Boxer Beast (17 page)

I
usually don’t have
my phone on, but it seems like everyone has to be connected to everyone somehow. I hear it beep and I ignore it, knowing it’s Sabrina but not wanting to check. It could be River. But it can’t be River. It’s not like he’d care enough to message me.

He’s already over me anyway.

My mind flashes back to seeing him in the ring with those girls around him, and I can’t believe I truly thought he would only ever love me.

I’m such an idiot. But I can’t cry.

We’re still in the car, driving. Far, far away. I told Sabrina what I was planning – to leave. To move. To get away from all this. She doesn’t even know where I’m going, and I struggle with everything in me not to tell her where I am. She’s my best friend, and I’ll miss her.

But she’s the one who got River back to me, leaving him clues and everything so he would know where to find me in his desperation –

I shake my head to try and get rid of the tears I feel rising there. I feel sick.

I stop at a red light and look over in the backseat; Dawn’s asleep in her car seat, her head starting to lull to the sides as she rests. The ride is slow. I’m not a dangerous driver like River – I never have been.

I look over at the signs on the street to try to figure out where I am now. I’ve never driven this far before. I don’t know what to expect from driving through a few states… I’ll be so tired.

But my soul is already tired and I can feel the emotional exhaustion lining my bones, so it’s not like this will be much else added onto it. I sigh, waiting for the light to turn green.

Drops of rain hit the window like pixies knocking against the glass, and I’m not sure if they’re angry or sad like I am. The sky opens and tears spill out, the clouds parting and coming together again to turn the sky dark. Darker than normal. Everything is darker than normal, though, and I just want to run away from it all.

I am running away from it all.

I move a hand to the glass in front of me, wiping away some of the fog growing on the windshield from my breath. I didn’t even realize that I was breathing so heavily, or leaning so close to the windshield trying to look out of it.

There’s a playground across the street, and I see a small family there, gathering their stuff and running to get out of the rain. A mother, a father, and a daughter. A little older than Dawn.

I tear my eyes away from them, back to the main road.

And then the light turns green again, and I start my car.

* * *

I
t’s only been
a little over three years since I’ve last been in this town, but everything is so much older. I turn into the driveway of my old house, knowing that no one will ever expect to look for me here… No one will look here.

But most importantly, River won’t look here – as much as I want him to. It’s best for me to be alone. I don’t talk about the past often, so it makes sense that people might assume I’ve moved on from it.

I haven’t moved on from the past at all. My entire life is consumed by it.

The drive here took a few days, interrupted by stops and breaks and sleeping at rest stops. But for all the rest we’ve gotten – and by we, I mean Dawn. I could hardly sleep a wink for thinking the whole time – Dawn is still sleeping when we get here.

I get out of the car, careful not to wake her. Then I open the trunk and take out our bags. We only started with one suitcase but some hurried packing at the apartment left us with…

So many.

I can’t even keep them in my arms.

I set them down on the pavement of the drive beside my feet, hoping that the rain I set them in doesn’t ruin the bottoms too much. I try to find the driest space I can, but there’s no way I can fit all those bags in my hands at once and close the trunk door.

I can’t even carry them at the same time without worrying about it. I slam the trunk closed, and beep my keys so that the car is locked again. Dawn stays asleep. She can stay in there for a second while I put the bags in, and then I’ll take her in so she can be adjusted.

I walk inside and throw every bag on the floor, to the side of the walk-in entrance. I don’t look at anything else. There’s still furniture here, though, and I remember with a pang that my father paid off our debts before his death. This house is ours…

I haven’t been here in forever. I don’t want to look at it. I run back out the door, desperate to escape the growing feeling of something I can’t run away from –

I’m back in the driveway, unlocking the car and unbuckling Dawn from her car seat. I take her into my arms and pick her up, feeling her yawn and mumble something in sleepy annoyance as I bring her into the house.

I can’t bring myself to cook that night. I’m sick with sadness. So I put the food stuffs I bought away and I go through the kitchen, looking for that old drawer Daddy and I used to stuff menus in after we forgot to give them back to the server after our orders. There’s a few takeout menus in there, too, ones we were supposed to take. I flip through the old, ragged papers, and finally find a Chinese takeout place I love.

They deliver. At least, they did, when I loved them as a teenager.

I take my phone out and slide past the texts and calls there, closing my eyes so I don’t have to look at whom they’re from. Then I call the restaurant, praying they’re still in business.

They are. I crumple to the floor of the kitchen, turning the lights off on my way down as I wait for the delivery boy to get here. I count every minute that passes.

Finally, after thirty minutes – busier than I remember, but I might just be noticing time more now that I means more to me – I hear a ring of the doorbell. Sighing, exhausted, and my bones cracking as I stand, I get up. I nod and give the boy his tip.

