Between Charlie and me, we have eaten most of the pizza. We agree that, in addition to not drinking diet, we are both relieved that the other eats a fair amount.
As I reach for my last slice, I see Charlie staring at my arm. I’ve noticed him looking towards the same spot a few times already, searching for my bruise.
“I told you I wasn’t hurt,” I say. Like I'd said in the car, it was easy to cover with makeup.
“The man who grabbed you will be in jail for a while. He had drugs on him, and he’d been charged with harassment before.”
“Well, good thing you immobilized him then, so he could be taken in,” I say.
“Like I said, you helped.”
He doesn’t smile, he just takes another bite of pizza.
“How did you know that? The cop, he seemed to know you. Did he tell you?”
“Yes, he does know me. I met him through my trainer,” he says, smirking at me. “Don't worry, he doesn’t know me from a cell.”
I laugh just as the waitress appears with our bill. Charlie insists on paying for the meal. I tell him that it’s old fashioned and chauvinistic, but he just laughs and leaves a generous tip, and I am secretly appreciative. I thank him, of course.
While we’re driving back to Lighthouse, I decide to ask Charlie a little about his career. The idea of professional violence (I know, that sounds dramatic) still scares me because of things that I wish never happened. But I can tell how genuine and kind Charlie is. He did save my life after all, and I want to understand.
He tells me that he trains others in addition to being trained and fighting himself, like the highschoolers that he'd been working with on Friday night for football. He doesn’t do sessions for others regularly necessarly, but people apparently quite a bit of money to work with him. Some even pay for his travel expenses, to bring him where they are. He travels for his own fights, too. Charlie has traveled much more than I have.
He doesn’t say that he is exceptionally skilled at boxing – he doesn't need to. His collection of experiences speaks for him.
“My trainer and I are very close,” he says, “We work together almost every day during the week. Occasionally he'll leave me alone to train. But most days, he’s there. I run every morning, and then on weekdays, we train in the gym after. I stop by the café on days that you work in between the running and the gym.” He smiles, his eyes still on the road, and I sense that he is a little embarrassed.
“You could come and watch, you know – watch me train.”
I feel a small shock at his offer. Sure, it sounds casual enough: sitting in a gym, watching Charlie and his trainer. But am I ready to see that part of his world? I don't want an issue that is only mine, one that he is not in any way at fault for, to affect us getting to know each other.
But when I see his face, it seems as though he is even more shocked than I that he’s asked me, his cheeks a distinguishable, rosy tint. It’s his reaction to himself that makes me want to be there for him.
“I think— I think I would like that.”
He breaks attention from the road for a split second to smile a beaming grin at me.
“Okay, what time do you have classes? I can move my training schedule around a little. But most days, I am in the gym at eleven.”
The fact that he offers to move his obviously steady schedule around for me helps me see how important it is to him that I be there. I wonder if he wants to show me that his profession isn’t so brash and vile after all, since I had reacted a bit oddly when he'd first told me that he fights. He doesn’t seem like much of a showoff – not the type who would simply want a girl to see him flex his muscles – so I assume the first.
“I only have one early class this semester, and the rest are in the afternoon. Eleven works fine for me.”
We are pulling up to Lighthouse now. He parks his car close to the front.
“Alright,” he says. “Is tomorrow good for you? I can just pick you up around 10:40 and we’ll head there.”
I agree and I give Charlie directions to my dorm, and we finally exchange phone numbers. His full name is Charlie Alexander, I ask his last for my contacts. I thank him for lunch and head into the café, pushing the ideas I have about boxing and fighting to the back of my mind, where they stay for the rest of the day.
But it isn’t so easy to keep my mind occupied when I am back in my room. My parents can tell over the phone that something is bothering me, but I insist that I am only stressed about upcoming exams. I speak to them every day, but I haven’t yet told them about Charlie.
I have already done my homework and eaten the dinner that I’d brought back from the café, so there isn’t much left for me to do. I take my shower and wait mostly, pretending to watch television, until I feel like I can fall asleep.
I wake at a quarter past six, fifteen minutes before my alarm is set to go off for my class at eight. I like to give myself time to eat and enjoy my morning. What wakes me is a pain in my stomach – it hurts terribly, and my legs tremble under the warm covers of my bed. I had nightmares that I wish I wouldn’t have remembered this morning. I feel helpless to my own anxiety, but I still try to reason with myself.
Eat something; drink herbal tea. You’ll be fine, Stella.
I am not so lucky, though. Minutes after I take my first bite of Asiago bagel, I am running down the hallway to the bathroom.
The passing time doesn't make me feel better either, and I decide to skip my eight o’clock class. In lieu of that lecture, I try to decide if I can even allow Charlie to take me to the gym.
I hate myself in these moments.
In therapy, they tell you not to blame yourself, that what others do to you is not your fault. Somehow though, I must have missed the part about not blaming other innocent people, because I shouldn’t be afraid to watch Charlie train for a sport in which he is a professional. I deserve the blame, for the faults that I make up in others.
By ten o’clock, I decide to call Charlie and cancel our plans. I find his name in my phone and send my call, wishing desperately that my body wouldn't have reacted to my senseless fear.
“Stella,” he says into the phone. The slight rasp in his voice sounds amazing through the line, and for a second, I am so calmed by it that I don’t want to cancel. He clears his throat. “Is everything okay?” he asks, “Do you still want me to pick you up soon?”
“I'm really sorry, Charlie. I got sick this morning.” It’s the truth, but even the truth is as peculiar as it sounds.
