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“Idon’t talk to my father.” He says it without any inflection at all.

I wait for more, but there isn’t any. He just stands there with a towel over his shoulder and a cut drying on his cheekbone, looking down at me like I’m something he’s been handed without any instructions.

Behind him, the man he knocked down is sitting on the edge of the ring with his head tipped back, blood running from his nose down into his collar. Nobody’s helping him. Someone over by the heavy bags is counting out money.

“He should lean forward,” I say.

Theo frowns. “What?”

“Your…friend.” I step around him before I can think better of it. “If you tip your head back, the blood just goes down your throat, and then you’ll throw up. Lean forward,” I call to the man in the ring. “Pinch the soft part of your nose. Just below the bone.”

The man blinks at me. Then he leans forward and pinches.

“Ten minutes,” I tell him. “Don’t let go to check.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says nasally.

When I turn back, Theo is watching me with an expression I can’t read. His eyes really are green. Not hazel, or that muddy in-between color people call green on their driver’s licenses. Green like bottle glass held up to the light.

I’ve been staring. I make myself stop.

“First aid course,” I explain. “I volunteer at a shelter. You’d be amazed how often people get hit in the face.”

Something moves across his jaw.

“No,” he says quietly. “I wouldn’t.”

Of course he wouldn’t. He hits people in the face for a living.

I clutch my bag strap with both hands and wonder, not for the first time today, what on earth I’m doing.

“Coffee?” he asks.

“The internet says your coffee is terrible.”

“The internet’s right.” He’s already walking toward a door at the back of the gym. “Come anyway.”

His office is the size of a closet.

There’s a metal desk, two chairs that don’t match, a filing cabinet with a dent in the side, and a coffee machine that looks old enough to vote. The window looks out onto a brick wall. A crayon drawing is pinned to the corkboard above the desk. It’s either a horse or a very determined dog, colored purple, with UNCLE THEO written across the top in an adult’s careful letters and a child’s wobbly kisses underneath.

I look at the drawing. Then I look at him.

He doesn’t explain.

He hands me a mug that says WORLD’S OKAYEST UNCLE and sits on the edge of the desk, which creaks under him. I take the chair. The coffee tastes like it’s been brewing since the start of last week.

I drink it anyway since it would be rude not to.

He watches me take a second sip and something tugs at the corner of his mouth. “You don’t have to drink that.”

“I know.”

“It’s genuinely awful.”

“It’s warm,” I say. “And you made it.”

He looks at me like I’ve said something in a language he used to speak once and has half forgotten.