Call It What You Want To

Chapter 14: Kyler

While fully aware of what Taya had informed me of what a meet would consist of, and whatever I had thought up a powerlifting meet would look like, I was not prepared at all for everything that would be happening! When we walked into the Indy Iron gym at 7am, I was greeted with about a hundred muscle-y teens and adults, with rock and rap music blasting, tables with shirts and food everywhere, and much to my pleasant surprise there were a couple dogs wandering around, including the dogs of one of Taya's coaches.

The first two hours went by and I got used to watching Taya from the sides over by her bag. From the minute Taya had gotten dressed that morning, when she found her team, and then started stretching; it was like a completely different girl I was watching. She was locked in and there was nothing that could distract her, as if she had disappeared into her own little, I've-consumed-enough-caffeine-to-put-a-horse-to-sleep, world. I had been a little nervous that maybe the people from our school would make assumptions or get nosey on why I was with Taya, but they were all in their own worlds with headphones on and energy drinks in hand.

When the meet really started to kick off, Taya wandered over to me and tucked herself right into my side with my arm draped around her. A part of me wondered if she'd be worried about other people seeing us together, especially the ones that we went to school with, but then I saw that everyone else was so focused on themselves that nobody cared what we were doing.

"You ready?" I asked as they called the first lineup to the platform, which Taya was a part of. Taya nodded, shaking her hair that she had cutely put in two braided ponytails. Watching her be so in the zone was really adorable, while simultaneously being incredibly attractive and sexy.

I stepped aside to watch as Taya lined up and her coaches took over in hyping them or honing them in on what was about to happen. Her events for the day went squat, bench, and deadlift and from the moment I watched Taya's first squat on the platform I knew I was gonna like this. She killed it, going down and up like the weight was nothing!

The first event breezed by, Taya squatting an easy two hundred and seventy-five pounds on her last attempt, which, come to find out, was almost double her body weight. It was like a switch had flipped and she was a happy-go-lucky ball of sunshine again. "Didja see me?!" Taya squealed as she came bounding over to me from across the gym.

"You fuckin' killed it!" I praised her, accepting the hug that she threw me into, hugging her back strong and hard. "So now what?" I asked her, draping my arm across her shoulder. Taya then explained to me that we were just gonna watch the other "flights" of people do their squats before the whole roster moved on to the bench portion of the meet. We filled the time by cheering for the rest of the people from our school plus the ones we didn't know, and checking out the foods that were brought into the meet, forgetting about the snacks Taya had packed for the both of us.

I noticed a t-shirt Taya had been checking out that was a light blue, then in lavender on the back it said "Hot Girls Lift Heavy" with a bunch of little white and yellow flowers. When her attention was turned, I decided to surprise her and buy the shirt to give to her after the meet. While watching the other lifters complete their lifts I noticed a lot of them went off and hugged someone to the side after their final lift, and I thought of how Taya looked as she scanned around the room to find someone when she did her last squat.

At that moment it clicked. She was looking for her parents. Everyone that had come from the high school team had their families with them, and Taya was seemingly the only person who didn't have someone to run to right from the platform. She waited for Dylynn to finish her attempt and they did a sweaty side hug, but Dylynn went to her parents after. I felt terrible for Taya, even though she had said that it was no big deal.