I thought I was needling him. Cracking that cool shrink shell. Maybe punishing him a little for the kiss, yeah, I’m not proud.But I wasn’t trying to open up the vault and let out whatever the fuck that was.
Rhys sits on the edge of the bench, head in his hands. Shoulders bowed. Not saying a word.
Benji crouches in front of him, elbows on his knees, waiting. Just being there. No fixing. No pressure.
I lean back against the wall and cross my arms. “You alright?” I ask.
Rhys doesn’t look up. “I put a guy in the hospital.”
That was not where I thought this was going.
“In high school,” he says, low. “He cornered me after class. Said some shit. Thought I was soft. I don’t remember what the last straw was. Just that I couldn’t stop. I kept hitting him after he hit the ground. Didn’t even hear the teacher screaming.”
Benji doesn’t flinch.
I do.
Rhys finally lifts his head. His eyes are raw, bloodshot, red at the corners like something’s bleeding behind them. “I broke his nose. His jaw. Two ribs. He had a seizure in the ambulance.”
“Fuck,” I breathe.
“I thought they were gonna arrest me. I thought I was a monster.” He swallows. “My parents sent me to therapy. Anger management. The same shit I teach now. The only way I felt like I deserved to keep living was if I made sure no one else ever lost control like that again.”
My chest tightens. Shame’s a nasty fucking thing. It doesn’t just make you hide. It makes you hurt the people who remind you of yourself. I pushed him into that ring like he didn’t have ghosts of his own.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Rhys looks at me like I just threw him off more than the fight.
Benji touches his shoulder. “You’re not that kid anymore. You didn’t lose control. You stopped. You chose to stop.”
“I don’t want to be that kind of man,” Rhys whispers.
“You aren’t,” Benji says, firm and warm.
I slide down the wall and sit across from them. Two men I wanted to murder with my bare hands a heartbeat ago. Now I’m just breathing with them. She sees something in all of us, and maybe, we’re starting to see it in each other.
We sit in silence a minute. Just us, the gloves, and the ghosts.
Then Benji clears his throat. “You think she’d be mad if we all cried and held hands?”
I huff a laugh. “She’d jerk off to it.”
Rhys groans and covers his face. “Jesus Christ.”
But he’s laughing too, and the weight doesn’t feel quite so heavy anymore.
We shower it all away. We’re still toweling off in the locker room when I see the bags.
Three of them. Lined up on the bench like offerings. Or threats.
“Did you bring those?” I ask Benji.
He shakes his head. “Nope. But I know who did.”
We all do. The bags are unmistakably her.
Mine’s hot pink and screaming. Black skulls, angry little punk rock eyeballs, and some glitter detail that’s somehow flipping me off. The tags are literal bones. I love it. I hate it. I might fuck it.
