I want to say yes, but what I really want is to not be alone with my own brain for another day.
Instead, I say, “You’re on.”
He walks out, and I stand there a minute, watching the rain start to bead on the cracked glass of the gym windows.
I let myself feel the burn, the ache, the weird looseness in my chest that wasn’t there before.
I sit in my car, engine off, watching the wipers smear the world into gray and silver lines. For the first time in two weeks, the vise grip around my heart has let up.
Just for an hour. But it loosened.
I rest my head against the steering wheel, close my eyes, and breathe in, slow.
Maybe, just maybe, I can do this.
Maybe we both can.
HANDS
The next morning, I wake up before sunrise, not because I want to but because my body has decided that four hours is all I get, and maybe there’s some evolutionary logic behind it, like if you never sleep you can’t have nightmares, or maybe it’s just that my brain is so allergic to peace it refuses to let me rest even when the only thing on my schedule is self-destruction.
I stare at the ceiling for five, six, seven minutes, count the cracks, listen to the faint tick of the cheap heat-pump cycling, tell myself I’ll get up at a round number, but when the clock finally clicks to 6,00 I’m already halfway to the bathroom, teeth clenched so tight it feels like I’ll grind them down to nubs by the time I’m thirty.
The morning routine is the same as always, but meaner, cold shower, no soap, just enough water to scrape off the last layer of sweat and whatever else you sweat out in the small hours when your head’s not right, and then a protein shake made with three scoops and no milk because flavor is for people who like themselves.
I strip down in front of the mirror, flex my hands, trace the faint lines of scar tissue above my left shoulder, remnantsfrom a college fight I pretend was a training accident, and for a minute I study my face, which looks older, tighter, like the skin is shrinking and my eyes are being pulled back into my skull.
There’s a text from Nia, nothing urgent, just “You up?”, and a voice mail from my mother that I delete without listening.
There’s also a group text from the team, something about a new league counselor and a reminder that practice resumes Monday if, “God willing,” they can finish steam-cleaning the last of the evidence out of the utility corridors.
I ignore all of it.
I tell myself I’m going to do legs, but by the time I get to the gym I’m so wound up that I head straight for the heavy bag, no warmup, just wrap the hands and go, and for the first three minutes I don’t even count reps, I just punch and punch until my lungs feel like they’re packed with wet sand and my knuckles start to throb under the tape.
When I finally stop, I’m gasping, head down, sweat running into my eyes, and every muscle in my arms is alive with that clean, surgical kind of pain that’s better than sex and way better than therapy.
Three weeks in, and the gym has become the only thing on my calendar that doesn't feel like punishment.
Ash shows up exactly on time, which is weird because I know he’s the type to leave a ten-minute buffer in case of traffic or a volcano or a plague of frogs, but he ghosts through the door at seven on the dot, bags under his eyes, mouth twisted in a shape that’s almost a smile but not really.
He doesn’t see me at first; he heads to the bench row, sets down his bag, and does this little stretch where he touches his toes and then snaps upright like a jack-in-the-box.
For a minute, I watch him, try to figure out if he knows I’m here, but after thirty seconds he turns, meets my gaze inthe mirror, and gives me the two-finger wave, the “we survived, guess we’re in the same cult now” kind of acknowledgement.
I nod back, too tired to try for a joke, and finish taping up my left wrist, which still pops when I rotate it past ninety.
We don’t talk, not for the first ten minutes, but we do the routine, squat racks, then pull-ups, then the death-march of weighted sleds down the length of the turf, and by the time we’re both doubled over on the green, sucking air, the weirdness of being together is almost gone, replaced by the old competitive hum that made practice bearable when we were the only sober ones in the room.
He’s the first to speak. “Your form is bullshit,” he says, not even winded.
“Yeah, well, I’m compensating for the fact that my left leg is mostly dead,” I say, which is only half a lie.
He grins, a real one this time, and wipes his forehead with a shirt that’s one size too big for him. “I guess you don’t need legs to stop a puck, huh?”
“You do if you want to get out of the way,” I say, and this time it’s my turn to almost-smile.
We finish the circuit in silence, then stand by the water fountain, both pretending not to be eyeing the same slot on the dumbbell rack.
