But to add insult to injury, the kid stepped forward and chose a much sought after rowing machine plainly within my field of view. He sat between two oblivious wide shouldered high schoolers holding his cup of coffee. Neither did he touch the handle, slip his feet into the restraints, and pull back to exude one breath of exertion. He sipped and taunted me.

I ran faster, speed increasing by one level as if I could show this clueless poseur that you were supposed to do at a gym. This scrawny little bastard in gym shorts, fancy shirt, and glasses, this pathetic geek, acting like he was some kind of Mac daddy, cool boy, flash kid everyone was supposed to gawk at. To come to the gym with such an obviously insufficient reason. How desperate, how disgusting. I wanted to slap sense into him like a mother, tell him what a clueless bastard he was, that he would never trap anything but a pathetic worthless girl who didn't have enough self respect to want more for herself than a obvious faker. The arrogance in his movement, half-closed glare held behind coke bottle glasses, judging everyone like he was better. And just how totally mistaken he was, made me want to chew him over with the heel of my Adidas sneaker. I didn't know what altered state one must be in to honestly believe that they are something so far out from reality.

I felt like vomiting all over him.

Pulse high! Slow down! the treadmill screamed, frantic chirping faltering my attention from my object of odium. Salty sweat soaked my eyebrows. I pushed it aside with the back of my bare hand. Body odor rose from beneath my arms. Slowing, I glanced at my calorie counter. The cookie was gone — just barely — but only if the thing was right. Some may say success is the ability to most often strike even. Disheartening as it was, most often I came up short of even while he, trying to sip his coffee, stopping, squinting into the small hole in the plastic non-biodegradable lid, made my daily struggle no easier. He frowned. Visibly upset, this imp of bizarre perversity shook his cup. He got up from the rower. He strolled past Moss manhandling a 50-pounder on the leg press, Jennifer twisting her latissimus dorsi, and Lou working tiny muscles on top of his shoulders toward, without hesitation, the trash can.

He threw his cup away.

He didn't have any more coffee.

One last look around the gym and he was gone. Not a single calorie burned, a single muscle group stretched, in fact just the opposite; he was a worthless waste of breath. If I had one ounce of the strength he didn't fortify, one tiny piece of the energy he didn't lay out, one dot of the self-assurance he had to walk into a gym with a cup of coffee, sit down to finish it then leave without doing a damn thing, I would never squeeze myself into a hidden support, sport top and take another breast-shaking leap on the treadmill ever again.