Chapter 35
Good news, good news, good news
That's all they wanna hear
No, they don't like it when I'm down
But when I'm flying, oh, it make 'em so uncomfortable
So different, what's the difference? —Good News, Mac Miller
Bella
It was four days into the National Golden Gloves Tournament being held in Kansas City, Missouri. Quarter finals.
Jacob called each night to share the good news, so I expected the cell phone singing and jumping on my bedroom dresser was him. I guessed correctly. "Hey," I said, filled with excitement.
"It's over. I'm done." His breaths were coming in hard, as if he just exited the ring. He paused, and I waited for him to tell me he won again, but he said, "I just got super, super tired this time."
A second of soaking up the gloom infused in the words, and I grasped what he meant. He lost. My heart ached for him. He'd wanted this so much.
"I don't know what the hell happened. I just had no legs tonight."
I briefly closed my eyes, then rose from my bed and gave the opened door a slight shove. "Aww, Jake." The door swayed to a stop only part way closed. "Are you okay?" I paced back and forth.
"Great." He almost sounded sincere. "I even did a three-mile run before I called you just to clear my head. I had all the energy and speed in the world. I felt fine."
Pursing my lips, I was a little confused, but I anticipated some silver lining to the news. Instead, his voice made an unpredictable change, and it all came crashing out. "I just don't get it, Bella! The guy was nothing but a scrub. He wasn't even good! What the fuck!"
"Jake, just tell me what happened," I said, willing him to calm down.
"I got beat! That's what happened! Weren't you listening?" The way he snapped shocked me. He adjusted his tone. "In the middle of the second round, my legs felt heavy. Like the canvas was quicksand or something. And by the end of the last round, my defense was shot. I had no speed, no power. I had nothing."
It was difficult to fathom; Jacob had never performed like he described. The unrecognizable depiction caused me to want to hear the opinion of someone less subjective, someone who viewed the fight from outside of the ring. "Was Ben there?" He was the boxing expert, especially on Jacob's boxing.
"I wish he wouldn't have been!"
"What did he think about it?"
"He said I did great. It wasn't a unanimous loss, but what difference does that make? It's a loss!"
I pushed my hair behind my ear and sat back down on the bed. No words I could say would make him feel better at this point. "I'm so sorry, Jacob."
"For what? It's not your fault. I should have listened to Ben. I didn't train hard enough. I should have been doing it from day one. I only had two weeks of intense, solid work by the time I got to California. What good was that? I busted my ass to get to Nationals, then I just pissed it away. I did exactly what I promised myself not to do. I can't believe I did that. I knew better."
He was talking, but not to me. The unspoken regret of spending time in Washington, of spending time with me, rolling off him in waves, crushed me, however unintentional. I hung my head, staring at my bare feet. If he could have done it over, he probably would have never come home. From day one, as he put it. A massive pang of guilt turned my insides. Even though he wasn't accusing me of anything, I felt somehow responsible.
A woman's voice asked to be excused in the background. The interruption relieved a small amount of the tension.
"Are you still at the tournament?" It was an empty question I used to take the conversation somewhere a little less painful for both of us. "Where are you?"
"I'm standing outside the hotel." His voice evened. "My fight was over a while ago, but I... I don't know. I think I've been in a daze."
"I wish I was there with you." Because then I could have been more of a comfort to him. I could have held him. I could have done whatever I needed to do to make him feel better.
After a brief pause, he said, "Yeah, me too." Then he made a coughing noise. "Bella, I've got to go. I'm going to... take a long hot shower or something and... get some sleep. Try to anyway. I'll call you tomorrow."
His heart was broken, and it sounded like his head was all over the place. I wanted so much to tell him that it would be okay, but I only felt safe enough to say, "Sure... I love you, Jacob..."
"I love you, too."
Placing the phone down, I lifted Winkleberry from the bed stand where she sat and curled her into my chest. A gentle knocking drew my head up. From the slim opening of my door, I recognized the braided leather bands around the wrist. "It's all right to come in, Seth."
The door drifted open, and Seth entered. "Was that him? How'd he do?"
The lump that formed in my throat prevented me from answering verbally. I shook my head.
"Oh," he said and made a sigh of disappointment. "Yeah, when he didn't call us tonight, I figured that. But I was still hoping. I knew he'd call you. So, I came over. Did he say what happened?"
