Page 161 of The Clinch
I like her hair tie on the nightstand. Her face wash on the bathroom counter. The mug she reaches for without thinking. The shape of her in my bed before dawn, warm and still and close enough to make every harder instinct in me sit up before I shove it back down.
Real enough to make the rest of my life feel temporarily theoretical.
Jessica gave us the exit. Fade it naturally. Keep it quiet. No new drama, no public unraveling, just let it stop being a story if that’s what we wanted.
Liz kept the ring on.
I haven’t asked what that means. Not because I don’t want the answer. Because I do. Too much. But the first week of med school is not the moment to pin her down just because I finally know exactly where I stand.
Be patient. She called me her boyfriend. She’s practically living at my place, even though her co-op on Seventy-eighth is still hers.
Let her settle. Let her breathe. Let her come to it in her own time. That’s the right move. The only move.
Doesn’t make it easier. Just makes it necessary.
Ray’s voice cuts back in. “You with me, or are we all just standing here while you daydream?”
“I’m deciding whether to fire you.”
“You can’t afford to.”
I huff a laugh despite myself and set the bottle down.
“Again.” Ray jerks his chin at Lukas, who pushes off the wall and comes back toward the ring with that expression fighters get when pride has replaced good judgment.
He climbs through the ropes and raises his gloves.
“Try not to hit me where I’m already regretting my choices,” he says.
“No promises.”
The bell sounds again.
The next two rounds go cleaner. He adjusts. I adjust faster. Rain taps the windows. Ray tells me to shorten the hook and stop admiring my own work. I move because movement is easier than thought and because this is the one place in the world where every answer arrives in the body first.
By the time Ray finally calls it, sweat has soaked through my shirt and my forearms feel heavy in a satisfying way.
I step out of the ring and pull the gloves off. Lukas bends at the waist, hands on knees, still trying to recover enough dignity to speak.
Ray claps him on the shoulder on his way past. “You lived.”
“Go to hell,” Lukas says.
Ray looks back at me. “Wraps off. Then ice. You’ve got physio later?”
I think of Eden’s hands, the precise quiet of cranial sacral work, the way it knocks the edges off the static when the camp grind starts to stack up in my neck and jaw and chest.
“We’ll see,” I say.
He gives me a look that tells me he heard the deflection for what it is—an answer from a man who already knows exactly what he’s going to do and just doesn’t feel like explaining it yet.
I peel the tape down from my wrist and let my thoughts drift where they’ve wanted to drift all afternoon.
Liz sleeping in my bed this morning.
Liz starting med school, all nerves and stubbornness and sheer force of will.
Liz moving through the city alone while Drake has gone quiet in a way I don’t trust for one second.
