Stella and the Boxer

Chapter 5

Between Charlie and me, we have eaten most of the pizza. We agree that, in addition to not drinking diet, we are both relieved that the other eats a fair amount.

As I reach for my last slice, I see Charlie staring at my arm. I’ve noticed him looking towards the same spot a few times already, searching for my bruise.

“I told you I wasn’t hurt,” I say. Like I'd said in the car, it was easy to cover with makeup.

“The man who grabbed you will be in jail for a while. He had drugs on him, and he’d been charged with harassment before.”

“Well, good thing you immobilized him then, so he could be taken in,” I say.

“Like I said, you helped.”

He doesn’t smile, he just takes another bite of pizza.

“How did you know that? The cop, he seemed to know you. Did he tell you?”

“Yes, he does know me. I met him through my trainer,” he says, smirking at me. “Don't worry, he doesn’t know me from a cell.”

I laugh just as the waitress appears with our bill. Charlie insists on paying for the meal. I tell him that it’s old fashioned and chauvinistic, but he just laughs and leaves a generous tip, and I am secretly appreciative. I thank him, of course.   

While we’re driving back to Lighthouse, I decide to ask Charlie a little about his career. The idea of professional violence (I know, that sounds dramatic) still scares me because of things that I wish never happened. But I can tell how genuine and kind Charlie is. He did save my life after all, and I want to understand.

He tells me that he trains others in addition to being trained and fighting himself, like the highschoolers that he'd been working with on Friday night for football. He doesn’t do sessions for others regularly necessarly, but people apparently quite a bit of money to work with him. Some even pay for his travel expenses, to bring him where they are. He travels for his own fights, too. Charlie has traveled much more than I have.

He doesn’t say that he is exceptionally skilled at boxing – he doesn't need to. His collection of experiences speaks for him.

“My trainer and I are very close,” he says, “We work together almost every day during the week. Occasionally he'll leave me alone to train. But most days, he’s there. I run every morning, and then on weekdays, we train in the gym after. I stop by the café on days that you work in between the running and the gym.” He smiles, his eyes still on the road, and I sense that he is a little embarrassed.

“You could come and watch, you know – watch me train.”

I feel a small shock at his offer. Sure, it sounds casual enough: sitting in a gym, watching Charlie and his trainer. But am I ready to see that part of his world? I don't want an issue that is only mine, one that he is not in any way at fault for, to affect us getting to know each other. 

But when I see his face, it seems as though he is even more shocked than I that he’s asked me, his cheeks a distinguishable, rosy tint. It’s his reaction to himself that makes me want to be there for him.

“I think— I think I would like that.”

He breaks attention from the road for a split second to smile a beaming grin at me.

“Okay, what time do you have classes? I can move my training schedule around a little. But most days, I am in the gym at eleven.”

The fact that he offers to move his obviously steady schedule around for me helps me see how important it is to him that I be there. I wonder if he wants to show me that his profession isn’t so brash and vile after all, since I had reacted a bit oddly when he'd first told me that he fights. He doesn’t seem like much of a showoff – not the type who would simply want a girl to see him flex his muscles – so I assume the first.