Chapter 1 The Job #2
“Weston, my mom is here.” She hisses it like a warning, so I back off. Her cheeks are all pink, and her shirt is rumpled, but she straightens up primly for her mother, who wanders into the foyer at the smell of pizza.
“Tessa, are you making out with the delivery boy again?” Heather jokes with a knowing smirk at her daughter.
Tessa says, “No,” at the same time I say, “Yes.”
Her grandparents are out with friends tonight, so it’s just the three of us. Rather, just the two of us, because Heather takes her pizza to the couch and watches Real Housewives reruns while Tessa and I stuff our faces in the kitchen.
“Is something going on?” Tessa questions me halfway through dinner. “You’re acting so… jaunty.”
“Jaunty? What does that mean? Why do you always use these words I don’t understand?”
“Chipper,” she clarifies. “Lively, cheerful.”
“I hope I’m always lively and cheerful.”
“You are… you just… seem different tonight.” She tilts her head, studying me like a psychic trying to draw out my secrets. “Has something happened?”
I shrug one shoulder, trying to keep the grin off my face. “Something might be happening. I applied for a job. Well, sort of.”
“Really? Where?”
“The boxing gym downtown.”
Tessa’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really? What kind of work is it?”
“Assistant instructor. Helping out with classes, that kinda thing.”
“Wow. That’s awesome, Wes. When do you find out if you got the job?”
“Uh, tomorrow morning, I think. The owner, Bruiser, wants me to go there in the morning and do some boxing drills and stuff.”
Tessa frowns. “Bruiser? What kind of name is that?”
“I don’t know. A badass name?”
“What’s he like?”
I tilt my head, not sure how to put him into words. “He’s… an ex-Marine. Jacked as hell, man. He made me punch him, and he’s, like, a hundred percent steel. I almost broke my knuckles.”
“He made you punch him?”
“Yeah. It was no big deal.” I lean back in my chair, feeling smug as I fold my hands behind my head. “I think he was impressed by how fast I was to react.”
Tessa looks slightly appalled by the idea of using physical violence to qualify for a job, but she smiles lovingly across the table at me. “I’m happy for you, Wes. I hope it turns out well.”
“Yeah. I hope so, too.”
She narrows her eyes. “What is it?”
“What is what?”
“That look.”
“What look?”
She leans her elbows on the table, peering at me like a psychic again. “That look I just saw two seconds ago. Are you… nervous about something?”
God, how can she see right through me like that? See the feelings I try to shove away before I even acknowledge what I’m feeling?
“I’m not nervous. I just…” I look down at the tabletop, running my fingertip over the lines in the wood. “He doesn’t know. Yet.”
There’s no need to say what he doesn’t know. Tessa understands. She nods slowly but says nothing, giving me space to spill my guts.
“It just didn’t come up, and I didn’t see the point in mentioning it, you know?
I was afraid if he did know, he might assume…
he might not give me a chance to prove what I can do.
” I glance back up at Tessa, who watches me with big blue eyes full of understanding.
“I just wanted to be treated like any other guy who walked into that place looking for a job.”
“That makes sense,” Tessa says quietly. “So, what are you going to do tomorrow?”
I shrug one shoulder. “I don’t know. I was thinking I could… hide it for a little while. You can’t really tell when I’m wearing sweatpants. He doesn’t have to know. Not right away.”
Tessa reaches across the table and slides her warm, soft hand into mine. “That doesn’t sound like the confident, devil-may-care Weston Ludovico I know.”
I grunt a tired laugh.
“You know what I think you should do?” Tessa says.
“What?”
“Be yourself.” She smiles, squeezing my fingers. “Don’t feel you have to hide. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I know you want to impress this Bruiser guy, but… you shouldn’t have to put on a mask to do that. If he’s not impressed by you being exactly who you are, then he’s not worth your time.”
She’s right.
I know she’s right.
So why do I feel a knot in my stomach when I think about being myself?
I wake up at six o’clock the next morning, put on my prosthetic legs, and brush my teeth. Then I stand in front of my dresser for about fifteen minutes, trying to decide whether I should wear sweats or basketball shorts.
Standard workout clothes are shorts and a T-shirt, always. Eventually I rip off the T-shirt too when I get drenched in sweat. And boxing drills always mean lots and lots of sweat. Sweat everywhere, especially in my prosthetic socks, which make my stumps feel like they’re swimming in liquid fire.
The last thing I want to do is wear pants.
