He looked at me with the saddest face I'd ever seen. "What's the matter with me, Eric? First I almost mess up my friendship with you by beating on you, and now I've probably ruined a guy's life because I had to prove how tough I am. They should lock me up." OK, now he was getting a little too dramatic. He certainly didn't need to be locked up.

"Bro, take it easy! This isn't a good thing, but it isn't as bad as you think. Trust me, I've known that guy practically all my life. You did the world a favor by taking him down a few notches. He's an asshole. Believe me, he wouldn't be sitting here all worried about you if he had broken your arm."

He finally seemed to be feeling better. I talked him into going with swimming with me to keep his mind off of Derrick. We both jumped in the pool and swam around a little. I swam up behind him and grabbed him around the chest. I whispered, "You're still my best friend Justin. I'll always be here for you."

He turned around and looked at me with a little bit of a smile. "I'm your best friend? What about Mike?" I smiled at him, "Mike's my boyfriend, that's different. You are my twin bro, you really are my best friend!" I don't know how many best friends kiss, but we did right then. He held me so tight, and then whispered in my ear, "Thanks Eric, this means a lot to me."

"Yeah, well fine muscleboy, but you need to loosen up your grip. I can't breathe." It was true, he had such a bear hug me that was having trouble catching a breath. We walked out of the pool and I crashed on a lounge chair. He sat down next to me and started massaging my back. "Is this OK?" he asked. "Yeah bro, you can do that as long as you want!" He needed to do something nice for someone, who I was I to deny him?

He started out working my traps and shoulders. "Eric, man, something is going on with you. Your muscles are getting really thick lately."

"Think so, bro?" I was almost asleep. He continued, "Yeah, I think if you upped your intensity, you'd really start growing."

"OK, J-boy, you'll have to set up a program for me." He kept massaging me. He was great at it too. He finished my back and then yanked off my swimming suit as he started working on my legs and butt. He finished my legs and told me to flip over. I did and he worked over my pecs and thighs. When he was finished, he gently grabbed my dick, which was of course hard by now.

"Looks like this could use some attention too." He said softly.

"Hey, bro. I appreciate the thought, but I think you'd better leave that for your brother." He put my dick in his mouth just for a second, then looked up at me. "Are you sure, bro?"

It was really tempting, but I resisted. "No, I'm good bro. Thanks tho."

He understood. Justin stretched and then laid down on top of me. I wasn't really expecting it, but I loved it just the same. He positioned himself so that his head was resting on my chest. He whispered, "Thanks for being here for me, bro." I put my hands on his head and in no time he was asleep. I nodded off a few seconds later.

We slept like that for a long time. I was startled awake as I felt Justin's body jerk violently. As his body jumped, I felt ice-cold water hitting my face. I sucked in a deep breath and opened my eyes to see Mike standing over us with bucket in his hands. He was laughing at us.

"I can't leave you two alone for anything can I? Get off him, Justin!" Justin was on his knees straddling me. He was rubbing his eyes and shaking the cold water from his head. The sun had gone behind the hills, so I figured it must have been around 5:00 or so. We were lucky that Mike had walked in when he did. My Mom would be home any time. Justin stood up and stretched and I found my swimming suit and put it back on. We both looked at Mike and asked in unison, "How is he?"

Mike sat down and told us that Derrick was fine. He'd stayed with Jarred in the emergency room until Jarred's parents had shown up. Then he looked at us a little more seriously, "On the way over in the car, I made a little agreement with Derrick and you guys are part of it. Rather than saying that Conan The Junior Destroyer over here broke Derrick's arm, we all agreed that it would better to use a different story. We told everyone that the five us were playing football and Eric and I tackled Derrick, breaking his arm." Justin and I both nodded, and Mike continued. "The guy was pissed enough about missing the football season. I didn't see any reason to humiliate him by saying that my superboy brother had thrashed him."

