Two weeks ago, I finally walked up to the man I liked at the gym and managed to tell him two things: he had an amazing body, and I was scared of him. Apparently, I had decided a compliment needed a warning label.
He smiled and tried to reassure me that he was a normal person and didn’t want me to feel afraid.
I’m 25, he’s 29, and I’d been seeing him around for more than four months. At first, he was simply a handsome man who seemed to be nearby quite a lot. He would look at me and hold my gaze when our eyes met. Sometimes he smiled. Somewhere along the way, noticing him notice me became a crush.
My contribution to this possible flirtation had been outstandingly unhelpful. When he smiled, I panicked and ignored him. Twice, when he tried to approach, I pretended I hadn’t seen him and left the gym. I wanted him to talk to me. I was giving a fairly convincing impression of someone who wanted him to stop.
There were smaller things, too. His water bottle kept ending up close to mine, even when we were the only people there and space was hardly scarce. His friend was unexpectedly friendly after we’d shared equipment just once. When I hadn’t been in for a month, the friend asked where I’d been. I noticed all of it, without knowing which parts meant anything.
I’m very introverted, I haven’t had sex, and my last date was five years ago. None of that makes standing near a handsome man easier. Once I started liking him, a look across the room stopped being a look across the room. It became something I could spend an entire workout thinking about while doing my best not to acknowledge it.
Yesterday, he greeted me with a warm smile and joked that he was fully dressed now, so I wouldn’t have to be so scared. The gym was freezing, and everyone had layered up. Then he took off his long-sleeved top. A slightly confusing follow-through on his reassurance, although I was hardly in a position to criticize anyone’s delivery.
Toward the end of my workout, he came over and asked to share the machine I was using. I do the same exercises in the same order on particular days; the people I see regularly have had plenty of opportunity to learn the routine. Between his turns, he put the machine back to my settings and smiled at me.
I still didn’t know whether he was flirting or simply being considerate. But there he was, making it easy for us to keep taking turns, while I sat in my headphones, nervous again.
