by Marci Fawn
And it starts, and River’s beautiful face fills the screen, and he’s telling stories to Dawn, and to me…
He’s looking right at us and it’s almost like he never hurt me, but his eyes are full of tears and his voice is breaking as he tries to compose himself. I try to, too, but I can’t. So I just sit by Dawn and wrap my arms around her, holding onto her as I cry silently.
The first video is only six minutes long. And then we click to the next one, and the next one, his voice rolling over us deep into the night.
60
River
Just because Sabrina told me that Faith is gone doesn’t mean I have to accept her absence. I’ll look for her. I will find her. Fuck. She can’t be gone.
She isn’t gone.
She wouldn’t leave me.
I feel a rush of emotions wash over me, and it comes so fast and so conflicted that I’m not sure if it’s pain or rage or regret or sadness or any mix of the three all coming at me in one fluid motion like the wind blowing too quickly through your hair after you roll the window down. I breathe heavy, and in one second it comes to me exactly what the feeling is:
Heartbreak.
My heart hasn’t been broken before, not really. Not beyond Faith. I felt it crack the first time when she refused to see me after I left for my first match – I had just turned eighteen and I left for my career. My first regret – and again, when I saw her that morning on the couch in her apartment and she yelled at me. It’s cracking now. It’s breaking now. My heart has only ever been for Faith; for everyone else, it’s hidden behind layers.
They might get glimpses of me, but they can never see me, not like Faith can. Not like Faith does.
I nod at Sabrina and ask her to move with the look on my face, not saying words. I can’t trust my voice right now. I wasn’t able to when I started recording those videos for Dawn and Faith, and I wonder if Faith will even let her see them.
I hope she does, and I hope that she’s not hurt by the way my voice sounds in them… Because the way it sounds then is going to be nothing compared to the way it’ll come out now.
“Alright,” I say, still choosing my words carefully as I exit out into the hallway. I need to figure out a game plan. Just because she’s not here doesn’t mean I won’t be able to find her. I need to get my control back again. I hate not being the one with the power, but Faith takes that all away from me. She always has.
Fuck.
“Where is she?”
Sabrina looks at me, but not at my eyes. Her gaze trails back down my face and then to my shoulder, and she looks past me as she talks. “I don’t know.”
I wait for her to continue. Like usual, she doesn’t.
Of course. I didn’t expect anything less.
“Sabrina,” I say again, my voice harsher and deeper than it usually is when I talk to her. I am serious. “Where… Is Faith?”
“I don’t know, River,” she says, finally looking at me. Her eyes are so sad, and I know she’s telling the truth.
But I accuse her of lying anyway, and I turn my back as the “I don’t believe you” spills out of my mouth so she doesn’t know I’m the one lying. The mood of this hall changes anyway, and I know she understands what’s going on. I feel her hand on my back as she tries to comfort me, but I’m already leaving, walking as fast as I can while still seeming casually.
Trying so desperately to seem like I’m not running away. Like I’m not always running away.
Pretending. Again.
It’s what I’m best at.
Hurting the people – the woman – I love is something I’m pretty damn good at, too.
I look everywhere in town, her favorite coffee shop, the book places I know she’ll have gone to… I’m looking around without direction and only making guesses – she never told me anything about what she loved in this city – until I get a text.
Sabrina.
There’s a list of places she might be, she says, but “Faith made it seem like she was leaving forever. She isn’t going to be shopping, River.”
I look anyway.
And I find nothing.
There’s couples sitting on the outside tables in the cafés, on dates Faith and I might go on if she would just listen to me. I know she ran away because she thinks I don’t want to be with her. That I’m already over her, whoring around with some other woman. Other women. I would never do that to her.
Goddamnit!
I kick a potted plant as I walk, the brown piece resting against a fence close to an apartment complex. It does nothing to the container and the flower doesn’t wilt within it like it should, and I scowl, hating how it can still be bright and sunny outside and people can still be happy.
Behind the fence is an apartment complex and I loosely wonder if Faith is in there, if she’s signed a lease and moved there, hiding away in an apartment complex to get away from me.
I’m hopeful, not stupid, and I know it takes a while to sign and get a lease, even if you’re the girlfriend – and hopefully, one day, the wife – of River Xavier. Every problem we have is because of I am. She deserves better than me.
I’m selfish, though.
I keep looking for her, through the night and early into the next day. My feet hurt but I keep going. I only stop when a limo pulls up to me and Coach drags me in, telling me to get my shit together, that there’s another match coming up, that I can’t be running myself ragged and that I can’t be this tired.
I don’t care.
I fall asleep as soon as I hit the bed, though. Not my bed. Back in hotels again. But Coach is in the room next door and he snores loudly, and as soon as I know he won’t wake up, I’m out the door, looking for her again.
I search for Faith the morning after. And the morning after that. The mornings blend into nights that greet different days, that turn into weeks… I’m coming up on a month of searching.