But then I remember the way Bruiser looked at me last night—sizing me up in one quick glance. A high school kid, looking for work. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Throw a punch.
I had a feeling he’d said that to a million other kids before me. Those pecs of steel were used to getting blitzed by try-hard boxers in the making. That’s what I want him to see when he looks at me.
A fighter.
Not an amputee.
So I shove my basketball shorts back into the drawer and slide it shut. It’s not until I’m pulling up my pants that I remember Tessa’s words from last night. The way she looked at me from across the table, her hand in mine.
Be yourself. Don’t feel you have to hide.
She had a point. Bruiser is going to find out eventually, so why keep it from him now? If he changes his mind about me because of my legs, what does that say about the kind of guy he is?
I shouldn’t care about this so much.
Why do I care about this so much?
Why am I so nervous?
“Pansy-ass,” I mutter under my breath, shoving my sweats back in the drawer and taking out my basketball shorts instead.
Bruiser is in the back office when I arrive at the boxing gym.
I can’t see him, but I hear him holler, “I’ll be right there, kid!
” as soon as I walk through the front door.
The place looks different in the daylight.
Less warm and welcoming, more cold and aggressive.
While waiting for my potential future boss to show his face, I wander around the gym and check out the memorabilia covering the walls.
Vintage posters, sports magazines, boxing gloves autographed by all the greats: Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Joe Louis, on and on it goes.
There’s a lot of MMA stuff mixed in with it, proving Bruiser to be a mutt like me—not a ride-or-die purebred boxer.
I wonder where he first learned how to throw a punch.
I wonder if he used to have brotherly fistfights with his best friend, like Rudy and I do.
My gaze catches on a framed photo that seems out of place among all the sports collectibles.
It’s a group shot of four Marines in full gear, standing in front of a Humvee in the desert.
They’re all grinning, faces shiny with sweat.
It must have been a hundred degrees when this picture was taken, but they don’t seem to care.
Their smiles are reckless and immortal. One of them is making a “rock on” sign; another one is flipping his middle finger at the camera.
I recognize a much younger Bruiser on the left side, his arm slung around the shoulders of the rock-on guy.
He looks so different, but that resting grumpy face is unmistakable.
Somehow, even when he’s smiling, he looks ready to kill someone.
Or maybe that’s just the sniper rifle he’s got slung under his free arm.
“Alright, kid, let’s see what you can—”
“Where was this picture taken?” The question pops out before I can think twice about it. When Bruiser doesn’t reply, I turn around to look at him—half afraid I’ve shot my mouth off already.
But that’s not the reason he’s standing frozen two steps outside the office, his face pale and his gaze stuck on my legs.
Oh, right.
I almost forgot.
It’s funny how, even after four years of walking around on prosthetic legs, the Reaction still hits me like a sucker punch.
I feel it all the way to my guts. I tell people I’ve gotten used to it, and that’s true—I have gotten used to it.
Kind of like how Houdini got used to people slugging him in the stomach. Until one day, it killed him.
I’m not sure what I was expecting Bruiser’s reaction to be—I hardly know the guy, after all. Given his gruff attitude and sleeve-ripper biceps, I was betting on either a stiff shot of tough-luck sympathy or total avoidance of the topic.
What I didn’t predict was for him to drop his coffee cup on the floor.
It happens in a split second: He looks at my prosthetic legs, freezes up like he’s just seen a ghost, then—
SMASH.
The cup shatters.
It’s a first.
We both just stand there looking at each other for a painfully awkward moment, unsure of what to say. I had prepared a speech for this moment, but now there’s a puddle of coffee on the floor and a broken ceramic cup and, somehow, what I was about to say doesn’t seem to fit the mood.
All I can think is: Why the hell didn’t I wear the stupid sweatpants?
Bruiser clears his throat, shaking himself out of his stunned daze. He doesn’t seem to notice the mess on the floor, but he sure as hell notices the way my face has gone red all the way to my ears.
It’s not embarrassment, not shame or insecurity.
It’s something more like… jealousy.
I’m jealous of the Weston I was last night.
“I wasn’t sure how to tell you, so I just…
” The rest of that sentence dies in my throat as I look down at the broken coffee cup on the floor.
When I start again, my voice is quiet but ironclad.
“I know what you’re thinking right now. But I want you to test me just like you were going to before.
I want to show you what I’m capable of, and then you can decide if I’m the right guy for the job. Okay?”