He stood near his table of pamphlets, arms crossed, watching the raffle with a tight smile plastered on his face, nodding along whenever someone glanced his way. Underneath it, something else was working. A calculation, a plan taking shape. He’d come to Cedar Falls expecting an easy win tonight. A grateful crowd, a stack of signed membership forms, a nice clip for his own website, the kind that said, “Local hero brings safety to small town seniors.” Instead, a girl in a gray polo shirt had corrected him in front of an audience, and he hadn’t been able to shake it since. Men like Derek didn’t handle that well. They never had.
Near the equipment table, Cory zipped up a duffel bag while Derek paced a small circle nearby, arms crossed, jaw tight. “You good, boss?” Cory asked, mostly out of habit. “I’m fine,” Derek said. Though his voice had none of the warmth it carried on stage, just thinking about how to close this out right. Cory had worked for Derek long enough to recognize the difference between the public voice and the private one. The public voice sold memberships. The private voice was the one that came out when something small had gotten under his skin and refused to leave. “That thing earlier,” Cory said carefully. “Nobody even remembers it by now. Crowd’s happy, raffle’s going great.” “I remember it,” Derek said flatly. He glanced across the gym toward the storage closet, and something tightened in his expression. Something that had very little to do with self-defense and everything to do with a bruised ego, looking for a way to feel large again.
Derek Vance had built his entire identity on being the most capable person in every room he walked into. It was part of why he’d chosen this career in the first place, years back after a string of amateur fights that hadn’t gone the way he’d planned. After a coach who’d eventually asked him to leave the gym and not come back, he’d told himself and everyone else a different version of that story ever since. One where he was always the best in the room. One where nobody ever got the better of him. Tonight, a community center employee had cracked that story just slightly in front of an audience. And Derek Vance had never once in his entire life been able to let a cracked story stay cracked.
“I’m doing one more demonstration before we wrap,” he said. “Something bigger. Something that reminds everyone why they’re here.” Cory hesitated. “You sure that’s a good idea? Crowd’s tired. Might be better to just close it out easy.” “It’s a great idea,” Derek said, already walking away, already rehearsing the words in his head. Cory watched him go, a small knot of unease settling in his stomach that he couldn’t quite name yet.