u/Emotional-Fix-2105

Working the front desk at a gym is its own kind of theater. You learn to read people fast. Who’s there to train, who's there to socialize, and who's there for something else entirely. Every shift had its regulars, and every employee had theirs.

Mine was a girl I'll call Natalie. Out of my league by any reasonable measure. The kind of girl who knew exactly what she was doing when she lingered at the front desk a little longer than she needed to. It started as small talk, then became actual conversation, then somewhere along the way crossed into something that was clearly flirting. I wasn't imagining it. But I also wasn't doing much about it. She was a member. I was the manager. There were lines.

One afternoon she came in for a tanning session and asked, with a completely straight face, if I could come help her apply lotion and put on one of those little stickers the girls used, a small shape placed just above the hip so you'd have a tan line to show off later. Something she could obviously do herself. I thought she was joking. I told her sure, half-expecting her to laugh it off.

She didn't laugh.

I followed her back. The door closed behind us. And before I could say anything, her shirt was off and her jeans were on the floor. Just a bra and a thong, and a body that had spent a lot of time in the gym. She turned and asked me, very casually, to go ahead and place the sticker. Right above the panty line. Close enough that there was no version of this that was accidental. The tension was palpable.

I was in my twenties…. Within an instance I was rock hard.

I placed the sticker. Hands not entirely steady. And then something in the back of my head started doing math, member, manager, job, reputation, and I mumbled something and slipped back out to the front desk like the responsible idiot I apparently was.

She came in after that like nothing had happened. No awkwardness, no acknowledgment, no follow-up invitation. Whatever window had opened, it had quietly closed again. Life moved on. She moved on.

I still see her on social media sometimes. Every time, I linger on the profile for a second longer than I should. Doing the math again, twenty years too late. Still coming up with the same answer.

An almost.

After that, I didn't get another chance to see Michelle for a while. Her family moved further away, and I found out she'd started seeing someone else.

Until one day, I spotted her at the missionary farewell of a mutual friend. Right then and there, it was like no time had passed. Prolonged eye contact from across the room, finding excuses to sit close, her hand brushing against my leg.
When her friends were ready to leave, she made an excuse to stay longer and volunteered me to take her home. I had no objections. She lived about 30 minutes away, plenty of time to get into trouble along the way.

It was dark by the time we left, winding along backroads toward her house. Her hand wandered up my leg, thumb eventually grazing against me. She told me to turn into a dark church parking lot. There we were, me still in a shirt and tie, her in a skirt. The good Mormon kids that we were.

Once we parked, it was game on. Two teenagers exploring each other. Clothes stayed on, but hands wandered everywhere. My shirt came untucked, belt quickly undone. Her hand found its way to my already hard cock while I hiked up her skirt, fingers slipping beneath her underwear into her pussy. We went at it the way teenagers do, clumsy and electric.

By that point, I was ready. I wanted her. I wanted to be inside her. I still hadn't had sex, and tonight felt like the night. We decided to move to the back seat.

We both climbed out and settled into the wide back seat of my parents' car. Hands were everywhere again, up her shirt, down my pants, no longer just touching but stroking. I didn't need any more encouragement. We were seconds away from getting naked, windows steamed up, completely lost in each other, when there was a knock at the glass.

We both nearly jumped out of our skin. A flashlight swept through the window. A cop.
I rolled the window down, heart pounding. He asked us to step out of the car. We did, embarrassed, clothes still disheveled. He didn't give us too hard a time. Said he saw it all the time but that we couldn't stay there. He checked that she was okay and with me by choice, then told me to get her home safe.

We pulled out with him trailing behind us, making sure there were no more detours before we cleared his jurisdiction.

We laughed about it the rest of the way home. Past curfew, but I got her there safely.

After that, we never got another chance. She fell into a serious relationship not long after, and we both just moved on.

But even now, some twenty years later, I still run into her once in a while. We're both married with kids. And every time, there it is, that knowing smile. A shared secret. An opportunity missed. An almost.

Michelle and I had known each other most of our lives. Our families went to the same church, sat in the same pews, smiled at each other in the same parking lot every Sunday. Nobody would have guessed she was anything other than a good LDS girl.

That was kind of the thing about Michelle.
By the time I actually asked her on a date we'd already made out a few times. Nothing serious, just enough to know there was something there. So when I picked her up that night I wasn't nervous exactly. Just excited.

What I wasn't expecting was what happened at dinner.

We were at a restaurant, both our families basically, her sisters on dates, everyone talking, laughing, completely normal. Michelle was sitting next to me and somewhere between the appetizers and the main course I felt her hand on my leg. No big deal. But then it moved. Slowly, casually, like she was just resting it there. And then, she was rubbing my cock through my pants right there at the table.

I kept a completely straight face somehow. She never even broke conversation.

Later we all ended up at my house watching a movie. She and I shared a blanket, my friend on one side with his date. Within twenty minutes her hand was down my pants, slow and deliberate, while everyone else just watched the movie. Nobody had a clue.

When it was time to get her home I drove alone. We'd done this before, she'd always find a reason to stop somewhere quiet and we'd make out for a while before curfew. I pulled over in a spot I knew and didn't think too much of it.

But this time was different.

Things got hot fast. Hands everywhere, breathing heavy, and before I really processed how we got there our clothes were coming off. I was fully naked. She was down to just a thong, pressed against me, and she leaned in close enough that I could feel her breath on my face.

"I want to be your first," she whispered.

And that's where the guilt showed up right on cue, like it always did. I froze. Mumbled something about it not being the right time. Drove her home. Lay awake that night staring at the ceiling feeling like the world's biggest idiot.
But what if I didn't freeze?
What if I just said yes?

I was never bad with girls. I just had a bad habit of getting in my own way.

I grew up Mormon, so there was always this voice in the back of my head telling me to pump the brakes. And sometimes I listened. But honestly? Not always. I had my fun. I made my mistakes. Then I'd feel guilty, clean it up for a while, and eventually find myself right back where I started.
Back and forth. Story of my life.

The thing is, the memories that stick with me aren't even the times I went for it. It's the almosts. The moments where everything was right there and I blinked. Where a girl basically handed me an invitation and I talked myself out of it at the last second.

Those are the ones I still think about. The ones that still get me going all these years later.

So I started writing them down.