Memphis

She isn’t dressed for a workout. That’s the first thing I noticed when Liv walked through the gym door this morning. The next thing I noticed was Leo’s black eye. The hostility brewing between the both of them is so thick, I can chew on it. I’m fairly certain both of those things are connected.

Liv’s kept the office door open all day, and she’s listening to classic rock, her lips moving with the words, but only half the time, like she only knows bits and pieces. A few times, Leo walked by and slammed the door shut. Without missing a beat—and without glancing his direction—Liv just got right up from her chair and opened it again.

Heatedly.

I tried talking to her when Leo disappeared for a four-hour lunch break, but I got the firm sense she wasn’t in the mood. I was getting that same cold shoulder she was dishing out to her uncle, which means whatever Leo did seems to have screwed all men over in general. I ended up catching up on a few hours of sleep before my afternoon routine.

Leo’s been gone for an hour now, the afternoon light fading and turning the frosted glass windows in the gym orange. The tank top from my workout is cold from hour-old sweat, and my muscles are even colder. If I tried to workout with Liv right now, I’d probably get an injury. I have work in two hours anyway.

Without saying anything, I rip the tape from my hands using my teeth and wad it into a tight ball that I toss into the metal can by the exit. I have to slide my back along the wall as I stand, my legs threatening to cramp. I was so preoccupied with Liv and her ditching our plans—and beating the shit out of her uncle—that I let my hydration slip.

Gnashing my lips at the threat of pain, I make a mental note not to slip again—no matter how distracting she is. Even in jeans and an over-sized gray T-shirt that I’m pretty sure once belonged to a man. Without looking her way again, I shove my things in my gym bag, including the training pads I planned on using with her, and toss the duffle straps over my shoulder as I head toward the door.

“He deserved that.”

Her voice practically echoes as I flip the switch on the gym’s main fan, killing the hum and leaving nothing but this glorified warehouse space and the sound of her voice. Her tone doesn’t seem angry, so I stop and turn to acknowledge her. I’m surprised when she’s leaning on the office doorway and looking right at me, waiting for my eyes. It’s the first time she’s looked at another person all day.

I shrug.

“I’m guessing you don’t need those lessons after all then.”

Her head cocks a little and her eyelids fall, not quite following me. I nod my head in the direction of Leo’s home.

“That looked like the work of a right hook, is all. I don’t think I did that kind of damage to a face until I was twenty.”

Her lips smirk, just a little, and I can’t help but let my lip curl too.

“Yeah, well. I’m pretty sure it was a jab. Isn’t that what you call it?” She thrusts her right hand out, and her form is decent, but I think the shot she got on Leo was probably mostly fueled by luck and adrenaline. For a man in his fifties, he’s still tough as fucking nails.

“Anyhow, like I said, he deserved it.” She rolls her body along the frame of the door, her momentum moving away from me.

“Wanna talk about it?” I ask.

“Nope,” her response comes fast, and it’s accompanied by her walking away, back into the office she’s been stewing in all day. I close the space between us a little, but stop at the doorway, respectful of the invisible barrier I can tell she’s trying to maintain.

“You gonna hide in here all night?”

Her shoulders lift with a slight laugh.

“Was thinking more all month.” She glances at me sideways, a pen cap held between her lips—no doubt mauled by her teeth.

I chuckle at her joke, but I don’t let go of her eyes. After a few seconds, neither of us is laughing. If I could just get rid of that fortress that’s standing in the way of whatever words I can tell are on the tip of her tongue, maybe I could get her to smile a little more. I could at least give her someone to talk to that didn’t throw baggage back in her face. I hold her gaze through her heavy breath, and I wait while her lips fall into a melancholy line.

“I’ll be ready tomorrow. I promise. I just…today—”

“Sure, yeah…we can start tomorrow,” I interrupt. I can see how bad she feels for skipping out on me, and that’s not what any of this was supposed to be about. It wasn’t an obligation. It was…it was something else—something that I probably shouldn’t let start tomorrow either, but I’ve already said yes to today.

“I’ll lock up. You head out and enjoy your night,” Liv says, and I can’t help but read into the minor shoulder shrug that accompanies her words.

My feet start to shuffle backward, but I keep my eyes on her. She’s chewing at the pen cap again and glancing from me to her work, pretending she wants me to just leave, but she doesn’t. There’s nothing on that paper in front of her on the desk, and I watched her put everything away already. She gives me a final smile and nods, and it’s maybe the worst acting performance I’ve ever seen.

Liv does not want to be alone right now.

“Go with me somewhere.” I lift my chin and hold my breath, hoping she’ll agree.

