“HOW LONG ARE YOU GONNA MOPE AROUND?” TESS ASKS. SHE THROWS a punch and I shift to the left to avoid her gloved fist.
“I’m not moping. I’m just trying to figure out how to make this job work.”
“And how will you do that?”
“I said figuring out, not have figured out.” I dance around the ring, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.
Tess mimics my movements. “That means you’ve done nothing but mope.”
I want to push back, but one, she’s right, and two, it’s challenging to argue while wearing a mouth guard. I remove it as I lean against the ropes of the ring in defeat. It’s one of the first times I’ve seen Tess since being back from the trip. We’ve blamed our distance on mutual busyness, that I am time-constrained and exhausted from my new job. That she has been dealing with a particularly ugly divorce at work, a twenty-six yearer. Both of these justifications are true. But packed calendars have never stopped us from seeing each other before.
“I think I’ve found my sport,” Tess says, shadowboxing in the middle of the ring. Her too large gloves against her tiny frame and long ponytail bouncing against her back make her look like a cross between Princess Peach and a miniature pinscher. She removes her own mouth guard, though because of the gloves she spits it to the ground outside the ring, which she takes great pleasure in doing. “Are you really this upset about the job?” she says, moving closer.
“Of course I am. Why would you ask that? This was . . . is my dream.”
“If it’s your dream, you wouldn’t be miserable.” She presses both her gloves forward and then spins in a circle in what I’m certain is not an actual boxing move.
“It would be if they’d just take me seriously. But instead, they’re taking the thing I love and turning it into something I hate. Even so, I have to stick it out. What’s the alternative? Perhaps I can even help pave the way like Anita—”
“Look at the bright side,” she says. “If you were to quit and were no longer working with the game designers from frat boy hell, you could date again. And Charlie’s just across the hall . . .”
I shake my head, push myself off the ropes, and start bouncing, doing my best impression of a capable boxer. “I’m sure he wants nothing to do with me. Why would he? I blamed him for my mistakes with the Catapult interview. I can’t offer myself up now without it seeming like he’s some sort of consolation prize because the job has turned out to be miserable. Besides, even though Catapult is not what I expected, I still have to play by their rules to keep a paycheck. And if that’s not reason enough, he also saw me with Zane.”
“You were with Zane?” Tess punches me square in the jaw.
“Ow!”
“Sorry. Natural reaction. You should deliver all horrific news in a boxing ring from now on.”
“I wasn’t with Zane,” I say, rubbing my jaw with my glove, likely looking as though I’m punching myself in the face. “He came by to try to get back together, and Charlie saw us . . . embracing.”
“You were cuddling with Zane?” Tess throws another punch. More prepared this time, I duck.
“Not cuddling. It was a goodbye hug. To get him to leave faster.”
“At least it wasn’t a kiss. People who surprise kiss are the worst,” she says with a devious smile.
“Yeah yeah, I get it. All roads lead back to Charlie.”
“Well, it sounds like you’re just giving up on having him again because you think you ruined it.”
“I never had him to win him back.”
“That’s not true. You had him twice,” she says, jabbing her glove into the space between us.
“Our time together was . . . incredible,” I say, my thoughts going immediately back to Charlie and me side by side on the resort terrace. “But it’s hard for me to believe that he was fully in it when he had plans to propose to his ex on the last night of the trip.”
“Maybe it really did all change when he met you.”
I press my chin into my neck and give her a look of dismay. “No, he’s not available. There’s no way he could go from ready to get engaged to ready for a new relationship in just a few weeks.”
“Why? Just because you couldn’t?”
“Yes, actually. It has been seven months since Zane and I split and I’ve barely been able to feel again. There’s no way Charlie is ready for anything other than a fling.”
“Are you?”
I shake my head again. “I don’t know.” As soon as the words leave my lips, I know they’re untrue. A few weeks ago, I would have been perfectly content never dating again. But after Charlie, I know I want those feelings back. The attraction. The joyous ache of physical want. The safety net. The friendship. All of it.
Tess sighs, presses a glove against her hip. “All I know is, I haven’t seen you as happy—as dreamy—as you are when you talk about him.”
I bite at the inside of my cheek in a poor attempt at staving off tears.
The truth is, Charlie is the person I want to share everything about the Catapult situation with. I know he’d say the perfect thing, whittling down this overwhelmingly complicated thing to a simple, hopeful solution. That he’d sit in the silence with me, then force me to stop blithering when it was time to stop blithering. But most of all, no matter what, he’d be proud of me. After everything that has happened, though, I can’t manage to knock on his door.
“I had someone too, in the time you were away.” Tess doesn’t make eye contact as she says it, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear there’s a pale blush across her usually unbothered face.
I push myself off the ropes. “Loafers Guy!” I am equally thrilled for the distraction from my thoughts about Charlie as I am that Tess has finally brought up her mystery man. “Are you finally ready to share all the sordid details?”
She nods, smile so wide her cupid’s bow gets lost under her nose. “We’ve been seeing each other a few weeks. He’s a math teacher. Sixth grade.”
“You are dating a sixth-grade math teacher,” I say, then shake my head and exhale sharply. “I guess it makes sense though. I mean, he probably has the patience of a saint.”
Tess throws her glove into my rib and I double over. She’s small but obnoxiously mighty.
“It’s early, obviously. But we’ve hung out almost every day,” she says as I catch my breath and unfold.
“That’s great, Tess. Honestly. How’d you meet?”
“Actually,” she says, “it was at that bar the same night you first kissed Charlie.”
