They circled my shoulder

The shoulder clicked at forty-five. Danny counts out loud to keep me honest. Forty-five out of sixty pull-counters and the gym was so quiet I heard the sound leave the joint. Jules was in the corner. I know she heard it. We didn't speak about it. Ten minutes on ice, then we started again. Easy to put in a paragraph. Not easy to put anywhere else.

Tom Vass rang me direct. Not Danny. Me. I didn't speak for about ten seconds and he said my name twice. He said Voss's team has my last three inter-gym rounds and they're building the read live, not off one clip. Three rounds I worked. Someone filmed them, someone packaged them, and now someone is selling the shape of my body back to me. He said, "I was never on their side. I was always on yours." I still haven't answered that. I'm not sure I believe him. I'm not sure the apology is even the point. The footage is the point and the apology is a separate thing and I'm not ready to sort the two apart.

At four they posted a thirty-second promo with Voss shadow-boxing and Briggs on the mic and the AIS shoulder-protect pattern circled in white. Someone watched me, three times, and decided the headline of me was the shoulder. The thing I've been hiding under tape and bag work since the AIS is now framed and posted and pointed at. I want to be sick about it. I'm not. I'm in front of the bag. That's the bit I'm noticing about myself, the way the worst feeling gets rerouted straight into the next round.