Celia was arguing with a shirt when Rae arrived.
It hung on a rack beside three others, all black, all apparently different in a way Rae couldn't see. Celia held one by the shoulders and stared into its empty neck.
"I said a plain one."
"It is plain," said the young woman beside the rack.
"It says UNSTOPPABLE across the front."
"It's black on black."
"So I can be unbearable discreetly."
Rae laughed before she meant to. Celia turned.
For a second neither of them performed the expression they'd brought. Celia's face opened, quick and unwilling. Rae saw the nineteen-year-old who'd once gotten trapped in a new sports bra and called from the bathroom for scissors. Then the present woman was back, hair tied high, shoulders bare, looking capable of removing the shirt and its owner from the room.
"Wear it backward," Rae said.
"Then they'll know on the way out."
"Useful. You can stop being unstoppable when you go home."
"I'd need another shirt. OFF DUTY. EASILY DEFEATED."
"Available in beige."
Celia laughed. A real short burst, loud enough for the young woman at the rack to look from one to the other with relief. Rae grinned back.
"Take mine," Rae said. "It's got somebody's name on the back. Apparently I'm grateful to a beverage."
"You look it."
They stood with the rack between them, smiling, and the six years acquired a smaller weight. Rae could have asked anything then. How are you. Where do you live. Do you still make that noise when you sleep with a cold. Instead she reached for one of the shirts and said, "This one's plain."
It wasn't. The lettering simply hadn't caught the light yet.
The promotional room occupied the top floor of an event space that usually rented itself for wedding receptions. Downstairs a couple was being shown chair covers. Up here two women were preparing to convince people they wanted to hit each other. Rae preferred their business. At least the cost was on the ticket.
The required approval had come through before Dorian announced the matchup. Now there were posters, a backdrop and a date large enough to be visible from the back of the room: JULY 3. Someone had placed Rae on the left and Celia on the right. Rae's photograph was newer than the one on her stolen comeback shirt but still too kind around the eyes.
Nita Sol stood beside Celia's gym bag, eating almonds from a paper cup. Rae knew her from other rooms and other fighters: compact, gray-streaked, with a way of keeping her gaze on you after you had finished speaking. Celia's trainer, and plainly no longer a visitor in Celia's life. Beside her was a narrow man in a pale shirt whom Rae recognized as the separate manager she'd seen in the event correspondence. He was on the phone, facing the window.
"Rae," Nita said.
"Nita."
"How's the lip?"
"Still attached. How's your girl?"
"Ask her."
Celia hung the shirt back on the rack.
Rae had meant nothing by your girl. People said it. They said our boy, my fighter, the kid, even when the kid had a mortgage. The reply made the expression stay in the air longer than it deserved.
Mick arrived with Dorian. He kissed Nita's cheek, stole an almond and told Celia she'd gotten tall.
"I've been this tall since you met me."
"And very consistent. I admire that."
She hugged him. Rae watched the old man’s hand settle between her shoulder blades and wanted to be elsewhere.
The photographers called them to the backdrop. There were only five media people and two content crews, but they arranged themselves with the solemn crowding of a much larger occasion. Rae knew how to do this. Chin slightly down, shoulders loose, give them something they could use without looking as if you were giving it.
The first pictures were individual. Celia went first, and Rae had time to look properly.
Celia's body had changed. Not bigger so much as settled. The strength was placed differently: legs, waist, the way the shoulders stayed low when she brought her hands up. Rae had taught her to stand with the left toe turned slightly inward. It was straight now. Nita watched the photographs with a small frown and said nothing.
Celia looked past the lens and found Rae watching. She held her gaze a moment, then returned to the photographer.
They put them together.
"Face each other."
Rae stepped in. Celia did not give her the inch she expected. At this distance Rae could see a small scar beside the younger woman's eyebrow that hadn't been there when she left. She wanted to ask where it came from. There would have been a time when she knew before it healed.
"Closer," said the photographer.
"Buy us dinner," Rae said.
People laughed. Celia didn't. Her face wasn't angry. It was working.
They stared until Rae could feel the foolishness of it, two women holding an argument for people who didn't need the words. Then the photographer said good and they stepped apart.