I don’t find her.
But I won’t give up.
Every second away from Faith is making my sadness turn into anger. Every second I can’t find her is making me need to get that out more, and I find myself back in the training room, pushing myself towards the ring more than I ever have. I’m at the top of my game, gloves on my hands as I pound away at the punching bag in front of me. I turn on my heel as quick as I can, ducking and hitting the other punching bag right behind me – I’ve arranged four so I can practice like I’m fighting up against several people, punching, hitting, going after every single bag I can.
Hit, hit.
Cross, jab.
I duck, hitting. My feet raise up and I kick the bag as I hit, knowing that I can’t do that in a boxing match but needing to fucking hurt something.
I stop putting rhyme and reason to it and I just start hitting it. I’m screaming, cursing, shouting as loud as I can as I throw my entire body against the bags. Fuck. Fuck. I focus on one single bag instead of trying to fight all four, and I just slam myself against it, putting both arms around it as I shake the bag and try to throw it to the ground.
“Fuck!”
I can’t do it, so I go back to hitting.
Coach runs in from the locker rooms – there’s an old office back in there from when I was in high school, training. He’s been my first trainer but he quit his job teaching other young boys so he could go on the road with me, and I’m grateful to him for it.
This isn’t the same office he was first in almost four years ago – an office he did papers in for nearly fifteen years – but it’s similar enough and he’s at home there.
He’s running at me.
“River!” He shouts, coming up from behind me and grabbing my sides from behind me. I shout again, completely losing control, thrashing against him and moving to hit him, fighting.
He grabs my head, and we’re both shouting. He slams me against one of the bags and I go limp, not because he’s beat me but because I know I need to calm down.
“I’ll stop,” I say, panting. I repeat myself, not knowing if he heard me
in between breaths. He’s still holding my arms behind my back, clutching me like I’m a threat he needs to take care of.
And I am.
A threat to myself and to people around me. That’s probably what he thinks. I’m sure it’s what everyone thinks.
“I’ll stop.”
He lets me go. I turn around to face him and he nods at me.
“So, kid,” he stretches his arms out to both sides, cracking the bones there. I don’t think I hurt him. I wasn’t intending to, but I might have. My eyes roam his body before I realize he’s not hurt – he’s just getting older.
“I have some news for you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I say, but I turn my back to him as I go to hit the bag again. I focus on one in particular, not the one I was body slamming earlier, and raise my hands in front of my face like I’m defending myself from the assault this red bag is about to endure.
“Oh, yeah,” he says, confident. “But you need to calm down first.”
I drop my hands, wondering what the hell it is. Everyone knows I’m obsessed with Faith, how upset I’ve been over her. People have been asking questions – not the people who need to be asking questions.
But I don’t mind when Coach talks about her, even though he rarely does it. So when he tells me I need to stop, I have a feeling that that’s where this is going.
It’s not.
“Your house is up for market again, River,” he says, turning to leave. He hasn’t been putting as much attention on me as he usually has, and he knows I want to be alone. I just want to fight.
Eat. Sleep. Fuckin’… I’m an animal. I want to behave like one. Not fucking socialize, be treated like a boy. I’m a man.
“I thought you’d want to know.”
I hit the bag again as he leaves back to his office, not as hard as I was earlier but hard enough for it to clatter back into another bag as it hits another surface.
My parents first sold the house when I took off to go work on being a boxer. We knew the people moving, though, and gave some of the money to Faith’s family to help them out. There were rules and we were able to leave our stuff there, since they weren’t planning to be there often anyway – just using it as a summer place. I have to keep the garage for my motorcycle.
Then my family decided they wanted to head down to Florida for the heat and the blues of the Keys, and they started talking about selling it again.
I got in a fight with my old man over it. They decided against it.
This was a year ago, and they’d told me just that.
Clearly, they’d lied.
Match after match.
I don’t get to go check out my old place for a while; I’m too focused on fighting. I can’t think of much beyond my skin and the skin of the men I fight against, the sweat, and the blood. If I think of anything beyond the physical pain and working myself through it, my mind goes back to her.
To Faith.
To the night she ran away from me again, probably for the last time.
I grimace thinking about it, trying to cut my mind off as I look at the man in front of me. It’s nowhere near the first time I’ve been in a ring, and it’s not even the first time I’ve been in this ring specifically. It probably won’t be the last.
The faces of the men I fight blur together and I can’t recognize them individually, and I can’t even think about what I’m doing. My body just acts of its own accord, my legs moving, my hands moving, fists hitting skin, ducks, blocks…
The match is over.
I won again.
There’s only two losses to my name and they’re from back when I was first starting, one when I wasn’t fast enough for the guy’s techniques and another when I was thinking too hard about Faith. Back before I got involved in my career.
