Brawler

by Tracey Ward

  “Wrap your arms around my waist and hold onto me hard,” I said gruffly, turning to face forward. “Clench the bike and me with your legs, lean with me when I lean. You got it?”

  She moved closer to me until she was straddling me tightly as I told her to. Her body pushed against mine, molded to it, and her arms wrapped around me tightly. Holding me.

  My breath caught in my lungs and I pressed my hand firmly on top of hers, pinning it to my stomach to ground me. I felt strange. Not angry, but excited. More of a feeling everywhere in my body, in side every nerve that threw me off so much that I worried I wouldn’t be able to drive. That we’d have to go back inside. But I couldn’t do that and the thought made the animal in me pace. He needed an outlet, one he wouldn’t find here, so I released Jenna’s hand, gunned the engine gently, and dove us deep into the night.

  I drove carefully and aimlessly for over an hour. I kept to the nicer neighborhoods and the quieter streets. I made sure I followed every rule of the road and some I made up in my head to keep Jenna safe. It wasn’t working. I was getting more anxious by the second, the tension building and building in my muscles. The release I’d hoped for wasn’t going to come and I started to panic. I felt like I’d throw up or my muscles would rip in half with the strain inside them.

  “Kellen,” Jenna’s voice rang softly in my ear, “take me to your gym.”

  I nodded then violently spun the bike around in an intersection and raced us toward my old neighborhood.

  When we reached the darkened building I was excited but nervous. I needed to do this. I needed to get in there and do the only thing that ever brought me down from the over amped level I was at. It hurt to be in my body. It felt too tight, like my skin was stretching hot and thin over my muscles that swelled and ached. I felt bigger than my bones. Stronger than my control.

  I killed the engine and waited for Jenna to get off the bike, but she hesitated. I turned to look back at her to find out why and her pinched expression told me everything. “What’s wrong? You’re scared, aren’t you?” I asked, feeling like a jerk for the second time that night. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. I’ll take you home.”

  “No, I’m not scared,” she swore. “Not of the neighborhood, but maybe of tetanus. I rushed out of the house to catch up to you and I didn’t put on shoes.”

  I stared blankly down at her long white foot where she lifted it for me to see, and I started to chuckle. “Hang on,” I told her as I dropped the kickstand and swung off the bike.

  I took her helmet from her, draped it over my arm by the chin strap, and swept her up easily into my arms.

  “Whoa!” she cried, her eyes going wide with panic.

  “I’ve got you.”

  Carrying Jenna in my arms reminded me of a day at the beach over a year ago when she’d stepped on a jellyfish. I’d swept her up exactly as I had her now and raced her up the sand to the lifeguard station. She had her face buried in my shoulder, her hands clenched tightly, and quiet groans of pain escaped out of her throat as I ran, spurring me forward faster and faster. I’d been in a rush that day. All I’d been worried about was ending her suffering, but tonight I walked slowly. I carried her and I noticed how it felt.

  It felt good.

  It felt right.

  The building was empty except for Tim sitting at his desk in a corner, a lamp glowing over his magazine. The rest of the lights were turned down low for the night to give the place the impression it was closed and discourage anyone from coming in. No one but regulars were really welcome after hours even though the place was technically open all night.

  Tim nodded to us vaguely but he barely looked up and he didn’t blink an eye at the fact that I was carrying a barefoot girl into the place. He’d been running a twenty four hour boxing gym in southern L.A. for over fifteen years. It took a lot to shock him.

  I parked Jenna in a chair on the far side of the gym before disappearing into the back to gather all of the gear I’d need to run through my workout, including a roll of red tape for my hands. I took it out to Jenna, knelt in front of her, and started slowly wrapping the tape around her bare feet.

  “What are you doing?” she asked nervously.

  I knew why. Jenna hated how large her feet were. She hated how tall she was. She hated how narrow her hips her, how flat her ass was, how small her breasts were, but while she thought she was bony and bulky, I thought she was graceful. Elegant.

