“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?”
He leaned her way. “With Sloane, finally learned how to do it. Life sometimes sucks and right then, it was suckin’ huge for me. I knew that apartment was shit. I didn’t like my family to be there either. Tight with my dad, loved my mom, not doin’ good with him gone and her goin’. I was not hangin’ on to the gym. I knew it had to go. It killed me. I love that gym. But my family was more important. I was workin’ two jobs, I’d drag my ass home at three in the mornin’, get up to open the gym at seven, crashin’ whenever I could. I didn’t want that and was tryin’ to find a way out. She wasn’t tryin’ to find anything but ways to ride my ass. When shit gets heavy, you stand by your man. You don’t drag him down when he’s already circling the toilet.”
There was a pause before she whispered, “This is very true.”
“I know it is.”
She kept whispering when she said, “I’m sorry she was that way with you, Jake.”
So fucking sweet.
“I was too at the time, honey,” he replied. “But the way she turned her back on me, but mostly on Ethan when she got her new man and set up her new life, not upset I’m shot of her.”
She held his eyes a long moment before she asked, “So is this when Gran offered you money to buy The Circus?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Place was a shithole. And Dave, the guy who owned it, was a dick. Paid the girls nothin’, sayin’ they made their money on tips. Had two bouncers on each night. Just two. For a club like that, that’s inviting trouble. Had girls behind the bar who couldn’t do shit should somethin’ go down. He still made money. A load of it. And when he was looking to get out, I knew, if I could buy it, I could turn it around, make a shitload more.”
“Therefore you told Gran this and she believed in your vision.”
Jake smiled again. “Yeah. She believed in my vision, Slick. Told me, I leverage the gym, she’d give me the rest of the money and, I could make a go of The Circus, pay her back along the way. Obviously I said no.”
She straightened and leaned toward him, sounding surprised when she asked, “You said no?”
“I said no,” he confirmed. “Taking pity money from an eighty-six year old lady?” He shook his head.
“But you eventually took the money,” she noted.
Jake nodded.
“I took the money. I said no about a hundred times first. The good part about this was, she was interested in me, she liked me, I liked her, and she kept at me. In this time, she met the kids, got involved in our lives, we liked her there, we kept her and she kept us. Eventually, she wore me down. I took the money, got a loan on the gym seein’ as I owned the building outright. I closed The Circus down for two months, me and some buddies fixed it up, reopened, paid Lydie back within a year. Paid off the loan on the gym within three. Got myself a four-bedroom house where my kids all have their own rooms. Life changed. Quit sucking. Got good. And Lydie was the catalyst for all that.”
“And that’s how you met,” she said softly.
“That’s how we met,” he replied just as softly.
She was still talking soft when she said, “I’m glad she was there for you, Jake.”
“I am too, honey.”
He watched her turn her head to the view before she said to it, “I just don’t understand how she could be so involved in your life, your children’s lives, and she never introduced any of you to me.”
This was the sticky part.
And it was a fucked up move, he knew it, but she was suffering so Jake waded into the mire.
He would deal with the blowback when, but hopefully only if it happened.
“Babe, she was all about you when you’d come to visit,” Jake told her and she looked back to him.
“Pardon?”
“She talked about you all the time. Thought the world of you. And when you’d come for a visit, she’d get real excited. She couldn’t wait. Not hard to see she missed you when you were gone and she missed you bad. So, my guess, when she had you, she didn’t want to share you.”
“We went to parties and I saw her other friends all the time,” she returned.
“Yeah, but I’m not exactly in her age group and my family isn’t exactly in her social set. We’re not invited to play bridge and we don’t go to church socials.”