Category: IST

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I slapped the mat twice, rolled out from under her and walked out of the sports hall with my head high and my face on fire.

“Running away?” Kat called after me, and half the office laughed.

I made it to the corridor before my legs went. I leaned on the wall by the vending machine and pressed my hands to my cheeks. It wasn’t the humiliation. I’d survived two years of humiliation. It was that the second her knee had pressed between my thighs, my body had said oh, hello, and I hadn’t been able to talk it out of it.

I hated her. I’d hated her for two years. That was the whole point.

I went up to my room, got into my swimsuit, wrapped the hotel robe round myself and went to find somewhere hot to sulk. The spa terrace had three outdoor hot tubs under a string of lights, steam curling into a cold October night. Two were taken by a couple from Marketing. The third was empty, bubbling gently.

From behind me, in the corridor, I heard footsteps. Long, unhurried ones. I knew those footsteps. I’d heard them walking past my desk to every promotion I’d ever wanted.

I had about ten seconds to decide where I wanted to be.

→ I slip out to the hot tub on the terrace

→ I go up to my room and lock the door

← Back

“Two!” Gareth bellowed, and I stopped thinking.

I bucked my hips, hooked my heel behind her knee and rolled us both, and for one beautiful second Kat Marlowe’s eyes went wide. Then it was her back on the foam and me on top, my knees either side of her ribs, her wrists in my fists.

“Three! Dani wins!”

The department whooped. Somebody from Finance threw a towel. I barely heard it, because Kat was looking up at me, flushed to the collarbones, ponytail wrecked, and she wasn’t angry. She was grinning, slow and wicked, and she flexed her wrists against my grip just enough for me to feel how strong she was and how much she was letting me hold her.

I should have let go. Instead I felt her ribs rising and falling between my thighs, her stomach hard and slick under my hands, and a heat low in me that had nothing to do with the radiators.

“Get off me, Dani,” she said softly. Then, lower, so only I could hear: “Or don’t.”

I let her up. She stood, tall and sweaty, and leaned in as if to congratulate me.

“Rematch,” she murmured against my ear. “No Gareth. No audience. Hotel gym at ten, if you’ve got the nerve.” Then, loudly, for the room: “Well played, Dani!”

I had a choice. Her turf, a locked-down gym at night. Or somewhere hot and neutral. The sauna downstairs was open until midnight.

→ I tell her I’ll see her in the gym at ten

→ I tell her the sauna at nine, or not at all

← Back

I went upstairs two at a time, locked myself into Room 214 and chained the door, like she was a burglar. Then I got in the shower and stood there until the water ran lukewarm.

It didn’t help. Every time I shut my eyes I felt her weight again. The knee. The ponytail. The way she’d looked down at me and breathed, “One.”

I towelled off, pulled on an old Calloway Digital charity-run T-shirt and nothing else, and sat on the bed with my phone. I scrolled through a draft email to HR about Kat’s conduct, which I’d been writing in my head for two years. I couldn’t think of a single thing she’d done wrong tonight except being unbearably, unfairly hot.

A knock on the door.

Three slow raps, the kind that sound like a smirk.

“Dani,” said a voice through the wood. Low, a bit rough, minus its usual swagger. “I know you’re in there. I can see your light under the door.”

I didn’t move.

“I brought wine,” Kat said. “And I’m not here to win anything. I wanted to say that was out of order, in front of everyone. And that I’m sorry. And that I’d like to say it to your face rather than your door.”

I looked down at my bare legs. At the chain. At the T-shirt that barely covered my arse.

On the other side of the door, I heard her slide down the wood and sit.

→ I take the chain off and open the door

→ I stay put and talk to her through the door

← Back

The water was scalding and perfect. I sank in up to my chin with a glass of prosecco from the terrace bar and told myself that I was thinking about spreadsheets.

“Mind if I join you?”

It wasn’t Kat. It was Tamsin from Finance, twenty-nine, round glasses, red lipstick and a navy swimsuit, a woman who had said maybe eleven words to me in three years. She slid in opposite, pink with embarrassment and heat.

“I saw the mat,” she said. “I mean, everybody did. Dani, can I tell you something? There’s a sweepstake. Whether you two will kill each other or…” She trailed off and went redder.