She stares directly ahead away from me for a few more chews on the pen cap, then reaches up and pulls it from her mouth, tossing it into the trash.

“Okay.”

Her answer is quick and without questions. I probably could have asked her to come help me bury a body right now and she’d be up for it, just to get out of this one-block prison she’s trapped in.

I wait by the exit while she finishes locking up the office and killing the lights on our way out. I don’t say anything more until we’ve walked around the gym to the alleyway and we’re standing in front of my bike.

“I’ve got an extra helmet. Just give me a few minutes to change. I’ve got work in a bit, so I’ll just drop you off here again after Miles.”

Her gaze remains on my bike, and the tip of her tongue parts her lips as she smiles faintly.

“Of course you ride a bike,” she says. She nods slowly and starts to laugh quietly.

I stop at the top step into the RV.

“I don’t have a bike. I have a nineteen-seventy-two Commando,” I say, leaning into the doorway of the RV and stretching my neck with pride. It’s dashed quickly with Liv’s snort laugh.

“Commando?” Her lips pucker as she strains to hold the rest of her laugh in.

“What?” I hold my hands out to my sides, and she lets her laughter escape completely.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s a very pretty bike,” she finally says, but her lips visibly twitching and wanting to laugh more.

“The Commando was Machine of the Year back in the late sixties. It’s iconic.”

“It’s also what you say when you let your balls fly free,” she deadpans.

I blink once, deciding that I like her here too much to tell her about the other things that make my bike special—like the fact that I know my real dad rode it across the country, and I know he wanted me to have it one day. Instead, I’ll let her have a good laugh. We could both use it.

My tongue held over my front teeth, I spend a few seconds letting my grin fall in place while I consider what words will make her blush the most.

“That’s the only way I ride baby,” I settle on, hooking my thumbs in the waistband of my sweatpants and letting my eyes haze just a little. I’m going for smolder, whatever that is. I have compression shorts on underneath right now, but when I’m not in the ring, I like to breathe. And I kinda like that Liv is thinking about that now. I wink when I feel like she’s turned the right shade of pink, then head inside to shower and pull on some fresh clothes. I catch a quick glimpse of her before I look away, and I’m satisfied by the way her eyes have widened.

I settle on my dark jeans and the white V-neck I washed at the laundromat, and I step back outside just in time to catch her swinging her right leg over my bike, her hand affectionately running up the seat, onto the chrome.

“You’ve done that before.”

Her cheek dimples on the side closest to me with a smile.

“Leo had a bike. Not a Commando, but it was a nice bike. He used to take me to school on it.” She glances at me, and I step forward to hand her a helmet.

“Leo around a lot when you were growing up?” I ask as I help her situate the helmet on her head.

“He was more of a dad than the one I got my DNA from,” she says, planting her hands between her legs and holding herself on the back of my seat. I put my helmet on and slide in front of her, feeling her warm body conform behind me as her arms snake around my sides and flatten against my chest. I haven’t had a girl on my bike in more than a year, and I don’t think I’ve ever had someone settle in with such ease and trust as Liv just did.

I turn my head slightly to the right and she reacts by resting her cheek between my shoulder blades, somehow getting even closer to me. It’s oddly intimate—almost…natural—and it halts me. My bike rumbles as I start it, but I leave my gaze to the side, catching the curled ends of her hair swirl in the breeze from under her helmet. She adjusts, and when her hand moves along my chest and grabs a fistful of my T-shirt, I breathe out heavily and let my eyes close for just a second, because it feels so good to have someone here, close like this.

“Hold on,” I say, swallowing.

I give over to the road, roaring us out of the alleyway and onto the side streets I’ve memorized in this part of the city. There are two personalities to this section of Phoenix. The version that’s busy and bright—loud, with cars and government employees on their lunch breaks wearing dressy clothes with sneakers so they can walk to some fast-food place on Van Buren, then back again. Then there’s this time—the afterhours, when the streets are quiet, so quiet that the growl of cars usually means someone’s racing, and the only people on the streets are the ones who live this far west of the high rises or the ones who didn’t make it to the shelter before it was full.

That’s how I met Miles.

His area is only a few blocks away, but too far to walk in this heat. I can feel Liv’s hesitation when I slow as we get closer to the long strip of patchy grass and trees that divide one of the city’s oldest roads. It’s not like the movies, where bums huddle around fires burning in metal garbage cans, but it still has an edge of sketchiness to it. The smell of weed and urine is strong. When I pull to a stop right against the curb in the center of the road, her hands squeeze at my sides.

