by Kathleen Gilligan

Created on: May 06, 2011

“You’re a gymnast?!” the girl asked.

He’d dealt with it for years.  The laughs. The insults.  Sometimes he’d smile, sometimes he’d frown.  Rarely did he throw punches.  It wasn’t his fault that his mother signed him up for gymnastics when he was little.  She wanted to help his balance, and her heart was in the right place.

And gymnastics had helped them.  Honestly he was probably in better shape than most of the guys at his high school.  He certainly bench-pressed more than they did.  He had to in order to compete.  Now his plaid shirt stretched tightly across his broad shoulders, muscles strong from holding himself up on the rings over and over. 

“Yeah,” he answered the girl curtly.  He stuffed his textbooks into his locker.  One of them accidentally smushed his lunch bag, but he’d deal.  “What of it?” he asked, not expecting her to stick around.

“Nothing,” she said, obviously flustered a bit, if the rising color in her cheeks was anything to go by.  “It’s just, so am I!” she said quickly, this time smiling at him. 

He looked over at her, his mood changing, now noting calluses on her fingers from the bars and seeing that she wasn’t rail thin like he had first thought.  “Oh, cool, sorry I was a little abrupt,” he said.  “I get a lotta crap sometimes about it.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, her smiling dimming for a second before it came back full blast.  “Well, I was just wondering if maybe you wanted to get some coffee after school?” she asked nervously.

He smiled.  “Sure, definitely,” he said, his day completely turned around as they exchanged numbers and planned to meet up later.  The bell sent them scurrying in opposite directions, but he couldn’t help looking back at her as he walked into his own classroom. 

“Hey man, you wanna hang out later?” asked a friend as they sat down.

He smiled again.  “Nope, sorry.  I’ve got a date with the gymnast.”

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