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

31. #SweetOffering, April 2018

Mike knew Daya's texts by heart, but he re-read them anyway hoping for a hidden message. Belousova kept Daya on her toe picks; Dhawan/Sorokin entered a regional competition in June, some place in Ontario he didn't know; they were to select music and start working on their choreography next week. 

None of it included him, except that she had reached out to him. The invisible string between them, thinner than spiderweb silk, tightened, then slacked again. Would a blushing smiley with a trio of ruby hearts have been better? Bad poetry? Should he text back about his thesis? So many questions...

"Michael, I thought you were going to the gym on the break?" Carol phrased it as a question, but her narrowed eyes said, Stop sulking, get off your butt.

"On my way, I was just throwing together a playlist for my run. They keep removing you-tube videos and I hate those snide messages about video being no longer available."

Carol peeked at his screen... and he didn't have the time to do anything about the folders he had dragged up from the obscurity before the app opened up. The list of references, bits and pieces of chapters, the drafts of the thesis proposal... a smile tugged at his boss' lip corner, but out loud she asked, "Taking along your best pal?"

His running list was heavy on the Japanese skating maverick's videos, so he could have been growing attached. "If I have to cultivate an unrealistic body image, I'm going straight for the abstract ideal. It's a compensation for my years of not giving a fig."

Carol shook her head, sending the salt and pepper curls bouncing. "Michael, just go to the gym."

He did. While the greatest-of-all-time flitted around from one corner of the small screen to another, landing back on the ice in an afterthought of each take off, Mike's heavy footfalls shook the treadmill. Must believe this is going somewhere. Oh, please. Going somewhere, on a treadmill? The stupidest thing, this.

And the alternatives were all in the same vein. Swim laps in the pool. Dance on one spot... or skate round and round the ice rink, like Daya must be doing right now in Ontario. His heart gave a painful lurch that had nothing to do with exercise.

This is going somewhere. It had to, to keep all those other people attached to heavy weights and never-ending locomotion.

His thesis could go somewhere too. While sifting through the materials, a busy work at first, it dawned at Mike that he could finish it now. Now that Daya had infected him with ambition, he could do it. Not that Daya would love a Doctor of Philosophy more than a librarian, but he could finish it if he returned to a university. 

After 30 minutes of stomping down the treadmill into submission, his face looked so red, it clashed with his hair. He threw cold water onto it, fruitlessly. So, it was with this watermelon-tomato face that he had shown up back at work.

His coworkers still lingered at the lunch nook. He smiled at Alyssa, while edging his way to the fridge, to get his post-workout ambrosia. Low cal, no sugar, 38 grams of protein diluted in something vaguely resembling days old hot chocolate.

"Mike, there're some gluten-free chocolate chip cookies left," Alyssa called brightly, shoving the plate across the table. Some was too imprecise an estimate; he counted eight cookies. The absence of gluten didn't alter the appearance, though perhaps the goodies were paler than their full-bodied wheat equivalent. His first impulse was to stuff one into his mouth and... he swallowed air.

"Thank you, but I'm good." He brandished his sippy cup for the grown-ups playing the dress-up game. Look at me, I'm an athlete! Daya's yoga pants always looked like they belonged on her.

"Just one?" Alyssa tossed her natural curls over her naturally slim torso, clad in natural wool. The knitted outfit was stuck in an awkward place between a sweater dress and a sweater. It stopped mid-thigh of her black-legginged legs, barely letting a plaid skirt peek from underneath.