MaNan : Love is Just a Word

4. Easy

People prefer the treadmills.

Buzzwords like thick and squat tutorials and protein enhancement recipes litter Nandini's social media, but the treadmills and stationary bikes are always full of students and tired business executives alike. Like they prefer running in place, running nowhere.

Nandini is more of the resistance type. If she's going to run, she wants to be going somewhere.

A waif of a boy steps off a bike, a woman with the blondest ponytail ever taking his place, not even bothering to wipe it down first or ask an employee to. 

Nandini makes a face but she's just the front desk attendant. The juice station part-timer. Mostly she cleans the machines after closing. She's not that good at resisting herself anyway.

"Hi. I think there's something wrong with- oh. Nandini?"

Leaning on the counter, Nandini catches herself from gaping just in time. There is nothing noteworthy or miraculous about this. Plenty of people use the gym, work at the gym. Some people just happen to be college-sort-of-professors, college students. 

It's happenstance, really, but it still feels like something out of the dozen or so works she had to watch or read last term, a poetry in the moment itself.

"Mr. Malhotra."

Manik tilts his head. He looks unassuming in sweats and an old oversized t-shirt. 

He does not look like he holds the precious fate of young minds in his hands every day, like those same hands handle tiny things with uncontainable care, like his brain probably can't contain his mind with ideas too big for a lecture hall. 

"Manik is fine. Or 'Oye' if you're into that though I'm not."

Nandini frowns, offended. Machinery clanks, some pop-tune loud over the gym speakers.

Manik slides his hands in his sweatpant pockets. "No offense to the motherland, of course, but I'm not really one for tradition. In case that wasn't obvious," he adds, arching his brows funnily though the headband holding his hair back ruins the effect.

Nandini has a hard time imagining Manik ever looks truly funny.

Nandini blinks harshly. She straightens her work-issued polo. She's supposed to be selling some exclusive fit fantasy and she guesses the way the shirt tightens around her waist is meant to help. 

When she looks back up, Manik is still staring at her, brows frozen in their comical arch, and okay, maybe he does have the capacity to look giggle-inducing.

The younger nods, says, "Manik."

That seems to be the magic word. Manik relaxes, and really, Nandini doesn't think she's ever seen anyone look so chill at the gym. Or in their own body. Or anywhere.

"How have you be-"

"You said you needed-"

Both started at once and stopped. The resulting silence is awkward and Nandini, who has always had an irrational fear of teachers, wishes she were back in middle school getting scolded for not paying attention again.

Manik asks, "How have you been since the semester ended?"

Nandini fiddles with the cup holder full of pens bearing the gym's logo on the desk. "I still have my scholarship so, fine, I guess. Yes. Um. Yeah. How are you? Been, you know?"

The side of Manik's mouth twitches, an almost full body flex with just that one muscle, but his eyes make Nandini think of peach jellies, fond almost. "You deserved that A."