At the table Rae got the microphone first. Of course she did. The comeback, the old title, the student against the teacher: all the things that made Celia's last six years a preface to Rae's return.
"How does it feel to be here with someone you helped shape?" a man asked.
Rae glanced at Celia. She was turning the cap on a water bottle, slowly, though it had already come off.
"She was trouble from the start," Rae said. "You could see she had it. Couldn't get her to do a warm-up without arguing, but she had it."
"Some things don't change," Mick said from the back.
Celia looked toward him and smiled. Rae wanted that smile at her end of the table.
"It must be special," the man continued. "Someone who came through your gym."
"Through my spare room too," Rae said. "I had to teach her everything. Boxing, laundry. How not to set fire to a pan."
A laugh. A good one. She leaned toward it.
"I made the woman sitting here, so if she hits me too hard I'm having words with myself."
Celia put the bottle down.
It made almost no sound. Rae heard it anyway.
"There's a lot of people who made me," Celia said into her microphone. "Some of them are here today. Nita's the one who's going to be in my corner on July third."
The manager by the window had put his phone away. Nita didn't move.
"That's what I mean," Rae said. "She never could take a compliment."
"You didn't give me one."
There was a small silence. Every phone stayed raised.
Dorian stepped forward with the clean timing of a man catching a glass before it fell. He asked Celia about her last win, Rae about the May comeback, brought the questions back to the fight. Rae answered. Her mouth knew the work. Yes, ten rounds would suit her. Yes, Celia was a serious opponent. No, she wasn't doing this as an exhibition.
Celia's answers were shorter. She spoke about her training, about what Rae still did well, and about the advantage of making someone solve a problem they thought they'd already solved. Rae looked at her then. Celia was looking at the man who'd asked the question.
Afterward they needed a final picture for a local sports site: less fight, more history. Rae stood beside Celia in front of the table. The photographer backed toward the door, tripped on a cable and apologized to it.
"Just relax," he told them.
Rae put a hand on Celia's shoulder.
She hadn't decided to. Her hand knew where to go. It had steadied Celia before fights, turned her toward a mirror, pulled her away from a stranger who wanted too much of a photograph. Now it lay on the strong bare shoulder like a claim placed for the camera.
Celia reached up and moved it.
Gently. No swat, no drama. She took Rae's wrist, lowered her hand, and let go.
"We're good like this," she told the photographer.
He nodded too much and took the picture.
Rae kept her hands at her sides. Her right thumb ached from the comeback. She pressed it against the seam of her jeans until the last camera lowered.
Back by the rack, the young woman had found a truly plain shirt. Celia took it, thanked her and went behind a screen to change. Nita collected the discarded one and folded it without comment.
Rae got a bottle of water from the table. It was warm. She drank anyway.
"She always been that touchy?" Mick asked quietly.
Rae could have accepted the offered alliance. It would have been easy to make a face, tell him six years with better people had improved Celia's manners. He'd laugh. They could go home carrying the same version.
"She doesn't like that story," Rae said.
"Which one?"
"Apparently most of them."
Mick looked toward the screen. "She'll settle."
Celia came out wearing the plain shirt. She had put her hair up again, tighter, and was fastening a small earring Rae hadn't noticed her take off. She caught Rae watching.
"The scar," Rae said. "Your eyebrow."
Celia touched it. "Training. Years ago."
"Stitch it?"
"Three."
"Who did—"
"Rae."
She stopped.
Celia finished fastening the earring. "You don't need to find something to fix."
"I was asking."
"Then yes. Three stitches."
Nita shouldered the gym bag. Celia took it back from her without looking, an ordinary exchange so practiced Rae felt she had walked into somebody's kitchen uninvited.
At the door Celia turned. "Good work last week, by the way. The eighth. You made her start over."
Rae was unprepared for the precise kindness. "You watched?"
"I watch my opponents."
Then she was gone, taking the plain shirt with her.
Rae looked at the rack. UNSTOPPABLE hung alone at the end, its dark letters catching the afternoon light.
She went back to the table and finished the warm water. Dorian was talking to a photographer about reach figures, the business going on cheerfully around her. Somewhere on a hundred phones she was still standing beside Celia, hand suspended in the second before it was removed.