Her Coach Wouldn't Take My Money, So I Paid Her Another Way novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Wrapped
Rae walks into Marchetti's Boxing to learn to hit something and Gina wraps her hands so slowly that neither of them stops; Gina refuses to take her money, and the woman her ex cheated with is standing across the gym.
Eleven days after I found the texts, I walked into a boxing gym at twenty to seven in the morning.
I was thirty-two years old, and I had never hit anything in my life.
The gym was a brick building on Larimer Street in Denver, with a faded sign that said Marchetti's Boxing.
I knew the name because it was printed on a key tag that Dustin left on my kitchen counter when I made him move out.
Dustin was my boyfriend of four years, and the texts were from a girl he called T.
I did not know who T was.
I only knew that Dustin came here three nights a week and told me it was for his stress.
So I came to find out what a person does here that makes him lie.
Inside, it smelled like rubber mats, old sweat and coffee.
A ring stood in the middle of the floor with faded red ropes.
Heavy bags hung from the ceiling in a row, and a woman was hitting the last one in a steady, quiet rhythm.
She stopped when the door shut behind me.
She was tall, with black hair cut to her jaw and tucked behind her ears.
Her shoulders were broad under a gray tank top, and her nose had been broken once and healed a little crooked.
Her forearms were wrapped in white tape up to the wrist.
"We're not open till seven," she said.
Her voice was low and dry.
"I'm sorry. I saw the light on."
"I'm always here. Door's unlocked." She pulled a towel off the bag stand. "What do you want?"
"I want to learn to punch," I said.
She looked at my work blazer, my flats and my laptop bag.
"Today?"
"Today."
She almost smiled, then she walked to a counter by the wall and slid a clipboard toward me.
"I'm Gina. I own the place. Six sessions is the beginner package, forty dollars each."
I wrote my name on the line.
Rae Whitfield.
I felt her look at it.
She looked at it a lot longer than two words need.
"Whitfield," Gina said.
"Is that a problem?"
"No." She put the clipboard under the counter, face down. "Take your shoes off. Sit on the bench."
I sat.
She came back with a roll of red cotton wrap, knelt on the mat in front of me and held out her hand.
I gave her mine.
She turned it over, palm up, and her thumb pressed once into the middle of my palm.
"You make a fist for me," she said.
I did.
"Looser. Now open."
The wrap started with a loop around my wrist.
Her fingers were warm and rough, and they never hurried.
She took the cloth around my thumb, then back across my knuckles, then down between my fingers one at a time.
Every time she pulled it snug, I felt the pull travel up my arm.
"Why do you wrap them?" I asked.
"So the small bones don't break."
She tucked the cloth under, her knuckles brushing my wrist.
"People think it's armor. It's mostly about holding the hand together."
I should have taken my hand back at the third pass across my wrist.
I didn't.
Gina didn't stop either.
She wrapped slowly, much more slowly than the job needed, and she kept her eyes on my hand and not on my face.
My breathing got louder than I wanted it to.
Hers did too.
When she reached the end, she pressed the last strip flat with her thumb, right over the inside of my wrist where my pulse was going hard.
She held it there.
"Fast," she said quietly.
"I haven't had breakfast."
"That's not why."
She let go, and the cool air hit my skin where her hand had been.
Then she reached for my other hand, and I held it out.
I took out my card when she finished.
"Let me pay you for the first session at least."
"No."
"I'm not asking for a favor."
"You're not paying here."
She stood up and held out a hand to pull me off the bench.
"Not today, not for any of the six."
"Why not?"
Gina looked at the door to the back room, then at me.
"Because of what your boyfriend did," she said.
My whole body went cold.
"My ex-boyfriend," I said. "How do you know Dustin?"
"He trains here, Tuesdays and Thursdays." She said it carefully. "The girl he's been seeing is my student."
"T," I said.
"Sasha." Gina's eyes went past my shoulder. "She's here now."
I turned around.
A young woman in a pink sports bra stood at the speed bag by the back wall, with her wrapped hands hanging at her sides.
She was staring at me with her mouth open.
She looked about twenty-three, and she looked terrified.
"Rae?" she said.
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