Page 84 of The Next Lie

The morning is barely morning yet. Thin gray light slips through the high windows and cuts across the mats in pale strips. The place is quiet, and I try to take a moment to breathe in the strange peace that all the exposed beams, brick walls, black rubber flooring, and equipment generates. Its kind of brutal neatness seems to say everything here has a purpose, and there’s…calm to be found in that. Heavy bags hang from steel mounts. Free weights line one wall. A bench sits near the back. There are racks of things I recognize and more things I don’t.

But there’s no peace this morning.

There’s also no Ever. No Shiloh. No Nash.

That’s good. I need somewhere to put this anger before it turns around and eats me alive.

It’s been building since Noir Night. Since Delia’s face appeared in front of me and split my life into before and after all over again. Then Cal, with his careful voice and measured lies. Then the house, the closet, the empty walls, the proof that wasn’t proof at all. Then Deacon in the kitchen, taking up space like a shadow that all of a sudden learned how to breathe.

You were hidden. There’s a difference.

I hate him for saying it.

I hate him more because some part of me understands.

That part can go straight to hell.

I cross the mats and grab a pair of boxing gloves from the top of a wooden crate near the heavy bag. Someone left them there instead of putting them away. They’re black, cracked along the seams, and heavier than I expect. I slide one on, then the other.

Way too big.

My fingers don’t sit right. My wrists feel loose. I make a fist inside the glove and hate how clumsy it feels. Hate how wrong. Hate that even here, even trying to hit a stupid bag in an empty building, I don’t know what I’m doing.

I yank one glove off with my teeth, then the other, and throw them onto the mat.

For one second, I’m back in Cal’s living room in Chicago, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a bowl of popcorn between us while he watches two men beat the hell out of each other on television. He used to talk through the matches like they were lessons.

Hands up, kid.

Watch his feet.

Power starts in the hips.

Wrap your hands first unless you want to break something you need.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Even this belongs to him.

Fuck that noise.

I open my eyes and start searching shelves, drawers, bins. It takes me three tries to find athletic tape in a metal cabinet by the sink. The roll is white and half-used. I take it back to the mats and sit down because my hands are already doing something stupid and shaky.

I’ve seen this done a hundred times. That doesn’t mean I know how to do it.

I wedge the end of the tape against my wrist with my thumb and wind it around, too loose at first, then too tight. I peel it back, try again, loop it over my knuckles, around my palm, between my fingers. The result is ugly. Lumpy. Probably wrong in six different ways.

It’s fine. Ugly and wrong are still better than bare. I just need to hit something.

I wrap the other hand, worse this time because I suck left-handed, then shove both hands back into the gloves. They fit better with the tape filling the empty space. Still too big. Still not mine.

But good enough to throw a punch.

I stand in front of the heavy bag, hanging there like an accusation.

Then I plant my feet, and I hit it. The glove lands with a dull, disappointing thud. The bag barely moves.

I hit it again. Same thing.

A small, stupid sound crawls out of my throat. Not a sob. Not yet. Something closer to a laugh.