A Fighting Chance (7 page)

When
the message ends, I can picture everything about Drew, like she’s in the room with me: her soft brown skin, curly black hair, her wide smile, and that contagious laugh. Guilt wrings my heart when I play the message again, and the depth of the longing for her that comes with hearing her voice surprises me. But the truth is, I still live with her ghost, too. I peel the cover off my phone and a pink guitar pick falls onto my chest. I still live with how much I love her, which is probably where my uncertainty about my future with Lydia is coming from.

I toss the pick in
to the air and catch it. Drew had been more than my girlfriend back in high school; she was my best friend, my biggest supporter, and my shoulder to lean on. For years it was just us against the world.
How is she? How has her life been?
I think about her often, even though I have my reasons for letting her go. And here she is, still going out of her way to look out for me. “
I think about how much that woman loved you.”
I replay that part of Drew’s message over and over, and I remember that she’d said something similar the night of my last fight.

My
thoughts wander completely to my mom, and I hope I’ve made her proud. She drove my will to succeed years ago but, eventually, the fuel became my own. At that point, I think I was so desperate to escape my former self that it was easy to erase everything about who I was before from my history. But the one thing from Glory I have kept with me is Mom’s advice—to just
love
no matter what.

I set my phone on the nightstand, roll over
, and force my eyes shut. I’m
not
going to love Henry Chance.
All rules have exceptions, Ma.
But HJ. He’s my little brother, and I worry about Henry’s influence over him as he gets older. Mom wouldn’t want me fighting again, but she wouldn’t want me to turn my back on HJ just because of Henry, either. My mind never goes quiet as the night wears on, so with some luck, I manage to fall asleep sometime before day breaks.

****

“You can’t imagine how
hot
that fighting stuff sounds…” Lydia says. We’re at brunch the next morning, on the patio at Musket Grill, and I have just ended my story about growing up in Glory. They already knew my parents were never married, but I disclosed the details of the affair and that I have a little half brother. I also told them about my past as an underground fighter, and that I’m probably getting back into the ring to help Henry raise money for something regarding my brother. But I left the exact details of
why
my father needs me to fight again out of the explanation.

“
Damn. No wonder you’ve got that body, baby…”

“Goddammit, I don’t want to hear about Jesse’s abs again or his goddamn V,” Duke whines. Just to piss him off more, I
lift my shirt and wink at him. He makes a noise of disgust, and then drinks nearly half the pitcher of mimosa on our table, as if it’s going to wash the image from his mind.

“
Those shorts sitting low on your hips. Another sweaty, built guy in the ring with you. Shit’s hot, Jess,” Lydia continues, ignoring her brother as she picks off the edge of my omelet with her fork.

I
get serious and shake my head as I take a sip of my orange juice. “You’re glamorizing it.” She didn’t see the bloody mess I made of Kerr’s face. She didn’t see me continue to attack a helpless man while he was down or the blood on me.

“
Damn, females aren’t loyal at all. She’s ready to dump you for the
old you
,” Duke teases, throwing a French fry at her, and he yells out when she kicks him under the table. They’re making light of it, but I can see the traces of something unfamiliar in their faces, a way they’ve never looked at me before, and I feel like I’ve tainted our relationship by sharing this part of my life. I never had to earn Duke and Lydia’s friendship, but I wonder if I’ll somehow earn the loss of it.

“So you’re really gonna do it?”
Duke asks.

“How else is he going to
get the money?”

“Take out a second mortgage on his house?” Lydia suggests.

“We could get our parents to loan it to him,” Duke says, convinced of his idea.

I smirk at
both of them, thinking about how the divide between our worlds has never been wider. “Henry doesn’t exactly have the type of credit and personal history for either of those. And I’m sure neither a bank nor your parents would just give it without knowing why he needs it.”

“
So, why are you helping him without knowing exactly why he needs fifty grand?” Lydia asks, studying me with suspicion. “Last night when I left it was almost a definitive ‘no,’ and now you’re just gonna go back to a place you haven’t been in four years? What are you going to do about school? Graduation will be here before you know it.”

“
He’s in a bind, and I have to go help.”
Because my father’s a fuckin’ idiot, and my little brother needs me. I have no other choice.
Even if it means leaving school.
I know the decision is hasty and stupid, but I want HJ to know that at least one person would go to the ends of the Earth for him—would go into Hell for him.

“And
Europe?” Lydia can’t hide her disappointment. She sits back hard against her chair with her arms folded over her chest.

“
Europe’s still on the table, and it’s early in the semester. I’ll stop out formally, finish in the fall, and meet you in Huntsville. Hopefully, I can delay my job start date if I let them know now. People stop out of college all the time and for far worse reasons. I don’t need the graduation ceremony. I just want the diploma.” HJ’s life isn’t the only thing at stake. If I have to get back on the fighting circuit, I can’t do it anywhere near here, where it could jeopardize my status as a student, and my freedom. I don’t want to go to jail or get expelled, so I need to go back to Glory, but I can’t even participate in Perry’s barn fights anymore, either. The prize money is too small and Bucky is probably still showing them on the Internet. This morning, a memory popped into my head about the man I met the night of my fight with Kerr, Francisco Acevedo, and how he had mentioned bigger fights for more money in Mexico. That’s where I’ll go, and thank fuck, it puts thousands of miles between Hamilton and what I have to do. “Our trip won’t change, babe. I promise. But Spring Break in Vegas is probably out.”

“Fuck that!” Duke says, pounding his fists
on the table. “Fuck Vegas! I wanna see
you
fight.”

