1/2
Lita usually has very little difficulty compartmentalizing. She sees situations in clear cut lines when others might only see where everything blurs and overlaps. There is a huge distinction between work and play, friend and patient and Lita more often than not knows where to draw the line and when. She can set aside feelings to take care of what needs to be dealt with; however, as she was finding out with most things, James is the exception. It is immeasurably hard to concentrate on the words he's saying and not just how pretty his mouth looks when he says the,. She's looking at his hands and how she's supposed to position her own in response but all she can think about it how his fingers feel when they trail up her skin.
Lita does manage to set most of her impure thoughts aside long enough to digest most of James' introductory lesson. Much like with the shooting practice, he's able to break things down into manageable pieces so that even someone with as little experience as herself can pick the pointers up and replicate them. She is a quick learner, certainly; if James was trying to show this to someone else they might not be able to pick up it up as quickly as herself. Still, Lita has to admit to herself there's something to be said about James' superior skill set and his ability to explain things in a way she just gets.
She shadows his movements, heeds his suggestions, and listens to his tales of rowdy boys of old while she hits the mitt with varying levels of success. There is something so inherently satisfying about the feel of connecting with the glove in James' hand, hearing the smack when she strikes solid and true. It's a different feeling from when she was finally able to hit the bottle way back in the canyon, shattering it into a million glittering shards of glass and grit, but it is just as validating. It's more visceral, certainly. Primal, even. She feels the connection not just in her hand but deep in her gut.
"Your best friend," she asks, a bit breathlessly. She jabs at the glove, her attention flicking back and forth between it and James' face. "He was the one you had in quarantine a while back?"
Lita remembers getting that text very, very vividly, even all these months later. She had hardly knew James then; he'd technically been an acquaintance and yet, decidedly not. He'd been just so damn sad and Lita had been at a total loss as to how to help him. She'd known then that if James' brother had made it as far as he had at that point he was likely to pull through and had told James as much, however much comfort that had provided, Lita did not know. When you're waiting those 10 days and it's someone you love, there's not much you can say that will help soothe your worry.