Page 11

11

JACK

WORKING

D ropping my head into a bucket at the side of the boxing ring, I spew up everything I’ve eaten this week… for the third time today.

Plus corn.

There’s always corn! Where the fuck does it come from?

“Let’s go,” Bobby coaches. “Get it up, get up, start again.”

“Fuck off, B.” The whooshing in my brain and the pending darkness has my head lolling on my shoulders.

I don’t know if I’m this bad because of how unfit I’ve become over this year – a hell of a lot more than I thought I was – or if it’s the lack of alcohol or weed I’d normally have in my system by this time each day.

It’s probably a combination, but this is the first time in my life I’ve ever vomited at training.

Ever.

Even during fight camp, year after year as we’d step up my training for the title fights, even when my brothers had me going around the clock, even when I lived on pure steak and protein shakes and fresh air, I never felt as awful as I feel right now.

My chest hurts – more than a regular workout hurt. My injuries from the wreck make themselves known. I’m allowed to train; my doctor cleared me, but the fact I haven’t used my body the way it’s supposed to be used in so long, my injuries don’t know this training .

They only know laziness and bad choices.

“Get up.” Jon moves in so close, his hot breath fans my ear. “Get up, push through it. We’re gonna get it back, bro.”

“I wanna die.”

And yet, there’s a freedom in knowing that, for the first time since the accident, I want to die not because she’s no longer here – there’s no elephant in the room sneering at me today – this time, it’s a simple case of good ol’ fashioned nausea and exhaustion tempting me to curl up and tap out.

“Well, we ain’t letting you.” Jon slams his palm over my shoulder. “We love you, Reilly, even when you’re a prick, so get the fuck up and start again.”

Wiping an already sweaty towel over my sweaty face, I mop up the liquid that continuously pours through my skin while my body detoxes. Standing tall, I toe the bucket toward Jon, simply because I want to be an asshole.

Screwing up his nose, he picks it up with his fingers and thumb and places it on the floor outside the ring.

“Let’s go.” Bobby lifts the Thai pads between us. “Shoe shine, Jack. Left, right, left, right, left hook, right rip. Go.”

Wearing the very same battered pair of gloves my sister bought me when I was a fifteen-year-old punk full of attitude, I lift my weak arms and channel all the poisonous anger from the last six months and let it flow into the pads.

It’s Wednesday now, four days after my breakdown, four days after I treated another nice girl like shit, four days since I asked to move back home.

Despite how horrible I’ve been – a half a year of pure hatred pouring from me, vitriol and anger aiming straight for my sister simply because I knew no matter what, she’d never give up on me – she still took me in after the hell I put her through.

Six months of treating everyone around me like shit, including myself...possibly especially myself. Six months of forgetting birthdays and parties, anniversaries and celebrations; six months of flushing everything away: my career, my body, my health, my money and reputation. I threw everything away, and now, finally, six months later, I’m back in the gym with what I started with – my ratty gloves and my family’s love.

That’s all I need.

The rest will come when I stop vomiting .

“Hands up, Jack!”

“They are u–” My petty argument is cut off by Bobby’s wild swing and the heavy pad smacking me in the ear.

“Hands up, dummy. Let’s go again. Shoe shine, then add legs.”

Angrily flicking my mouthguard with my tongue, I pop it off my teeth, then put it back in place as I catch my breath. “I forgot how much I hate you, B.”

Shrugging, he swings the pad and has me scrambling to get my arms up to cover.

“Again!” he snaps. “We have to vomit the rest of that crap out of your body. Half a year of burgers and weed.” He shakes his head. “You got fat and lazy. Keep going, kid.”

This is how we spent yesterday, too. And the day before that. The day before that was spent as a family squished in Kit and Bobby’s living room while we watched cartoons and ate a meal together.

I was a little… silent. I was mid-quarterlife-crisis, but everyone else was at ease, or at least pretending to be. Jimmy joked, he tried to goad me and stir shit up, and Tink tried to tease me about certain girls she’s seen around the club, though she used big words to keep the kids in the dark.

Everyone was acting fine, but I spent my time trying to not cry like a baby as I craved a beer so damn bad my hands shook and my stomach rolled.

I had no clue I’d created a dependency on alcohol, but there you go.

If you’d asked me last week, I would’ve scoffed and said I could pass up a drink any day, any time, easy . But those were the words of a man knowing his next beer was only as far as the fridge. Now that I’ve cut it out, now that I’ve banned myself, I’ve realized I might be somewhat addicted.

Just another reason to be disappointed in myself.

I didn’t tell my family that my cravings had me chewing my nails down to the quick, I simply told my body to sit down and shut the fuck up, and in a self-imposed mute prison, I endured shakes and nausea unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.

Today, day four, the detox shakes seem to be lessening, though Bobby’s bullshit training has replaced them with those of a deathly exhausted man.

I can’t say I like this kind, either.

Throwing jabs toward Bobby’s pads while wanting to both spew and cheer – since I’m impressed I can still move pretty fucking fast – I think about Sunday afternoon, about the working bee my siblings created and the production line they formed to move my shit from my house into my sister’s.

They moved me back into my old room, back into the twin bed that I’d outgrown before she even got it home from the store. My legs hang off the end, and my arms flop over the sides, but despite the neck kinks I wake to every day, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I’m home, and despite the fact I’m a twenty-five-year-old badass fighter, my heart is happier for living under the same roof as my family again.

My youngest niece still wakes crying in the night, and her older siblings are constantly helping themselves to my room and my shit. They bicker non-stop, they whine, they fight… and I can’t get enough of it.

Their theatrics and bullshit have filled some of the gaps that Steph and alcohol and weed left in my chest.

I spend the next few weeks of my life repeating the same cycle; training, vomiting, arguing with pre-teens, sleeping. But after the first two weeks – two weeks that I was better than before, but not actually better – add in a therapist that Jon insisted I see.

Sonia’s a nice older lady that’s seen me cry more than anyone else on this planet ever has before.

My first day, I walked in with that same chip on my shoulder that I’d worn for months. I didn’t expect her to help me, I expected to take the hour to nap, but I left feeling lighter than I had in a long time.

It was exhausting, it was painful, it was especially brutal reliving time and time again that day on the I40 as I held my sweet girlfriend’s body in my arms.

Sonia would tear me apart, ask me about the worst day of my life, then when I’d think the worst was over, she’d throw a curveball and ask about my dad.

Turns out, I resented the fact we were a broken family, that my mom was dead and buried, that my sister was so much older, had already moved out, and had already started her adult life. I resented the fact that I was a teen, a latchkey kid, while my dad worked to the bone, and after everything he worked for, he died anyway.

I held onto so much resentment for so long, Sonia told me my reactions after he died, then again after Steph died, aren’t uncommon .

Her words don’t excuse my shitty behavior, but I’m working on me. I’m working really fucking hard on making it up to my sister somehow. And better yet, I’m working on making it up to myself.

I’m working on it.

The kindest thing I can say about myself this year; I’m working on it.