24. Xander #2
Penny looks at me. The eyebrow. The “what are you hiding” eyebrow that she’s been aiming at me since we were six and I ate the last of her Goldfish crackers without asking.
“The gym is sponsoring me. Amateur circuit. Regional fights. I’m signing a contract to be part of their team.”
Alice is out of her chair before I finish the sentence. Her hug nearly knocks me backward—the full Alice, the one that compresses you until your ribs protest and you love every second of it. “I am so proud of you, Xander. So, so proud.”
She lets go. Penny takes her place—smaller hug, tighter, her face in my chest, her words muffled: “I knew you’d do it. I knew it.”
I hold her. Look over her head at Gideon. At Alice. At the table with four plates and four glasses and the bread Gideon baked this morning and the painting Alice hung last week and the porch light glowing through the kitchen window.
“I couldn’t have done any of this without you.
” My voice is not cooperating. The thickness of a boy who is feeling something he has no practice feeling: gratitude without strings.
Love without conditions. The unconditional acceptance of a family that chose him.
“You are my family. The only real family I’ve ever had. And I’m so…”
I can’t finish. The tears come. Not the crisis kind—the full kind. The overflowing of a boy whose cup has been empty for so long that feeling it fill is almost painful.
Alice touches my face. Gideon squeezes my shoulder. Penny’s hand in mine. The MacHale formation—three people and a boy they claimed, standing in a kitchen, crying over good news because good news is so unfamiliar it registers as overwhelm.
Saturday. The gym puts together a small celebration—me and another new fighter, Landon, being welcomed to the team.
It’s not a party—nobody in our group has the bandwidth for a party.
It’s a gathering. Snacks and sodas and Marco giving a speech about discipline and heart and the future.
The families are there: Gideon and Alice.
Callum and Saoirse. Thomas. Arthur and Darla and Iz.
Kaiden and Cat. Ryan with his phone, texting Ally updates because Ally can’t be here and Ryan makes sure she’s present anyway.
The gap. Danny’s absence fills the room the way silence fills a room after music stops—you don’t realize how much space a person occupies until the space is empty. I text him again. The sixth text this week.
Me: Wish you were here, D. Not the same without you. Whenever you’re ready. No pressure. No timeline. Just know the seat is empty and it’s yours.
No response. The blue bubble sitting alone.
Cat is quiet tonight. She’s here, she’s present, but the ice princess is on—the armor she wears when the feelings underneath are too close to the surface.
Kaiden stays near her. Not smothering—orbiting.
The gravitational pull of a boy who understands that sometimes the best thing you can do is be close without being intrusive.
Iz appears beside me. Soda in hand. The Iz grin, still warm even after everything. “Our girl looks good tonight, huh?”
I laugh. “My girl. Mine. I don’t share.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. But seriously, X—I’m glad you two worked it out. We all knew it was always going to be you and Penny. Took you long enough to figure it out.”
“Took us both long enough. And Iz—” I look at him.
Really look. The bruise from our fight is gone.
But the weight is still there—Bella, the unresolved tension, the girl who won’t let him in.
“You’re going to find it too. What Penny and I have.
I don’t know if it’s Bella or someone else. But you deserve it.”
He smiles. Smaller than the usual Iz grin. Realer. “Thanks, X. Means a lot.”
Across the room, I watch Penny talking to Landon—the new semi-pro fighter.
She’s animated. Gesturing. Already in manager mode, asking him about his training schedule and his social media presence and the things a girl who changed her major to music and sports management would ask.
Landon is laughing—not flirting, just enjoying the company of a girl who is genuinely interested in his career.
He sees me watching. Raises his hands in surrender. I grin back.
I walk over. Put my hand on Penny’s hip. Pull her into me. The gesture that says everything without words.
Landon grins. “Your girl is terrifying, X. In the best way. She already knows more about fight contracts than my last two managers combined.”
Penny beams. “Research.”
“She means obsession,” I correct. She elbows me. I kiss her temple.
The evening winds down. Families drifting home. The gym emptying. Marco clapping me on the back: “First fight is in six weeks, kid. We’ve got work to do.”
In the parking lot, Penny leans against my car. The January sky is clear. Stars visible despite the coastal light pollution. Her breath making clouds in the cold air. The bracelet on her wrist catching the streetlight.
“X.”
“Yeah.”
“Are we going to be okay?”
The question. The real one. Not about tonight or tomorrow or the fight contract or the major change.
The big question—the one that encompasses everything: the sobriety that requires daily maintenance, the trauma that requires weekly sessions, the friend group that has a hole in it, the boy whose father is in federal custody and whose mother’s house sits empty on a street they used to walk together, the girl who almost died in a treehouse and a warehouse and is standing in a parking lot wearing a bracelet she tied on at seven.
I take her hands. Both of them. The bracelets aligned—teal and yellow, his and hers, the threads faded and the colors muted but the knots holding.
“We’re going to be okay.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we’ve survived everything else.
The closet. The treehouse. The hospital.
The cage. The warehouse. A federal case and a kidnapping and a girl with a gun and pepper spray and two addictions and a dead mother and a father in prison.
We survived all of that, Penny. Every single one of those things tried to end us and we’re still standing in a parking lot holding hands. ”
She looks down at our hands. At the bracelets. “We’re still standing.”
“Damn right we are. And the stuff that’s coming—the recovery, the therapy, the Danny stuff, the Ally stuff, whatever the future throws—we’ll handle it.
Not alone. Together. With the boys and the dads and Darla and Cat and every person who has refused to give up on us even when we gave them every reason to. ”
She steps closer. Into my chest. Her arms around my waist. Her face against my heartbeat.
“Forever?”
“Forever.”
We stand in the parking lot. Two kids from the same street who were born ten minutes apart and have spent eighteen years finding and losing and finding each other.
Two addicts who are one day at a time. Two survivors who are one breath at a time.
Two people who tied strings on each other’s wrists when they were seven and said a word they didn’t understand yet and are only now beginning to learn what it means.
The ocean is stronger than anything. The sun never gives up. And neither do we.