Justin looked really unhappy as he heard all this. He had no problem going along with the story, but he felt bad for Derrick all over again. I wanted to do something to cheer him up. I could only think of one thing, "Hey Mike, I was thinking, since it's pretty hot out these days, maybe we should do our biking in the morning and then lift in the afternoon. Besides, J-boy here says he's going to put me on a program to get huge."

A smile finally came to Justin's face. "Really?" he grinned.

Mike smiled at me saying, "sounds like a plan to me." It was settled. We had just two weeks of summer vacation left. I figured Justin could use the company and maybe I'd get something out of training with him. Justin and Mike took off for their home and I waited for my parents to get home so I could tell them about our football game. I hoped they'd believe me after all, we didn't even own a football.

Luckily they were more worried about Derrick's well being than getting every detail of the story. Mike and Justin's parents were the same way. Our parents thought we should visit Derrick the next day to cheer him up. I was afraid he'd freak when Justin walked in, so I called him before we went. I told him how bad Justin felt and that he kept saying he was giving up wrestling.

To my surprise, the visit with Derrick went really well. We brought him some CDs and he seemed genuinely happy to see us. As were about leave, he told Justin to stay a minute. Mike and I didn't like the idea, but what we could we do? We waited outside the house. Justin came out in about five minutes with a pretty happy look on his face. We started walking back to our bikes. Mike couldn't handle the suspense; he had to know what Derrick wanted.

"Well, somehow he knew that I was giving up wrestling." Justin said slowly. "I don't suppose you had anything to do with that, Eric?" I nodded and looked down, "Sorry bro, yeah I told him." Justin continued, "Well, Derrick wanted to tell me that he didn't want me to quit. He told me he thought I could be as good as anyone ever was." We grabbed our bikes silently waiting for Justin to continue. He didn't.

Finally Mike asked him, "So what did you tell him?" Justin thought about it for a second and then spoke so softly we could barely hear him, "I told him that I appreciated what he said, but that wrestling just wasn't fun for me anymore. I'd lost the passion for it. Derrick just said, 'that's too bad, kid. I'm really sorry for you.'" Mike and I were both stunned. We realized that Justin had made his decision and that was that. I also realized the Derrick wasn't quite as much of an asshole as I thought he was. We rode home and ate lunch. This would be our first afternoon training together.

We ate at the Williams. I took off for home to get changed, and Mike and Justin said they'd meet me in the gym in just a few minutes. They walked in just as I got there. Justin came bounding over to me and handed me three sheets of paper and a small notebook. "Here you go bro!"

"What's this?" I asked, as I started to look over the first page.

"It's your new program!"

"So I see." I said as I looked over the first page. He'd mapped out a six-day training schedule completely. He'd even included stretching time and listed the distances we were supposed to bike each day. "Pretty intense, Justin." I said as I turned the page.

The second page had a daily schedule on it. Everything was mapped out down to the half-hour. He'd included three main meals times and three smaller meals throughout the day. Each mealtime had a complete menu. I couldn't believe how much he expected me to eat. "Dude, I want to get more muscular, not turn into a fat blimp." His look of excitement was turning into a look of disappointment.

I looked at the third page. It was a template for a diary. He wanted me to track everything I ate and everything I did. "I'm supposed to fill out this notebook using the form, huh?" There was a tone of disbelief in my voice. Justin was definitely looking less happy.

"Well yeah Eric. We have to make sure you don't have any bad habits and that you actually end up eating and sleeping enough." I looked at him trying to think of a way to get out of this without hurting his feelings any more than I had. "So this is pretty amazing, J-boy. How'd you come up with this?"

He sensed hope. "I just wrote down everything I did during the day. I changed a few things to suit you - substituted your biking for my martial arts - but otherwise it's just my schedule."

"You can't possibly eat this much, J-boy." I was shaking my head. "Oh, trust me, he eats that much." Mike chimed in. He had been reading over my shoulder. I looked at Mike hoping I'd get some help. His expression clearly told me that I'd gotten myself into this and I'd have to get myself out. "This might work for you J-boy, but it seems like a little much for me."

