Desire | Shawn Mendes

TWO

Shawn
Song of the Chapter: From the Other Side of the World - Sara Hartman

"One day when you're standing next to me / One day you'll understand why I had to leave."
- -

"He is currently the undefeated, heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Ladies and gentlemen, our first guest for the night, the gentle fighter, Shawn Mendes!"

The curtain pulls back and I place my left hand over the button of my dark blue tuxedo jacket and smile at the crowd that stood on their feet. I raise my right hand and wave before pouring my finger at the host, Jimmy Fallon, for jokingly calling me a gentle fighter. We shake hands as I walk over to him and he pretends to hit me in the stomach and I pretend to hunch over like it hurt. Afterwards, I take my seat on the couch and he takes his behind the desk. The crowd settles down, but there were the few whistles. I wink at the crowd and then look at Jimmy.

"You know I'm gonna have to kick your ass for calling me a gentle fighter." I joke.

"Commercial break? Meet me in the alley." He jokingly replies.

I nod my head and then turn to the audience. "Ladies and Gentlemen, don't be surprised if your host comes back with a few missing teeth."

"You know, I saw that fight when it happened." Jimmy says. "Man, that was crazy. I remember thinking, I'm genuinely afraid of this guy. I gotta play a clip of that."

He points to a worker and suddenly we look at a screen where a clip of the fight was being shown. My opponent, a Russian guy who was half a foot taller than me, swings with his right hand. I dodge it, and I punch him square in the mouth, and then with my left I hit him in the lower jaw. His mouth guard, bloody, came out his mouth as he stumbled back and two teeth fell out. The clip stops and then the audience claps and I give a small smirk.

"You sure you wanna call me a gentle fighter?" I reply. The audience laughs and Jimmy pretends to look worried. "Don't worry, we're friends. I'll go gentle with you."

"Oh, gee, thanks man. For a second I was worried there." He replies. I laugh and take a sip of the drink from the black mug that was provided. "Heavy weight boxer of the world. Man, when I met you, you were just a kid. Four years later, you're like a man."

"You've seen me boxing at twenty. I was still a man back then." I reply, garnering some wild whistles from the crowd. "See, even they agree with me."

"How'd you get into boxing anyways?" He asks. It's a question I've always been asked, but I always avoided it. I think back to when I'm in my bed with Jasmine and she had asked me that question for the last time.

"Shawn, why do you fight?" I remember hearing the pain in her voice. I couldn't tell if it was because I accidentally hit her, or because she desperately wanted to know because she saw me get to a level of angry I never wanted her to see.

"As a kid, I always had this built up anger when playing sports. My hockey coach would sometimes be eh on putting me in games because I was always so focused on hitting the guys, and not scoring. And this one guy walked up to my mom and said, Is that your kid? And my mom, oh my mom was so embarrassed. I'm out there, gloves off, taking on two guys at a time, and my mom is just pretending I'm not her kid. And so she just sighs and tells the guy, Yeah, sadly. And he told her that fighting on ice was dangerous, that I should be doing it in a ring instead. And that's how I got into it." I reply.