by Lily Zante
“Your boy is going away to a training camp in Wisconsin.”
I resent the term he’s using. “He’s not my boy.”
“I’ve suggested to Lou that it makes sense for you to tag along.”
I’m not keen on the idea. “I don’t think Lou wants me there.” That day when I was talking to him, I got the distinct feeling that Lou would have told me if he’d wanted me to come along.
“You can’t cover half of a story. They’re training in Dwayne Banks’ place. You do know who he is, don’t you?”
“The middleweight champion nineteen years ago,” I reply calmly. “Lou thinks he has a chance of repeating that success with Eli now.”
“And if they’re going all that way and training, it makes sense for you to go with them.”
“Eight to ten days?” I balk at the idea. The only reason I can put up with the boxing gym here is because I can go home every evening and take my mind off Eli. I can recover. I shudder to think of what it would be like being stuck with him for days.
“I can’t let you go for that long. Four days. That should give you enough time to flesh out what you have.”
He walks away and I ponder how awkward things are going to be. I am already dreading the training camp but I don’t have much time to think about it because I have a lot of things to look through. I had planned to visit Grampton House later today but found out that it’s closed down. Reports of neglect and incompetence have circulated for years. There were other rumors too, but they weren’t substantiated. I shuddered when I found out that this was the place where Eli and Nina ended up in when they were seven and eight years old.
I return to the boxing gym the next day and Eli’s back is the first thing I see as I walk in.
He’s hitting the speedbag. There’s a certain rhythm to it, one I couldn’t get the hang of when I tried. Ernesto laughed at my feeble attempts.
Eli makes it look so easy. I try not to stare but he moves slightly and I see the side of his face now as he casually, almost lazily, taps the speedball. It’s not a brute force, or strength, but rhythm, Ernesto said, and as I slide into my chair, I’m still riveted by the way Eli’s hitting that thing.
It’s hypnotic.
And then he turns and throws a glance in my direction, as if he can tell I’m watching. It’s odd how we both do that. How, across the floor of the musty, smelly gym full of people, he can sense that I’m here.
When I escaped to the office, it wasn’t only because I was angry at him, it was because I needed to get away. I’m not sure what’s going on with me, or why my belly tingles when Eli’s around, but something happens to me that I can’t control. I can’t fight this feeling, but I need to because his feelings for me are completely different than my feelings for him.
* * *
ELI
* * *
I’m sweaty and grimy, and I could leave it until I’ve showered, but I don’t want this hanging over my head and I’d rather get it over and done with now. I go up to Harper.
“Haven’t seen you around here lately,” I say, taking my gloves off.
She looks up, surprise flickering in her eyes. “I was working from the office.”
She’s cold and has an edge now. Nothing like how she was before, and I can’t blame her. I don’t suppose anyone’s ever answered back to this princess or treated her the way I did the other day. It must have been a huge shock to the system.
Nina’s words reverberate around in my head and I force myself to make the apology. “I’m sorry,” I say, “about the other day.” Funnily enough, my apology sounds softer than it did in my head. It almost sounds sincere.
She stares right at me but doesn’t say anything. I can’t tell if she’s surprised or still pissed at me, but because there’s nothing but silence between us, and because I’ve had to make the move and come to her, I can’t walk away. “I didn’t mean to get so angry.”
“I don’t suppose you can help it.”
That stuns me for a moment. “I can’t, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
Now she’s the one who seems to hesitate. “It’s okay,” she says finally. “You’ve got a lot going on. It’s a big fight. You don’t need me to mess things up for you.”
She didn’t have to say that, but I’m pleased she did. She understands me more than I give her credit for. “Is that why you stayed away? Because of me?”
The way her mouth shuts tight, I can detect her struggle to answer the question. I’m thinking ‘yes’ and that she’s not about to own up to it. She’s too proud to admit to certain things. We both are.
“You hurt me,” she replies, knocking me back as sure as Garrison’s left hook would.
“I did what?” I didn’t hold her wrists that hard.
“What you said. I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t know I’d overstepped a line. I own up, I might have pushed the conversation in a certain direction with your sister. I’m sorry if you thought I had maliciously tried to seek her confidence, but the level of your anger was something I wasn’t prepared for.”
I’m still trying to process this.
“I stayed away because I needed to get work done and…” She looks at me with her sad green eyes. “I’m not having the best time with this assignment. I don’t have a boxing bone in me. I don’t know this sport, and my boss is breathing down my neck. He hates me because my dad pulled some strings to get me this job, but I’m not a privileged brat. I work hard, and I’m trying to do my best to get this story, but you make it so difficult. I needed to take a break from you.”
Holy crap. I’m stunned. She’s let it all pour out, and I kind of feel sorry for her. Nina was right. She’s trying to do her job. I’m the obstacle.
“Are you coming to the fight?” That’s the first thing that pops into my head, because she’ll get the story of her life if she’s there to see me win the title.
“I don’t know if Merv will let me.”
“Merv?”
