Big Man Read online

  The thunk of Tom’s boot echoed dully in Max’s memory.

  “You knock ’em out.”

  “Sometimes. Probably not with an elbow strike. What if you don’t?”

  “Um. Still daze them?”

  “Bingo.” Lewis grinned. He looked manic, with that huge grin. “Put your left hand on your left shoulder and stick out your elbow for me.”

  Max blinked but obeyed.

  “Feel that?” Lewis asked, slapping the jut of bone, albeit hidden and cushioned under a heavy layer of flab. “Felt a bit odd, that, didn’t it? But didn’t hurt, did it?”

  “No,” Max admitted.

  “It’ll hurt him. The elbow strike drives that point down your opponent’s forehead, with all your body weight behind it. Hell of a hard blow, and nine times out of ten, you’ll break the skin. And what do head wounds do?”

  “Bleed?”

  “Like a mother. Split his face open with one of those—fight’s over. He won’t be able to see a damn thing. And in a street fight, everyone else panics at the amount of blood.”

  “But—but won’t it…”

  “Anywhere else, it’s nothing more than a sharp graze or a scratch. It only works so well because the skull is so close to the surface, there’s nothing to protect it, and the skin gets ripped between bone and bone.”

  “Between fat and bone,” Max said.

  “Yeah, granted, you probably won’t be splitting no skin right now.”

  Max stared at the casual…

  What, acknowledgement? Acceptance?

  No, he decided. It was more the bland shrug. The way Lewis had skated over it like…

  Like who cared?

  But he was fat. Everyone cared. It was shitty to be fat.

  “But there’s a trade-off,” Lewis continued. “A good strike, you put your body weight behind. And this is one of the few moves where if you hit home, your weight is going to present Cian with a serious problem.”

  “How?”

  “How much you weigh?”

  Max coloured fiercely.

  “Enough,” he ground out.

  “Yeah, but what? Fifteen, sixteen stone?”

  “About that,” he mumbled.

  “Right. Now imagine fifteen, sixteen stone coming down on your face via a point that gets driven from your hairline to the bridge of your nose.”

  Max grimaced, and Lewis chuckled.

  “Yeah. It’s not pleasant. And between us, you know, it’s a good one for self-defence if, hypothetically speaking, somebody’s giving you some bother.”

  Max narrowed his eyes.

  “Lot of mess, no major damage, nice and quick, and it’ll make ’em think twice. You know. Hypothetically.”

  “Hypothetically,” Max said and grinned. Oh, man. Imagine getting to smack Jazz with sixteen stone via a point.

  “We’re only going to practice today. Takes a little getting used to. And Cian has to get his fitness up. So I’m gonna show you how, Max, and we’re going to put this little knobhead through his paces—”

  “Hey!”

  “Max, you’re gonna practice a strike at him. Then he does a lap of the room. When he gets back, you do it with the other elbow. Fast as you can. And Cian, I mean that. None of this jogging shit, I want you to run.”

  The elbow strike was—weird. It involved rolling the entire arm until his forearm was parallel to his ear and then jamming the elbow down in a rapid crash onto Cian’s—well, the foot of air in front of Cian’s face.

  It felt awkward. And weird. And kind of horrible, the way it scrunched Max’s shoulder fat into his neck. But the downward swipe of his elbow, even over air, felt sudden and brutal. The way he could shove his shoulder forward and drive his weight behind the strike felt powerful. When he decided to jump forward a little, Lewis laughed and said he was getting into it.

  “Good heavy strike, that. Now get the speed up. If he sees it coming, he’ll get out of the way. Cian, start dodging it if you see it coming.”

  That was harder. Cian was quick. And yet—Max followed. The awkward footwork was starting to come naturally. His calves didn’t hurt so bad when he tried to follow and swipe again. And when Cian ducked away, and Max’s elbow bounced off his shoulder with a heavy thump, Max laughed in dizzy, strange delight.

  “Fuck me, glad that wasn’t my head,” Cian said and then flashed a heart-stopping grin and turned to run down the mats.

