Page 68 of Now to Forever

She nods. “Art.”

I clap my hands. “Perfect! Tell him you want to draw his”—June clears her throat and gives me a warning look—“face,” I say with a sweet smile.

Wren nods, like this isn’t the worst idea.

“I’ll do your makeup for the festival,” Wanda declares. “You’ll be the prettiest apple in the peck.”

“Yeah,” Wren says like she’s summoning courage from the energy of the minivan. “Okay.”

When we all start clapping and squealing, she rolls her eyes. “Hags are so weird.”

We fall silent, Wanda, June, and I looking at one other.

And then, we laugh.

Twenty-Three

OntheoutskirtsofLedger, Fight Club sits in half of an old brick warehouse, the other half empty and evidently for sale based on the sign in the window partially covered in kudzu vines.

The door of the gym is propped open with a broken brick. Loud music mixes with laughter, shouts, and the smacking of gloves against bags as I slip inside. I smile at the guy behind the counter. He looks at me, eyes narrowing as he folds his tattooed arms across his beefy frame, no doubt remembering me from the one and only time I was here before. “You gonna be trouble?”

I shake my head solemnly, holding up three fingers. “Best behavior. Scout’s honor.”

He grunts, hands me the paper to sign and takes my credit card then nods for me to go in.

Ford doesn’t know I’m coming. I didn’t even know I was coming. He came to feed the birds, told me he couldn’t stay because he had a class, and Wren—who had been helping me paint the backbedroom—took off to do homework. Then the idea consumed me. After he talked about it the other night, I had to come back. See what he’s like in here. What the classes he takes are made of, and why he wants to buy it. As frustrated as I was when he told me he wanted to take it slow—wanted me to stay—and spend time getting to know each other, I want to know all of him. Everything I’ve missed about him in the last twenty years—right down to what he looks like when he works out—and I want to know it all at once and immediately. Every change, every habit, everything. If I only get Ford for a few months, I want every. Single. Bit.

And a very,verysmall part of me is curious to know what it feels like to move with the purpose of feeling different. Feeling . . . less.

I hear Ford’s voice before I see him. “It’s easy to be impatient,” he’s saying to a small group of boys. “To want to take what we feel and get right to beating the hell out of something. But the warm-up can be just as beneficial. Sometimes I think more so.” Seven sets of eyes watch him as he talks. He eclipses them with his size; they’re all kids. The oldest maybe twenty, the youngest somewhere around Wren’s age. Their bodies are all different, lanky to portly, one kid is wearing glasses, one has braces, two have acne, but they wear the same Fight Club T-shirt as Ford.

It strikes me: Ford isn’t taking a class, he’s teaching it.

I slip onto a bench behind him, and he’s oblivious to my presence, wholly focused on them. Watching him with them feels like I’m being let in on a secret piece of him. A gift that can’t be replicated.

He takes time to look each of them in the eye. “John, eyes up, man.” The lankiest of the kids looks at him reluctantly. “We approach every part of this practice like we approach our problems in life. Head on. Don’t shy away from the hardest parts. You hear that little voice that screams‘run away from this and don’t look back’?” Ford shakes his head, his next words underscored by a hint of laughter. “Believe me when I say, you can’t outrun them. But, with time and effort, you can work through them. Feel ’em to heal ’em, so they say.”

A couple of the kids chuckle, a couple roll their eyes, the rest don’t react at all.

Ford passes out jump ropes to each of them. “Ten minutes. Notice what your thoughts do when you get uncomfortable.”

“Then what?” one asks. “We finally get to hit something?”

The boys snigger.

“You keep jumping. Think of the hitting as the dessert. These are your veggies.” He waves a stopwatch at them. “Go.”

He keeps his position, a wide stance, as they start jumping. I stand and step beside him. “Coach,” I say, looking up at him with a palm out. “Got an extra rope?”

He does a double take as he looks at me, taking in my yoga pants and cropped T-shirt, surprised smile overtaking his face. There’s stubble on his chin and sweat on his brow. “The hell you doing here?” He looks down at the stopwatch in his hand, at the boys jumping, then back to me.

I shrug, head bobbing back and forth as I say, “Getting to know you. Give me a damn rope before I change my mind.”

He does, biting back a smile as I start to jump.

The next minutes are sheer torture. It’s just jumping, but it hurts and it’s boring and every time the rope hits the rubber mat beneath my feet, I want to quit. Every time Ford announces how many minutes are left—with a smile and encouraging tone—I want to tie the rope around his neck and hang him from the rafters.

But I don’t stop. I keep jumping and mentally telling him tofuck the fuck off.

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