“Merv the Perv,” she says, scratching her neck the way she does when she’s nervous or thinking about something. “My boss.”
My gut tightens. “Merv the Perv?” I ask, not liking the connotations of that label. “He’s a perv?”
“No,” she shakes her head. “I don’t think he is. He just hates me. People call him that behind his back, but I don’t know if there’s anything to it. It’s a name that’s stuck.”
“Don’t you want to see me win?” I ask, finding it strange that she’s been hanging around here for a while, and yet on the fight night, the big one, she’s bowing out.
“Gerry might do that.”
“Gerry?” Now I can’t tell if that’s a work decision, but her answer soon makes that clear. “I really can’t handle a boxing match. I would be a mess watching it at the ringside.”
“You’re at the gym to watch me and write about me, and you wimp out on the big night?”
She runs a hand through her wavy hair. “I don’t know if Merv will let me.” I’m convinced that he thinks me being here so long is a good enough break in itself.
“Come with me to the diner,” I say on the spur of the moment. “We can talk there.” This has been our longest and most civil conversation yet, and I feel as if I owe it to her to give up something of my story. Plus, if I take her to the diner, Nina will know I made it up to her.
“At the diner?” she asks, sounding shocked and suspicious at the same time. “Now?”
I take a step back, and note her gaze run down my chest, and then back up to my eyes. I caught her looking again. Most women don’t hide their blatant appreciation of my body, but Princess here looks ashamed that I caught her. I breathe in, and pull myself up so that I’m standing taller, I even go so far as to puff my chest out a little. Her gaze is pinned on my eyes now, and I would bet anything that she’s itching to let it slide.
“I need to shower first.”
Chapter Eighteen
HARPER
* * *
That was
an odd exchange; Eli asking me to go to the diner with him. Who am I to say ‘no’?
But did he have to tell me he was going to take a shower? He’s left me with that picture of his back as he walks away in his boxing shorts. My eager eye takes in every muscle, every curve, every inch.
“We missed you,” Ernesto says, his voice jerking me out of the Eli soft-porn movie that’s started to play in my head.
“I missed you,” I tell him truthfully. I’m happy to see him. He sets down his toolkit and wipes his brow with a small white handkerchief. “What did you fix now?” I ask him.
“The sink was leaking in the bathroom.”
“You’re a real DIYer, aren’t you?”
“Someone’s got to take care of things. This place is falling apart.” He scrunches up the hankie and shoves it into his pocket. “Where have you been?”
“I had some work to do from the office.”
“Did you?” he asks, looking at me as if he doesn’t believe me. “Or is that an excuse?”
I lean back in my chair and fold my arms.
“I was fixing one of the showerheads in the locker room that day. I heard everything.”
I press my lips together. “Then you know why I needed to stay away for a few days.”
Ernesto’s face turns somber. “That boy needs to control his temper. He treats everyone as if they’re his opponent.”
I smile at him, glad that he has my back. “He’s apologized.”
“That’s a start. Glad to have you back,” he says, then picks up his toolkit again.
I get back to work and a short while later, Eli comes up to me and announces that he’s ready.
Ten minutes later, we walk to the diner and things feel a little strange. It’s not because of the people who turn to look at him, or that kids shout out encouraging words to him, it’s because the tables have turned. He’s being extra nice, maybe nice is not the right word, but he’s trying to make conversation and I’m holding back. I’m doing that because I find myself in a peculiar position. I am well aware of the effect Eli has on me, or rather on my body. My mind is trying to be in serious journalistic mode but my body is getting ready for good times.
Ever since he strode over to me earlier, wearing nothing but his boxing shorts, and sweat, and a smile, my mind has started playing games. Now that we’re together, out of the familiar confines of the gym, my pulse races and my heart starts to beat faster. It’s annoying, and exhilarating, and all the myriad of emotions in between, and I hate this because I don’t like being out of control.
He wants to know if he can read the stuff I’ve written on him. “You haven’t given me anything,” I retort.
“Ask me anything you want,” he dares, then pushes the door of the diner open for me. I’m in front and as I scan around the half-full room, trying to decide where to sit, people look up, and the sudden silence is followed by a hum slowly moving through the diner as the customers realize he’s here.
“They know I’m Nina’s brother,” he explains, and saunters over to where he wants to sit; in a booth over by the window, where Gerry and I sat last time. I follow and watch as people high-five him and smile at him and greet him along the way.
“Hey,” Nina approaches us as we sit down.
“Hi.” I smile at her.
She looks from me to Eli, and then looks stumped for a moment. “A working lunch?” she asks me.
“I’m not sure,” I reply, because the truth is, I have no idea what brought this on.
“I told him to be nice to you.”
I look at Eli, then at Nina. “So I have you to thank for this?”
“Yes,” Eli confirms, then glances at the menu in his hands.
“How refreshing, a boxer who cares what his sister thinks of him.”
“I’ve always looked up to her,” he says. “She’s looked out for me my entire life.”
