The Will(53)

Jake said nothing, reading her mood and deciding she didn’t need a grief counselor or a conversationalist.

She needed a listening ear.

So he was going to give it to her.

However, he was wrong.

He knew this when she turned his way and caught his eyes in the dim light.


“Can you just tell me how you met?” she requested quietly.

“I’ll tell you anything you want, baby,” he replied quietly.

She nodded and Jake gave her what she needed.

“My gym was goin’ down,” he shared.

She tipped her head to the side and he kept going.

“To make a real go of that place, I need to offer boot camps, spin classes, aerobics and shit. In a town this size, a boxing gym is not gonna make a man a shitload of money. And it didn’t. Problem was, I had three kids to take care of and a wife at that time and I needed to make money. A friend of mine is a reporter for the county paper and when it looked like the gym was gonna go down, she made a big deal of it, hoping to get me more members. The Truck losin’ his gym. The kids losin’ their league.”

“The kids losing their league?” she asked.

He nodded. “Got a junior boxing league runs outta the gym. They train three afternoons a week after school and have matches on the weekends. There isn’t a shitload of kids in it but we always got around twenty or thirty. Makes no money, dues they pay barely cover equipment and it eats up gym time. Still, it keeps kids from doin’ f*cked up shit and it teaches them discipline, gives them confidence, shows them it’s important to take care of their bodies, and gives them the means to stick up for themselves.”

“You never mentioned that,” she noted.

“Haven’t known you that long, honey,” he replied.

She nodded then said, “I’ve heard this ‘truck’ business and your gym is named that. What does that mean?”

“I’m The Truck.”

“Pardon?”

He grinned at her. “I’m The Truck, Josie. Used to box. That’s what they called me.”

She straightened in her seat. “You’re a pugilist?”

His grin got bigger. “Uh…yeah, I’m a pugilist. Used to be a pretty good one. That’s how I could make the paper, even if it was just the town paper. Started boxing early, just for a workout. Wasn’t into team sports and my dad wasn’t into havin’ a kid layin’ around watchin’ TV. Found it suited me. Liked bein’ in my head, havin’ it be about what my body could do but more, while my body was being challenged, I had to keep my head. You get trained, you learn your opponent, you have people drilling strategy in you, but when you’re in the ring, there are only two of you and the goal is pretty extreme. You gotta beat the shit outta the other guy so he doesn’t do it to you.”

When he stopped talking, she asked, “And you were a pretty good one?”

“Yeah.”

“How good?”

“Had a couple pay-per-view fights in Vegas. That good.”

She sounded adorably confused when she asked, “Is that good?”

He smiled at her again. “Yeah, Josie. That’s good. Boxed in college, had a trainer-manager approach me, ditched school my junior year, went all in. It worked. Got some big fights. Made decent money. Did some traveling and saw some nice places. It was good, exciting, I liked it and I loved to box. But you gotta do it smart and you gotta get out when it’s time to get out. Your body can’t take that forever. I got out, came home to Maine, used my earnings and opened the gym.”

“I still don’t understand why they call you The Truck,” she said.

“I’m called The Truck ‘cause I knocked out a kid in college three minutes into the first round. When the college paper asked him what happened, he said my right hook was like getting hit in the face with a Mack truck. It stuck.”

“I’m taking it that’s complimentary,” she guessed and that got another smile out of him.

“Yeah, babe. Very,” he confirmed.

He saw her teeth flash before she prompted him to get back to the story, “So, you were going to lose you gym…”

“Yeah. And Lydie saw the article,” he told her. “She came to see me. Not sure she wanted The Truck to keep his gym. It was probably more about the kids having their boxing league. But whatever it was, she came to offer me money to help bail me out.”

“Ah…” she murmured.

“Lydie’s Lydie, way she was, she got me to talkin’ and she got the whole story. Dad was dead. Mom was draggin’ and we’d find out not too long later she was dyin’. My gym was in the red and to put food on the table, I was a bouncer working nights at The Circus. We were livin’ in a two-bedroom apartment close to the wharf and that place wasn’t good normally, but it smelled like dead fish depending on which way the wind was blowin’. Donna was beginning to embrace her inner cougar so she was more interested in getting laid than having her kids during her custody times. This meant Sloane was up in my shit, not happy to have two kids most of the time ‘cause Donna was out carousing and a baby in that small pad.”

“Is this why she left you?” Josie asked.

“She didn’t leave me, babe, kicked her ass out.”

Her voice held surprise when she asked, “You ended things with her?”