"How do you know? You haven't even tried it yet." He was looking a little pissed off now, I knew I wasn't going to have to give it a try. "OK, OK. You're right. I said you should set something up for me and you did. The least I can do is try it for a week."

He started to smile. "How about two weeks, until school starts?"

"OK, Two weeks." He was now VERY happy. He was running the show now. He made me stretch and corrected my form with each movement. I apparently was doing most everything wrong. Mike was sort of doing the same stretching, but Justin was clearly focused on making sure I did things his way.

Justin then set up the weights for us. He did the first set each time and I went second. Again he made sure my form was right. Mike went after me. I figured Justin would do his usual thing and crank out one more set than Mike and me. I was wrong. He let Mike off the hook, but I had to do the same number of sets that he did.

I had to protest this. "Hey bro, how come you get off easy?"

Mike looked at me and snickered a little, "You agreed to do this; I didn't. I don't have a death wish." Justin was pretty much ignoring Mike.

"You can do this, Eric. Don't let wimp boy over here distract you. We'll be huge and he'll still be scrawny little Mikey." He bunched his brother's arm.

"Ouch. Stop picking on me, you big shit!" Mike mocked Justin.

We continued on with the workout. Justin spotted me for each exercise. I couldn't put down the weights until he had decided that I had done enough reps. I wondered if he was trying to kill me.

I made it through the first work out and was exhausted. We headed out to the pool and I launched myself into a lounge chair. "Get your lazy ass off that chair." I heard Justin say just as my face hit the pillow on the chair.

A muffled "What?" came from my mouth and through the pillow. "You need to eat right away." He said. "Juffin, pleaf, jus let me reth a minuth" came my words through the pillow. I felt him grab my hand. I stood up and looked at him like I was about to die. Over his back I went; he carried me into my house and plopped me down at the counter.

He'd seen me make protein shakes often enough to know where everything was, so he set to work. "Dude, I know you are tired, but you really need to eat right away after you train. It's important." How he knew this, I wasn't sure, but I was far too weak fight. I drank the shake and headed back to the lounge chair. I was out cold in no time.

I did my best to follow his program, I even wrote the diary. He checked it every day like a drill sergeant looking over the daily report. Each morning that week I woke up stiff and hurting. I recognized that it was "the good hurting" and not "the bad hurting", so I did my best to continue on. I was very happy that we weren't working out in the mornings. I was in far too much pain for that. By afternoon I was more or less ready for more punishment, and that's exactly what I got.

To my surprise, I was able to eat as much as he had scheduled for me. In fact, I found it easy to eat that much. I seemed to be hungry all the time. After the first week, I had gained two pounds and was finally not feeling so sore. I was horny as hell too, but even on the couple nights that Mike stayed over, I was too tired to mess around. He felt sorry for me, so he'd massage me a little bit, give me a quick blowjob and then put me to bed.

By the end of the second week I was really getting into it. I started lifting heavier weights and managed to gain two more pounds. I was up to 166 and felt really strong. That Friday Mike asked if I wanted to stay at his house. We did that from time to time. I really liked his parents and they seemed to like having me over. Saturday morning we got up and headed down for breakfast. I was starving. All I could think about was eating.

When we got to the kitchen, we found Justin there. "Hey, boys. You're right on time." Justin had two big green plastic cups in front of him along with a carton of eggs. "OK, Eric. I think you're ready for Justin's magic breakfast." He was cracking eggs into one of the cups. "This is the only way you can really get complete proteins," he said as he passed me one of the cups.

I looked in the cup and saw the eggs floating around; I made a face. "What's in this?"

"Vanilla soy milk, glutamine, creatine and five whole eggs. It's not bad. Think about it, it's like French toast without the bread." I wasn't buying this.