My eyes narrow then widen in recognition. “You’re dating Man Bun Guy?”
“Yes.” She manages to cross her arms, though it’s difficult with gloves. “And let me tell you, the fantasies I’ve had about that hair . . .” She rolls her eyes to the back of her head and thrusts her lower jaw forward.
“I’m so happy for you. And look at the positive.”
“What’s that?” Tess says, head pitched to one side, hip jutted, knowing a jab is coming, either verbal or gloved.
“You can rest assured that your best friend will never, ever fall for him. Not unless he cuts his hair,” I say with a fake shudder, and she punches me square in the left boob in a vicious crossover.
I will not be boxing with Tess again.
She stands still for one of the first times since we entered the ring. “We’ll see where it goes,” she says, her eyes flicking upward.
“Why’d you wait so long to tell me?” I ask, afraid I already know the answer.
She bites at her lower lip. “I wasn’t sure you could handle it. After everything you’ve been through.”
I push off the ropes and make my way to her to grab her hand, having momentarily forgotten about the gloves. Instead, we end up in a gloved fist bump.
“I didn’t realize the aftermath of Zane affected me for so long. And how it affected you. You were there for me through it all. And of course I want you to be happy.”
She nods, presses her gloves into mine.
I shake my head. “Look at you, all grown up.”
“Yeah, it’s nice over here. You should join me.” She starts bouncing again, her ponytail wagging behind her like a wild stallion’s tail.
Tess, who has a strict “keep it light” rule, has met someone she actually likes and dove straight in with seemingly no hesitation. I’ve waited for this moment our entire adult lives, fantasizing about a time when we could go on double dates to picnic at the Getty or to Wednesday night trivia at the pub on her corner. And yet, now that she’s found someone, I’m more alone than ever. I feel Charlie’s phantom embrace.
“Okay, enough about me. I don’t understand how you could have complicated things so much with this guy in such a short time,” she says. She finally stops moving and leans against the ropes, out of breath.
Leaning next to her, I think again about Charlie. Yes, there’s a lot to like. His eyes, his cheek dimple, his not-at-all sprayed-on abs. His wit, caring nature, belief, and, dare I say, awe of my talent and dreams.
“It’s written all over your face, you know.” Tess motions a glove up and down me.
“He made me feel like I don’t have to apologize for who I am or what I want. Nobody outside of you has believed in me the way he has. Not my parents, certainly not Zane. I just keep thinking . . . maybe that’s special, you know? And I want to be that for him too. I want him to know I support him the way he has supported me. It’s like I look at everything differently after meeting him. Like knowing there’s magic left in the world makes me unable to settle for less than magical.” As soon as I say the words, I close my eyes.
Because I realize it just as Tess does.
“Oh my god, you love him! This is so much more than a vacation bone with the spray-on abs guy!”
I keep my eyes pressed shut. I can’t even argue. Because as she says the words, a warmth spreads over me. I feel the crush of my cheek against the fabric of his T-shirt when he wraps his arms around me. I feel the safety of it.
I feel the love of it.
Perhaps I’ve made an irreparable mess of things. Perhaps he’s not available yet, no matter how much he insists he is. Perhaps I will lose my dream job. But I have to try to make it up to him, to prove to him that what we had—have—is real. So real that in just over a week together, I managed to fall in love with him. I have to know if he feels the same. There’s no amount of fear or embarrassment that can keep me from finding out.
“I need him to show up to my parents’ vow renewal,” I say.
“You’re really still worried about showing your parents you have a boyfriend?”
“No, I don’t want any more fakeness between us. But he thinks I’m back with Zane, that I chose the job. I want him to know I choose him above it all. He deserves that and so much more.”
“More like meeting your parents?”
I shake my head. “Think about it, if I take him to the renewal and introduce him to my parents as exactly who he is, exactly as what we are, it’ll show him I am serious. That I want something real with him. And that I’m not going to try to hide him away for a job or anything else.”
“What about your job?”
I exhale sharply, a sliver of doubt worming in. “I don’t know,” I say. “But I have to at least try to make it all work.”
Tess breaks a moment of contemplative silence. “I can only imagine your mom’s reaction to learning that your date to her vow renewal is a part-time actor with whom your status is, it’s complicated.” She exhales. “I’ve never understood your mom. She desperately wants you wifed up but doesn’t want you to ever rely on a man. She wants you to be successful but not in what you actually want to do. And she wants you with anyone who will take you, but if you bring someone like Charlie, she’ll inevitably be disappointed?”
“Bingo.”
Tess shrugs, having known the dichotomy that is my mother for most of her teenage and adult life.
“I just need him to show up. He said he would, but after everything that happened . . .” I trail off because I can’t manage to say the rest aloud. But after everything that happened . . . I don’t know why he would show up. But if he does, I can lay it all on the line, knowing I’ve done everything I can.
I just have to get him to show up.
“Ladies, less gossip, more punching, please!” Our instructor grabs the towel from around his neck and throws it to the ground outside the ring to show his dismay. Now that I really look at him, all I can see is Kenji Sugano’s rendering of Arsonist Joe, tatted and all biceps, in desperate need of calf raises to build some counterbalance. Another class we can’t show our faces in again.
Just as I’m about to suggest we make our exit, Tess lands a powerfully backed glove into me at ovary level. Her diminutive height and general lack of interest in physical activity made me completely underestimate her as an opponent.
“I’m definitely coming back here,” she says as she dances around with her gloved hands in the air in celebration of her perceived KO.