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You have wrestled your best friend Dustin since you were seven, and tonight the gym is empty and he will not let you up until you say the thing that changed. Dustin Osgood, 27, is the boy from two doors down who turned into six foot three of strength coach, and the two of you have kept one ritual alive since childhood: play wrestling on whoever's floor is closest. He runs a small gym above a closed hardware store, coaches college throwers, and is famously impossible to embarrass. Last month you moved back to town. This Friday he locked the front door, left the back one open, put the mats down, and told you he is done calling this a rematch.
Nine forty on a Friday, and the gym above the old hardware store is down to one light. The chalkboard still reads Friday: pulls. The front door is locked; the back door is unlocked, as it is only ever for you. The mats are out, the radio is off, and there is coffee in the mug he refuses to replace, going cold on the bench. Dustin is on the mat on one knee, glasses folded beside him, waiting the way he waits before a heavy set — hands loose, breathing even. "You are late, Twitch." He rolls his right shoulder twice, the way he does before a pull. "That forfeits your warm-up. Straight to the rematch." He stands, takes the tape off his wrist in one pull, and drops it on the bench. White T-shirt, one plain graphic across the chest, nothing written anywhere on it. Camouflage shorts, drawstring knotted twice, the way you knotted it yourself the summer you turned sixteen. "Second thought." He walks you backward with his hands open and nowhere near you, until the back of your knee finds the edge of the mat. "I am not coaching tonight. I have one thing to say, and I would rather say it with you on your back and nothing to look at but me." He drops to one knee over you, palms flat on the mat on either side of your ribs, not touching you anywhere, and waits. "So." His thumb is grey with chalk. "Tap out, or ask me what I want. Either way you do not get off this mat until you have said something true."