  Max paused, one meaty arm in the air, and swallowed against a sudden pressure in his throat.

  “Max? You okay?”

  “Uh. Just—just need a drink.”

  The cool bottle of water soothed the burning in his face, but his hands still shook slightly as he returned to the mats and got into stance. Max scowled at his fists. Great. Even exhausted, his body wanted to embarrass him. Bad enough Cian had guessed, but to prove it?

  He clenched his fists tighter inside the wraps.

  “Here he comes, Max. Nice and fast, now.”

  Right arm. Roll. Jump forward. And strike.

  He jumped into it, crashing his weight behind the blow. The crunch of bone shuddered up his arm. His shoulder wobbled with the impact. His balance was thrown, and both of them crashed to the mats, Max winded, and Cian—

  “Whoops,” Lewis said.

  Max’s jaw sagged.

  “Oh shit. Oh my God. Are you—”

  “He’s fine,” Lewis said. “Come on, Cian, sit up and let me have a look.”

  “Can’t,” Cian mumbled. “Might be sick.”

  “Max, there’s a bucket by the door of the lads’ changing rooms. Can you pop and grab it for us.”

  Max heaved himself to his feet. He thought he might be sick too. His elbow was smeared in a bright pink graze, throbbing dully, and Cian’s face—

  Christ, his face.

  The blood was everywhere. On the mats, on his top, running down his face and neck in thick, brilliant streaks. Max couldn’t even see the cut; there was so much blood. He was lying limp as a ragdoll, his hair streaked pink where Lewis had pushed it out of the way to have a better look.

  “Max? Bucket.”

  Max turned and jogged for the door. His heart was suddenly in his mouth. He’d—he’d just ripped Cian’s face open. He’d need stitches. He’d have a concussion. Or worse. What if—what if Max had fractured his skull? What if he’d proper busted him open? What if—

  The bucket had a mop in it, but no water. Max abandoned the mop and jogged back with the bucket, the adrenaline overriding his exhaustion. When he crashed through the door, Cian was sitting up, loosely cross-legged, head bowed and Lewis’s hand dark and firm on the back of his neck.

  “Cheers. There we go, kid. Puke away,” Lewis said, shoving the bucket between Cian’s knees. Cian gripped it but didn’t otherwise move. “Now that was a strike, Max. Lovely work.”

  “Is he—is he okay?”

  To Max’s surprise, Cian gave a silent thumbs up, and Lewis chuckled.

  “He’s got a hard head. Like I said, elbow strikes look a lot worse than they are. Think you’ve rattled his brain cells a little, but there’s only three of them, so I’d not worry.”

  Cian said something very rude—and then finally hurled. Max grimaced at the painful sound.

  “I’ll excuse that on grounds of a concussion.” Lewis shifted onto his knees and pulled a phone out of his pocket. Max shifted uncomfortably on his feet and then hunkered down to sit on the mat.

  “Um. Sorry?” he offered.

  “Don’t be,” came a mumbled reply. “Was a good—”

  The second wave of retching cut it off, and Max winced.

  “Hey Josh, bob down to the private room and scrape our Cian off the floor, would you? Elbow strike,” Lewis said. “Yeah, reckon he’s got a concussion. Might need a stitch or two, can’t tell yet. What? Naw, keep an eye on him, and if he doesn’t get any worse, I’ll run him down later. Still got half an hour in here.”

  Max stared.

  “You—you can’t continue the session
.”

  Lewis grinned as he hung up. “He can’t. I just found a newbie with a heckuva good elbow strike, so of course I can.”

  “But—but he’s—”

  The door opened, and a man in his twenties with dreadlocks down to his backside marched in and, without so much as a greeting, hauled Cian to his feet, bucket and all.

  “Trust you,” the man said, and then—that was it. Cian was gone, and Lewis was standing up.

  “Come on, then. Let’s get a couple of pads and work on that technique. Excellent on the power, but you’ll hurt your shoulder doing it like that.”

  “But—”

  “Max. He’ll be fine.”

  Max frowned, glancing at the door.