  “I don’t want you walking around here barefoot,” I explained. “It gets cleaned but not well and guys spit, sweat and bleed all over this place.” I finished wrapping her foot and ran my hands over the tape, feeling to make sure it was covering her entirely. “Is this too tight? Does it hurt?”

  “No,” she answered softly, a shiver running through her body.

  “Are you cold?”

  She shrugged. “A little, maybe.”

  “Here,” I said, pulling my T-shirt over my head. I wouldn’t need it soon, not once my workout started, so I slipped the shirt over her head before reaching for her hair to pull it free. It tangled in my fingers, soft and thick, then spilled out over her shoulders nearly to her waist, looking impossibly dark and glossy against the light fabric of my shirt. I sat back, grinning at her. “It looks good on you.”

  “It looks huge on me,” she chuckled, flushing pink.

  I was quick wrapping her other foot, eager to get her out of there. I worried she was cold but I also worried she was shivering because she was afraid. This neighborhood didn’t bother me, but I’d grown up here. As cool as Jenna was about everything, she couldn’t be comfortable here this late at night. Not even with an ambassador to the underworld like me.

  “Do what you’ve gotta do,” Jenna ordered, waving me away. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not scared being here?”

  “I’m never scared when I’m with you.”

  I smiled, but it was hard to hold onto. “Laney has never been here. All this time and she’s never shown up. She said she doesn’t like the neighborhood. She’s worried her car will get stolen.”

  “Kellen, what she said tonight—“

  “Is true,” I interrupted darkly, looking away. “She’s right. I’m poor white trash, Jenna. It doesn’t matter what grades I get or college I go to. I’ll always be poor white trash.”

  “Those aren’t the same thing,” she said angrily.

  “What isn’t?”

  “Poor and trash. Those are two completely separate things and you know it. You’ve met some of Laney’s friends. Hell, you’ve met some of my parent’s friends. They’re rich as shit but some of them are straight up trash. People lying to each other, cheating on each other, stealing from each other. Money doesn’t make you a good person. If anything, it ruins you. Hey!” she snapped at me, seeing me start to shut down. To hide from the conversation because talking things out was never my strength. “Look at me.”

  I brought my eyes back to hers and she pinned me down with her stare.

  “When you look at me,” she asked, “do you only see a rich girl?”

  I frowned. “No. Not at all.”

  “Good, ‘cause when I look at you, I don’t see a poor boy. I see you. All of you. The boxer, the genius, the smartass, the know it all. You are who you are, Kel. You’re not the place you grew up in or your bank account. You’re you, and I happen to think that you are pretty fucking amazing.”

  I grinned at her, amazed by the way she could do that to me. Buoy me up when I wanted to drown and fade away. “You’re pretty fucking amazing yourself.”

  “I know. Now go do what you do until you feel like yourself again. I’ll wait.”

  I did as she told me. For hours. I silently ran through my entire workout. I lost track of Jenna. I’d be working on the weights or the jump rope and she’d be in the chair when I started, but when I looked up at the end she was somewhere else. Moving around the room casually, like she belonged there. Like none of it fazed her. Not the anger in my eyes or the sweat on the floo
r.

  I’m never scared when I’m with you.

  I wanted to believe that. She had seen the animal before and she hadn’t run. She was seeing it now. She was pacing his cage with him as though nothing could touch her, and she was right. Nothing on this earth would touch her. Nothing could hurt her. Not while I was alive.

  When I finished, she silently handed my shirt back. I watched her take it off, pulling it up over her head and exposing her narrow body that had been hidden underneath it, and my racing heart slowed to a near stop until I saw stars on the edge of my vision. When I slipped the material back over my head, it smelled like her. It smelled comforting. Familiar.

