Trust No Bitch: Part 1

Gemma Akintola

The finish line; it's a curious thing. 

Like running into complete darkness. A runner never knew exactly what lay there: ebullience or despondency. Sometimes Gemma thought she could sense it, knew how to praise her own efforts, but she had been wrong on multiple occasions. It was best to just power through, grit her teeth, cut through the air and see what she found on the other side. Not many people realised the significance of half a second. Gemma did. Her future success, the actualisation of the dream she'd had since she was about 5 years old depended on it. Her coach had put her forward for the British Indoor Athletics Championships in December. If she won, she would advance on to the European Indoor Athletics Championships in Prague. Gemma withstood the pressure well. She ignored invidious comparisons and was open to being criticised as long as it provided her with a specific area to improve on. After all, she ran for endorphins, not glory; it made her feel amazing, as cheesy as it sounded. The pure determination that projected her forwards, fuelling the pitter-pattering of her feet, one in front of the other on the tarmac when she knew she had to do better. The glow of achievement, that weightless, breathless sensation that started from her feet and surged up to her head, ending in a wide smile when she was told she'd improved. Gemma lived for it.

"48.2 seconds!" Josh Young yelled, clapping her on the shoulder and passing her a bottle of water. She had just ran 400m. The entry requirement for the championship was 57.00 seconds. She was on track. She high-fived Josh and he held her hand in his, her small hand fitting inside his large one. "Nice one." He said, staring at her with such intensity that she could crumble to pieces right then and there, rubble on the ground in front of him.

"Thanks." She replied, slugging down the water left in the bottle Josh had been holding for her. They were still going strong, or as strong as any illicit relationship could go, for that matter.

"I was wondering, anyway, Gem,", Josh refrained from calling her by her second name when it was just the two of them, "if you fancied coming to my place later?"

"Yeah, sure." Gemma answered with a smile. "Don't you have to see Jade?" Unfortunately, Josh had still failed to tell his girlfriend, Jade, that he didn't want to continue their relationship. Gemma was still the other woman, so to speak. Only putting it that way made it sound a lot more sexy than it was. In reality, she was still Josh Young's side chick. And she had to be okay with that.

"Well, yeah. But I can cancel."

"I wish I could say don't cancel, and mean it, but I don't. Will she be pissed off with you?"

"Probably." Josh replied with a shrug. "She's pissed off with me most days anyway. Ah, here she is." He added, gesturing towards the woman that was sauntering across the track towards the two of them.

"Perfect timing." Gemma muttered, Josh grimacing.

"Nah. One of her friends probably just texted her saying that I'm on the track speaking to another girl."

"Trusting girlfriend."

"She isn't stupid, Gemma..." He murmured as Jade approached, a laptop tucked under her arm, caramel waves of hair whipping from side to side (it had to be a weave, Gemma had always thought). Her nostrils were flared and her fists were clenched, a mirror image of Gemma herself when she was pissed off, she couldn't help but notice. It was irritating how just one look at the bloody girl could trigger a hurricane of insecurity. Gemma had always dismissed the similarities between her and Jade, preferring not to dwell on it. To dwell on whether Josh had a type.

Whether he would swap Gemma for a better-looking version of herself if they ever ended up together.

There really was a striking resemblance between the two. Both had deep olive skin, like Josh; whilst his family were from Trinidad, he'd told Gemma that Jade's grandparents were Jamaican, like Gemma's dad. Gemma had seen the photos of Jade in her barely-there bikini with her body pressed against the side of Josh's, who grinned broadly with an arm round her shoulders. It was taken in the back garden of Jade's grandparent's house in Cherry Gardens, apparently, right next to their cushy 18 foot swimming pool. She had also felt the stab of envy that corresponded with the unintentional narrowing of her eyes as she saw the photo plastered all over Jade's twitter. The only thing that had slightly attenuated her mood was her awareness of the fact that she looked better in a bikini; whilst both were of medium height, Jade lacked Gemma's toned, athletic physique, her muscular definition. She was a stick girl, with tree branches for legs and arms. Josh could break them with a slight of the hand. Facially, though, the differences between them were minimal. Both girls had symmetrical, proportionate faces; long eyelashes, mud brown eyes, straight noses that were slightly turned up at the tip, and full-ish lips. Everything that men found attractive. Of course, their dissimilar physiques were not the only way to tell them apart; Jade's hair was lighter and longer, with Gemma embracing the natural, coarse texture of her black hair, which fell just past her shoulders when left in its corkscrew curls. Gemma had also chosen to get an undercut on one side. Aside from that, Jade's features were smaller, more slight than Gemma's, whilst Gemma's eyes provoked concupiscence in a way that Jade's didn't. Though they were wide, they were tired, bored-looking, like you had to impress her. And Gemma was not easily impressed. Except by Josh. Usually she would dismiss men with a shake of the head and a disparaging glance over her shoulder; she liked them to jump through hoops. It was probably that which gave Jade a more open look to her than Gemma, although that appearance was specious; every time Gemma saw Jade she was whining, groaning, moaning about something. The sunshine, the rain, the colour of the sky, the proportion of oxygen to nitrogen in the air. Give that girl a topic and she could bitch and wail for Britain, Gemma had always thought and predictably, it looked like that was exactly what she was on her way to do at that moment.