Page 160 of The Clinch
Across the table, Leo refills my water without being asked.
I watch him do it and say nothing.
38
ROADWORK(LEO)
By the third round, Lukas is breathing harder than he wants me to notice. He comes in off the jab just late enough, trying to turn his shoulder fast and hide the drag in his footwork. I clip him clean to the body before Ray calls time.
Lukas steps back with a muttered curse, glove brushing over his ribs. Sweat runs down the side of his face and drips off his jaw onto the canvas. The gym smells like old leather, disinfectant, wet wraps, and effort. A radio mutters low behind the front desk. Rain ticks against the high windows, dull and steady now, the storm reduced to background noise.
Ray leans through the ropes and looks at Lukas. “You trying to impress me or die pretty?”
Lukas spits his mouthpiece into his glove and glares. “Could be both.”
Ray snorts. “Take a lap. Then come back when your feet remember they belong to you.”
Lukas drops out of the ring with all the dignity available to a man who just got folded with a liver shot in front of witnesses. I stay where I am, elbows braced on the top rope, breathing hardbut even. Sweat runs down my spine under the compression shirt. My pulse is up, but my head is quiet.
That’s the thing about camp when it’s going well. Everything unnecessary burns off. The noise. The static. The extra thoughts. There’s only the work in front of me and my body answering it.
Ray hands me a towel. I drag it across the back of my neck and over my face.
“You’re sharp,” he says.
I grunt.
“Sharper than you should be this deep in.” He studies me a moment, one thick forearm hooked over the top rope. “You’re sleeping better or getting laid or both. Keep it going.”
I look at him over the towel.
He grins. “That wasn’t a question.”
“Mind your business.”
Ray’s grin widens. “Nah.”
I drop the towel onto the stool in the corner and reach for my water. The bottle is cold enough to sting my palm. Across the gym, Lukas is pacing the far wall, breathing through his nose and pretending not to listen.
Ray keeps watching me.
“What?”
“You’re less ugly this camp.”
“That’s your professional assessment?”
“That’s me saying whatever’s going on in Brooklyn seems to agree with you.”
The bottle pauses halfway to my mouth.
Brooklyn.
Her.
He’s not wrong.
It’s there in stupid places now. In the way I look at the clock between sessions and count how long until I can get back. In the way the apartment feels wrong without her and settledthe second she’s back in it. In the way her things have spread through my place so gradually, I could pretend not to notice if I wanted to, except I don’t want to.