“This isn’t the kind of spot you take a girl for a picnic.” Her words are followed by a nervous laugh.

“I told you, we’re meeting my buddy Miles.” I grin at her as I slide from my bike so I can take her helmet and help her off too. She pulls the collar of her shirt up to cover her nose, and my chest squeezes with guilt. This was a bad idea…bringing her here. But if she gets it—if she sees why Miles matters—it will be a sign that she’s maybe more than a distraction. Or, that I’m looking for signs anywhere I can get them, because she’s also beautiful.

Liv’s eyes scan the park, and she winces slightly with each ruffle of a bag that reveals a sleeping human underneath. Without thinking it through, I turn my hand outward and feel for her fingertips, grabbing her free hand at the first brush. My touch sends her gaze down to our linked palms and mine to her eyes. She lets the shelter of her shirt fall from her nose, and her neck moves with a slow swallow. My fingers pulse once, squeezing her a little tighter.

“It’s safe,” I say, her eyes sliding upward to meet mine again. She gives a slight nod.

I recognize Miles’s plaid shirt resting against the largest tree in the center of the median, the maroon duffle bag I gave him during our last visit tucked tightly against his right thigh and a water bottle clutched in his left hand.

Smirking a little, I nod toward him and escort Liv closer. Her grip tightens with each step, so when we startle Miles upon our approach and he jumps, she squeals and jerks behind me.

“Good lordy, holy hell my man. You thinnin’ out the homeless by giving us heart attacks one at a time?” I breathe out a laugh and reach my hand down toward my fallen friend. He grips my palm with his dry, cracked fingers, and I immediately notice the new bandage wrapped around two of his fingers.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it. Jus’a burn is all. I was too close to the exhaust pipe the other night, and I’m a wiggler in my sleep. But you know that.” Miles laughs and coughs together, his breath running thin and his face reddening with his struggle to breathe. I let go of his hand and crouch down to lift him from under his arms. He’s struggling more to stand than he did a few months ago.

“You talk to the man at the VA? The one I gave you the card for?” Miles scrunches his face like he’s struggling to piece together what I’m talking about and I can tell he didn’t. I save him the effort of lying to me. I know he doesn’t like to.

“He’s only going to help. You know that. But I won’t force you. I get it,” I say, letting our eyes lock for a few seconds. He nods and glances over my shoulder toward Liv, and I know that conversation is done for tonight.

“Look at that. Young Memphis gone and got himself a better-looking friend, I see.” Miles’s eyes crinkle at the corners, and his unshaven face bends with his smile. Even sixty and broken by a failed system, his Southern charm possesses a magic I envy when I hear Liv’s quiet giggle behind me.

“I don’t know about that,” she says, stepping out from my protection and taking a hand that’s lived twice as many years as hers and has survived war.

“Honey, trust me when I tell you—between the two of us,” Miles pauses, pressing his lips to the top of her hand after lifting it, then winking. “You are most definitely the better-looking friend.”

I glance at her and am hit with this vision—her lips puckered, trying to hold in her smile, her eyes squinting in flattery, and her cheeks high and rosy with blush.

“Well, thank you.” She nods and lowers her eyes, but sweeps her gaze my direction as her hand falls back to her side. “But what I meant was this fool ain’t my friend. I just felt bad for him is all. I was trying to build up his self-esteem and make him feel like he wasn’t such an enormous loser.”

Her smirk shines in her eyes, and I breathe out a short laugh as I tilt my head.

“I like this one, Memphis. She keeps you in your place. A champ needs to be humbled,” Miles says, adjusting his weight on his legs and folding his arms over his chest.

“Yeah, she keeps me humble all right,” I say, suddenly unable to turn my eyes away from Liv’s.

I shake off the trance, realizing the dim light has triggered the streetlamps, which means it must be getting close to eight o’clock.

“Liv, meet Miles Dickerson, a man who has three medals of bravery for some things that happened over in the Middle East in the early eighties. Good luck getting him to tell you anything more than that. I’ve been trying to get him to talk about it for a year.”

Miles starts waving his hand, dismissing my flattery, before I finish my last sentence.

“There are a whole lot of people who are worth a lot more fuss than me,” he says.

“And they should take better care of them, too,” I add.

Miles just rolls his eyes and moves back toward the tree and the spot he’s claimed as his, at least for a while. I kneel down by his feet, nodding for him to take his right shoe off while I pull the salve and wrap from my pocket. I hear Liv take a sharp breath when she sees the dirty bandage I begin to remove. I glance up at her, pausing my hands, and nudge my head to encourage her to look away. She steps closer and kneels at my side.

