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I’m half a pasteles in when I shake my head as the blond in blue shorts gets an uppercut that knocks him off his feet for seven seconds. “I don’t get it. He’s an influencer. Why would he think he could beat last year’s heavyweight champion of the world?”

Dad shoves a spoonful of yellow rice into his mouth. “People don’t understand how difficult boxing is. It’s one thing to hit a bag for a few hours. But a moving target? Going toe-to-toe with someone trying to KO you? Different.”

Some influencer decided to go wild on social media, claiming he could take out a boxing legend months ago, and now I’m watching him get his ass beat on our flat-screen. Making smart decisions isn’t easy for everyone, but this makes my earlier slipup feel minor in comparison.

I mean, I got to walk away without any bruises from the situation.

The screen pauses. “Bathroom break.”

Dad’s hands grip the edge of the couch, and he pushes himself up with a grunt. The noise is like a rusted knife in my heart. It’s something he didn’t do before, something that required less effort for him to do. I notice everything.

Like how the only wrinkles he used to have were laugh lines from decades of chuckling, mainly at his own jokes, and now they pull the ends of his eyes down, crease his forehead where his curls can’t hide them, and dent the sides of his once-sharp cheekbones.

He wears belts now because his clothes fit loose on him. He doesn’t have the energy to bounce back from a shift and head downstairs to his workout room to box for a couple of hours.

His alarm rings five more times than it used to before he gets up and shuts it off. He goes for walks, not runs, with Vivi now.

Age and being overworked are catching up to him at a rate that makes dread flood through me. It’s like I’m drowning in fear and anxiety and I don’t know how to swim out of it—a riptide of panic pulling me farther and farther away from the shore of being worry-free, where I used to stand.

Before, I had a mom, and Dad didn’t have to work so many hours at a warehouse, which was the only place that would hire him without a degree. Mom made plenty as a lawyer. But she’s gone, which means Dad is alone.

And will be entirely when I go to Harvard.

My gaze lands on the couch and the dent he made.

How many times will he sit there and look at the dent-less place I used to be beside him? He’ll see the raised cushion and think of the daughter hundreds of miles away in college.

We’ve never been apart before. I’ll be fine, but Dad?

This house is too big, too filled with echoes of memories of two women, one permanently gone from his life and the other absent for years and years. It’s too lonely.

Nobody to appreciate the jokes he’ll still place on the fridge, or the meals he experiments with, or the random moments he gets excited about some event at the town hall and takes me with him.

I place my plate on the side table and try not to let what I ate climb my throat.

Dad returns and I smile and laugh and comment on the fight as it goes on. Like in a mock trial, I keep all my emotions locked away in a tiny box. I can compress anything into it, lock it away, and shove it far enough that it doesn’t rattle me.

Now, though, when I do, the box is already full, and I have to push it in to fit with the rest, like an overpacked suitcase you sit on and zip as fast as you can before it bursts.

“I’ll clean up,” I say when the fight is over and the influencer is unconscious on the floor. “You go to sleep before your shift.”

We say good night and my mind runs restless while I scrub the dishes. It won’t focus on a single thing, like scrolling through Netflix trying to find something to watch: an endless endeavor.

When I’m done, I lie on the couch and let Vivi hop onto it and rest on my legs, her warmth a small comfort to my body running cold. Instead of concentrating on my thoughts spiraling into unproductive worrying, I scroll through my feed, move from app to app.

I swipe through my phone until my finger hovers over my dating app.

It was used one time, when nobody asked me to homecoming and Lexie assured me that it was because people think I’m unapproachable because I’m too beautiful and too smart to fall for any of these pretentious jerks. When I accused her of simply loving me too much, she bet me her MacBook that if I made a dating profile, I’d get ten matches within a day.

I got seventeen but remained, unfortunately, MacBook-less.

Footsteps creak before Dad pops his head into the living room.

I hold up a finger. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

He gives me an I’m the father, you’re the daughter look. “All right, I’ll see you tomorrow. Do not stay awake for me. I mean it, you better be asleep when I leave.”

“I will,” I say as he leaves. “Dad?” He pauses and it hurts to get the words out. “I love you.”