I swig from a water bottle through the cheers, taking a rag and wiping the sweat from my head as I move the ropes and swing out from the ring. I jump to the ground as fans crowd me, but I shove my way through them, not caring about how this might look and about who will think about me. I’m busy, and in a few days I’m going to have to be training again. Maybe take another interview.
But for now, I have a three day gap in my schedule.
I don’t know when I’ll be this free again.
So I have to go see it.
The house.
Take care of shit before some other bastards move in there, before there’s any offers. I want it for myself, even if Faith won’t be with me –
But she will be.
I need to find her.
I don’t expect to, though, although I want her more than anything. When I finally pull up in my own driveway and pull myself out of the car, Faith walking on the sidewalk on her way back to her old house is the last thing I expect to see.
I call her name, demanding she notice me because I commanded it before she can notice me first and run away. I don’t want her to run away. She can’t.
I run to her.
61
Faith
The voice is too familiar for it to be real. I’ve always thought about River, but these past few months have been hectic, horrible –
Every time he comes to mind, I push the thoughts of him back. His towering frame, his eyes, his voice… Even his hair. I allow myself to think of none of it, filling my time with fixing up our old house for Dawn. She’s out of preschool – graduated early, my smart little girl – and not old enough for kindergarten yet, so I put her in daycare.
Not any daycare, though. A personal one. I didn’t know nannies were still around, but you figure things out when you’re desperate to fill your time. So desperate that you go back to college to finish that English degree you never caught up on, because you were desperate to be married and find a father for your child.
A father figure, because her real one wasn’t there for –
I look up, my hair falling in my eyes as I see him. Running to me. His frame bigger than ever, and it looks like he’s taller, more commanding, but that might just be because I haven’t seen him in a while –
My legs go weak and I can’t even think about running. I’m glued to the spot. Not because I’m scared, but because I want to see him. I’ve wanted to see him for long. He runs to me, and he doesn’t say a word as he throws his arms open, slamming into me and pushing me down onto the grass beneath him as he hugs me.
“Did I hurt you?” he pulls away a little to look at me, concern evident in his eyes.
“No,” I say, shaking my head as I hold back onto him. This can’t be real. I giggle at the craziness of it, wondering if I’m losing my mind. “No. No.”
“Good,” he nuzzles his nose against my skin, moving his face to the nape of my neck and settling in there. “Good.”
It takes a while for him to get off me. We don’t talk. When he finally moves, he just pulls himself over so that he’s lying next to me in the patches of grass. Then he grabs me by the waist and pulls me so I fall into him, against him, almost lying on top of him.
“Well,” he says, his voice more confident and sure of himself. The River I’m used to. The River I love, even though his voice is trembling – he’s weak with emotion and so am I. “It looks like I’m definitely buying my old house now.”
“What?” I say, looking over at him. I cling to one of his arms as I stare up at his face. He looks down at me, and I’m still not sure if any of this is real, or if I’m just manifesting him… Just imagining him because I want it to be real so badly. I can’t ask. I don’t want to know if it isn’t. “You weren’t sure?”
“No, but now that I know you’re here…” He trails off, bumping his hip against mine. I laugh, the sound breaking off as my throat almost closes up with tears.
“Uncertainty isn’t like the River I know,” I tease him, bumping back even as I remove my eyes from his. If he is real… I can’t let him see how hurt I am.
But he is River, and if he needs me anywhere near like I need him, he needs to know. Especially when he says his next words.
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br /> “And running away isn’t like the Faith I know.” His hand moves to my cheek, and he turns himself up, holding his weight on an elbow as he looks at me. He’s sitting so he’s angled on a side, almost like he’s doing a blank.
He’s not on top of me, but he’s…
Above me.
I suck my bottom lip into my mouth briefly, bringing myself to look up at him again.
“Okay, well,” he grips my cheek, tapping against my lips with one of his fingers lightly. He’s being kind. Playful. “It is definitely like you.”
“River,” I say, needing to be close to him, nuzzling into him, holding him against the grass… “We need to talk.”
He starts to stand, offering a hand to me and picking me up. He takes me into his arms and hugs me deeply for a second, before letting me go and holding onto my hand instead as he looks off into the direction of his old house. It’s still only about twenty feet away from mine, just like it was when we were babies, just like it was when we were children, and just like it was when we were teenagers.
“And I need to go look back in that house,” he says, still carrying a joking tone, like he’s worried that if he gets too serious, he’ll hurt me.
And I’m glad that he knows he might, because right now it seems like I’m going to break down in his arms, even though for weeks he was the cause of that breakdown. Is the cause. “Come with me.”
I hold onto his hand still as my other arm grips his elbow, holding onto him with everything I have as we cross the lawn.
“Your porch needs some work,” I say, watching River break into the front door of his house with some lock picking skills I could never forget he has. “And you need a key.”
“Hey,” he defends himself, looking up at me before looking back to the knob. He has one of my bobby pins in his hand and it looks… Oddly right there. But still weird.
