First, I walked on Cathy and Nathan, which weirded me out so much, that I just backed the hell away and went home to process things. I managed to calm myself down then because it was just two adults making adult decisions. I was incredibly surprised by this since Cathy was as far from Nathan's taste in girls as I could possibly imagine, but it really wasn't my place to question that. I made an easy decision to go back few days later and if the awkward situation repeated itself, I would just politely cough and made fun of them for enjoying adult fun in a public place. I was determined not to be pushed out from my gym by something like this.
So when I went back, determined to just mind my business, I almost walked on them having sex on a bench right in the middle of our gym. I was stunned and just stood in the door frame, watching Cathy at the top, riding the guy mercilessly and laughing loudly. I was standing there for almost half a minute, just watching the scene enfolding in front of me, Cathy's back and butt jumping up and down and hairy muscular legs of my friend sticking out from below her. Only after then I realized that it was John fucking Cathy, not Nathan. I lost it right there and then, turned tail and ran home. I never stopped before locking my door behind me and the entire time I have been replaying the same scene in my head just to make sure I really saw that.
I was back there again, watching the fat on her back moving up and down, up and down, with the same rhythm as her big butt, just grinding mercilessly. John was not a small guy by any means -- he was ripped and his quads were tensed, but it still looked like she was crushing him under her massive body. There was no mistaking it, their grunts of pleasure were clear indicators, that they were both enjoying the sex, however improbable it looked to me. But that wasn't the worst thing at all, I knew all too well that John was married. In fact, he was married to a totally amazing looking girl, that almost became a lingerie model. I couldn't even imagine why would he cheat on her, and to do that with a girl like Cathy? My mind was just unable to process what could lead to this situation.
That was when I started pacing back and forth in a futile effort to calm my nerves and find out some kind of a solution for this situation. It was not like I was the chief of morality police, but at the same time, I couldn't just watch this thing enfold and do nothing about it. My first impulse was to confront John with the thing I saw and tried to get some explanation, but I wasn't really comfortable with doing that. The solution was obvious -- I just had to confront Cathy about this, but I wasn't even sure where to begin. She was of course fucking John, which meant he cheated on his wife, but what about Nathan? I thought it was just consensual fun between friends, but when I thought about it now, I wasn't really sure about it being innocent now. How was she doing it to these guys? Did she have something on them? Or was she that good in bed that they talked about her and just couldn't resist?
Those reasons just didn't make sense and I had to myself that those guys just found something about Cathy that made her hot in their eyes, and I just couldn't see it. But that didn't matter, because at least that thing with John was just wrong and I decided to confront her about it right the next day.
I came to work right on time, like always and looked around my floor. Everybody was already in their own workplace dealing with daily tasks. Cathy was of course nowhere to be seen, but she always arrived a little late. I once asked her how was it that she didn't get in trouble for that and her response was that her contract was just made a little bit differently from ours. It never bothered me in the past, but as the day progressed, I kept thinking more about things sometimes being a little bit off around Cathy.
She arrived about two hours later and I was still observing things that somehow managed to escape me in past and it was just now that I realized how different her place was in our company. Most of us were slaving inside partially transparent cubicles that were obstructing natural light, but at the same time you could see the silhouette of a person inside. She somehow managed to get an open space in the center of our floor with flowers and decorations. Those small perks kept adding over time, so that was probably why I didn't notice how much better off she was, but looking at it now, I felt almost cheated. It was pretty clear that she managed to charm our bosses to giving her more even though our company was usually boasting about equal pay and rewards. I couldn't really check her payroll to be sure, but there was already suspicion rising in me that her salary would be much higher than mine.
I was steaming inside, suddenly feeling outraged by her and all those unfair perks she was enjoying. It just piled up on all that frustration I felt about my friends and it was almost too much to bear. I rose from my chair and walked towards her station, suddenly becoming aware of the music she was playing in there. Cathy had always something on when she was in work and most of the time, I ignored it or barely noticed even though her music kept getting more and more invasive -- lately it replaced the background music playing on our floor, but no one complained. When approaching, I realized that the steady beat of her tunes had somehow become more intense, but I wasn't going to be deterred by anything at this point.
"Cathy, I have something I need to talk to you about," I started with a serious tone that should have been a clear warning for her.
"What about?" she turned around on her chair, but kept calm expression on her face.
"There is something I saw in gym yesterday..."
"I thought this is something work related," she interrupted me with a raised eyebrow. "Do you think work is a good place to discuss things that happened somewhere else?"
"Well, not exactly," I suddenly realized how this could become very awkward for her.
"You should stop thinking about it then!" she frowned and pushed a bunch of papers in front of me. "Finish these instead, they should give you plenty of entertainment for today. And if you want to talk to me, find me in gym, seven o'clock, don't be late."
I opened my mouth to protest, but instead of doing that, I just picked up all the papers and went back to my cubicle. I was sure that something was bothering me just a minute ago, but now I just had to concentrate on work which she just dumped on me. There was no one I could complain to, so I just started to go through my tasks one by one, hoping I can finish them by evening.
The day went by in an instant and after submitting my last assignment, I was barely able to pack my stuff and catch last bus that could get me to gym on time. I really didn't want to be late today so I even ran part of the way just to be there before seven, which for some reason felt important to me.
Cathy's music was already playing inside. It made sense since she left work earlier than me and this was the place where she spent most of her time lately, although it still did not show at all. I wondered if she even worked out or just came here to have fun, but then shook my head, because it wasn't important. I was reminded that she needed to be confronted about her action and since I couldn't do it at work, now was the right time.
I was greeted by cheers of my friends -- to my absolute surprise it looked like every one of our core crew was already there working out and they looked happy to see me, as if our group reunited after a long time. Which was basically what was happening, since I wasn't able to properly go to gym for weeks. After they greeted me, everyone went back to their machines -- Nathan was doing bench presses, Randy got back to his squats, John went for preacher curls and Tom kept doing something weird with kettlebells, that I didn't even know the proper name for. Only then I realized that Cathy was also sitting in the room, dressed in her stylish gym clothes, not even bothering to pretend any exercises. She was playing with her phone and only change of the music revealed what was she up to.
"Cathy, we need to talk," I walked straight up to her.
"And what about?" she raised her head and there was innocent smile playing on her face.