‘We have learned to see the world in gasps.’
– Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Not exactly a story about sports, as the Wicked Wednesday prompt suggested, but more on the Olympics and how much can change in four years.

***

BEIJING 2008

I wasn’t ready to be faced by those eyes, wow those beautiful eyes, and words completely fail me. I just stare at him. For an embarrassingly long time. And then he starts smiling at me and, oh God, it makes it worse!

‘Umm,’ I eventually stutter, ‘my flatmate has taken her TV home for the summer and, ah, I could hear you watching the Olympics and I wondered if…’

I’d thought when I stayed on at uni for the summer that I would be alone in this block but there were people everywhere. It seems that I wasn’t the only one hoping to earn a bit of cash before the new term. I couldn’t think why else I would have missed him, he lived right across the hall!

‘I have beer?’ I felt like Baby in Dirty Dancing, stupidly holding up my watermelon as I brandished a six-pack.

‘Well, in that case, come on in!’

My heart was racing so fast as I crossed that threshold that I felt like I was the one racing for a medal. That I was the one on the starting blocks, waiting for the rest of my life to begin…

LONDON 2012

‘You can’t come again until Bolt wins.’

The anniversary dinner of sorts has ended exactly how such events should – naked and stretched out on the sofa with his face pressed between my thighs as he delicately swirls his tongue around my clit. Fuck, he knows my body well; teasing and edging me closer and closer to defying his command. His fingers curl suddenly inside me and I arch into him, squeezing harder.

‘Not yet…’ His cool breath against my soaking cunt does nothing to hold back the orgasm that threaten to crash over me. ‘Not until he wins!’

Four years. Four years ago we drank too much beer and cheered like idiots as the U.K. won medal after medal. Four years ago we ate takeaway pizza and high-fived in delight and tried to pretend that we didn’t just want to tear off each other’s clothes and see if this crackling spark that shocked us each time we touched would translate into something really special. Four years ago, we held out until after Bolt’s 100m final, watching him break that world record before both sprinting to his room with an eager speed that would have made Bolt proud!

And now he’s making me wait again.

They’re lined up on the starting blocks when his finger starts circling my ass, easing inside in a way that he knows I cannot resist. I am filled with white-hot pleasure and it floods out of me almost beyond my control. My breathing stops with the effort of holding back; the 9 point nothing seconds that it takes that incredible man to cross the line last longer than any other single moment in my whole life, before he tells me it’s over and he’s won and I give in, shuddering with release as he holds me close to him, telling me that I’m a good girl…

RIO 2016

It’s 2am but I’m up and waiting to watch Usain Bolt once again – the baby’s cries have woken me at the perfect time. So much has changed in these four years, but it seems that even the time difference to South America hasn’t kept me from watching the Olympics. Our tiny boy is 2 weeks old and has woken in time for all the big finals – Phelps, Whitlock, some of Murray’s match and now Bolt. It’s almost like he knows how important the Olympics are to this family. I wonder which medal he could win. His sister will be a gymnast, already fascinated by the tumbles and sparkly leotards, but he is still a mystery. He could do anything!

Harry stumbles into the room and drops heavily onto the sofa next to us. His body still feels comforting next to me, fitting together with the ease of years of practice. Neither of us speak, listening to the contented feeding of the baby and the comparatively frantic commentary as Bolt flashes across the line. A third 100m gold at a third Olympics. He is still the best, still the same after eight years; my life couldn’t be more different.

But it’s exciting, wondering what the next four years might bring. What might have happened by TOKYO 2020…