Page 66 of On the Ropes
Dean
Running was a lot more enjoyable with Tabitha.
“Cheater,” she sputtered, but she was laughing. Already out of breath. I deliberately slowed until we were shoulder to shoulder on the first landing.
She dropped her hands to her knees. “I’m not giving you the prize when we get to the top.”
I nodded up ahead. “My trainers always said the victory’s in the movement. Not getting a medal after.”
“Your trainers sound like psychopaths.”
I tipped my head back on a laugh. “Some days they are. But we’ve only got sixty more steps, give or take. Come on. No quitters in this friendship.”
She shook out her arms. Blew out a breath. And then we ran the next set of stairs together. And the next. If I touched my face, I knew my smile would be huge. It was a reaction to her delighted laughter, the looseness in my limbs, the act of running with no purpose. Not for time. Not for conditioning. Not as a warm-up.
What else had I been missing?
We reached the very top at the exact same time.
“I think,” she gasped, “that you might have held back there a little bit.”
I shrugged. “Seems like it was a tie, fair and square.”
“I call bullshit.”
“Maybe…” I hedged. “Maybe, when I was first training, Sly had me run these stairs every day, up and back, ten times.”
Her jaw dropped. “You’re a double cheater.”
“How do you think I won all those matches?”
Her laugh turned into a slightly wheezing cough. I tapped her elbow and stacked my hands on top of my head. She copied me. Took a big inhale. Up here, all my fidgety thoughts slowed down. The jagged edges in my mind smoothed over. Since my first day at the boxing gym, I discovered that physical activity had that effect on me. The faster my heart raced, the less I felt the need to hyper-analyze every word I said. Or constantly self-edit. Boxing became a sort of home, the one space where I could think clearly.
Like I was finally myself.
“I always thought it was extra quiet up here,” Tabitha said. “Like this immediate hush. But a powerful one. Do you know what I mean?”
I followed her focus. Directly in front of us, the fountain sent sprays of mist into the night sky. The massive stone columns at the entrance always made me think of Rome when I was a kid.
“During matches, the first ten seconds after the gong went off were silent for me,” I said. “I couldn’t hear the crowd screaming. Or their chants. Or trainers yelling. Only my heartbeat.”
Her gaze flicked to mine. “There’s a story there. About the precious, quiet seconds before the chaos of a fight.” A clap of thunder drew her eyes up to the dark sky. “Like the calm before a summer storm. Maybe I’ll make a movie about you one day.”
Her tone was sincere. I still scoffed. “That would be a boring fucking movie.”
“I disagree.”
I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t blurt out how beautiful she was. Instead, I turned to face her fully. “Do you want the authentic running the Rocky steps experience for this adventure?”
She cocked her head to the side. “Hell yeah. Do you need to dump a thing of Gatorade all over my head or something?”
I shot her a questioning look. “Tabitha. Do you know what happens in the Rocky movies?”
“No,” she said, dragging out the word. “I never saw them all the way through, but I don’t believe that’s a problem.”
I ducked my head on a laugh. “We’re going a little off script.” I held my palms straight out in front of me. “Do you want to do a punching drill?”
“You mean hit you?”
