Page 35 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)
Twenty-Three
On the outskirts of Ledger, Fight Club sits in half of an old brick warehouse, the other half empty and evidently for sale based on the sign in the window partially covered in kudzu vines.
The door of the gym is propped open with a broken brick.
Loud music mixes with laughter, shouts, and the smacking of gloves against bags as I slip inside.
I smile at the guy behind the counter. He looks at me, eyes narrowing as he folds his tattooed arms across his beefy frame, no doubt remembering me from the one and only time I was here before. “You gonna be trouble?”
I shake my head solemnly, holding up three fingers. “Best behavior. Scout’s honor.”
He grunts, hands me the paper to sign and takes my credit card then nods for me to go in.
Ford doesn’t know I’m coming. I didn’t even know I was coming.
He came to feed the birds, told me he couldn’t stay because he had a class, and Wren—who had been helping me paint the back bedroom—took off to do homework.
Then the idea consumed me. After he talked about it the other night, I had to come back.
See what he’s like in here. What the classes he takes are made of, and why he wants to buy it.
As frustrated as I was when he told me he wanted to take it slow—wanted me to stay—and spend time getting to know each other, I want to know all of him.
Everything I’ve missed about him in the last twenty years—right down to what he looks like when he works out—and I want to know it all at once and immediately.
Every change, every habit, everything. If I only get Ford for a few months, I want every. Single. Bit.
And a very, very small part of me is curious to know what it feels like to move with the purpose of feeling different. Feeling . . . less.
I hear Ford’s voice before I see him. “It’s easy to be impatient,” he’s saying to a small group of boys.
“To want to take what we feel and get right to beating the hell out of something. But the warm-up can be just as beneficial. Sometimes I think more so.” Seven sets of eyes watch him as he talks.
He eclipses them with his size; they’re all kids.
The oldest maybe twenty, the youngest somewhere around Wren’s age.
Their bodies are all different, lanky to portly, one kid is wearing glasses, one has braces, two have acne, but they wear the same Fight Club T-shirt as Ford.
It strikes me: Ford isn’t taking a class, he’s teaching it.
I slip onto a bench behind him, and he’s oblivious to my presence, wholly focused on them. Watching him with them feels like I’m being let in on a secret piece of him. A gift that can’t be replicated .
He takes time to look each of them in the eye.
“John, eyes up, man.” The lankiest of the kids looks at him reluctantly.
“We approach every part of this practice like we approach our problems in life. Head on. Don’t shy away from the hardest parts.
You hear that little voice that screams ‘run away from this and don’t look back’?
” Ford shakes his head, his next words underscored by a hint of laughter.
“Believe me when I say, you can’t outrun them.
But, with time and effort, you can work through them. Feel ’em to heal ’em, so they say.”
A couple of the kids chuckle, a couple roll their eyes, the rest don’t react at all.
Ford passes out jump ropes to each of them. “Ten minutes. Notice what your thoughts do when you get uncomfortable.”
“Then what?” one asks. “We finally get to hit something?”
The boys snigger.
“You keep jumping. Think of the hitting as the dessert. These are your veggies.” He waves a stopwatch at them. “Go.”
He keeps his position, a wide stance, as they start jumping. I stand and step beside him. “Coach,” I say, looking up at him with a palm out. “Got an extra rope?”
He does a double take as he looks at me, taking in my yoga pants and cropped T-shirt, surprised smile overtaking his face. There’s stubble on his chin and sweat on his brow. “The hell you doing here?” He looks down at the stopwatch in his hand, at the boys jumping, then back to me.
I shrug, head bobbing back and forth as I say, “Getting to know you. Give me a damn rope before I change my mind. ”
He does, biting back a smile as I start to jump.
The next minutes are sheer torture. It’s just jumping, but it hurts and it’s boring and every time the rope hits the rubber mat beneath my feet, I want to quit.
Every time Ford announces how many minutes are left—with a smile and encouraging tone—I want to tie the rope around his neck and hang him from the rafters.
But I don’t stop. I keep jumping and mentally telling him to fuck the fuck off.
When he calls time, I nearly collapse, most of the boys looking as pissed off as I feel. We gulp water, hinge at the waist, and pant. My legs feel like they’ve been microwaved.
“Guys, this is Scotty,” Ford says standing next to me.
I give a half-assed wave.
“She your girlfriend?” one kid asks with a smart-ass smirk.
Ford and I exchange looks, his amused, mine annoyed.
“She’s Zeb’s sister.” At the mention of my brother, my spine snaps upright.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, waiting for an explanation.
Ford doesn’t give one, yet they all look at me with a sort of recognition.
There’s no way they knew my brother. Most of them weren’t even born until after he died.
“Guilty as charged,” I admit.
“That why you’re here?” one of them asks.
“Uh.” What the hell is going on?
“She’s just here to hang out,” Ford answers, looking at me while holding out a pair of gloves. “She’s helping me with the demos. You have to watch her, though. She’s been known to go off half-cocked unprovoked. Ain’t that right, Scotty? ”
I look at the gloves, the boys, and then back to him before taking them from him. “That’s right,” I answer, turning to the boys to add, “but I only go off when provoked.”
When they laugh, Ford breaks us into pairs. He kicks our asses with an easy smile on his face for the next forty-five minutes.
“So you’re Zeb’s sister?” the kid with braces says as we wipe down the pads after class.
“The one and only,” I tell him.
“My sister did drugs. Pills mostly.”
I still my rag mid-wipe and look at him. “Oh.” He keeps working, not bothering to look at me. “And how is she?”
He sprays another mist of cleaner on the mat. “Dead.”
I clear my throat as he wipes the surface. “That’s pretty shitty.”
He looks at me, surprise flittering across his young features. “Nobody ever responds like that.”
“Well, most people don’t understand how shitty it is,” I say with a slight smile.
“Jimmy, your mom’s here,” someone shouts from across the gym, making him look and raise a hand in acknowledgment. I take the cleaning supplies from him as we stand.
“Does it get easier?” he asks.
I answer him the most honest way I can: “Not yet. ”
He nods, like he gets it, then says goodbye to Ford by way of a fist bump and jogs to his mom who’s waiting at the front door.
“I’m glad you came,” Ford says, standing next to me as I watch the kid leave. “You like it?”
“I won’t be able to move tomorrow, but sure. What is it? Who are these kids?”
He brings his hands to his hips, glancing around the gym before answering me. “They, uh . . .” He drops his chin to his chest, sniffs, then looks at me again. “They all lost someone to addiction.”
The words seep into me so deeply that the next time my heart beats it’s borderline painful.
I have the sudden urge to wrap my arms around him and cry, but instead: “The jump roping was pretty awful.”
He vibrates with a soft laugh. “Tell me something real right now.”
“This whole thing makes you pretty fuckable.”
He grabs my hand and kisses my thumb. “What else?”
“I miss Zeb,” I say, the words nearly cracking me in two. “And he would love that you did this.”
He makes an agreeing sound. “He’d hate the jump roping though.”
Around us people laugh and gloved fists smack bags. Ford’s right, Zeb would have hated the jump roping.
On the drive home, I take the long way, driving by Glory’s, the overgrown cross on the side of the road, and the house in the subdivision where the shadows of three silhouettes move around a dining room table. I don’t stop at any of them, but for the first time in years, I’m not mad either.