Ten Tiny Breaths (Ten Tiny Breaths #1)(7)
“Our past isn’t who we are. I’m me and you’re you and that’s who we need to be,” Livie reminds me. She leaves and I know exactly what she’s thinking. I’m not Kacey Cleary anymore. I’m an empty shell who cracks inappropriate jokes and feels nothing. I’m a Kacey imposter.
***
When I searched for our apartment, not only was I looking for a decent school for Livie. I needed a gym. Not one where pencil-thin girls prance around in new outfits and stand near the weights, talking on their phone. A fighter’s gym.
That’s how I found The Breaking Point.
The Breaking Point is the same size as the O’Malleys in Michigan and I instantly feel at home when I step inside. It’s complete with dim lighting, a fighting ring and a dozen bags of various sizes and weights, hung from the rafters. The air is infused with that familiar stench of sweat and aggression—a bi-product of the fifty to one male to female ratio.
As I step into the main room, I inhale deeply, welcoming the security it brings with it. Three years ago, after the hospital released me from long term care—after extensive physiotherapy to strengthen the right side of my body, shattered in the accident—I joined a gym. I spent hours there each day, lifting weights, doing cardio, all the things that strengthened my shattered body, but did nothing to help my devastated soul.
Then one day, a ripped guy named Jeff with more piercings and tattoos than a jaded rock star introduced himself. “You’re pretty intense in your workouts,” he said. I nodded, uninterested in any direction the conversation could go. Until he handed me his card. “Have you tried O’Malleys down the road? I teach kick boxing down there a few nights a week.”
I’m a natural, apparently. I quickly excelled as his star pupil, probably because I trained seven days a week without fail. It has turned out to be the perfect coping mechanism for me. With each kick and each hit, I’m able to channel my anger, my frustration, and my hurt into one solid blow. All the emotions I work hard to bury in my life, I can release here in a non-destructive way.
Thankfully, The Breaking Point is cheap and they let you pay month to month with no enrollment fees. I have enough cash set aside for one month. I know it should be going toward food but not working out is not an option for me. Society is better off with me in a gym.
After I enroll and get the grand tour, I drop my gear by an available sand bag. And I feel their eyes on me, the questioning stares. Who’s the redhead? Doesn’t she realize what kind of gym this is? They’re wondering if I can throw a punch worth shit. They’re probably taking bets already on who gets me in the shower first.
Let them try.
I ignore the attention, the flagrant comments and snickers, as I stretch my muscles, afraid I’ll strain something after missing three days. And I smirk. Cocky ass**les.
Taking several breaths to sooth my nerves, I focus on this bag, this gracious thing that will absorb all my pain, my suffering, my hatred without protest.
And then I release it all.
***
The sun isn’t even up yet, and the worst kind of old man heavy metal blasts through my room. My alarm clock reads six a.m. Yup. Right on schedule. It’s the third day in a row that my neighbor wakes me up to this racket. “Keep thy peace,” I mutter as I jerk my covers over my head, replaying Tanner’s words. I guess keeping thy peace means not kicking down thy neighbor’s door and smashing thy electronics against the wall.
That doesn’t mean I can’t exact thy revenge.
I grab my iPod—one of the few non-clothes possessions I grabbed in our dash—and scroll through the playlists. There it is. Hannah Montana. My best friend, Jenny, loaded all this tween shit as a joke years ago. Looks like it’s finally going to come in handy. I push away the ache that goes along with the memories tied to it as I hit play and crank the volume to max. The contorted sound bounces off the walls of my confined space. The speakers will likely blow but this is worth it.
And then I dance.
Like a maniac, I bop around my room, waving my arms, hoping this person hates Hannah Montana as much as I do.
“What are you doing?” Livie yells, barreling into my room in rumpled PJs, her hair untamed. She leaps onto my iPod to slam the power button off.
“Just teaching our neighbor a lesson about waking me up. He’s some kind of dickhole.”
She frowns. “Have you met him? How do you know it’s a guy?”
“Because no chick blasts that shit at six in the morning, Livie.”
“Oh. I guess I can’t hear it in my room.” Her brow puckers as she studies the adjoining wall. “That’s dreadful.”
I give her a quirked brow. “Ya think? Especially when I worked until eleven last night!” I started my first shift at a Starbucks in a nearby neighborhood. They were desperate and I have a stellar reference letter thanks to my old manager, a twenty-four year old mama’s boy named Jake with a crush on the bad ass redhead. I was smart enough to play nice with him. It paid off.
With a pause and then a shrug, Livie shouts, “Dance party!” and cranks up the volume.
The two of us jump around my room in a giggling fit until we hear the pounding on our front door.
Livie’s face drains of all color. She’s like that—all bark, no bite. Me? I’m not worried. I throw on my ratty purple house coat and proudly strut over. Let’s see what he has to say about that.