Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Gemma Akintola

10M, funeral. 10M, coffin. 10M, eulogies.

Her breathing, shallow, periodic, irate, and pounding on her ear drums, along with the smacking of her trainers on the burnt orange tarmac like the rhythm of a bass drum, still failed to engulf the sensation of abject foreboding Gemma was experiencing. It'd been squeezing the bitter air out of her lungs with its gnarled, powerful hands since she'd woken up earlier that morning. It was affecting her performance too, she could tell, her velocity subsiding as she crossed the finish line. Finally coming to a standstill, she strolled over to Josh Young, whose face was contused from his fight with Louis Blackmore the night before. His mouth contorted as he yawned, the swollen, reddened skin underneath his eye bunching up.

"How many seconds?" Gemma asked him, doubling over with a rapturous sigh before grabbing her energy drink back out of Josh's hand.

"55."

"55 point what?"

"It doesn't matter, Gemma. You're just tired. I saw you do a lot better the other day."

"Josh!"

"55.9."

Gemma gulped down the energy drink as if it could fill the hole in her chest, the mindless optimism it had held only seconds before sloshing onto the floor around her. "I'll go again." She said tonelessly.

"No, Gem-"

"What? The championships want 57 seconds or less. First round's in December. And they won't care how tired I am." She muttered, pushing the drink back into his hands and walking slowly back towards her starting position, one hand on her hip and the other on her forehead. Josh strode after her, however, his hand clasping onto the top of her arm. Gemma's body swivelled round and drew itself towards Josh's magnetic form without first allowing her to even think the movement through.

"What's wrong? Is it what happened at the bar last night?" He said, boyish face tightening in all the places that silently intimated distress.

"No. It's her funeral today. And actually, I probably don't have time to do another lap because I need to go and get ready."

"Cleo's?" Gemma nodded. "Are you speaking?"

"Nah. I don't really do public speaking. I was going to but...the stuff I planned on saying was a load of bullshit anyway so it would've just been harder to remember." Gemma had never written what she considered to be a deft piece of work in her life; from the moment she'd learnt to talk, it had become clear she'd been endowed with a propensity for expletives (despite growing up in a relatively obscenity free household) and whilst she rarely fell victim to a Lilly Philipps' style "like", she still suffered at the hand of the notorious mind blank. It wasn't just that. Cleo had once told Gemma that her grandma, Penelope King, had scolded her mother, Eleanor, for talking in what she called a "northern patois", despite the fact that she was the one that had raised her there. Consequently, the idea of going up there and making a speech with her own cockney twang was not one that had ever been particularly inviting to Gemma.

"I thought you were the kind of girl who took one for the team." Josh said, countering her self-doubts, his words plucking at the part of her that was constantly trying to oblige other people's best interests. However, she was already aware of the reason she had never felt the same sense of duty towards Cleo King, and she could proclaim it with the same level of certainty with which she'd explain Cleo's predicament to an inquisitive stranger.

"I am. But Cleo was never on my team." She shrugged, not due to irresolution but instead, insouciance. "She only ever played for her own. I could never be truly sure about that whilst she was around but now that she's gone, I see it a lot more clearly. Hindsight is a pain in the arse. Anyway, I'll see you later." After glancing over her shoulder to check nobody was nearby, she reached up to cup his bruised cheek in her hand and ran her thumb softly across the mottled patch of skin. "You look like you need a rest, too." She murmured.