  I took her the long way home, feeling content for the first time in too long. She leaned with me effortlessly, her arms wrapped loosely around my stomach even though I was a hot, sweat soaked mess. She never complained and she never shied away from me. Even at the red lights when she could have sat back, she stayed with me, and I pressed my hand over hers whenever I could to keep her there. To ground myself to her cool, clean calm.

  When I pulled into the driveway, I felt like myself again. I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t nearly as angry. I was what I always was after a night at the gym – bone dead ass tired.

  Unfortunately, sleep was a six hour drive away. I was considering calling Callum to see if I could crash with him when Dan appeared from the house.

  Jenna leapt off the back of the bike and ran straight for him. “I jumped on the bike and refused to get off,” she said quickly. “It wasn’t his fault. I was worried he’d hurt himself driving away mad and I knew he’d be careful if I was with him so I went. I know I wasn’t supposed to but—“

  “Jenna, it’s fine,” Dan interrupted quietly. He put his hand reassuringly on her shoulder, shaking his head. “No one is mad. Not at you.”

  “Dan, I’m sorry,” I said sincerely, stepping off the bike. “I should have left her behind. I never went over thirty miles per hour, I swear and she wore the helmet the whole time.”

  “I know you were careful. We’re not angry at you either.”

  “But you’re mad at someone,” Jenna said slowly, reading between the lines.

  He nodded. “We are. At least, I am. I’m angry at Laney for what she said.” He took a step toward me, his eyes full of regret. “Son, I’m sorry. It should be her here apologizing, not me, but when I told her she needed to make things right, she left.”

  “It’s over between us,” I said heavily. “There’s no making it right this time.”

  “And that’s fine. Whether you two stay together or split up, I don’t care as long as you’re both happy. But what I do care about is how she handled it. She owes you an apology and you’ll get it. Just not tonight, apparently.”

  “That’s fine. I’m not in the mood to hear it tonight,” I said, running my hand over my face and thinking of all of the wrongs I’d committed that night against this family that I loved. “I owe Karen an apology. Laney as well. I shouldn’t have shouted like that and I definitely shouldn’t have used that kind of language in her house.”

  “She’ll get over it,” Dan assured me with a faint grin. “But for now it’s late. Jenna, why don’t you go inside and get to bed. Kellen, you’ll stay the night in the pool house.”

  “That’s alright. I’m going to drive back home.”

  Dan stared at me hard with his courtroom eyes. “No, you’re not. It’s too late for a drive like that tonight and you already look exhausted.”

  “No, I really—“

  “Get your ass to the pool house, Kellen.”

  I smiled, nodding slightly in defeat. “Yes, sir.”

  Dan nodded in satisfaction, then headed for the house. “Goodnight, you two.”

  “Goodnight,” we both called back.

  When he was gone, Jenna looked at me with nervous eyes. “You’ll be gone in the morning, won’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I’ll get a few hours of sleep but then I’m gone.”

  She nodded, worrying her lip between her teeth. Finally, she whispered, “Remember that you promised me.”

  That you’ll never quit on me.

  I shivered at the thought of that afternoon. The day that had set something off inside of me that I still didn’t totally understand and that I knew I wasn’t ready for. “I remember,” I said gravely.

  “You’ll keep it, won’t you? Even with you and Laney splitting up.”

  I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her to me gently. “That has nothing to do with you and I, Jen.”

  Jenna and I – we were more than family. More than friends. Something separate from the ghetto and the golden hills. We were a bond that should never be broken. Something that was worth fighting for.

  She took a shaky breath against my body as she knotted her fists tightly in my sweaty shirt that still somehow smelled of her. “You’re my best friend,” she whispered.

  I closed my eyes and rested my head against hers.

  “You’re mine.”

  We stood there for a long time like that. Just Jenna and I and the sea salt on the air, the gentle roar of it in the distance. With the workout under my belt, the animal sleeping soundly, and Jenna in my arms, I felt good. The most at peace, at ease, and at home I could ever remember feeling and I never wanted to let her go, but I knew I’d have to. In the morning I’d leave before the dawn and I didn’t know when I’d come back. I had no idea when I’d see her again, but I knew that I would. Whatever it took, no matter how much time and awkwardness I had to endure to get this Laney shit behind me, I’d make my way back to Jenna again.

