The Spring Anthology ✔

Karate Kicks

Written by @serenade_me

'Three...'

Breathe in.

'Two...'

Breathe out.

'One..'.

And wink

'Go!'

I had his moves memorised. Every little quirk of his, every little ritual he carried out thinking it would help, every motion of his limbs and the sequences of them, I could play them out in my mind before he could even think about it. And that's why I could defeat him. Every time.

'That was totally a new move!'

'Oh please, that was as new as that obnoxious wink you give before starting every match.' It was funny how I knew his tactics more than he did. He was too cautious. You can't be cautious in karate. You have to be sharp and impulsive. Your muscles must be trained to fling out a reflex before your eyes can even register that your opponent's heel just moved an acute angle.

'It's those huge eyes of yours, you're at an unfair advantage.'

I laughed and blocked one of his -very predictable- punches and swung a leg to literally sweep him off his feet.

'The only thing unfair here is the amount of time I'm having to waste on you.'

He landed with a thud onto the blue mat and let out a stifled groan before huffing out an almost incoherent curse. Sensei held a thumbs up out at me and I let a smile spread on my face, only however, to have it shrink back into a grimace because my eyes slid past sensei's amused face to Casey's disapproving one. She'd given me a talk just the previous day about how guys never liked being defeated and most certainly not the chick defeating them.

And as much as I loved my best friend and found her totally sexist analogies amusingly idiotic, I couldn't help but think they might be true. After all, none of the boys in class looked at me as anything but one of the guys. Casey was the cute one trying to learn self-defence while I was simply the one who nailed self-defence. It was always lightly flattering and slightly offensive. But anyways, the point was, maybe Casey was right. Maybe I needed to let Danny win once so his ego could get a little boost. 'ELl, he's probably just way too intimidated to even think about liking you like that,' was one of Casey's analogies- the one that had finally struck a chord in me.

So breathing out some of my self-esteem I loosened my fists, relaxed my shoulders and waited as Danny roughly adjusted the front of his karategi, stepped up to where I stood, took his usual defence position and locked his fierce green eyes with mine. And we fought. It was moments like this, such tantalisingly tense moments that made the neurones in my brain go haywire and send out a million sparking impulses down to every cell in my body. I was hyperaware. And so after he'd quite skilfully escaped my attempt at a headlock, I knew exactly what move he was going to pull up next and exactly how I was going to make my legs stumble and let his blow throw me to the ground.