“Not anyone,” I said. “And not for long.”
We sat with that for a bit while crickets chirped somewhere beyond the fence.
“Yesterday,” I started, before I could talk myself out of it, “when those women called me The Butterfly… it didn’t bounce off.”
Rowan didn’t move. “I noticed.”
“It stings,” I admitted. “Not because it isn’t based on something real. I’ve dropped things before—left a half-built climbing wall in an old apartment when the lease was up, ran a pop-up gear shop for two weekends and vanished, and even tried to start a ‘Thorne Brothers Fitness Collective’ before I had a plan. But none of that has anything to do with the gym.” I balanced the can against my knee until it stopped wobbling. “I want people to stop waiting for me to give up.”
The seconds stretched while she watched me, her brown eyes evaluating me through her glasses like she wasn’t sure if I was worth the effort. “Why did you open the gym?”
“Because I kept seeing kids get pushed toward trouble when the sun went down,” I said. “Because I watched Harvey keep moving after surgery and thought maybe I could help other people do the same. Because I wanted a place to be at the end of the day that wasn’t a bar stool.”
My answer kind of surprised me and based on the way Rowan’s brows arched, it must have surprised her too. Her eyes softened, not much, but just enough that I noticed.
“And the courts?” she asked.
“Because people need reasons to show up,” I said. “Seniors who want to stay steady. Kids who need somewhere to burn the edge off after school. It’s a game that lets you laugh while you work, and sometimes that’s the only way the work sticks.”
She looked back at the fence. The notice rustled once in a light breeze and settled again. “You could have said ‘fun’ and left it there,” she said.
“I could,” I said. “But it’s more than that for me now.”
She took another drink and set the can between her hands. “The nickname,” she said after a moment. “You said it stings because it’s close enough to true.”
“Used to be,” I said. “The part about not staying.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m tired of leaving things half-built,” I said. “I don’t want to be the story people tell at The Knotty Tap about the guy who almost did something.”
The quiet held. I didn’t push it. The old version of me would have tried to fill the silence with jokes to make the weight go away. I let it sit instead.
“People don’t change,” she said. The words were soft, but her voice didn’t waver. “Not really. They just get better at hiding the same impulses.”
I turned my head. “Is that what you think of me?”
“It’s what I think of people.” She kept her gaze on the lot, on the chalk line and the posts and the space where we both pictured courts that weren’t there yet. “We are who we are. Our files stay thick.”
“I’m not asking you to rewrite my file,” I said. “I’m asking you to add a page.”
Her mouth made that almost-smile again. “One hard copy. Two signatures.”
“Three,” I said. “I’ll bring lemon bars to the meeting.”
She shook her head, and this time it was a laugh, quiet and real. “I told you, food won’t influence approvals.”
“Right. But correct documentation does,” I said. The words landed easy in the space between us.
I kept my hands on the can as I remembered how close I had leaned in the studio and how she had pulled back with her spine still straight. Out here, with no one but the birds to bear witness, I’d let her decide the distance.
“Thank you for dancing with Harvey,” I said. “He was trying to be casual about it, but it mattered. He wants to stand up straight at the Founders Festival.”
“For himself,” she said.
“For himself,” I agreed. “And maybe for Nellie.”
“He’ll need practice.”