  Because with Jenna was exactly where I was meant to be.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Laney called me a couple weeks after the incident and apologized. Sort of.

  “I said some things that I shouldn’t have,” she told me, sounding like a broken record I’d heard a million times before, “and so did you.”

  “Did I?” I asked skeptically.

  “You called me a brat and said my best friend was horse faced.”

  That girl wasn’t her best friend. Not before our fight, but now for the sake of the strength of her argument, they were sisters.

  “You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that,” I admitted.

  I should have said she was a frigid bitch with a voice that only dogs should hear.

  “So we were both wrong and we admit it.”

  “Yep.”

  “Good. We’re good?”

  “Broken up, but, yeah. We’re good.”

  She hesitated. “We’re broken up?”

  I closed my eyes against the growing tension headache this conversation was giving me. “That’s what I said when I left.”

  “I thought you were just angry. I didn’t know you meant it.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “Kellen,” she complained quietly, her voice hurt and breaking.

  “Don’t do that, Lane. It’s not going to work.”

  “I don’t want us to be over.”

  “And I don’t want to get back together.”

  “Ever?!”

  “No.”

  She started crying then. It was weird. She didn’t do it very often, and when she did, it was usually only to get her way on something. Hearing it now didn’t make me feel like an asshole the way it had every time before. It didn’t leave me wondering if I was making a mistake and if we shouldn’t give it another try. I knew it was right to end this, finally and forever. She wasn’t good for me, and I definitely didn’t feel like I was any good for her.

  I eyed the painting on the wall, the one Jenna had done of me in the ring when the animal took over, then I saw a gray shirt on the chair underneath it. It was the same shirt I’d worn to the gym with her. The one she’d put on that stilled smelled lightly of my sweat and her perfume. A shirt I hadn’t realized until then that I hadn’t washed.

  I listened to Laney cry over the phone, answering her whimpered questions when she posed them, but I never wavere
d. I didn’t give in and in the end she hung up calmly and quietly, her tears miraculously dried up.

  Two months later and I still hadn’t gone down to see the family. My birthday came and went. I turned twenty one, old enough to drink, but still I stayed away from alcohol. Maybe the thrill had been killed for me, but I think I was still worried. I was still afraid of what could happen to my life if I stepped out of line even for a second.

  I started dating a girl at school named Savannah. She was sweet, funny, smart. I took it slow with her and she didn’t question why, something I wasn’t used to. Back in high school I had a reputation, one every girl expected me to live up to immediately. It was like every relationship had a roadmap already laid out for it and I was supposed to follow it every time. With Savannah, though, she didn’t know anything about me other than that I had just come out of a long, volatile relationship.

  The new approach didn’t matter, though. Eventually she started accusing me of cheating just like they always did. We hadn’t had sex, I was emotionally unavailable, and so I must be having sex with someone else. I ended it the second the infidelity fights started. We had taken a different road to get there, but we ended up where I always did. Nowhere.

  I started missing Jenna something fierce. It was like the first days when I went away to college and we didn’t know how often we’d see each other. There was a feeling like a clock was ticking and with each and every click, we grew farther and farther apart. I wanted nothing more than to sit on the floor of her living room with her the way we used to when I tutored her, watching her struggle through the French that came so easy for me and teasing her relentlessly about her pronunciation. I wanted to hear her laugh and feel it vibrate against me where our bodies met.

  Weird thing was, when I pictured us together that way, it was never the Jenna I’d met. It wasn’t the thirteen year old that filled my memories. It was the woman with the husky laugh and the solid smile. The honest eyes and the long fingers forever smudged faintly with charcoal. That was how I saw her now, and it changed the way I missed her.