The unexpected night of passion had seen Sonya and Mandy not emerge from the bedroom until morning, by which time they made love to each other several times. Things had happened so fast between them, but Sonya wasn't going to question it when it felt so right. It had been a long time since she had connected with someone in the way that she already had with Mandy.
If they had not been due to report for their second day of training, Sonya could easily have suggested going out for breakfast and then returning to bed for the rest of the day. But that wasn't an option. They needed to be up bright and early, and they needed to show up for training looking fit and ready to go. The opposite was closer to the truth.
"I feel as stiff as board," Mandy had complained while awkwardly getting out of bed.
"I have pain in muscles I didn't even know I had before now," Sonya had replied, grimacing.
There was another problem, too. The cleaning of the apartment had been abandoned with the job barely started, meaning that the bathroom and the kitchen were still filthy, with the exception of the toilet and the oven. Tired, stiff and racked with pain, Sonya felt like she had to suck it up and do the rest of the bathroom. She could not face the idea of returning home that night to find it still filthy.
"Mandy, I think we should finish the cleaning before we go out," she suggested she got dressed into the Adidas tracksuit she had briefly worn the previous night. "I need a long bath so bad for these aching muscles."
Walking around the bed, Mandy looked adoringly at her. The night with Sonya had truly blown her mind. It had been the best sex she had ever had, and she felt as though she was in love already, as insane as that would have sounded if she had told the story to someone. "I could join you?" she suggested, biting her bottom lip.
Mandy, you are such a temptress, Sonya thought, feeling herself warming up quickly. Even so, she chose to play it cool. "No, you have the kitchen to clean."
"I meant join you in the bath tonight," Mandy purred, nestling up against Sonya and kissing the side of her neck.
"Oh, did you?" Sonya asked innocently. "I guess I could be persuaded to share my bath."
"I'm very persuasive," Mandy said, continuing with her kissing and fondling one of Sonya's breasts through her tracksuit top.
"I know you are," Sonya gasped. As tempting as more sex was, she was used to being in charge of her relationships. She liked to be dominant, and was not going to allow Mandy to feel like she was controlling things. For that reason, she kissed her lover and then backed off. "Cleaning, breakfast, training, then sex."
"You're so bossy," Mandy said, only pretending to grumble about it.
"I can be bossier."
"I'll wait to see that," Mandy said, obviously turned on.
After some more small talk, it was time to get down to the job at hand. They were pushed for time to get it done it they wanted to be able to grab breakfast before heading to the Performance Centre. Sonya went into the bathroom, where she had left her cleaning supplies the night before. She put on her rubber gloves and was about to get to work when she realised that Mandy was standing in the doorway watching her. "What?" she asked with a giggle.
"Nothing. You just look so sexy like that," Mandy said.
Sonya laughed, spreading her arms wide. "Of course I do. No makeup, hair a mess, tracksuit and rubber gloves on. This is the next trend people will be copying for sure."
Mandy walked forward and kissed her. "I'm not joking. I do find it hot. Very hot."
"I'll keep that in mind," Sonya promised, realising that she was in fact serious.
"Good," Mandy said softly. With one more kiss, she headed off to the kitchen.
An hour later, the apartment was in much better shape. Needing to get a move on so as to arrive early for training, they decided that they were going to have to settle for coffee and donuts for breakfast.
At the closest donut bar to their apartment, Sonya allowed Mandy to choose her favourite type of glazed donuts and purchased them to go. They would need to be eaten on the drive to the Performance Centre. Now that they were out of the apartment, they had been able to talk about things other than sex.
"Coach Bloom said we're going to learn how to run the ropes today," Mandy said, sipping from her piping hot cup of coffee while Sonya drove. "Do you think it'll be tough? On the face of it, it seems like it would be quite easy."
"I've read about it before," Sonya replied. "It's supposedly trickier than it looks. There's a specific technique to learn, and even then, the ropes hurt your back until you get used to it."
"Oh good. I needed my back to hurt some more after yesterday," Mandy said with a wry smile.
Sonya laughed. "I hear you. But, like Purrazzo said yesterday, we'll soon toughen up. I'm wondering how long it will be until we start actually practicing moves."
"I'm not sure. I hope it's not long. I know we've got a long way to go, obviously, but I can't wait until we can have matches at live events. No doubt we'll be doing that for a while before we have a chance of getting on TV."
"You're right," Sonya nodded. "Hey, do you think maybe they'll let us be a team?"
Mandy's eyes lit up at that. "How awesome would that be? What do you think we could be called? Our names don't combine well, do they?"
"No," Sonya said after thinking about it for a moment. "Dandy is the best I've got, but there's no chance of them having a tag team called Dandy."
Now it was Mandy's turn to laugh. "No way," she agreed. "It sounds more like a YouTube series or something. Dandy's Donuts."
"Girl, what an amazing idea!" Sonya cried. "You are a genius. We should totally do that."
Mandy looked at her, mouth full of donut. "Wait, really? You'd want Dandy's Donuts to be a thing?"
