Her Coach Wouldn't Take My Money, So I Paid Her Another Way novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Hundred Punches

Sasha tearfully swears she never knew about Rae; Gina corrects Rae's stance with her hands, Rae cries on the heavy bag, and Dustin texts that he knows she was here.

Sasha came toward me with her wrapped hands held out in front of her.

"I didn't know," she said. "I swear to God, Rae, I didn't know about you."

I stood very still on the mat in my socks.

"He told you he was single."

"He told me he was between apartments." Her voice cracked. "He said his ex was a roommate who wouldn't move out."

I laughed, and it sounded awful.

"That's me. I'm the roommate."

"I found out when he texted me that you'd seen my messages."

Sasha wiped her face with the back of her wrist.

"That was eleven days ago. I haven't talked to him since. I swear."

"That's not true," Gina said from behind me.

Sasha flinched.

"She texted him Tuesday," Gina said. "I saw the phone."

"Once," Sasha said. "To tell him to lose my number."

I looked at her, and she was crying so hard that her shoulders shook.

She was twenty-three, and she looked about fifteen.

I had spent eleven days picturing T with a face I could hate.

I couldn't find the hate anywhere.

"I'm not going to hit you," I said.

"I'd let you," Sasha whispered.

"Go hit the bag, Sasha," Gina said. "Far end. Two hundred straight punches, and you don't talk to her until I say."

Sasha went.

I stood there with my wrapped hands feeling light and strange.

Gina walked me to the heavy bag at the near end of the row.

"Feet," she said.

I looked down.

"Shoulder width. Left foot forward. No, your other left."

I laughed again, and this time it sounded closer to real.

She stepped behind me.

Her hands settled on my hips, and she turned me a quarter turn until I was angled to the bag.

I felt every one of her fingers through my work slacks.

"Knees soft," she said, near my ear. "Chin down. Your elbow stays in, like it's holding a book against your ribs."

"Like this?"

Her hand moved up my side and pressed my elbow in.

Her thumb rested against my ribs, just below my arm.

"Like that."

I couldn't remember a single thing a man had said to me in four years that sounded like that.

"Now hit it," Gina said.

I swung.

The bag barely moved, and my wrist hurt.

"Again."

I swung again, and it hurt again.

"Again, and think about what you came here to hit."

I thought about Dustin.

I thought about the way he'd said "you're being dramatic" while his phone lit up on the counter.

I thought about four years of Sunday dinners at his mother's, and the ring he had talked about buying.

I hit the bag so hard it swung back and caught me in the shoulder.

Gina caught me by the arms before I fell.

"Good," she said.

"It hit me back."

"They do that. Again."

I hit it fifty times, then another fifty.

My blazer ended up on the bench, my hair came loose, and my arms started to shake.

Somewhere in the second hundred, I started to cry, and I didn't stop swinging.

Gina stood next to the bag with her hands braced against it, so it wouldn't move too much.

She didn't say it was okay.

She didn't say anything at all.

When I finally dropped my arms, she handed me a towel.

"Forty minutes," she said. "That's a full session."

"I didn't pay for it."

"I told you not to."

I wiped my face and looked at her.

Up close, she had a small white scar through her left eyebrow and gray at her temples that she didn't hide.

She was thirty-five, she had told me while I punched, though I hadn't asked.

She looked at me the way she'd looked at my name on the clipboard.

Like I was something she had been expecting for a long time.

"Gina," I said. "I make good money. I'm not a charity case, and I don't like owing people."

"You don't owe me anything."

"That's not how it works."

"It is here."

She took the wrap off my right hand, slowly, one loop at a time.

"Sasha is my student. What her guy did to you came out of my gym. That's mine to carry."

"That's not your fault."

"Then I won't take your money for something that isn't my fault either."

She unwrapped the left.

"Come back Thursday. Early. Six in the morning, before the evening people."

I understood that she meant before Dustin.

"I'll find some way to pay you," I said.

"Then find one."

She dropped the red cotton into my palm, still warm from my skin.

"Wash it," she said. "You wrap it yourself next time."

"I don't know how."

"Then you'll have to come early and learn."

I got my bag and my blazer and went to the door.

My phone buzzed while I was putting on my shoes.

Dustin: Sasha says you were at Marchetti's. What are you doing? Don't make this weird.

I stared at the screen.

Then I looked back across the gym.

Gina was watching me from the middle of the floor with her arms crossed.

She had read the message on my face, and her jaw was tight.

I did not answer him.

I put the phone away, and I walked out into the cold with red cotton in my hand.

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