  “Promise,” Lewis added, oddly soft. “He’s probably got a bit of a concussion because of the sheer force you just smashed into his head, but he’ll be fine. Not the first, won’t be the last.”

  “The blood…”

  “Head wound. You came in a bit low, so I think you’ve broken his nose as well. He’ll be back in a couple of days with a shiner, right as rain.”

  Max chewed on his lip.

  “Hey.” Lewis clapped him on the shoulder and shook him lightly. “So your Aunt Donna might have told me the incident that landed you in here.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh. Now imagine who’d have ended up in that ambulance if you’d done that to him before he kicked you.”

  Max duly imagined.

  Then squared his shoulders and nodded.

  “Okay. So—what did I do wrong?”

  Chapter Nine

  CIAN WASN’T AT the next session.

  Granted, it was the next day, but—Max still kind of expected him to be there.

  “He’s fine,” Lewis said when he asked. “His mum threw a bit of a fit. She’s none too keen on the boxing business.”

  “Mine either.”

  “Mums generally aren’t,” Lewis agreed and clapped the pads together. “Twenty jabs, twenty crosses. Get your shoulders nice and loose. You ready for a proper class?”

  Max missed. “What?”

  “A proper class.”

  “With—with other boys?”

  “And girls. Yes.”

  “No.”

  Lewis shrugged. “Harder than that.”

  The lack of argument felt—odd. Missing. And Max found himself making the excuse even though Lewis hadn’t pushed.

  “They’ll laugh at me.”

  “They won’t.”

  “They stare when I arrive.”

  “Because they haven’t seen you before. We have regulars just like any other gym.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Then what do you think it is?”

  “Because I’m fat.”

  “Big deal. Not everyone stares because you’re fat.”

  “What would you—” Max started…and then stopped.

  Because of course Lewis would get stared at sometimes round here. Of course he would. Not for fat, but…

  He would.

  “Yeah, what would I know,” Lewis said and snorted. “I’m going to put that down to you’re too busy punching to think. Mountain climbers, five minutes. Go!”

  Max groaned but dropped to his knees and hauled himself into the V. He hated these. He always felt like he was suffocating in his T-shirt.

  “Your strike yesterday was good. You put your weight into what you’re doing. You try hard.”

  Max wanted to add that he was out of shape, overweight, and unable to do as much as three body kicks without stopping for a breather, but talking during mountain climbers just…wasn’t possible.

  “You’re getting fitter already.”

  He wasn’t.

  “And it’s not easy to catch Cian. That’s his strength. He’s not strong, but he’s fast. You’re the opposite. You’ll be good for each other. He won’t be able to really hurt you, not without a heckuva lot of effort on his part, and if you catch him, he’ll go down. Hard. But you need to catch him first, and if you don’t, he’ll wear you out and bring you down that way instead.”

  Good for each other. Christ, what a joke.

  “Listen.”

  Lewis’s knees appeared at the corner of Max’s vision as he squatted down beside his head.

  “If Cian came into the class with you, so you had someone to pair up with for the whole session, would you consider it? And—stop.”

  Max fell out of the mountain climber and grasped greedily for the bottle of water Lewis held out for him.

  “Why—do—you want me—to go?”

  “Because you’re good,” Lewis said. “And because with the right training, with enough training, you could be up on the foyer wall.”

  Max frowned.

  “You mean—compete?”

  “Yeah. One day.”

  Max blinked.

  “You could really be something, Max,” Lewis said quietly, “and the only person standing in the way is you.”

  AUNT DONNA WAS late to pick him up.

  Which meant Max waited in the foyer for nearly fifteen minutes, staring up at the pictures on the wall.

  He’d never really looked—never wanted to—but something about the conviction in Lewis’s voice made him stare.

  The pictures were all at competitions. Sweaty men and women in bright shorts, beaming in fight rings, with belts and arms aloft. All fit. Ripped arms and bulging pecs and concrete stomachs. A woman with black braids, winning a semi-final with a huge smile on her face, had thighs that could have snapped a man’s neck. A man who looked a whole lot like Lewis, white teeth glowing out of a bruised face, could have taken on a bus and won.

