Knockout

by Tracey Ward

  I knew then that I wouldn’t quit on him. Never. Maybe I wouldn’t get what I’d always wanted out of this, out of him, but it didn’t matter. What really mattered to me was my friend. That I loved him.

  What mattered was that I was a pisser and I wasn’t lying down. I was Jack “Nonpareil” fucking Dempsey and I’d have to be knocked out and dropped to the ground to make me stop fighting for him.

  “We’re good, Kellen. You’ve got a lot on your plate. You have physical therapy, boxing, you need to get a job, you just came out of an engagement. I’m not looking to jump into anything with you right now. I’ll be here for you while you work on all of that, though. Just like I’ve always been.”

  “Is that a dick thing for me to ask, though? Am I asking you to wait?”

  “I don’t know, are you?”

  He sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. This was stressing him out, I could see it and feel it in the tightness in the air, but this was the core of the problem right here. When it came down to this stuff, to the intimacy and the relationship shit, could he do this with me? Could he talk to me?

  Eventually he dropped his hands, his eyes falling on mine. They didn’t feel as weighty as usual. There was something light in his look. Hesitant. He was on uncharted ground and I could see it in his eyes – he was scared.

  “Yeah,” he told me softly. “I think I am. Is that something you can do?”

  I snorted. “Like I haven’t been doing it for years already.”

  “See, now that makes me feel like shit. I never meant to do that to you.”

  “But you didn’t like me with Alexander.”

  He shook his head firmly, his eyes going hard. “No.”

  “Okay, well, honesty time. I didn’t like you with Laney. So we’re even.”

  “Was it a competition?”

  “I wouldn’t count it as one until I’m in the lead. Let’s just do what we do and we’ll see where it goes. No Laneys, no Alexanders, no age restrictions, no expectations. Just you and me being you and me.”

  He nodded in agreement, grinning slightly. He looked relieved.

  “I can handle that.”

  “Good. Now get back to work. We have to figure out how to hide your right hand.”

  I stayed for the rest of his workout. I didn’t sit in the chair and watch as I had before, though. I stayed with him, I hung by his coach, I listened as they talked and I learned. I got to know some of the ins and outs of the sport that I’d remained spectator oblivious to. It felt like the day in the hospital in New York when they’d discharged him and I’d stood beside his wheelchair as they rattled off all of the information about his medications, the specialists he was supposed to see and the rehab he was meant to go through. I absorbed it because it was him. It was what he needed and I wanted to know. I wanted to help.

  The last part of his workout was sparring in the ring. That’s where I noticed the biggest change in him. He was slower than before. His power was still pretty on par with where it’d been before the accident but the hesitation was obvious. Not just in his right hand, but in everything. He had lost that confidence in himself, the godlike surety that had made him move like lightening on pure instinct and muscle memory. The thing that made him vibrate with energy and life. You could see his doubt in every footstep. Every jab. I could feel it in every hit he took.

  When he was finished I followed him outside. I’d parked my car beside his motorcycle and there wasn’t a single part of me that didn’t want to jump on the back of that thing and wrap myself around him. But as I very well knew, wanting and doing were two completely different things so I unlocked my car and gave him a smile and a wave.

  “Practice tomorrow?” I asked. “Same time?”

  “Same Bat channel, yeah. That’s a long drive for you.”

  “Two and a half hours,” I admitted, shrugging. “I can handle it.”

  “Do you like Bakersfield?”

  I paused, surprised by the question. “It’s where work is.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” he said, sitting sideways on his bike and watching me.

  “I don’t know. It’s alright. I miss being right next to the ocean, but like I said, it’s where work is.”

  “What about opening your own shop?”

  I laughed at the way he said it. Like it was so simple, like opening a can of soda.

  “Why is that funny?” he asked seriously. “I thought that’s something you wanted to do.”

  “It is, of course it is, but really that’s a huge undertaking. Finding the money to rent or buy the shop space, buying all the equipment, getting licenses, branding, hiring and paying employees, the list goes on and on. I don’t have the money for that.”

  “You know people who do.”

  “Ugh,” I groaned, feeling the way he did back inside the gym – sick of having this conversation. “Dad, yeah, he has money and I know he’d give it to me but… I don’t know.” I played with my keys, unwilling to look at him. “What if it fails and I can never pay him back? What if it fails and that means I failed and my dreams go swirling down the toilet right in front of me.”

  “That’s stupid. You have the talent to make it happen.”

  “A lot of people have talent, it doesn’t mean they open their own shop.” I gestured to the broken brick building next to us. “You have talent but you’ve never tried to go pro. I couldn’t even convince you to try out for the Olympic Team, something you could have done, by the way.”

  “I know” he said solemnly, “and I should have listened to you. I should have gone. But that wasn’t what I was doing with my life then and I regret it now. I don’t want you to regret anything.”

  “I won’t,” I said, not even sounding convincing to myself.