“Someone had to,” replies Nina. Though she says it as if it’s funny, almost a dismissive comment, I start to think there might be something weightier under those words. “What can I get you?” she asks, getting ready to take our order.
We place our orders, and then stare at one another when Nina leaves. Eli seems to take up his entire seat, and it’s not because he’s huge. He isn’t built like a grotesque bodybuilder, but his persona takes up more space that his physical body. I feel a little shy around him, and it’s not something I should be feeling at my age. It’s definitely not something I’ve felt outside of my teens, so the fact that I feel it now throws me. This happens more and more, I realize. Eli unnerves me, and it’s not just because of his displays of anger. He excites me as well, and he’s making me feel like a teen right now. I blame it on his pheromones; they roll off this man like dust.
I’m eager to make some conversation. “This is why you’re being nice to me?” I say, with a grin. “Because Nina asked you to? I assumed it was because you’d softened towards me.”
“Nina did ask me to apologize, and I could have left it at that, but I feel I owe you. I don’t want to get you in trouble with your boss.”
“I’m not in trouble with him.”
“You said I’d made it difficult for you to get your article written.”
“You haven’t exactly made it easy.” If ever there was a guy who didn’t want to talk about himself, it’s him. “You were going to tell me about your meteoric rise to the top.”
“It’s not meteoric yet,” he states. “I know how this fight is being promoted. Most people don’t think I’ll go the distance, let alone make a dent, but I will, and then they’ll be talking about my rise to the top.”
“I believe in you,” I say, sitting forward, because I do. I’ve seen Eli’s different faces, some of them, but I’ve got a jagged jigsaw-pieced picture of his past. I believe in him because I want to and because he thinks nobody else does, outside of his boxing family and Nina.
“Where do you want me to start?”
“At the beginning.”
So he starts, allegedly at the beginning and tells me about his absent father, and the struggles of his mother, and how after that weekend where she left her two toddlers home alone, they were taken away from her until she cleaned her act up. How his aunt took care of them, and how his mother never did manage to get over her problems. “She died of a drug overdose a few years later. She never managed to clean up her act.”
My body slumps at the news, at how much strife this man has known. “I’m sorry, Eli.” I want to comfort him in some way, but it’s hard to know what to do, and how to do it. We have such a tricky dynamic; I don’t know how I’m supposed to react around him most of the time. He doesn’t like too much emotion yet how can I rein it in when I hear such awful things about his childhood years?
He lowers his voice each time Nina walks past. I sense he doesn’t like talking about it especially when she’s around, but I dare not suggest we go someplace else.
“My aunt had no choice but to take care of us. I guess she hoped that my dad would come back and take over, but he went back to Panama.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“He died a few years after my mom, but he never came back here. We never saw him again. I have no proper recollection of either of my parents.”
“How long were you with your aunt and uncle for?”
He shakes his head. “There was no uncle. She had a series of boyfriends over the years. The last one didn’t like me much.”
I remember what Nina said about the beatings.
“He had a temper on him. Liked his belt too much.”
I force myself to remain composed, but it’s hard not to wince or jolt at the images that his words paint.
“She couldn’t take care of us as time went on. She was struggling and had two little kids of her own by then. We got taken away by CPS then, and ended up at this place where we stayed while they tried to find us foster families.”
“Grampton House?”
Nina brings the food over and Eli turns si
lent.
“That’s the place,” he says, when Nina leaves.
“It closed down years ago.”
“It should have been razed to the ground.”
I push my salad around on the plate, and he barely touches his brown rice and veg. The conversation dies.
“But you must have gone to school and made friends?” I ask, desperate to hear about something good in his life, something normal.
“I hated school. I couldn’t sit still or pay attention. I’d play hooky, and get into trouble. Hang out with the wrong kids. Get up to no good. Teachers always said I’d amount to nothing. That I was a waste of space, come to think of it, that’s the message most people drummed into me most of the time.”
“Is it respect you’re after?” I ask, wondering if that was what he sought, the thrill of winning a fight, and proving his physical strength and ability.
“Respect?” He says it with such derision that I know it’s not that. “I want to prove that I am worthy.”
“To who?” His family? Nina?
“To myself,” he says, as if I’ve asked him a silly question. “I’ve grown up with people telling me I was a useless, worthless piece of shit. Now’s my chance to prove that I’m not.”
I look at him, at the defiance in his dark eyes, but I’m too choked up to say anything.
“Everyone wants to prove something, Harper. Don’t you want to prove something?”
“I want the story.”
“And I want the belt.”
These are simple things to want, but not so simple to get.
“You can give me the story,” I say, wanting to see his reaction to my request. “But I can’t give you the belt.”
“I’m going to get that myself, don’t you worry.”
“I have every confidence in you.” He looks up and throws me a look as if he doesn’t believe me. But I mean what I say and I’m not saying this to pay him lip service. I don’t care what everyone says about Garrison. Eli wants this title more than life itself and I want, with all my heart, for him to get it.