I looked over at Mike. He was leaning against the counter starring down at a newspaper. "Bro, do you drink this stuff?"

"Every time he makes it for me." Mike replied, without lifting his head from the paper. As Mike said this, Justin grabbed his glass and downed the whole thing in one long gulp. He wiped his mouth and smiled at me. "Delicious! Just like Mike Tyson drinks. You're turn!"

"I just want to get big bro, I don't want to start chewing people's ears off." Justin just smiled at me waiting. Mike kept on reading the paper. I grabbed the cup and looked at it. 'I can do this.' I thought to myself. It's just eggs. I put the glass to my mouth and started drinking. I didn't taste good, but it wasn't as horrible as had imagined it might be. The real problem was the texture. I felt the egg whites going down. They sort of oozed tastelessly down my throat. Then I hit the yolks. I tried to drink them without breaking them. I figured they had to taste totally nasty. I felt them hit my throat. One, two, three. no - not three. The third one had broken as it hit the back of my mouth. It definitely tasted terrible. That was all I could stand. I slammed the cup down and struggled to swallow what was left in my mouth.

I finally choked it down and looked at Justin. He was wide eyed and his mouth was hanging open. As his eyes met mine, I could see that I'd been tricked. "Oh-ho-ho-oh, Mikey! He did it! He drank almost he whole thing! Dude that was sick!" I looked over at Mike. He'd picked the paper up so that I couldn't see his face, but he was obviously laughing. In fact, he was laughing so hard to himself that the paper was quivering.

The irony of Justin's compliment wasn't lost on me. I felt like I really was going to get sick. "So what was in your glass?" I burped.

"Just milk, bro. Those eggs are too nasty for me."

I looked at Mike, who had finally put the paper down. "You lied to me! You said you drank this stuff."

"No I didn't. I said I drank it every time that Justin made it for me. Believe me, he's never made THAT for me before. You were right, J-boy. He will do anything to get big." And with that, Mike reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it to Justin.

"You assholes were betting on me?" They were both laughing too hard to answer. I had to figure out a way to get back at them for this. This was over the top. We went on to eat our REAL breakfast. I still managed to eat a ton of food on top of Justin's magic drink. Mike finished eating first since he wasn't stuffing himself silly like Justin and I were.

"So it looks like you two are going get a chance to work for a few weeks without me." I didn't understand. "I've got driver's ed in the afternoon after school for the next eight weeks, so I won't be home until late. Look's like Justin's got his star pupil all to himself."

I wasn't happy to be training without Mike, but I was pretty stoked about focusing on my workouts with Justin. Mike decided that he'd work out for an hour before school. The high school day started and ended an hour later than the middle school, so Mike would have time in the morning. As it turned out, I didn't have a class last hour, so I could leave early.

Each day I'd ride over to the Middle school and Justin would be waiting for me. We'd head home and work out for about two and half hours. Justin still lifted hard, but he was mostly having fun being my trainer. He really focused on getting me to do everything right.

By the end of the third week I'd gained another three pounds. My lifts were getting huge. I was starting to come close to what Mike was lifting. I was even increasing more quickly than Justin. I could tell I was starting to grow taller too. My joints ached in a way that told me I was growing. Justin and I were totally excited about my progress, but we were worried about Mike. He was looking forward to his license, but he hated the driver's ed class. They taught it so that any moron could get through it and he was totally bored. Justin and I thought it might not be such a good thing for him to see that I was getting so strong. We agreed that we'd make it look like I wasn't progressing so quickly. We figured we'd make it look like I was about to hit Mike's weights at the very end of his eight-week class.

As it turned out, by the end of the forth week of training on Justin's program - just two weeks into school - I was lifting more than Mike was. I got up in the mornings and spotted for hi; I saw he was having a harder and harder time getting into his workouts. I tried to encourage him, but he had hit a plateau and was frustrated that he couldn't get past it. He could clearly tell I was gaining weight, and he was happy for me, but he was starting to really get down on himself. •