  They were fit and powerful and gloriously, defiantly happy.

  Deliriously happy, in Max’s view.

  And Lewis thought he could end up in those pictures?

  Like hell he could. Max could never look like those people. Could never be like those people. They’d never been bullied at school, or moved from place to place to get rid of it only to find it again, or lost—

  The unexpected swell in his chest hurt, and Max blinked back tears and ducked away, out the doors and down the fire escape to wait in the yard.

  They’d never been failures. Disappointments. They were successful.

  Fatso Farrier was never going to be one of them.

  Chapter Ten

  THAT WEEKEND, AUNT Donna’s mum came to visit.

  The bad part was that Max hated her. She insisted on him calling her Grandma Gracie (and what even was that? It sounded like something out of a Saturday morning kids’ cartoon) and she’d said she was his grandma now, and the past was the past.

  Apparently, she’d meant that not having a nana growing up was the past. But Max had taken it to mean Grandpa and Grandma weren’t his anymore because Mum had moved on. He’d never forgiven the old witch for it and had steadfastly refused to accept her as a grandmother ever since.

  The plus side was that Mum and Aunt Donna weren’t exactly Grandma Gracie’s biggest fans either, so when Aunt Donna knocked on his bedroom door on Saturday morning and said, “I rang Lewis. Josh is free to go through a fitness session with you,” Max took the out and grabbed his kit.

  “I still don’t like this,” he said, just to make things clear, as he clambered into the van.

  “I know,” Aunt Donna said, “but a couple of hours with Josh and then walking home is better than all morning with the Wicked Witch of the West.”

  “Why am I walking home?”

  “The shop is tragically going to flood later.”

  Max squinted sceptically at the brilliantly blue, utterly cloudless sky. “There’s nothing in the shop to flood it.”

  “No, but the laundrette next door might have an accident.”

  Max smirked, Lewis’s words drifting back to him.

  “Hypothetically,” he said.

  Aunt Donna grinned from under her shades. “Yes. Hypothetically. Not a word to your mum.”

  “What do I get if I don�
��t tell her?”

  “A tenner, and I won’t ask where you spent it.”

  Which, in Aunt Donna speak, meant he could buy whatever snacks he wanted and not get any hassle for it.

  “Deal.”

  The roads were busy—maybe the rest of the town had heard that Grandma Gracie was coming for a visit, too—and Max was nearly hanging out of the window to avoid sweating to death in the van. He’d never been relieved to reach the courtyard before and had to unstick his shorts from the leather seat.

  “Be back before dinner, or Lucy’ll go mad,” Aunt Donna called. And then she was turning the van around and gone in a clatter of cogs and a belch of thick, stinking smoke.

  “Try engine trouble,” Max mumbled. “It’d be more convincing than a flood.”

  He peered up the fire escape and felt the battered tenner in his pocket. He could just…not go. It wasn’t a training day. This wasn’t part of his sixteen-week course. He could just…wander off.

  But something drew him in anyway.

  The foyer was quiet. Cal was on the phone and waved Max towards the training room with a big grin. The changing rooms were packed with bags and clothes, and music was bellowing out of the main class area. Max changed hurriedly, pulling his tank top down as far as it would go, and shuffled barefoot into the private training room, carefully winding the wraps around his hands in hopes of avoiding the smelly communal gloves.

  And stopped.

  Josh wasn’t there.

  But Cian was. Squaring off to a punching bag at the far end of the room and…murdering it.

  Max winced.

  “Um,” he called. “Hi. Sorry. I thought—”

  Cian dropped out of the stance and turned. Grinned.

  “’Bout time. I was bored, so I let Josh off the hook. You wanna spar?”

  Max coloured. “Uh.”

  Just him and Cian, alone, and sparring? Without a proper warm-up or anything? Oh yeah, no way that could go wrong.

  “Come on.” Cian put his fists up, still grinning. “Let’s play pretend. I’m that gobshite from the bus stop, and you’re Fatso Farrier who don’t take no shit from nobody.”