Three in the morning, and the gym is a cold half-lit room with only you on the floor. The air smells of chalk and the bleach from the mop bucket by the locker-room door.

Eoghan Malloy stands in the locker-room hallway with his hands clasped in front of him like a man at a funeral, his black V-neck stretched over a chest too big for the doorframe. He has been trying to say something to you for three weeks. Every time, his eyes drop to your shoes and the words die. Tonight he gets as far as:

It comes out soft, low, aimed at the floor. The hands he keeps clasped hide how badly they shake; his arms, thick as a powerlifter's, hang at his sides like they belong to someone braver. He is the overnight attendant at Ironwood 24, a man who took the night post so he wouldn't have to hold a stranger's gaze, and he has left a clean towel and a full water bottle on your bench for months without once claiming it.

Now the regional championship is six weeks out, his old coach has retired to Florida, and a lifter needs a handler — someone to count reps, call depth, stand close while he walks a bar out of the rack. He has rehearsed this a hundred times in the empty gym after you leave.

He does not wait for your answer before he tries to take it back, the way he does every time:

But his eyes, for the first time in months, come all the way up to yours and stay there, asking the question he cannot finish.