Bedtime Manners

Sophie had a routine. Every night, same order, no exceptions.

First, the stretch. She sat on the edge of the bed and raised both arms overhead, lacing her fingers together. Her lats spread wide, pulling her torso into a dramatic V that made the mattress creak beneath her. The stretch traveled down through her serratus, each finger of muscle fanning out along her ribs, and her abs compressed into a tight grid of eight deeply carved blocks. She held it for a long breath, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, then let her arms fall.

"Okay," she whispered to no one.

She swung her legs up onto the bed and the quads bunched and shifted, enormous teardrops of muscle rolling over each other as she repositioned. She folded them beneath her for a moment, kneeling there in nothing but a thin pair of bottoms, and reached for the lotion on the nightstand. Her shoulder rolled forward as she squeezed the bottle, and the delt capped at the top of her arm caught the lamplight, round and striated, split cleanly into three heads.

She worked the lotion into her forearms first, pressing her thumbs along the thick cords that wrapped from wrist to elbow. Then up over her biceps, each one a dense, heavy mound even without flexing, the skin stretched smooth over the peak. She always spent extra time on her traps. They climbed from her shoulders up toward her ears in wide, sloping ridges, and she kneaded them with her fingers, wincing a little.

"Tight," she muttered, tilting her head to one side.

The motion made the thick column of her neck flex, and the traps shifted like tectonic plates beneath her skin. She worked at a knot on the left side, jaw set, her pecs tensing with the effort. Those pecs were enormous, two thick slabs that sat high on her chest, striated and heavy, with a deep vertical line carved between them. Every time she pressed into her own shoulder, they shifted and bunched, the muscle fibers visible beneath the surface.

She gave up on the knot and flopped back onto the pillow. The impact made her whole upper body bounce once, all that dense mass settling against the sheets. She lay there staring at the ceiling, one arm bent behind her head. The bicep peaked up against the pillow, a solid ball of split muscle framing her face. Her abs rose and fell with each breath, the deep cuts between each row casting tiny shadows in the low light.

She reached over and set her phone alarm. 5:45. The same as always.

Then she pulled the blanket up to her chest, and it stretched across the broad shelf of her pecs, tenting over them like a hillside. Her obliques, thick twisted cords along her sides, relaxed as she settled in. She tucked one arm under the pillow, and the forearm pressed flat, every tendon and vein visible even at rest.

Sophie closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed. The blanket rose and fell over the landscape of her, all those ridges and valleys of muscle going still and quiet beneath the fabric.

She was asleep in three minutes. She always was.