Winners Don't Have Bad Days (Watty 2020 Winner, Romance)

1. #FirstSnow, October 2017

First snow cloaked Calgary overnight on Friday, October the 13th.

Daya glanced out of her rental basement window at the frosted lawn, ignored the forecast and shrugged into a black hoodie. Then she jogged to VITAL community center where she worked as a fitness instructor, just like she did every morning. First snow on Friday the 13th, big stinking deal.

The soccer fields reflected the predawn light at her, coloring the world gray. The air steamed with her breath. VITAL loomed ahead, squat and sprawling. Lights should flood from the floor-to-ceiling windows of the library any minute now, fooling her senses into ignoring the winter chill... or at least she hoped they would. 

The building, however, remained dark this morning, and the wind nipped through her clothes. She picked up the tempo. Since her feet pounded the frozen ground faster, her not bad, not bad, not bad mantra banged inside her skull more urgently. These were the words she lived by. They  helped her cope with her freezing toes, her life in general and her polite coworkers.

And truly, her life was not that bad when she skidded to a stop at an unexpected obstacle—

A lone guy who was crossing the parking lot with his shoulders hunched, his head bowed, jerked his head toward her... right when one of his feet lifted to step on the curb. It slipped off, sideways, on the icy concrete. He yelped, flapped his arms in the air, fighting for balance, and tumbled by her feet on the pavement.

And, yes, that was when she skidded to the full stop in front of the unexpected obstacle in her routine. Now, here was someone whose day was starting out badly.

Blasted Friday the 13th at work!

Her mind searched for a charitable way to describe the sight. A beached whale? Starfish with legs? An unhappy panda?

"Are you okay?" she asked, leaning over him. "Sorry, I didn't mean to spook you. Normally, no one shows up this early..." Except whoever turns on the lights in the library.

Maybe she should have given him a wide berth and let someone else handle it, but she was the first on the scene. It might have even been her fault. And she couldn't get rid of the impression that she knew him from somewhere. Not trained him no, but—

So she extended a helping hand.

Not that she expected to pull the fallen hero back to his feet: the physics objected with vehemence. Daya was five-three in her running shoes. The guy obviously drank every glass of milk his momma gave him. On top of winning the height game, he wrapped himself in pounds of winter gear for the arduous trek from the car to the side entrance of the VITAL, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

He grabbed her hand, making her wrist and half of the forearm disappear inside his rated-for-outer-space-exploration mitt. He squirmed, she braced—and ta-da!—he sat up.

"Are you okay?" she repeated, impatient for the yes that would let her off the hook.

"Oof," he said midway through a valiant attempt to bend further forward at the waist. "No, I'm not okay. My foot's in agony."

"Then get up, go home and ice it," she said. "You know the drill." Okay, this sounded a little rude, but they were lingering in the cold at five in the morning, for  goodness' sake!

"Elevate, ice, something, something sort of thing," he murmured.

The mustard-yellow toque he had pulled over his ears could not have flattered his complexion at the best of times. Under the harsh parking lot's lights and in a combo with sweat beading on his forehead, his pallor alarmed her. Pained wincing didn't help her peace of mind either. Despite herself, she started to worry about her martyr.