  “If you don’t give this a shot, you will. I know you. You’ll always wonder. You have the talent and resources to break out and make it big on your own, things that not everyone has, Jen. It’s a waste. It’s a slap in the face to life if you don’t use all of it to its full potential. Take everything you can from life and put out everything you’ve got. Otherwise what’s the point?”

  I smiled. “Are you telling me YOLO?”

  He laughed. “Don’t be a jerk. I’m being brilliant here.”

  “I know, sorry. And you’re right. I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t think about it. You’ve obviously already done that. Now it’s time to do it.”

  “Actually,” I said, glancing down at my watch, “now it’s time to get on the road and get to work or I won’t have a job to fund this big dream of yours.”

  “Ours. Do you work tomorrow?”

  “No,” I said, reeling slightly from the ‘ours’ comment.

  “Good.” He came up off his bike to stand in front of me. He held my arm, pressed a quick kiss to my cheek. It was warm and dry. Sweet. “We’ll look at shop spaces tomorrow.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked, feeling like I’d missed a step.

  “I’ll find some online today and we’ll check them out tomorrow.”

  He was already back on his bike, his helmet in his hands.

  “Kellen, slow down. I’m still in college. Don’t you think I should finish that first?”

  “You can do both.”

  “You could do both. I can’t manage all that alone.”

  “You’re never alone. I’ll help you.”

  “I don’t know my budget,” I said desperately, trying a new angle. “I haven’t even talked to my dad.”

  “It’s a business proposal. We’ll come to him with the budget.” His motorcycle roared to life as he grinned at me. “You better get moving! You’re gonna be late!”

  Then he tore out of the parking lot, leaving me standing there alone and stunned.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Two months later, after another of many mornings spent in the sweat scented gym, I found myself standing in a urine scented abandoned office space. We’d been shop shopping countless times and this place, by far and away
, was the worst we’d seen. It would haunt my dreams for days.

  “This is not the one,” Kellen said, glancing around at the busted up office furniture.

  I think someone had started a fire somewhere in the corner once. Either it was soot or black mold, I didn’t know. All I knew was that it probably wasn’t up to code and we were going to get sick breathing this air.

  The realtor had refused to come inside with us. That was telling.

  “You’ve barely looked at it. There’s a bathroom back here, I think,” I said, carefully stepping over a pile of sodden books slowly morphing into one literary beast that breathed mildew and threatened to reach up, grab my foot and yank me down into its depths.

  “This entire place is a bathroom.”

  “Now you’re being a pessimist. What is it they always say on House Hunters about places like this?”

  “’Thanks to the triple homicide it’s priced to sell?’”

  I smiled. “I think we’re watching different shows.”

  “House Hunters: Inner City? Is that not the one?”

  “I was thinking of, ‘It has potential.’”

  “For contracting hepatitis.”

  “Pessimist!”

  “Pisser.”

  I froze in front of the open door of the bathroom. I was not going in that room. The New York subways had had cleaner bathrooms.

  “Alright,” I admitted, retreating slowly, “maybe this isn’t the one.”

  It was a shithole. Plain simple. I would never tattoo someone in here, not even after a full gut job and renovation, the money for which I absolutely did not have.

  “Are we done here?” Kellen asked, inching toward the door. “Can we go see one of the properties I picked now?”

  “We’ve been over this. You pick expensive ones, so no.”

  “I pick good investments.”

  “The money for which I do not have. This,” I said, gesturing around the room, “is what I can afford.”

  “On your own, but we talked about that.”

  “No, you talked.”

  “And you clearly didn’t listen.”

  “I really don’t want to ask my dad for money,” I whined, though I was getting over it more with each passing second in this place.

  “Do you want to own a space like this?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Then you need to ask him for a loan. Pay him back with interest if he’ll let you, but if you want to hit the ground running, you need his help. Don’t be so proud.”

  I laughed at him. “Are you serious? Pot calling the Kettle black, Kel! You’re the proudest person I know.”

  “But I’ve taken his help before, haven’t I?”

  I pressed my lips together tightly. He had. In more ways than one. In more ways than I think he realized I knew. Despite everything he’d opened up to me about over the years, we’d never talked about the night he came to the house with a beaten face and broken spirit. There were things Kellen always kept hidden and the details of his life in the foster system were definitely some of them.

  “You have, yeah,” I admitted softly.

  “He wants to help you.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Because we’ve talked about it.”

  “What?” I cried.

  “He’s all in.”

  “When did you talk about this?”

  “A while back and then again last night. I know what your budget is, Jen, and I didn’t pick any properties outside of it. So can we please leave this dump and see something worth looking at?”

  I frowned, feeling disoriented. This was unreal. This could actually happen. Initially I’d come with Kellen to shut him up because dude was like a dog with a bone when he got an idea. It was easier to make him look at complete rat’s nests with me for a few weeks to dissuade him than to try and talk him out of this. But he’d talked to my dad and while part of that pissed me off, another part was tingling with excitement. He’d taken the first, hardest step for me. This was possible. This was my dream, my biggest, craziest, most beautiful dream, and it could happen.

