Page 89 of Rules of Association

My mouth dropped open again. “I do not daydream about Con, Paulo! He is myfriend.”

Lie.I was daydreaming about him a lot lately.

Double lie.Did friends pull you in close and play with your hair and say things like ‘that body’and call you perfect? Even if they did, the way Connor had done it wasveryfriendly. Too much so.

But Pau didn’t know that. The only interaction he’d had with Connor was looking at him through the window days after the incident. We’d come by to get my car and to tell Pau what happened, only to encounter a livid Italian grandpa of a man who simultaneously chewed me out for putting myself in danger and thanked the heavens that I was okay. Turned out he’d gotten the alert late at night that same day but by the time he’d woken up, everything was already over. Still, he watched the video footage and apparently felt sick that this happened when he wasn’t around to protect me. When I asked him what his old ass was even going to do, he said he didn’t have a bear of a husband for no reason.

But so what? He’d seen us together once. That didn’t make him an expert on the way I felt.

“Ah, but you are daydreaming about something. You think I don’t notice you staring into the universe like you want to be somewhere else? And now you mess up even more than you did before.” He tsked, shaking his head like I was a petulant child. “Tell me what you’ve been thinking before I—”

“You know, you can’t just keep threatening to throw me out any time you feel like it,” I said. “Butsince you can’t help your nosey old ass, I’ll tell you.”

Pau only glowered as he crossed his arms. But he settled in with a hip against the counter to listen.

“We—Itook this class yesterday at a fighting gym. For exercise! Don’t give me that face,just for exercise—Anyway, it was actually a lot of fun and I dunno.” I shrugged as my thoughts trailed off, incomplete.

“You don’t know? What does this mean,you don’t know?”

“It means,I don’t know! It was…fun”

“You already said this.”

“Fun and…I dunno.”

His mouth wobbled at the corners and I got the distinct impression that he was laughing at me. But before I could narrow my eyes and call him on it, he straightened up and looked out the front window. “Looks like the sun is setting, bimbosa. Time to go.”

Sunset was the new curfew Connor had given me for leaving here by myself. He’d made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want me hanging around here at night in case that guy decided to come back and finish what he started. Pau didn’t seem to have a problem with it at all. Especially because it wasnotsunset right now. Nowhere near it.

I looked outside too. We were in the middle of our midday lull. The sun was very high in the sky, far from setting. But when I told him as much, he just waved me off. “You are young. Go enjoy the day. Maybe explore those classes that are so…fun.”

* * *

“Can I help you, honey? Oh! You were here the other night weren’t you—don’t tell me, let me guess… Cecil?”

I smiled at the front desk woman at Counter Strike Fighting Gym, Ms. Chelsea. Her deep skin glowed against the sunlight streaming in through the front window. The sun was setting just on the horizon, casting the room in this half glow.

Pau sent me away early again. The first time he’d done it the other day, I had almost come to the gym like he suggested, only thinking better of it at the last second. Yesterday I had only gotten as far as the parking lot, peeking in through the window like a total fucking creeper. Today I told myself to stop being a puss and go in.

So here I was, standing in front of the short black woman who called me honey and gave me warm feelings. She seemed like a warm hug of a person, but as she leaned forward on the countertop, I realized that warm hug would be pretty fucking tight if her jacked arms and toned shoulders had anything to do with it.

I knew I liked her for a reason.

“It’s Ceci,” I said as I approached the counter. Black surfaces took up the space she leaned on and I ran my eyes along the top, not sure what I was searching for.

“Right, right! Well, can I help you find anything, Ceci?” she asked as she watched me survey the empty countertop.

I paused, contemplating. Could she help me? “I don’t know. I guess I’m just wondering if you guys have any brochures or an information center?”

The smile that spread across her round, weathered face was knowing. “We’ve got a bulletin board right over there. Take any flyer you want, we replace them all the time.”

I followed her finger over to the wall that separated the main rooms from space around a bend. I suspected they were offices by process of elimination. The bathrooms were in the very back and I’d already seen each of the separate activity rooms. The offices were the only thing I hadn’t scoped out yet.

The bulletin board was as big as a classroom whiteboard and covered an array of papers ranging from flashy gloss flyers to white copy paper with barely legible scribbles on it. They all offered some type of service or another. Boxing lessons, Introduction to Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu sparring sessions, Krav Maga and so on.

They all seemed interesting, but I wish I knew more about them. More about which one might be good forme.

“I had a feeling you’d be back.”

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