Page 54 of Gym Bros (Bay Area Bros #2)
SAMUEL
Y ep. This is the fucking worst. And nope. Not speaking to my dad.
It’s been more than a week since I’ve talked to anyone but the folks at the gym. I have another fight to train for. Turns out when I left the expo Saturday, three promoters wanted to set me up with matches.
The conversation with my coach went something like this: “You’re gonna lose this one, but you’ll learn a lot.”
“What makes you think I’ll lose?”
“He’s a Division One wrestling champ. Undefeated. You’ve got plenty of time to train for it and study him, but you’ll see what I mean. He’s about to go pro.”
“So I’m just supposed to roll over and give him the W?”
“No—you’ll fight your best fight, but he’ll beat you, and that’s fine. I’ll remind you your amateur record won’t mean shit if you go pro, so take the L and learn some shit. That’s what your time here is about.”
“Is this what you do with all your fighters?”
“Build their character and refine their game? Yes, actually.”
Now really isn’t the time to tell me I’m going to lose anything, but admittedly, once I watch Jason Munoz’s entire online history of fighting, I get why my coaches think I don’t stand a chance.
However, my ego won’t allow me to simply “do my best.” I’m still training to win.
Maybe it’s a gift. Maybe it’s a curse, but one thing I know for sure—it’s keeping me busy and obsessed with something other than the fact that I’ve got no one to come home to, and I know something that could destroy my family.
So for that reason, this opportunity is a blessing.
The best wrestler at our gym is Gina Cartwright. She’s also undefeated, also on the verge of going pro. Yes, she’s a woman, and yes, she’s tiny compared to me, but Javier has me training on the mats with her for now, and she’s a menace.
Since I outweigh her by a lot, I’m not using my strength, just technique, and it becomes very clear, very quick that I have a lot to learn. Here I thought since I wrestled in high school, I’d just need to brush up on a few skills, but MMA is a different animal altogether.
The ability to strike your opponent once you’ve got your legs around him being the biggest difference. Gina’s handing me my ass daily, and if she were allowed to hit me, I have no doubt I’d be short a few teeth and have a broken nose.
As much as I hate doing it because it’s an exercise in mental and physical torture, I’m continuing with yoga at home.
There’s a woman on YouTube whose daily videos I do religiously, but there are too many times I feel the ghosts of Calyx’s hands on me, pushing me deeper into a stretch, lifting my arm into a more perfect line, his voice reminding me to breathe into the burn.
He was my secret weapon, but now he’s a knife turning and twisting in my chest. I can’t see my way through the mess of this, and every single day I regret clicking on that text.
I wish so badly that I didn’t know. It’s hard to even be mad at him for not telling me when I’m angrier with myself for finding out .
But I’m also extremely angry that he allowed me to pursue him in the first place. He always acted like he was so much older. That he knew better. He should have known better than to give me a chance. He should have stayed the fuck away.
In terms of my mom—I can’t bring myself to talk to her, which I know stresses her out, but I don’t know what to do.
It’s an impossible situation where I hate my dad and want him to suffer, but the idea of telling her what he’s done is too awful to consider.
I’m not going home for Thanksgiving, though.
I just can’t. I can’t stand the idea of being in the same room, much less at the same table as both of them. I’ll fucking explode.
What I really want is for him to tell her.
But I don’t want him to do it enough to talk to him and force his hand.
Bottom line: I want him away from her. I want him to hurt, but I think the one who’ll actually wind up hurt is my mom.
My dad will simply keep living and traveling and fucking whoever’s willing. He’ll be perfectly fine.
He might even manage to seduce Calyx again, and the thought of that?—
Let’s just say my closet walls are filled with holes put there by my fists.
The good news is, I’m coping. I’m not keeping everything bottled up.
Evan met me for a run in the park a few days ago, and I told him everything just so I could get all of it out there and find a shred of validation.
I was hoping for some advice, too, but he didn’t have much of that—saying he was the last person to comment on anyone’s love life, but he did tell me I was entitled to my feelings of betrayal and loss.
Not in so many words, but at least I know now I’m not overreacting.
Rachel’s been calling, and I’ve been declining because I don’t know whose side she’s on, but the woman is persistent.
I figured since she didn’t know where I live, she’d eventually give up, but I’m talking three calls a day, every day. They started two days after Calyx left my condo for the last time.
I just need it to stop, so after ten days’ worth, I finally pick up the evening call.