He’s a teenager. He doesn’t look happy, either, though, not like he should, so I give him a little extra more than I usually would.

And then I shut the door and call Dawn down, and we dig in.

* * *

W
e’re moving
around stuff like we usually do, trying to make the place happier. Just because I’m not cheery doesn’t mean Dawn shouldn’t be, and this dusty relic is no place to raise a daughter – not one like Dawn.

“We could paint your room,” I say, looking down at Dawn as she sits on the floor, trying to lift up a chair so she can dust underneath it. She’s not good at that, though, so she just takes the rag and gets to work on the chair’s legs. She doesn’t look happy. She hasn’t in a while, but we haven’t talked about why. She just shakes her head –

She was delighted when I gave her my old room a few weeks ago. But the excitement has settled in, just like we have. And now no one is happy.

“Dawn,” I squat down so we’re at the same height. One day, Dawn will be taller than me. I know she will. “What’s the matter?”

She crosses her arms over her chest, ever the strong one. “Nothing.”

“Dawn…” I draw her name out, waiting for her to give in and tell me, so I can comfort her, my eyes pleading with hers before she drops her gaze to the ground and breaks out in tears. I don’t expect it and crawl over to her immediately, pulling her into my lap and tickling her, desperate to make her smile, to make her laugh, to make her anything happy.

Nothing works. She speaks, finally, her words so quiet that they come out as mumbles and I can’t hear a word she says. I tease her about mumbling, trying to make the mood lighter, but I can’t do it and she just drops off into silence.

Minutes pass before she tries again, and I wonder if I’m doing the wrong thing teaching her how to deal with her emotions, if my heartbreak is going to bleed into her childhood and mess her up for good.

“I miss River,” she finally says, burying her head in my chest as I hold her.

I put a hand on her head, pushing her closer to me as she cries, and I feel a sob building in my chest, too. But I can’t cry. I have something that might finally make her feel better. I was waiting to show her these – the first dated one is for her fourth birthday, a few months from now.

“I have something to show you,” I tell her, and then we go to the closet by the door together.

I used to keep rain boots and coats here. I will when we get into fall and winter and Dawn needs those, but for now they’re still up in the boxes I’ve left them in. She’s getting older, growing – she’ll have new ones then, too.

The surprise I have for her now isn’t shoes.

We go up the stairs.

* * *

I
t takes
a while for me to find the remote to the TV, and I’m glad Dad finally decided to get a new one in my room before he passed away – or else we wouldn’t be able to watch this. I silently thank River’s parents for helping us out near the end, because indirectly they’re why he was able to do that, and why we’re able to watch this…

If I’d never fallen for River, I wouldn’t be in this situation right now.

Dawn wouldn’t be crying on the bed next to me, sitting silent with her legs out straight as she watches me look through the box. River left the box full of stuff under our bed in the villa, and I’d taken it all out. It’s not in the same box, though, and this one is more a shoebox than…

Whatever he’d put it in. I look at Dawn and smile at her, putting it on the mattress and pushing it towards her.

“Open it,” I nod to her, and she looks at me in confusion before breaking out into a big smile that makes me think she’s actually really happy for a second.

She takes it out and stares in confusion at the envelopes and SD cards. She doesn’t know what the latter is, so she pulls one out and starts chewing on it –

I take it from her in shock and gasp at her. She gasps at me back dramatically, and asks what it is as I explain. I go to the TV and look for the little line to stick the card into, and then I pass the remote to Dawn. I explain the buttons for her – this one is more old-fashioned than the ones she’s used to – as the menu pops up, showing all the files on there. They’re labeled, neatly.

“Introduction.”

“Stuff about me.”

“For Faith.”

It goes on and on and Dawn scrolls down through all of them, and I see that there’s a few hundred in there, at least. I wonder how he got the time to do this over the course of a few days. Dawn looks at me and is about to click on one labeled “your first Christmas” when I shake my head at her and go back to the one called “introduction.”

And it starts, and River’s beautiful face fills the screen, and he’s telling stories to Dawn, and to me…

He’s looking right at us and it’s almost like he never hurt me, but his eyes are full of tears and his voice is breaking as he tries to compose himself. I try to, too, but I can’t. So I just sit by Dawn and wrap my arms around her, holding onto her as I cry silently.

The first video is only six minutes long. And then we click to the next one, and the next one, his voice rolling over us deep into the night.

J
ust because Sabrina
told me that Faith is gone doesn’t mean I have to accept her absence. I’ll look for her. I will find her. Fuck. She can’t be gone.

She isn’t gone.

She wouldn’t leave me.

I feel a rush of emotions wash over me, and it comes so fast and so conflicted that I’m not sure if it’s pain or rage or regret or sadness or any mix of the three all coming at me in one fluid motion like the wind blowing too quickly through your hair after you roll the window down. I breathe heavy, and in one second it comes to me exactly what the feeling is:

Heartbreak.