“Yeah! We
wanna go to Glory instead!” Lydia adds with a spike of excitement in her voice.

“Not even a possibility. No way.” Lucky for me they don’t push the issue further because
a hostess sits some school friends of ours at the adjacent table, and the conversation shifts to topics far more mundane after we put the tables together. While everyone else is talking, though, Duke taps me and motions for me to lean toward him.

“What’s up, dude?”
I ask. “You wanna see my abs again? I know you like them, but I only have room for one Price in my—”

“You’re still a sick fuck.” Duke scrunches his nose.

“I was going to say heart. What’s up? What did you want to ask me?”

“Okay, so, you work at the campus bookstore,
tutor math occasionally, and you’re probably the nicest pledge educator in the history of Z Chi, but you were a knockout king and shit? I
knew
you couldn’t be this much of a puss. Was this, like, a Clark Kent-slash-Superman secret life thing? Have you been in any underground fights since you’ve been here?”

“No. I don’t fight anymore.” My tone is harsh enough to grate my ears, but Duke doesn’t even seem to notice; he’s just staring at me with curious amazement. Duke and I spend hours insulting each other and joking around—and it’s shit that if most people heard they’d wonder why we’re actually friends—but the conversation is rubbing me the wrong way
. I grit my teeth to suppress my annoyance. I’m probably being overly sensitive about it, though. “This is more like Clark Kent retiring Superman and then being forced to put the cape back on. I’m all Clark Kent here. Just scanning overly priced books and saving the pledges from your wrath.” I press out a strained smile because it’s all I can manage right now.

He nods
slowly with a hint of skepticism in his expression but he quickly relaxes. “When you get settled, I’m coming to one of your fights.”

“No, Duke. I don’t w
ant you guys involved in this.”

“
Fuck that. Dude, I’ve seen you in a thong, crying like a little bitch, and doing pushups while you had to recite the Z Chi presidents in reverse chronological order during our Hell Week. I can handle you bloody and beat up and
crying like a little bitch
.”

I chuckle.
“Yeah, I guess you’re well versed in the art of bitch-crying. And the answer is still no. The best thing you can do for me is to make sure Lydia isn’t just worrying about me, okay?”

He salutes me. “Got it, JC.
”

After putting down our portion of the bill, Lydia and I leave Duke and our friends to stroll through downtown. The town of Hamilton is so small it loses
close to a fourth of its population during the summer when our school is on break, but I love how peaceful it is: tree-lined sidewalks, mothers pushing strollers, and children playing in fountains.

Lydia drapes my arm
around her shoulders and looks over to me with a sultry smile as we walk. “I still like my fantasy of you shirtless and punching other guys…” But her smile falls away when I don’t give her one in return. “It really bothers you, huh?”

I nod. “I wasn’t really a guy you would have wanted to be around, Lyds, just trust me, and I associate fighting w
ith who I used to be. I was so insecure and feeling so worthless because of what my parents did. Sometimes I still struggle with who I’m supposed to be because of it or in spite of it. I started fighting because of my dad but also to give people a reason to like me…a way for them to stop defining me by the affair. And it sort of took over.” But it’s weightier than that. I remember how starved I felt on nights I didn’t fight, even initially after I quit for good. Winning on fight nights was the fuel that got me through the week. But the hunger
never
stopped. I needed the audience to love me. I wanted to belong, even if it meant
belonging
to
them.
And when you keep feeding from something long after it should have sated you, you aren’t the one doing the consuming anymore. I was addicted to the feeling of greatness, and I think that it is still dangerous for someone like me. Make no mistake, the appetite is long gone, but that doesn’t mean I have forgotten the flavor. “I needed fighting to feel good about myself. I’m ashamed of that.”

“But that was before you knew you could do all of
this
, and have this life. You’re still going to graduate, you’re still an architecture major, and you’re still my amazing, sweet, loving boyfriend. You have so much to come back to when you’re done helping your dad. School, your friends…
me. Us.
Because
I’m not going anywhere.” The kiss she gives wraps me in relief, but she has always been an understanding and supportive person. Early in our relationship, we went out to dinner with her parents and they peppered me with questions. It was normal stuff about my background—not extreme interrogation—but I was too embarrassed to share. I was sweating so much from nerves that I excused myself to the bathroom. When I returned, it was clear from the change in conversation that she had shut that shit down while I was gone. Back then even she didn’t know much about me, either. “Thank you.”

When she spots a friend from one of her classes in a shop that sells handmade jewelry, I know I’ve lost her to both for a while, so I take a seat on a bench outside and make the call I’ve been dreading all morning. Henry answers on the second ring. “Jesse.
Hi. I’m on my way to the airport. Headed back to Glory.”

“I’ll do it.
I’ll help you get the money.
After
I talk to HJ and Barbara about what happened with the man at his school.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” He sounds grateful
, and it infuriates me because there’s nothing to appreciate in ripping someone’s settled life away. But Henry will never see it that way, and I should know better because once he had been ready to cart his son off to a foreign country and encourage him to beat the shit out of people. In fact, he is still doing that now.

“I need to be clear, though. We aren’t family and we damn sure aren’t friends. I would let them cut you into more pieces, you know. But, HJ…he’s just a kid. Like I was when I wanted you to give a shit about me. And in spite of how terrible a person you are, he probably
idolizes you and can’t see your flaws yet because he’s still young. I didn’t get that, and I don’t want to take that away from him. So I’ll do it, but I need you to know I’m
only
doing it for him.”