Page 74 of Main Event

“About?”

“This could make me confess to things I didn’t do.”

“I told you he was credible.”

Juice runs down her wrist. She catches it with her tongue before it reaches her sleeve, and I look away because I’m a man with limits and wet clothes and no interest in proving how little discipline I have outside a ring.

She notices. “You okay there, champ?”

“No.”

Her smile turns wicked around the peach.

I point at her. “Don’t weaponize fruit.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You are absolutely doing something.”

“I’m eating a peach.”

“Provocatively.”

“I don’t think fruit can be provocative.”

“You’re wrong.”

She laughs again, and I lean back on my hands, letting the sound settle into me. This is what I wanted. This is what I didn’t know I needed. Not silence. Not rest. Her. Like this.

The afternoon stretches. We eat peaches and cookies Mrs. Alvarez packed because she is apparently wiser than both of us. The lake moves in small bright pieces beyond the shade. Andi leans back against the oak trunk, damp hair curling over one shoulder, a towel around her, bare feet crossed at the ankles.

I look at her and think of every version of her I’ve seen. Onstage. In boardrooms. In hospital rooms. In the kitchen at two in the morning, a notebook full of war plans. In the center, kneeling beside kids who needed someone to look them in the eye and mean what they said.

This version feels rarer than all the others.

“What’s going on up there?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“No,” she says. “You have the look now.”

“What look?”

“The one where something is happening in your head, and you’re deciding whether to say it.”

I pick at the edge of the blanket. “You changed my life.”

Her expression stills. Not in fear. In attention.

“You know that?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer immediately. “I know we changed each other’s lives.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Her gaze softens. I look out at the water because some things are easier said when I’m not staring straight at what they could cost.

“I thought I knew who I was before you. I thought boxing had taught me everything important about discipline, endurance, and getting back up. I thought loyalty meant standing in front of someone and taking the hit if it came. I thought protection was mostly about force.”