“You’re sick?” He asks, his tone somewhere between concerned and suspicious.
“I think I must be. I’m so sorry, I wanted to see you.”
By the end of our conversation, I fear that he is blaming himself, thinking that I am a fragile and emotional little girl whom he shouldn’t have asked to watch him hit a punching bag. And I am disgusted with myself because right now, I am being fragile and emotional, and I hate it.
He’s seen something in me, and I in him. Yes, I’ve had a difficult past, and it still affects me, it makes things harder sometimes. But I sense that he is the same way, and he is trying so hard. I could be wrong, but I imagine that he doesn’t invite girls to watch him train very often – I should be more grateful.
By 10:50, I decide that I have to go. I don’t care if I come out of the gym so frightened that I want to hide under my own bed for the rest of my life. I’ll go for him.
Rather than call Charlie and look like a fickle, indecisive brat, I call Mr. Miller, hoping that maybe Charlie has told him where he trains during one of their past conversations. I had always tried to listen in on their conversations since, until recently, it was the only time that I was able to hear Charlie speak, other than ordering oatmeal. Sometimes, I would be busy with other customers though, so I might’ve missed it.
Thankfully, Mr. Miller answers when I call, and he does in fact know the name of the gym. He is able to give me simple directions, too. He doesn’t ask why I need to know, but I offer an explanation anyway, saying that Charlie had invited me and I’d lost the address, so I needed to look it up again by the gym’s name. I hurry then, and I make it to the gym only fifteen minutes late.
The gym is small, but very nice and rather immaculately clean. Charlie and his trainer are the only people in the entire building whom I see, along with a young boy of about nine or ten, I guessed.
Charlie has his back turned to me at first. What captures my initial attention is that there are tattoos scattered on both of his arms, all in black ink. I hadn’t considered that he might have tattoos, given the fact that his arms are always covered, despite the pleasant, fall temperatures of South Carolina.
He wears a loose, white tank top and black workout shorts. His bare arms are just how I pictured them, despite the tattoos: large, muscular, but not “ripped,” necessarily, which was something that I really liked about his body.
His trainer and the boy spot me before he can. But when he sees his trainer staring past him, he turns.
“Hey,” I say, cheerfully, hoping that he isn’t annoyed that I've shown up after canceling.
He grins and walks immediately over to me, greeting me as he does. His trainer calls the younger boy by name – Mason. The boy stands from the chair that he had been sitting on by the wall nearest me, and he goes to the trainer.
“Are you feeling better?” Charlie asks when he reaches me. He casually holds either side of his lower hips between his long fingers and stares down, looking me in the eyes.
“Yes,” I say. “I think I must’ve just eaten too early, or something.”
“I’m glad you came,” he says.
He confidently introduces me to his trainer and the boy – the trainer’s son. Charlie’s trainer’s name is Mark Isaacs. He is around the same height as me, much shorter than Charlie. He is actually quite robust around the waist and has ultra short, dark hair.
His son, Mason, is short and slender and his hair is much lighter than his father’s. He has very bright, green eyes and a happy smile.
Charlie and Mark go back to work and Mason and I sit beside each other on chairs, watching and chatting.
“Charlie said you were sick,” he states, “I’m sick, too, that’s why I’m not at school.”
I feel terribly guilty. Charlie must have told Mason and Mark that he'd invited me and then, that I had canceled. I’m endlessly thankful that I pulled myself together to show up.
I ask Mason where he goes to school, not that I'm familiar with any of the elementary schools in Clemson. But when he tells me, I ask him how he likes it, what he likes to do, which subjects he enjoys, etc. He is a really sweet kid, and very smart.
He tells me that Charlie helps him practice for sports a lot. He says he prefers when Charlie coaches him, rather than his dad, because Charlie is much nicer.
After just an hour, Charlie and his trainer walk over to Mason and me.
“We are cutting it short today, because I told Mason that I would take him to get ice cream, and we're bringing his old man along, too. Would you like to come with us?” Charlie asks.
I say yes, and we all walk just a short distance down the street to a small ice cream shop. Charlie pays for everyone without asking, even though his trainer is significantly older than he, and despite the fact that Mason is Mark's son. He shouldn’t be paying for me either, but he ignores my protest again.
The four of us talk for a long time over ice cream, just friendly conversation. Mark already knows about my job at the café, and of course, he is familiar with Mr. Miller. When he asks how well I'm balancing school and work, I tell him that I find my schedule fairly easy to manage, and that I would like to start working one more day a week, doing something that relates to my major.
“I know the best child’s psychologist in town,” he says, “I could give you her number, and you can tell her I sent you. She may have some sort of position for you.”
"Really? That would be amazing." As I thank him, I wonder idly how and why he knows a child's psychologist, but I don't ask.
“We should probably be going,” says Mark, tapping his son’s shoulder. “It was so nice to meet you, Stella. I hope I get to see you more often.”
Mason says goodbye to Charlie and me and I tell him that I hope he feels better. After they’ve both left us at the picnic table outside of the ice cream shop, we’re quiet for a moment.
“Stella,” Charlie says calmly, “Why didn’t you want to come this morning? You sounded upset when you called, scared even.”
I take a deep breath in and I let my lips fall open a tiny bit, trying to relax and prepare myself. I almost want to lie. But if I were to lie once about my past, I would find myself lying all of the time. They would cover me in layers, and Charlie could never really know me. I want him to know me; I want to know him.