“Or?”

“Or the other thing.” She took her glasses off and wiped them on her wrist. “I’ve got a tenner on the other thing. I think about it more than I should.”

I stared at her. Under the water, her bare foot found my shin and stayed there. She was looking at my mouth.

“Is this okay?” she whispered.

Before I could answer, a tall shadow fell across the steam.

Kat stood at the edge of the tub in the hotel robe, a bottle of champagne in one hand and two glasses in the other, a lazy smile on her face. She looked at Tamsin. She looked at me. She looked at Tamsin’s foot, which had not moved.

“Room for one more?” she said, and let the robe slide off her shoulders.

→ I tell Kat to get in and make it three

→ I tell Tamsin to leave us, I want Kat alone

← Back

The sauna was a cedar box at the bottom of the spa, dark and glowing orange, with two tiers of benches and a bucket of eucalyptus water. I got there at nine, in a towel, and made myself comfortable on the top bench with my eyes shut.

At five past, the door opened and Kat walked in.

She was wearing a towel too, black, knotted high on her chest, and nothing else but the ink. The swallows and peonies on her arm, the star behind her ear, a line of script along her ribs that vanished into the towel. She sat on the opposite bench and stretched her long legs out in front of her.

“Terms,” she said. “First one out buys the other breakfast and admits the other is better at something.”

“At what?”

“Whatever the winner decides.”

The heat pressed down like a hand. Ten minutes went by in silence. Sweat ran between my breasts and pooled at my navel. Kat’s skin was shining, her hair stuck to her neck, and I did not look at her thighs. I looked at them twice.

At fifteen minutes I was dizzy. At eighteen, Kat tugged the knot on her towel loose and let it fall open around her, her small tits bare, nipples tight in the heat.

“It’s hot,” she said innocently. “Isn’t it?”

I could stay and outlast her. Or I could cross the room and tell her it was a draw.

→ I stay put and outlast her

→ I cross the room and call it a draw

← Back

The gym at ten at night was empty, humming and lit like a fridge. Behind the free weights was a corner of crash mats left from the morning’s yoga, and Kat was already there in a sports bra and tiny shorts, tying wraps round her knuckles, tattoos catching the light.

“Shut the door,” she said. “Gareth does rounds.”

I did. It clicked, and the little light by the handle went from green to red. A laminated sign informed me, far too late, that the fitness suite fire door locks automatically at ten and can only be released from reception, which is unmanned until six.

We both read it. Kat looked at me. I looked at her.

“Well,” she said. “Nobody’s coming to stop us.”

I tried the handle for show. Then I put my phone on a bench, kicked off my trainers and walked onto the mat.

We circled. Kat fights like the gymnast she used to be, all springs and angles, long limbs everywhere. I’m shorter and stockier, built out of spin classes and spite. She got me in a headlock. I got her in a scissor hold with my thighs round her waist. We rolled, grunting, sweat soaking through our clothes, her breath hot in my ear, my knee wedged high between her legs.

Then we stopped, tangled and panting, her hand twisted in my hair and mine fisted in her bra strap, our mouths an inch apart.

Neither of us moved away.

→ I throw my weight and take the top

→ I go limp and let her take the top

← Back

I didn’t open it. I sat down on the carpet on my side of the door, put my back against the wood and my knees up under my T-shirt, and said, “Say it again.”

“Which part?”

“The sorry part.”

“I’m sorry, Dani.” Her voice came through the wood close and low, as though she’d turned to speak against the door. “I mean it. And I’m not only sorry about tonight. I’ve been a cow to you for two years.”

“Why?”

A long pause. The carpet rustled. I imagined her on the other side, tall, folded up on the floor, fiddling with that star behind her ear.

“Because the second I met you, I wanted to be on your team,” she said. “And the only way I know how to want something is to compete for it.”

I didn’t say anything. My heart was pounding so hard I thought she might hear it through the wood. My thighs were pressed together, and I was aware of my body in a way I really hadn’t asked to be.

“Dani?” she said. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“Are you angry?”

“No,” I said. “I’m turned on. It’s very annoying.”

A silence. Then, softly, so softly I almost didn’t catch it: “Me too.”

