Page 5 of Boxer Next Door

I chuckled at my son and his excitement, before turning back to my guest. His eyes were aimed inside, a look of curiosity on his face. I wondered if he’d ever seen Bryson, though he’d probably heard him. My kid didn’t like staying too quiet.

“I have to go now,” I said to Ken. “I’m watching some movies with my son, and I’ve already missed a part of it. I should probably get over there before he comes for me.”

I didn’t need Bryson to see him at my doorstep and wonder why he was there. Or worse yet, invite him in to enjoy movie night with us, because my son was polite like that.

Ken nodded. “I figured. But I don’t feel right just leaving things as they are, either.”

I sighed through my nose, puffing my cheeks up a little bit. “Why don’t we talk about it tomorrow, then?” I offered. “I’m not going anywhere for the day. I’ll be awake by around nine or ten, and we can decide what to do?”

He offered me another grin, this one larger and brighter than the ones that had come before it. “Sure. Oh, and you never did introduce yourself…”

I blinked, then felt my face warm up again. “Oh! My name is Lydia. It’s nice to meet you, Ken.”

“The pleasure was all mine,” he said, and I thought his voice was just a little lower.

I waved at him and waited for him to leave before I went back inside and moved over to Bryson.

His eyes had looked down at me, I thought, a little giddily. His eyes had, very obviously, lingered on my chest in that short time before he turned away. I’d been looking closely, and I knew I hadn't imagined it. I should probably be offended, but I couldn’t help but be thrilled.

Does that mean he thinks I’m hot?

I knew I shouldn’t be letting myself get carried away. It wasn’t like anything would happen between us. I’d already made that much clear to myself. It just wasn’t practical. But it was an enormous boost to my ego to know that someone that young and attractive could look at me with desire. Juggling between a demanding job and looking after my son had left me feeling older than my years, and I couldn’t help the smile on my face as I curled back into the couch with Bryson.

The feeling was too much to keep to myself. I picked up my phone from where I’d left it, biting on my lower lip.

I’ve still got it, I thought to myself, sending a quick text to my friend Annara.

Her reply was back in a moment, and I put my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t do something embarrassing like squeal.

Yes, honey, you still do.

3

Kenji

I took a deep breath and wiped the sweat off my forehead.

Fuck. Too much work to do.

I didn’t mind it, if I was honest with myself, I was kind of loving it. A lot of work kept my muscles from going soft, and I wasn’t a slave to my own thoughts, either.

It just felt too much like I was trying to hide.

The whole move, making myself busy so I had no time to try and contact my parents. Not that it was an easy thing to do.

My parents were… I couldn’t say I hated them, exactly. They still raised me and took care of me, even if the standards weren’t quite up to what I would have liked. Because of them, I hated my own name. Well, it’s more because of all the teasing I got for it, but I still hated it. My name was Kenji, I knew full well it was a Japanese name, and people in school had given me shit for it. My parents, the carefree people that they were, told me not to care about other people and embrace my name. I wanted to go by Ken, but they insisted on calling me by my full name.

That made it hard for me, because it was hard to get everyone to forget my full name if my own parents spewed it everywhere.

It was a hard decision, to move to a new town, to this broken-down house that I knew I’d have to fix up. I’d bought it pretty cheap, and I had dumped almost all of my savings on it. But I wasn’t just running from my parents, I was also running from an ex.

When I met her, I thought she was the best thing ever. For a long time, I thought she was the love of my life, and I thought she felt the same. She was nice, gentle, and beautiful. She knew my real name and made fun of me a couple times, but I knew it wasn’t meant to hurt, and she called me Ken when I insisted. We’d had plans of moving in together and starting up a family, one that would be entirely different from what I was subjected to for most of my life.

But it wasn’t meant to be. Because I found out that she didn’t think the same as I did, no matter what she’d said to my face. She might have told me she wanted a family with me, but she had a pretty healthy nightlife. She said she would settle down, but she couldn’t settle down with one man. I didn’t even know how many men besides me she’d actually been with. I’d chosen to walk away instead of asking for an explanation, because her carefree attitude reminded me so much of my parents.

Ah, my parents. If it wasn’t so rude of me, I would call them the bane of my existence. They never cheated on each other, but they had other shortcomings I couldn’t help but be critical of as I grew up in a public school environment, getting to see just how different my family was from the norm.

I loved my parents, but they just never understood the real world, and they didn’t want to understand it. They were what most people would call hippies. Because of their beliefs, I was subjected to a lot of ridicule, and in my earlier years, we had to travel a lot. I didn’t know just how different my family was at first, because I didn’t join public school until my parents decided to settle when I was seven. Before that, I was homeschooled, if you could even call it that.