Page 162 of The Clinch
That thought hits harder than the rest.
Silence doesn’t mean gone. Not with a man like him.
I know Drake’s shape. Prideful. Mean in the quiet ways. The kind of man who would rather scorch the earth than admit he lost. The last time we fought, in Atlantic City, I beat him in front of a room full of people he wanted to impress. He looked at me afterward like he was still arguing with reality.
Men like that don’t absorb humiliation and grow boundaries. They get quiet. They wait. They look for the next seam.
And one bad second is all a man like that needs.
Camp means I don’t get to close every gap I want to close. So I do what I can. I tell myself that’s not the same as closing around her.
It’s a thin line.
I sit on the bench and start unwinding the last of the wrap from my left hand.
Across from me, Lukas is toweling off, quieter now. Ray is speaking to one of the assistant coaches near the lockers, voice low, hands moving through something technical about angles, recovery days, and where he wants my weight sitting by the end of the week. The gym settles into its usual between-round hum. Men moving around each other. Ice packs. Water bottles. Wraps hanging off fingers. The ordinary aftermath of damage done in controlled amounts.
My phone vibrates once on the bench beside me. A text from Eden from earlier, buried under camp notifications and weather alerts. I pick it up and type without overthinking.
LEO
Can you come by again tonight or tomorrow?Neck’s tight
My thumb hoversover the weather notification. I tap it open.
Tomorrow looks ugly. Gray all morning. Heavy rain by midday. Transit delays already predicted, because New York runs on infrastructure held together by spite alone.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, and pull up the car service app.
She should be thinking about school. Not trains. Not weather. Not how to get herself from Brooklyn to First Avenue without wasting half her focus before lunch.
The car takes less than ten seconds to book. I hit confirm and sit back, wrap hanging loose from my hand, rain ticking softly at the windows.
One thing. No more than that.
The ring is still on her finger.
I sit with that for a long time.
Then I check the weather for the day after tomorrow.
39
NO SPACE LEFT (LIZ)
The second week of med school arrives, and the real shape of it starts to show. No more orientation ceremonies. Just classes, labs, and reading that never ends. I fall into orbit with Nia, Mateo, and Rebecca, the people I keep reaching for without thinking. It happens fast when everyone understands no one gets through med school alone.
I should be grateful for that.
I should also be grateful for the black car waiting every morning.
The storms have finally broken. After days of rain, the city has turned soft around the edges. The air is cooler. The light is clearer. It’s the first stretch of weather that makes New York feel livable.
Which makes it harder to explain why the sight of the sedan makes something in me brace.
It’s not always the same car or driver. But it’s always the same setup: the quiet engine, the back door opening before I’ve decided whether I’m getting in, the smooth assumption that this is how I’m getting to campus.
Plenty of women would kill for this. So why does my body keep reacting as if I’ve walked into a decision someone else already made for me?