My heart hasn’t been broken before, not really. Not beyond Faith. I felt it crack the first time when she refused to see me after I left for my first match – I had just turned eighteen and I left for my career. My first regret – and again, when I saw her that morning on the couch in her apartment and she yelled at me. It’s cracking now. It’s breaking now. My heart has only ever been for Faith; for everyone else, it’s hidden behind layers.

They might get glimpses of me, but they can never see me, not like Faith can. Not like Faith does.

I nod at Sabrina and ask her to move with the look on my face, not saying words. I can’t trust my voice right now. I wasn’t able to when I started recording those videos for Dawn and Faith, and I wonder if Faith will even let her see them.

I hope she does, and I hope that she’s not hurt by the way my voice sounds in them… Because the way it sounds then is going to be nothing compared to the way it’ll come out now.

“Alright,” I say, still choosing my words carefully as I exit out into the hallway. I need to figure out a game plan. Just because she’s not here doesn’t mean I won’t be able to find her. I need to get my control back again. I hate not being the one with the power, but Faith takes that all away from me. She always has.

Fuck.

“Where is she?”

Sabrina looks at me, but not at my eyes. Her gaze trails back down my face and then to my shoulder, and she looks past me as she talks. “I don’t know.”

I wait for her to continue. Like usual, she doesn’t.

Of course. I didn’t expect anything less.

“Sabrina,” I say again, my voice harsher and deeper than it usually is when I talk to her. I am serious. “Where… Is Faith?”

“I don’t know, River,” she says, finally looking at me. Her eyes are so sad, and I know she’s telling the truth.

But I accuse her of lying anyway, and I turn my back as the “I don’t believe you” spills out of my mouth so she doesn’t know I’m the one lying. The mood of this hall changes anyway, and I know she understands what’s going on. I feel her hand on my back as she tries to comfort me, but I’m already leaving, walking as fast as I can while still seeming casually.

Trying so desperately to seem like I’m not running away. Like I’m not always running away.

Pretending. Again.

It’s what I’m best at.

Hurting the people – the woman – I love is something I’m pretty damn good at, too.

I look everywhere in town, her favorite coffee shop, the book places I know she’ll have gone to… I’m looking around without direction and only making guesses – she never told me anything about what she loved in this city – until I get a text.

Sabrina.

There’s a list of places she might be, she says, but “Faith made it seem like she was leaving forever. She isn’t going to be shopping, River.”

I look anyway.

And I find nothing.

There’s couples sitting on the outside tables in the cafés, on dates Faith and I might go on if she would just listen to me. I know she ran away because she thinks I don’t want to be with her. That I’m already over her, whoring around with some other woman. Other women. I would never do that to her.

Goddamnit!

I kick a potted plant as I walk, the brown piece resting against a fence close to an apartment complex. It does nothing to the container and the flower doesn’t wilt within it like it should, and I scowl, hating how it can still be bright and sunny outside and people can still be happy.

Behind the fence is an apartment complex and I loosely wonder if Faith is in there, if she’s signed a lease and moved there, hiding away in an apartment complex to get away from me.

I’m hopeful, not stupid, and I know it takes a while to sign and get a lease, even if you’re the girlfriend – and hopefully, one day, the wife – of River Xavier. Every problem we have is because of I am. She deserves better than me.

I’m selfish, though.

I keep looking for her, through the night and early into the next day. My feet hurt but I keep going. I only stop when a limo pulls up to me and Coach drags me in, telling me to get my shit together, that there’s another match coming up, that I can’t be running myself ragged and that I can’t be this tired.

I don’t care.

I fall asleep as soon as I hit the bed, though. Not my bed. Back in hotels again. But Coach is in the room next door and he snores loudly, and as soon as I know he won’t wake up, I’m out the door, looking for her again.

I search for Faith the morning after. And the morning after that. The mornings blend into nights that greet different days, that turn into weeks… I’m coming up on a month of searching.

I don’t find her.

But I won’t give up.

* * *

E
very second away from
Faith is making my sadness turn into anger. Every second I can’t find her is making me need to get that out more, and I find myself back in the training room, pushing myself towards the ring more than I ever have. I’m at the top of my game, gloves on my hands as I pound away at the punching bag in front of me. I turn on my heel as quick as I can, ducking and hitting the other punching bag right behind me – I’ve arranged four so I can practice like I’m fighting up against several people, punching, hitting, going after every single bag I can.

Hit, hit.

Cross, jab.

I duck, hitting. My feet raise up and I kick the bag as I hit, knowing that I can’t do that in a boxing match but needing to fucking hurt something.

I stop putting rhyme and reason to it and I just start hitting it. I’m screaming, cursing, shouting as loud as I can as I throw my entire body against the bags. Fuck. Fuck. I focus on one single bag instead of trying to fight all four, and I just slam myself against it, putting both arms around it as I shake the bag and try to throw it to the ground.