“It’s infected,” she says, her voice almost a whisper.

“He has a hard time getting new bandages. Just getting in to see someone, so—”

I shrug.

Liv blinks slowly, her eyes grazing over my friend’s dirty jeans with tears along the legs, and doubled-up socks that don’t match and haven’t been washed in weeks.

“We have a lot of stuff at the gym. We can bring more.”

My chest kicks hearing her words, the same ones I said when I first met Miles a year ago. He’ll shut her down, too, but god I love that her mind went there.

“I get by. And I’m not here long. This is temporary. My daughter lives in the Springs. I’m heading there soon.”

Liv nods, just like I did the first time Miles said it to me. When his gaze hits mine, we exchange a silent agreement that I will let him continue to spin this story for now. I’ll tell Liv the truth later, though, because for some reason, I don’t want to have secrets between us.

Us. A beginning of us—or an accidental us, fate or coincidence…maybe luck—whatever it is, it made us. We are in this space together, and there was a moment. It makes breathing both hard and satisfying when she is around.

“I have to get to work,” I say, standing up as Miles slides his newly wrapped foot back into his well-worn tennis shoe. “I’ll stay longer next time…maybe bring some food.”

“Well if I’m not here, don’t worry. Just means I caught a ride to the Springs…”

“Yeah, I know the drill. Give the food to Manny, and don’t let those young, druggie punks near your tree,” I say.

It’s the same thing I always say to him. Over the year we’ve spent talking to one another here in this pathetic excuse for a park, we’ve developed a sort of secret code. This tree is important to him. It’s sheltered him from rain and brutal sun alike. And if he’s gone, my job is to make sure this little plot of public land goes to someone worthy. I should feel happy that Miles has finally gotten a ride to the Springs, even though I know that his daughter died years ago, along with his wife—and that going to see her means his time has come, too.

“It was really nice to meet you, Miles.” Liv’s fingers sprawl and contract in a small wave, and her eyes soften as she takes in a final smile from this homeless man who insists on living in this park.

“The pleasure was one hundred percent mine,” he says, fluttering his hand down his chest like a gentleman would a hat in the olden days. I can almost picture him in dress blues, cleanly shaven, with hair slicked back.

We’re both quiet as we walk back to my bike, and I wait to start the engine while Liv slides in behind me and positions her helmet back on her head. Her hands quickly find the place they belong on my chest, and I struggle to keep my breathing normal. I can’t show her how affected I am.

“How did you meet him?” I feel her cheek rest against the center of my back after she talks.

“He was in the ER the day I got this.” I hold my palm up above my shoulder and she peels back enough to look at the top of my hand. Her right hand slides away from my body briefly until she runs her thumb along the thick line of stitches that ladder from the webbing of my thumb all the way around my wrist.

“Was this from a fight?” she asks.

I shake once with a laugh and bring my grip back down to the gears. I’m glad when her palm returns to the warm spot along the side of my chest.

“I wish I could say it was something cool like that. I was making salsa. I cut the shit out of myself with one of your mom’s knives,” I say.

“Ah,” she responds.

We’re both quiet, and as the seconds tick, I start to feel desperate to find a reason to stay right here, just like this.

“Where do you work?” She breaks the quiet.

“St. Peter’s, in the community center. I run the night desk on the days they’re open late. The crowd from eight until eleven is a little rough, but for some of these kids, this is the only place to go. Technically, they can’t be on the streets after curfew, but most of their parents work nights too. I’m supposed to help them check out pool cues, games, or whatever—but I’m really a security guard. The girl that works there with me got beat up a few months ago, because she was working the desk alone at night. Some guys came in to give one of the teens a hard time. I guess I have one of those faces that warn people not to take a swing, so they asked if I could move from mornings to nights.”

She’s quiet again, and I regret talking so much.

“Can I come with you?”

I freeze when she interrupts my self-doubt, and then I smile because she can’t see it.

“Sure,” I answer, a small word for something that feels bigger. I glance down at her grasp, the tips of her fingers dug into the softness of my shirt.

“Hold on.”

When I fire up the bike, her chin rests firmly on the center of my back, and I imagine where it puts her lips. I imagine her kissing me there, and working her way around to my mouth, then my chest, and my stomach.

“Hold on tighter,” I say, knowing she’s holding on tight enough. I just want her closer, and for now, that’s the only way I can see it happening. She obeys, closing the fractions of space between us, her thighs squeezing around my hips. I shift the gear and kick away, my body burning up thanks to the mental torture of my own doing. This fantasy is going to need more than a twenty-minute bike ride to fade away. Probably because it seems so real.