Epilogue
ISLA
There’s a twelve-year-old kid named Michael who keeps dropping his left hand every time he throws a jab. Everett has corrected him about it six times in the last ten minutes without once raising his voice.
I’ve been watching while pretending I’m not, sitting on a bench by the front desk of the gym with a textbook open on my lap. Studying for a psych exam is nothing compared to watching my boyfriend teach a roomful of teenagers how to punch things correctly.
This has become sort of a routine. He finishes his sessions at five, and I pick him up because his truck is in the shop again.
Something about the transmission, which I choose to believe is unrelated to the time I drove it and clipped a mailbox.
Sometimes we go to his place, sometimes we go to mine.
Grandma doesn’t care either way, as long as he compliments whatever she’s wearing on his way through the door.
“Hands up, Michael,” he calls out. “Every time. I don’t care if your arms are tired.”
He taps the kid’s gloves with his own, light enough that it’s a reminder more than a hit. “You drop your guard, somebody’s going to make you regret it.”
“But my arms hurt,” Michael whines.
“Good. That means they’re working.”
Michael groans but lifts his hands. When he throws the next jab, his left stays up. Everett gives him a nod. I’ve come to recognize that as high praise from a man who communicates primarily through jaw movements and single-syllable grunts.
He got the job two months ago. The gym owner is a retired boxer named Phil, who’s missing part of his left ear and has the kind of calm that only comes from getting punched in the face several thousand times.
He saw Everett working out one morning and asked if he’d ever thought about coaching.
Everett said no. Phil said too bad, you start Monday.
That was pretty much the end of the discussion.
It pays less than fighting. A lot less. The first month was rough—he was short on the mortgage, and I caught him looking at his phone one night with Reece’s number pulled up, and his thumb hovering over the call button.
I didn’t say anything because I promised myself I wouldn’t guilt him.
He put the phone down on his own and picked up an extra shift instead.
The second month was easier. Phil started sending more clients his way, and it turns out Everett is actually good at this.
Not just the fighting part—he’s obviously good at that—but the teaching part.
The patience. That’s funny, because patient is not a word I would’ve used to describe him three months ago.
But watching him with these kids, I get it.
He sees himself in them. The angry ones.
The scared ones. The ones who don’t know what to do with whatever’s living inside of them.
He doesn’t talk about it, and he doesn’t have to.
I see it in the way he adjusts their stance without making them feel stupid.
The way he lets them hit the bag as hard as they need to without asking why they’re so angry.
He knows why, because he’s been that kid.
Michael lands a combo that actually looks decent, and Everett says, “Better.” That single word makes Michael’s entire face light up as if he just won an Olympic medal. One word. That’s all it takes.
God, I love this man.
The session wraps up at five on the dot.
The kids file out, with a couple of them fist-bumping him on the way past. One of them waves at me because he’s seen me here enough times to know I’m part of the furniture.
I wave back. Michael’s mom waits by the door, and she mouths “thank you” at Everett before guiding her son outside.
He pretends not to notice, but I see the way his shoulders sit a little differently after.
He grabs his bag and walks over to where I’m waiting. His hair is damp, and his shirt is sticking to him, and he smells like gym mats, which shouldn’t be attractive but is, because apparently my standards have been permanently rewired by a man who once punched his own teammate over my glasses.
“How was it?” I ask, closing my textbook.
“Michael dropped his left hand again.”
“I saw. You were patient with him.”
“I’m always patient.”
I bite my tongue rather than mention the helmet he threw last week when a ref made a bad call. He made good on his promise to keep his anger bottled up for when he’s on the field.
He slings his bag over his shoulder and holds out his hand. I take it the way I always do, and his fingers close around mine. It still does something to me every time. I don’t think that part’s going to stop. At least, I hope not.
“I have a surprise for you,” he tells me.
I narrow my eyes. “Good surprise or bad surprise?”
“Do I sound like it’s a bad surprise?”
Okay, he makes a point. “Is anyone going to get punched?”
“No.”
“Is anyone going to get kidnapped?”
“Jesus, no.”
“Then I’m cautiously interested.”
The light outside is golden and warm, the kind of light that makes the whole world look like the kind of place where bad things don’t happen.
I know better than that, obviously. Bad things happen all the time.
They happened to me months ago in an alley on campus.
They happened in a warehouse, where I watched the person I love let somebody beat him until he was almost unconscious, just to keep me safe.
But good things happen, too. That’s the part I’m still getting used to.
He drives for about twenty minutes, past campus, past the diner where we first ate lunch together.
He drives us past the development, too, where, from what I understand, Christine Jones has taken up gardening as her new hobby.
I like to think she’s too busy growing tomatoes now to terrorize anyone.
I like to think we played a part in that change.
We pull into the parking lot of a farm supply store. There are bags of feed stacked outside and a hand-painted sign, and when I open the door, I smell animals and hay.
“Why are we here?” I ask, even though something is already starting to flutter in my belly.
“Come on.” He only holds out his hand, and I take it to follow him inside. We pass aisles of supplies and tools, and boots on our way to the back of the store. The air gets warmer, and the smell changes from hay to something... alive.
I hear them before I see them. The high, frantic peeping that sounds like a tiny alarm going off. When I turn the corner, there they are.
Chicks. A whole bin full of them. Tiny, yellow, fluffy. My hands cover my mouth and stifle my gasp.
“I figured the girls could use some company,” Everett explains. When I turn around, he’s wearing the expression he gets on his face sometimes. The one that shows the softness beneath all the hard parts. The one only I get to see.
“You’re buying me chicks?” I whisper.
“Sure am.”
“How many?”
“However many you want.”
There have to be thirty of them in the bin, all peeping and wobbling and climbing on top of each other. One of them has separated from the group and is standing in the corner by itself. Smaller than the rest, looking around and wearing an expression I can only describe as confused but determined.
“That one,” I decide immediately, pointing at the loner. “She’s mine.”
“You don’t want to look at the others first?”
“Nope. She’s the one.” I reach in and scoop her up. She fits in my palm the same way Starlight did all those years ago, warm and trembling, and so small. She peeps once, then settles. “Hi, baby,” I whisper.
When I look up at Everett, I’m crying, because this is who I am. I cry at pet insurance commercials. I also cry when large, grumpy men buy me baby chickens in a farm supply store.
“I love you,” I tell him.
“I know.” He leans down and kisses my forehead, careful not to squish the baby while he does. “Pick out a few more. Brad Pitt needs something to keep him busy.”
I turn back to the bin and start choosing, one at a time, studying their faces like I’m conducting interviews. I am, really. These are important decisions. These are family members.
And Everett doesn’t rush me. He doesn’t check his phone or wander off, or tell me to hurry up.
He stands there with me, watching me fall in love with baby chickens the way I fell in love with him.
When I look back at him over my shoulder with three of them cupped against my chest, he’s almost smiling.
And that’s enough for me.
Thank you for reading Rent a Bad Boy.