hadn’t looked at me like I was breaking her heart by telling her no, I would have found the strength to deny her. There would have been no cuddling, no touching, no kissing, none of it. Then it wouldn’t have led to the single moment of my life that turned into a domino effect of bad luck.
The gym is a welcome sight after admitting something I haven’t since leaving Ohio. I can breathe easier walking into the facility, knowing two important things. One is that every day that I’m here working, living, and breathing is for Brea—to let her know that I’m doing it for her. Always for her. And the other is that I’m not broken from what I’ve gone through. Maybe I’m splintered with a permanent crack down the center of my heart, but I’m still standing. That counts for something. I told somebody about Brea, someone who deserves to be talked about. She’ll never be a forgotten memory, and the fact that Lawrence knows she exists allows a lone suture to close the biggest gap in my beating organ.
Hearing Lawrence talk about his parents made me realize that I need to try harder with mine, so I tell myself that I’ll call home once I’m done here. They’ve always been the ones to reach out first, to check in, to make sure I’m still alive and well and relatively happy. And I am. Not every day, sometimes it’s hard as hell and I want to throw in the towel when I let my mind wander, but I’m better. I even consider calling back Donna Michelson, who doesn’t deserve the cold shoulder I’ve given her when she’s done nothing but try playing peacekeeper between me and her daughter. Mom has told me a time or two that Donna asks about me, telling me Sophia is the reason she wants to know, as if the mother of my child actually cares.
Don’t go there, Reece.
I’ve spent a long time, and a lot of money on therapists, to get me in the mindset that I’ve, for the most part, kept the past couple of years. I don’t hate Sophia. I don’t blame her for what happened necessarily. My parents don’t. Her parents don’t. What happened was fate playing a dirty hand, ending in a cruel debt that we’ll never be able to pay.
What I do have is a lot of pent up frustration over how she could have handled it differently, how it could have ended differently. For that, I’ve always held part of the blame, even when my parents told me not to. Even her parents told me before I left that I shouldn’t do that to myself. Well, Donna did. Mr. Michelson is an entirely different story, but considering he was barely in the picture, I don’t care too much about his opinion of me or my role in things.
“Christ, Champ, is that you?” Champ. The nickname makes me smile, even if I still find it overwhelming. Still, I walk over to the owner of the gym, Iverson Evans, and clasp the hand he offers, drawing him in for a quick hug. “It’s been a hot minute, son.”
Feeling a little bad, I draw back. “Sorry. Had a lot going on. New school year started and all that.” Plus, I’m being a moody ass, but I don’t add that tidbit. He can make his own conclusions like he always has, because he knows me well enough by now.
Iverson doesn’t know too much more than Lawrence, but he suspects. What he suspects is still a mystery to me. I can only guess based on the one-on-one we had the first year I started coming to the Better You gym complex. We’d built a relationship when he found out my family all lived out of state, even going as far as inviting me over for dinner with him and his wife. When I didn’t take him up on it right away, he’d found me the next week and said, “You’re about our son’s age. Would make my wife real happy to feed a growing boy again.” I found it endearing, and I was a little homesick, so I agreed and started making it a monthly occurrence.
Until, one month, two years or so later, his actual son came home from business that kept him in London and raised hell over being replaced. Even though Iverson and his sweet wife Claire had told him he was being dramatic and that I was welcome anytime,