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I don’t know who moved first.

I remember the first punch. It was a jab, short and hard and fast, straight to his chest. It landed with a hollow thump, like hitting a tree. He didn’t budge. He didn’t flinch. He simply stood there, breathing.

“Again,” he said.

I hit him again.

I hit him a hundred times.

I hit him in the ribs, the stomach, the shoulders. I hit him with my left and my right and my elbow and, once, God help me, my head. I screamed. I don’t remember the words. Some of them were his name. Some of them were my father’s. Some of them were curses I hadn’t used since I was fifteen. I threw everything I had. The bulb swung on its wire. The walls rang. He took all of it, every blow, and never once raised his hands.

“More,” he said.

“I hate you!”

“Yes.”

“I hate you for leaving!”

“Yes.”

“I hate that you’re scared! I hate that you didn’t tell me! I hate that you sent me fifty words and thought that was enough! I hate that I believed you! I hate that I knew you’d come!”

“Yes,” said Maksim. His voice was very gentle. “Yes. All of it. Go on.”

“I hate that I love you so much I can’t breathe! “

I drove a fist into his stomach with everything I had left, and my knuckles cracked, and the whole world went white.

I didn’t fall. I hung there. My hands were shaking and my arms were lead and my breath came in great tearing sobs. I opened my eyes and saw him, still standing, his shirt torn at the shoulder, a red bruise blooming on his jaw where I’d caught him. It was already fading. He was looking at me with tears running down his face.

“There you are,” he said.

My knees gave out.

He caught me, and he was on the floor with me before I knew it, on the wooden boards of the old squash court, with my head in his lap and his arms around my shoulders and my face pressed to his chest. I cried, and God, I cried like I hadn’t since I was a child. It shook me from head to foot in huge dry-throated sobs that hurt my ribs, and he held on to me through all of it, rocking me and saying nothing.

I don’t know how long it lasted.

When it ended, when the last tremor had gone through me, I lay there hollowed out and gasping, with my cheek against his shirt and my fist still curled in the cloth.

The pressure was gone.

It wasn’t dead, but it was quiet. It was sitting in a corner of my chest like a big dog with its head on its paws, watching. It knew me, and it wasn’t going anywhere, but it wasn’t going to bite.

“How do you feel?” said Maksim.

“Tired.”

“Good.”

“Empty.”

“That is also good.”

“I hit you.”

“You did.”