“Fuck!”

I can’t do it, so I go back to hitting.

Coach runs in from the locker rooms – there’s an old office back in there from when I was in high school, training. He’s been my first trainer but he quit his job teaching other young boys so he could go on the road with me, and I’m grateful to him for it.

This isn’t the same office he was first in almost four years ago – an office he did papers in for nearly fifteen years – but it’s similar enough and he’s at home there.

He’s running at me.

“River!” He shouts, coming up from behind me and grabbing my sides from behind me. I shout again, completely losing control, thrashing against him and moving to hit him, fighting.

He grabs my head, and we’re both shouting. He slams me against one of the bags and I go limp, not because he’s beat me but because I know I need to calm down.

“I’ll stop,” I say, panting. I repeat myself, not knowing if he heard me in between breaths. He’s still holding my arms behind my back, clutching me like I’m a threat he needs to take care of.

And I am.

A threat to myself and to people around me. That’s probably what he thinks. I’m sure it’s what everyone thinks.

“I’ll stop.”

He lets me go. I turn around to face him and he nods at me.

“So, kid,” he stretches his arms out to both sides, cracking the bones there. I don’t think I hurt him. I wasn’t intending to, but I might have. My eyes roam his body before I realize he’s not hurt – he’s just getting older.

“I have some news for you.”

“Oh, yeah?” I say, but I turn my back to him as I go to hit the bag again. I focus on one in particular, not the one I was body slamming earlier, and raise my hands in front of my face like I’m defending myself from the assault this red bag is about to endure.

“Oh, yeah,” he says, confident. “But you need to calm down first.”

I drop my hands, wondering what the hell it is. Everyone knows I’m obsessed with Faith, how upset I’ve been over her. People have been asking questions – not the people who need to be asking questions.

But I don’t mind when Coach talks about her, even though he rarely does it. So when he tells me I need to stop, I have a feeling that that’s where this is going.

It’s not.

“Your house is up for market again, River,” he says, turning to leave. He hasn’t been putting as much attention on me as he usually has, and he knows I want to be alone. I just want to fight.

Eat. Sleep. Fuckin’… I’m an animal. I want to behave like one. Not fucking socialize, be treated like a boy. I’m a man.

“I thought you’d want to know.”

I hit the bag again as he leaves back to his office, not as hard as I was earlier but hard enough for it to clatter back into another bag as it hits another surface.

My parents first sold the house when I took off to go work on being a boxer. We knew the people moving, though, and gave some of the money to Faith’s family to help them out. There were rules and we were able to leave our stuff there, since they weren’t planning to be there often anyway – just using it as a summer place. I have to keep the garage for my motorcycle.

Then my family decided they wanted to head down to Florida for the heat and the blues of the Keys, and they started talking about selling it again.

I got in a fight with my old man over it. They decided against it.

This was a year ago, and they’d told me just that.

Clearly, they’d lied.

* * *

M
atch after match
.

I don’t get to go check out my old place for a while; I’m too focused on fighting. I can’t think of much beyond my skin and the skin of the men I fight against, the sweat, and the blood. If I think of anything beyond the physical pain and working myself through it, my mind goes back to her.

To Faith.

To the night she ran away from me again, probably for the last time.

I grimace thinking about it, trying to cut my mind off as I look at the man in front of me. It’s nowhere near the first time I’ve been in a ring, and it’s not even the first time I’ve been in this ring specifically. It probably won’t be the last.

The faces of the men I fight blur together and I can’t recognize them individually, and I can’t even think about what I’m doing. My body just acts of its own accord, my legs moving, my hands moving, fists hitting skin, ducks, blocks…

The match is over.

I won again.

There’s only two losses to my name and they’re from back when I was first starting, one when I wasn’t fast enough for the guy’s techniques and another when I was thinking too hard about Faith. Back before I got involved in my career.

I swig from a water bottle through the cheers, taking a rag and wiping the sweat from my head as I move the ropes and swing out from the ring. I jump to the ground as fans crowd me, but I shove my way through them, not caring about how this might look and about who will think about me. I’m busy, and in a few days I’m going to have to be training again. Maybe take another interview.

But for now, I have a three day gap in my schedule.

I don’t know when I’ll be this free again.

So I have to go see it.

The house.

Take care of shit before some other bastards move in there, before there’s any offers. I want it for myself, even if Faith won’t be with me –

But she will be.

I need to find her.

I don’t expect to, though, although I want her more than anything. When I finally pull up in my own driveway and pull myself out of the car, Faith walking on the sidewalk on her way back to her old house is the last thing I expect to see.

I call her name, demanding she notice me because I commanded it before she can notice me first and run away. I don’t want her to run away. She can’t.