Since I had known her, I had never once gotten a good idea of what they looked like, even this year, when they had clearly grown a bit more. Bridget always wore sturdy, full-coverage sports bras when running, like any intelligent girl. But when she wasn’t running, her favorite item of clothing was a hoodie. And when that was not on the table, she wore loose, flowy stuff, and I don’t think I had ever once seen her sporting a low neckline. I had no clear idea of how her boobs looked.
But I damned sure always knew that they were there. And that all the sparsely available evidence was that they were considerable.
And all I needed was a brief, fairly minimal, though committed effort, and I would finally get to see them. She was already totally pissed off at me, she couldn’t get any more mad.
Right?
Right?
I waited until she reached the end of that long, straight, flat stretch of road and disappeared around a curve. I picked up my pace as soon as she could not see me, and right when I knew for certain she that she had to be letting hers slack. I didn’t press, I simply kept going along at just short of my old, mid-race, Cross-Country pace. For four kilometers, every time I temporarily came into view behind her as the road wound, I had closed the distance-sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Every time, she could see I was closing, too.
I finally caught her at about the eight kilometer mark, just before the direct, hilly, final stretch back to campus. We said not a word as I pulled up beside her. We ran easily beside each other for almost half a kilometer, until the big hill just beyond Elm Street. It was time for Bridget’s nightmare. I clearly was going to win. But beyond that, I was mad at Bridget for making me bust my hump on a Sunday morning where I had just wanted to lay around and feel guilty. She was going to pay.
And there was the little matter of the bet, the mental image of which had kept me company on the long, deliberately drawn-out road to catching her.
At my school, the Cross-Country program dictates that hills are everything. If you treat hills aggressively, both up and down, they are where you can break your opponent. We hit the hill together, and both answered our training, leaning in to accelerate together.
But Bridget had let her anger get her early in the course, and had pushed too hard for miles two through five. She is a great runner, so she still kept her form beautifully, eating up the road with each long stride, and quit was as always a foreign concept for her. She had taught me about that. But she had only been ahead of me for so long before by pushing herself too fast for what she could sustain over so long a distance.
And I was still on my natural distance race pace. I was definitely hurting, don’t get me wrong, but I could keep it up.
I had put fifty yards between us in that near sprint up the long hill, and I just kept pushing on down the back side. The race was truly over already, and she knew it now. She had to have known it when I caught up to her where I did. My anger at her had long ago burnt off over the last few miles, and especially up that last big hill just now, but by God, I still wanted to make my point. I pushed through until I looked up and saw the bridge that was the finish line. I ran past it with a final sprint, holding my form to the end. I pushed my timer on my watch absently as I stepped onto the bridge, then collapsed onto the ground so I could get that out of the way before Bridget showed up and saw me committing the ultimate sin of lying down after a race.
When she did round the last curve, I was back up on my feet and watching from the big oak against the back of the ice rink, right before the bridge. She sailed across the imaginary line and stopped her timer, form perfect to the end, beaten, but unbowed.
Blowing hard, she walked back to me, hand planed on her hip to help keep herself upright.
“Any chance… you are just chilling… there, and forgot to… finish the race?” she smiled through heaving breaths.
“You are no tortoise,” I smiled. “And I damned sure aren’t that hare-brained.”
“I thought…” Bridget went on, still sucking air, but recovering, “I thought it would be closer… at the end… and I could psyche you out.”
“And that,” I replied, “is why I didn’t let it be close at the end. Come on,” I added, jerking my thumb back towards campus down the hill on the other side of the ice rink. “Let’s go have omelets!”
Yes, I was still very aware of the bet. The thought of it had given succor to my soul on a few difficult stretches of the race when Bridget was not getting closer as fast as I had planned. I had let the image float in front of me like a carrot on a stick during that last, agonizing push once I had passed her for good, when I was piling it on for ignoble reasons.
But come on. It had been a skeezy bet. And even if it had not been, it wasn’t a fair one. Even had she run smart, she was not going to win that race. And as I said, my anger at her had burnt off. I just hoped hers at me had too.
“Wait, asshole” Bridget said, as I turned toward the path. Uh oh.
“What?”
“A bet’s a fucking bet. You win.”
The idea that this whole stupid, skeezy bet idea might make her more angry, not less, had not entered my feeble little brain. Why? Because I’m a dim-witted male.
And, because I am indeed dim-witted, and apparently very male, if recent events said much of anything, I turned around and looked on with more than a little open anticipation in my eyes. That was not well received.
Oh well, if she was going to stay angry with me, I found I had some reserves of anger that I, too, could call on.
She stood about ten feet from me, checked, as I did, for anyone in the area, then yanked her tank top over her head.
The cups of her very sturdy, boring, beige, jogging bra securely squished her boobs against her chest. Those cups had better be strong, because there was indeed plenty in them. For the first time, I saw a hint of cleavage on Bridget. Given the shape and coverage of the bra, for there to be any cleavage showing at all meant that there was a very interesting amount of flesh within…
“Wow. Um, wow,” I repeated. Then I made one last chance to be gracious. “They look amazing. I didn’t believe that you’d actually take off your shirt.”
Nope.
“That wasn’t the bet, and you know it,” Bridget growled. “Quit trying to be magnanimous.” She crossed her arms and grabbed the bottom of the bra, under her boobs.
Oh boy. Here we go. I had never in my life been remotely hard this soon after a difficult workout, or especially a race, but here I was, slowly filling my thankfully baggy running shorts. Praise all the powers above that the first shorts to hand when she woke me had been the baggiest I owned. And while we were at it, thank you also that I had on a long, untucked tee.
I was expecting a brief but glorious flash. I had finally let myself hope for it.
Bridget just pulled the whole goddamned bra off over her head and stood there, letting the damp fabric dangle from her hand as she held her arms down at her side.
Let’s be clear–I was sure they would be pretty good. Despite the way she dressed, it was clear she wasn’t under-endowed. And while there were no outright stories about Bridget going around-everyone she had dated had the good sense to not blab-the general tenet of conversation about her seemed to take a nice rack for granted. The narrative had probably come from other girls.
But I was not ready for what I saw. I mean, holy shit. Bridget’s torso was amazing! She looked even more fit above the waist than she did down below with her top-of the class legs. She didn’t have a six-pack or anything, but she was verging on it. And her boobs were… just unfair.
They were as big as Mary and Maddie’s. At least. And they were shaped even better. They sagged a little less, almost impossibly, given their size, and they were deliciously round. Her dark aureoles were tiny-little perfect circles barely three times the diameter as her pencil eraser-sized nipples.