"Yeah! A video series where we buy donuts from different places and review them. I bet people would love it. We might even make a bit of extra coin if the series took off. Hey, it's worth a shot at least. What do you say?"
"I'm up for it," Mandy smiled. "We could do one episode a week or something and see how it goes? We could film in the car, put one of our phones on the dash or something."
"Great idea," Sonya said.
"Welcome to Dandy's Donuts," Mandy said theatrically, practicing a potential intro. "I do like the sound of it a lot. And what better project than eating our favourite food?"
"Exactly," Sonya said with a big smile on her face.
By the time they arrived at the Performance Centre, the coffee and donuts were gone. They made their way inside, thankfully having remembered their photo ID to gain admittance, and went through to the locker room to get changed.
Entering the locker room, they found Charlotte and Zelina had arrived before them, leaving only Dakota to come.
"Morning. How are you?" Zelina said to them.
"Morning. Don't think I've hurt this much for a while," Sonya said.
"I know I haven't," Mandy added, drawing laughter from everyone. "How are you?"
"I'm alright," Zelina said. "You guys are hurting because you're new to it. It doesn't last forever."
"Today we're running the ropes, then learning how to do body slams," Charlotte said. "I was speaking to Paige when I arrived."
Now standing at their lockers, Sonya and Mandy looked at each other, delighted with the news. "I was saying on the way here I wondered how long it would be before we were allowed to practice moves. I didn't think it would be today."
"Yeah," Zelina said as the relative voice of experience in the group. "Body slams and other simple slams will be fairly early in the training programme. The later stuff is learning how to punch, and obviously learning more complicated moves. Those sessions will be more specific to you as individuals rather than a group thing. By then, they'll have given you an idea what style of wrestler they want you to be, along with some basics about the initial character they want you to portray on NXT."
"We're lucky to have you as part of our intake," Sonya said. "It's great to have someone who knows about how the training is going to work. I can only speak for myself, but it makes me feel more at ease."
Mandy and Charlotte voiced their agreement as Dakota entered the room. Greetings were exchanged, then Sonya and Mandy set about getting changed into their ring attire. For the moment, they only had one set each, not that Sonya was going to complain about Mandy's. The gold sports bra, shorts and boots she had made her look the absolute bomb.
Filing out into the main hall a sort time later, the women found the men ready and waiting, chatting away with the four coaches.
"Morning, ladies," Coach Bloom said, talking loudly as was his natural style. "Since we're all here early, we'll not waste time getting started. This morning you'll be split into four groups." He announced the groups, one of them being Sonya and Mandy, who were assigned to work with Coach Purrazzo. "In your groups, you'll be learning to run the ropes. Then, this afternoon, we'll have the women in one group and the men in another, and you'll be doing some body slams."
"There you go, Seth, you're finally going to learn how to wrestle," Dean Ambrose said to his friend. Everyone knew they were both wrestlers already, so the joke drew laughter.
"Yes, we know some of you already know how to do this stuff," Coach Kendrick said. "But for the first couple of weeks, we're keeping the groups together. After that, we'll look at advancing those who are coming in with more experience."
"Okay, in your assigned groups, go with your coaches," Coach Bloom ordered.
"This way, ladies. We're over in this corner ring," Coach Purrazzo said to Sonya and Mandy, gesturing to the ring in question. As they walked away from the rest of the group, she had a comment to make. "You guys seem to be getting along well so far."
"Yeah, we've, uh, hit it off well," Sonya said with a sideways glance at Mandy that went unnoticed by the coach.
"That's good," Purrazzo said. "You'll be on the road working live events before you know it. It's usually two or three months before you get the green light for that. When that time comes, you're going to want at least one good friend to travel with."
Sonya and Mandy looked at each other again, pleasantly surprised that they would be wrestling what sounded like really soon after starting training.
"We've got that covered," Mandy promised. "But did you say we could be working live events in a couple of months?"
Purrazzo reached the ring she had been leading them to and turned to face them. "Sure," she said with a relaxed smile on her face. "Once you've learned the basics, you're good to work short matches on live events. Experience in the ring is vital, and that's what we give you."
"Sounds amazing," Sonya said. "Roughly how long does it take before we have matches on TV?"
"As I'm sure you can appreciate, that varies from person to person. It's too early for me to say anything more at this point." After a brief pause, Purrazzo moved on. "Right, let's get to it. I'll have both of you in the ring, please."
The coach followed the two trainees into the ring.
"Okay, as Coach Bloom said, today I'll be teaching you how to run the ropes. Fair warning, since you're new to it, you'll find yourselves hurting tomorrow morning."
"Believe me, we're already there," Mandy said, making Sonya and Deonna chuckle.
"Don't worry," Purrazzo said. "Tomorrow, you'll be doing something completely different."
A/N: Many thanks to those who left a review last time!
The question for this chapter is what did Coach Purrazzo mean when she said Sonya and Mandy will be doing something completely different the next day?