  I looked up at Kellen, smiling from ear to ear and when he smiled back, that same smile that had destroyed my world all those years ago, I wondered if this was my most beautiful dream after all. With his blue eyes alive and deep on mine, I knew there was another. Maybe it was crazier, maybe it was bigger and more unattainable, but it was mine. And despite the distances that constantly yawned wide and wild between us, I’d never stop reaching for it because it never stopped reaching for me.

  “I love you,” I told him.

  I hadn’t meant to say it. It was a breach of everything we had agreed on months ago at the gym, but it had been on the tip of my tongue since I was seventeen and there’s only so long you can hold something that big inside of you before it destroys you or it bursts to life in front of you. And I meant it. Every last letter. Every last breath, every last beat of my heart. Every second of it and him and us – I meant it.

  He took two deep, satisfyingly ragged breathes, his eyes sparking with black fire. Then he closed the distance between us. When he kissed me it was unlike anything that had happened before. It wasn’t passionate or desperate. It wasn’t wrong and it wasn’t forbidden. It was soft and it was slow. He barely touched me but with his lips and he took his time, moving with breathless, heart wrenching ease.

  It was so right kissing him. It felt like coming home. Like being safe and sound in your bed in the middle of a storm that banged on your window and burst with electricity around you, yet you were untouchable. And I thought maybe this wasn’t going against what we had agreed on. Maybe it was exactly what we had said. We’d agreed to see where it went with us simply being us. And this was us as we were, as we wanted to be, as we always should have been.

  I knew when his lips left mine I was sure they would stay closed. He wouldn’t say it back and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel it, it was because it was a promise. One he didn’t know how to keep yet. And I’d rather be met with silence than a lie.

  He ran his fingertips down the side of my face.

  “If I get anything in this world right,” he whispered, “I swear on my life, it will be you.”

  Call me crazy, but I would take those roughly whispered words over three little ones any day of the week.

  ***

  “I can’t believe you’re still friends with him,” Laney said bitterly.

  “I can’t believe you can’t believe it.”

  “He was a complete asshole to me.”

  I raised my eyebrows at my mom at the end of the table. “Nothing?” I asked. “No comment on her language.”

  “She’s a grown woman,” mom replied placidly, skewering a chunk of broccoli. “Besides, she’s hurting.”

  “Unreal.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” Laney insisted. “You have to stop speaking to him.”

  “Well that’s just not going to happen.”

  “How can you do this to me? I never want to see him again.”

  “So don’t.”

  “If you’re friends with him, I’ll see him.”

  “Really?” I asked incredulously. “How often do you see Sam?”

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “It is exactly the same thing.”

  “Stop speaking to him.”

  “No.”

  “Jenna!”

  “Laney,” dad said calmly, his eyes tight, “you can’t ask her to do that. She was friends with him before you ever started dating him.”

  “Dan, let’s not choose sides,” mom told him. “Let them work it out.”

  I frowned at her. “How is it that by saying neither of you should choose sides, it feels like you’re taking her side?”

  “I can’t control how you feel, Jenna.”

  “No, but you can sure try.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Can I be excused?”

  “No. What
did you mean by that?”

  “She means she thinks you’re controlling,” Laney chimed in.

  Traitor!

  “Is that what you think?” mom asked, sounding hurt.

  “A little. Maybe. Yeah,” I admitted, thinking of New York and her telling me I was ‘sad’.

  “Well that’s the thanks I get for caring, I guess.”

  My shoulders sagged as the guilt set in. “I don’t mind you caring, mom, but I don’t need you to weigh in on every single thing I do, say or wear.”

  “I’m your mother. I’m supposed to be all up in your shit.”

  Every eye at the table shot to her and hung there, frozen.

  “Did you just…” I whispered, unable to finish.

  “You heard me,” she replied. “I know you think I’m awful sometimes but that’s part of being a parent. I’m not your friend, Jenna, I’m your mom. I want the best for you and I worry about the decisions you make. I don’t know anything about tattooing. I don’t know if there’s a future in it for you, if it’s a good career choice, if it’s dangerous in some way. I can’t help you with any of it because I don’t understand what you’re doing. That scares me. So yes, I micromanage you sometimes on the things I do understand because I’m worried.”

  It was a shockingly legit explanation for years of behavior that I had always interpreted as my mom simply not liking me very much. When I had been a kid we’d been better. So much better. But ever since I started college and told them about tattooing, everything had changed. And now it made sense, at least part of it. She didn’t hate me. She was scared for me. Maybe a little bit of me.

  “If you came to the shop I could show you what I do,” I told her slowly, carefully. I was afraid of spooking this open and honest moment away. “I’d love to have you come see me work.”

  “Oh no,” she said forcefully, “I am not watching you work.”

  And the moment was gone.

  “Fine.”

  “She hates needles,” dad explained.

  “Really? Since when?”