Page 95 of My Family

Hell yeah!

For thirty seconds, I believe I can win, or at least not die. Not dying would be nice.

I land a jab-cross combination that snaps his head back, and hell yeah, at least this won't be as ridiculously humiliating as I thought.

Then Dominguez adjusts.

It happens very fast.

He drops his lead hand slightly, and when I throw the jab he's been letting me land, he slips it and fires a counter cross that I never see.

The fucking impact arrives behind my left eye and reorganizes my understanding of where the floor is.

My guard drops, and he follows with a hook that folds me sideways, then a straight right that catches the edge of my head and sends the gym spinning.

I'm backing up. I don't remember deciding to back up. My feet are doing survival things.

But he keeps going.

Feint low, strike high. Feint right, come left. A hook digs into my ribs hard enough to steal my breath. Each combination exploits a gap I didn't know I had, each punch arriving from an angle my training didn't cover.

Then the final hook.

The mat rushes up to meet me, and I barely feel the impact. The ceiling stares down at me, crisscrossed with metal beams, and the overhead lights are halos, and the referee's face appears, his mouth moving, counting.

One. Two. Three.

The count sounds like it's coming through water. My ears are ringing, and I think about the time I almost drowned in a pool while my grandmother crocheted and forgot me there.

Four. Five.

I roll to my side. The mat is cool against my cheek.

Somewhere far away, Ethan's voice.

"Get up. Liam. Get up."

Six. Seven.

I get up.

Not gracefully. I get to one knee first, then push, my legs arguing with my brain about whether standing is a reasonable request. I make it upright by eight, hands up, guard up, and the ref looks into my eyes, holds up fingers, and asks a question I answer correctly, even though I still barely register it.

Dominguez is already there.

He closes the distance, patient as ever, and I try to circle, try to move, but my body isn't answering.

He throws an uppercut that catches me under the chin, and my mouthguard shoots sideways, and the ceiling returns, and my body is horizontal, where it belongs.

The referee doesn't count this time.

He steps between us, arms waving in wide crosses.

Stop. Done. Over.

I don't know how I'm standing now, and the referee raises Dominguez's arm. He taps my back, and someone helps me to the bench. I don't even register who, just hands under my arms, the floor moving unreliably beneath me.

My ribs ache where his hook landed. My temple throbs.