Disclaimer: I don't own "Make It or Break It."
A/N: So I was working on the next chapter of "Heart of a Champion," and the plot bunny struck again! This is just a quick little one-shot about one character's ponderings. I never write one-shots, so I apologize if this isn't very good. I actually think this is the shortest thing I've ever written, but hopefully it's pretty good. I was under attack by the aforementioned plot bunny so I wrote it just to get it out. Let me know what you think!
He was so stupid. Stupid, stupid, STUPID! He berated himself mentally. Why can't you just tell her how you feel?
Was it because he was afraid? Doubtful, since he was a gymnast. Doing death-defying stunts every day without breaking a sweat wasn't usually the sign of a scared person.
Could his secretive nature be part of it? Possibly, but it should have been easier to tell her than any other girl he knew. She was an enigma, as much of a mystery as he was. He had never been one for puzzles, but she presented one that he wanted nothing more than to solve.
Lack of self-confidence? Maybe, but his extraordinary confidence in his gymnastics was well-known to anyone who trained with him or competed against him. Why should applying this to his emotions be any different than applying it to the execution of a front handspring rudi?
Maybe all of these played a part in his hesitance. Despite his reckless abandon when it came to gymnastics, he had always had difficulty opening up to people as friends. Friendship was hard enough for him, telling a girl that he loved her was like trying to climb Mt. Everest with an elephant tied to his back.
Love. That was the source of his doubt, of his inability to express his emotions! There was no way to see if she shared his feelings, obviously causing his reluctance to confess them! Sitting back to ponder this revelation, he immediately poked several holes in his logic. Defeated, he gave in to the only explanation he could possibly offer.
The reason Nicky Russo couldn't tell Payson Keeler he loved her was simply this: he just wasn't that kind of guy.
A/N: Quick little pos-script here: I think the main reason I wrote this is because the things that the "MIOBI" writers have Nicky say are sometimes a little too flowery for my taste. Maybe they should've explored his inability to really tell Payson how he feels without speaking about their gymnastics, so this is where I step in!