“Hey Rachel,” I say, putting the necessary amount of exhaustion and annoyance into my tone.
“Well, hi there.”
“What’s this about?”
“You’re a smart guy. I’m pretty sure you can guess.”
“I don’t want to know anything about Calyx,” I say.
“Oh, well, no. It’s not a report. How he’s doing really isn’t your business since you dumped him and all, but I guess I just thought you might want someone to talk to about it.”
“I have someone for that, so thanks, but no thanks.”
“You sure about that? Sometimes it helps to bounce major things like this off a few people.”
I want to say yes, I’m most definitely sure I don’t need to talk about it anymore than I already have, but the truth is, it’s not like I can put the situation in the past since it’s an ongoing issue I’m grappling like hell with. “Are your parents married?” I ask.
“That’s actually one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. They’re not. My dad cheated on my mom, too.”
“No shit.”
“No shit. It all came out a few years ago when I was in college.”
“Were you the one who found out about it first?” I ask.
“No, my mom caught him. She’d known a while. I’m not saying the situation is remotely the same. I just kinda understand the barrel you’re looking down, and if you want someone to talk it through with?—”
“Okay,” I say.
“Yeah?” she asks, surprised.
“Sure,” I say only because I think she might have more to offer in the advice category for how to process what I know. “You wanna come over?”
“Wow. I didn’t think this would work, but yes. I can head there now.”
“Fine,” I tell her. “I’ll text you my address and the door code.”
“Hey, Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s gonna be okay.”
“If you say so.”
“I promise,” she says.
It doesn’t take her long to get to my place, and she didn’t dress up or anything. Her curly hair is in a bun, and she’s wearing baggy jeans, an even baggier hoodie, and fleece-lined boots. She looks cold.
“Want some coffee?” I ask. “I have decaf.”
“No, but I’ll take liquor.”
“I don’t have any liquor.” I’m twenty-one. It’s not like I have a stockpile. If I buy it, I drink it, and I don’t drink all that often. Empty calories piss me off on principle.
“Beer? Wine?” she asks.
“Nope.”
Rachel sighs. “Decaf is fine.”
I make her a mug of it while she sits on the couch and scratches Beauty behind the ears. I fill up my water and have a seat with them.
“So,” she says, taking the coffee from me. “I guess my first question is does your mom know yet?”
“I don’t think so,” I tell her. My mom has called, texted and left messages for me, and I’ve returned a few texts, but nothing seems off. She sounds like she always does when she checks in with me.
“And you don’t know whether to tell her or not?” she accurately guesses .
I nod.
“You’ve got brothers, right?”
“Yeah. Older. Twins. I’m not close with them.”
“Not even close enough to run this by them and see what they have to say?”
“I’ve thought about it,” I admit. It’d be easy to drop all this in their laps and make them come up with a way to deal with it. They’re both logical people, sort of boring. They also have the added benefit of not having shared a lover with our dad. “It feels like my responsibility.”
“That doesn’t make it your burden.”
I shrug and put my hand on my dog, rubbing her between the shoulders. She leans her head on my leg and looks up at me with her big, brown eyes.
“What happens if you tell?” she asks.
“Best case scenario, she already knows and gets embarrassed that I do, too. Worst case, she’s blindsided, and I ruin her life.”
“It wasn’t you though, Sam.”
“I know, but…I feel involved.”
“Because of Calyx?”
“I don’t know. Because I figured it out. Because—yeah—him, too, I guess. I mean can you imagine if she did know, and I showed up for Thanksgiving with him? Like how’s she supposed to deal with that?”
“Look, Calyx is many things, and before you came along, he was many other things, too.”
“Like what?” I ask before I can think better of it.
“Like he didn’t give a shit. About anything. Yoga, maybe, okay sure, but himself? If you asked him what he was like he’d be all—I’m a model.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just that he didn’t have much of a life.
Pri and I met him in a yoga class, and we talked him into going out with us because we thought he was adorable.
We had no idea what he did for a living, and when he told us we were both in awe, obviously.
Like what a catch in terms of a friend, right?
But the thing was, he was like twenty-four going on fifty.
He was over all of it. Partying, dating, youth . ” She lets out a depressing laugh.
“What are you getting at?” I ask.
“He grew up in a world that placed more value on his looks than who he was as a person or what he wanted. He defined himself in terms of a good hair day.”