The hallway light flickered under the door. I could see her fingers, long and ringed, lying on the carpet in the gap, close enough to touch.

I could talk her through exactly what I wanted, with a door between us. Or I could be sensible, say goodnight and be on the early train.

→ I tell her what I’d do to her

→ I wish her goodnight and pack for the early train

← Back

I took the chain off and opened the door.

Kat was sitting on the carpet in the corridor with her back against the wall, holding a bottle of red wine by the neck. She was wearing a grey hoodie and joggers, her hair loose, no make-up, and she looked younger and more tired and a great deal less like a woman who had ever beaten me at anything.

She got up slowly. She took in the T-shirt, my bare legs, the wet hair, and I watched her swallow.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“I’ve got one glass,” she said. “Obviously I didn’t plan this well.”

I stepped aside and let her in.

She apologised properly, sitting on the end of the bed with the bottle between her knees. She’d always gone hard on me because she’d seen what I could do and it scared her. She’d gone for every promotion because she’d thought I’d get there first. She’d called me “Dani” in that tone a hundred times because it was the only way she could say my name without it coming out soft.

“You could have just said that,” I said.

“You’d have hit me with a stapler.”

“Probably.”

She laughed. I laughed. I took the bottle off her and drank from it, and she watched my throat move. Then she put her hand on my bare knee, quite lightly, and waited.

“I don’t want to fight tonight,” she said. “Unless you do.”

My heart was going like a drum. I could let her kiss me and make this tender. Or I could pick up the pillow beside me and hit her with it.

→ I kiss her and take her to bed

→ I hit her with the pillow

← Back

I looked at Tamsin. “I’m so sorry. I think I need to talk to her.”

“Oh, thank God,” Tamsin said, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. “I mean, no. I mean. Of course.” She clambered out in a flurry of steam and flustered dignity, wrapped herself in a towel and paused, glasses fogged. “For the record, I do think you two should kiss. I’ve got a tenner on it.” She winked, which on her was devastating, and left.

Kat watched her go, then slipped into the tub opposite me, put the champagne on the edge and handed me a glass.

“I’ve never been so jealous in my life,” she said.

“You? Of Tamsin?”

“Of anyone who got to sit this close to you without it being a war.” She sipped, then smiled at the bubbles. “Two years. I’ve been so bloody scared of you. You’re better at the clients than I am, you know that. You walk into a room and they trust you. I only beat you on paper, because I’m sharper with the numbers.”

“Don’t you dare be nice to me.”

“I’m trying to be honest.”

The steam rose. The water slid hot over my collarbones. Her foot slid up my calf under the water and rested lightly on my knee, and her eyes were so serious, so open, that I forgot what I’d been angry about.

I could kiss her right now. Or I could ask what I’d been dying to ask for a day: whether the promotion was really, finally hers.

→ I lean across the tub and kiss her

→ I ask her about the promotion first

← Back

The robe hit the tiles. Kat stood there in a black bikini, tall and tattooed and utterly shameless, and lowered herself into the tub with a long sigh. She sat to my left. Tamsin sat to my right. Between the three of us, the water boiled.

Kat poured champagne into a glass and handed it across me to Tamsin. Her arm brushed my breast, slowly, on the way past.

“Tamsin,” she said. “You’ve been staring at us for two years. Tell me you didn’t bet on this.”

Tamsin went crimson. “Ten pounds.”

“On what?”

“On the other thing.”

Kat threw her head back and laughed, a real laugh, loud and delighted, and I realised I’d never heard it before. I’d only ever heard the smirk. Under the water, her hand found my knee, and the other found Tamsin’s. I felt Tamsin shiver beside me.

“I propose a new game,” Kat said. “No whistle. No Gareth. We’re all adults, we all say yes out loud or we stop. Dani?”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice cracked.

“Tamsin?”

“God, yes.”

Kat’s hand slid up the inside of my thigh. Tamsin’s mouth was on my shoulder. Kat looked at me, eyes dark.

“Now,” she said. “Do we help each other, or do we make it a competition?”

She was looking at me. It was my call.

→ I tell them we all take care of each other

→ I propose a competition, and Tamsin judges