Emmett appeared in the doorway, looking at Seth. "I thought I heard your voice."
That gave me the opportunity to clear away the lump. "He lost by a split decision. He said he got exhausted, and he had no legs."
Seth reiterated some of Jacob's words. "No legs, no power."
"He said that, too," I said, speaking in a soft voice through my frown.
"Jeezus, that's too bad," Emmett said. "But, hey, he made it to Nationals and was only three fights away from being number one... That's got to be like, what? A ranking of four or five in the nation now? That's a damn fine accomplishment to me. Hopefully, he'll see it that way."
"He won't," Seth said. "You know how he gets after a loss. Shit, I wouldn't put it past him to be back in the gym tonight." The concern must have shown on my face because Seth's eyes met mine. "It's not a bad thing. He'll just reevaluate his training and throw himself into his boxing for a while. That's just how he deals with losses."
Emmett shook his head in disapproval. "The guy has really got to learn how to take a loss."
Jasper emerged, freshly showered with wet hair and a towel hanging around his neck, and joked to Emmett. "You're the expert. Show him how."
"I'll show you how," Emmett said, snatching the towel from Jasper's neck and whipping him with it.
It lightened up the mood some.
"Emmett and I are going to grab some pizza at the Pizza Palace. You want to come along?" Jasper asked Seth.
Seth nodded.
"Leah's on her way over. I invited her earlier." It may have been my imagination, but I thought Jasper almost blushed when he mentioned that.
"How about you, Bella?" Emmett asked. Then he told Jasper to hurry and get dressed because he was starving.
"I don't think so." Jake was hurting. I wanted to stay at home and hurt with him. Hanging out with friends and family, enjoying myself while he suffered, wouldn't feel right. As they filed out the door, Seth last, I lifted my voice. "Seth." He stopped and turned to face me. "Jacob will be all right, won't he?"
"He'll be fine... um, just don't think he's ignoring you when he starts working out twenty-four seven. It's nothing personal."
I summoned a smile. "I won't."
Seth wasn't exaggerating. Jacob stayed in the withdrawn training-funk longer than I would have imagined. But aside from that, he and I were doing fine. We remained close, talking to each other regularly.
He wasn't blatantly depressed or anything; he just trained obsessively. Seth, Emmett, and Jasper told me not to worry about it. They didn't see a problem. According to them, once Jacob exercised his heart out and corrected whatever he thought he did wrong, he'd be back to normal. He stopped communicating with everyone in Forks but me, and because of that, I worried about him a lot. So, it thrilled me when he called and told me he was thinking of going to the beach with some friends from the gym.
"I think you should go. Have fun for a change. You never go out and have fun."
"Boxing's fun," he said with a scolding tone.
I rolled my eyes. "You know what I mean. Some different kind of fun, because summer is almost over, you know?"
"Now that you put it that way, I think I will."
We began our ritual of swapping stories, and I updated him on the rest of the gang. "I'm proud of Jasper. He didn't have that depressed relationship-withdrawal the way Emmett did when he and Rosalie first broke up."
Jasper and Maria had quit seeing each other the day after the party at the pit.
"That's because he broke up with her."
"I know, but still. There must be a void when a person spends so much time with someone and then one day that someone isn't there anymore. They went out for almost a year."
"You think there's someone else?"
"Seth." We both laughed.
"Definitely less maintenance," he said.
I heard a difference in the noise on his end of the line. Jacob asked me to hold on because he had another call coming in.
"Hey, Charlotte..."
"No. It's still me, Jake."
"Sorry. Be right back."
I waited for him to return to our conversation, curious about who Charlotte was. Once back on the line, he said, "That was Charlotte, wanting to know if she should pick me up or not. I told her yeah."
"Charlotte? She's the person you're going to the beach with?"
He hesitated. "One of them. She's a kick boxer from the gym."
I doubted he would have ever mentioned Charlotte if he hadn't mixed up the calls. "Oh, I see." My heart began pounding.
"Um... no. I don't think you do. She's just a friend I talk to sometimes at the gym. That's all."
"That's fine with me, Jacob." I was lying. "I mean... You could have told me you were going out with a friend who was a girl. You didn't have to hide it."
"I wasn't trying to hide it. I didn't know she'd be picking me up."
My eyebrow lifted. "Well, is she the person who invited you?"
An odd tension filled his silence, answering for him and flooding me with dread.
To be continued next chapter...
