by Leigh, Anne
California was known for its celebrities and people handled famous people differently than in the Midwest. There were people who asked my dad for autographs, but they were very casual about it. My brother also signed a few shirts but there weren’t any bras thrown, thank goodness.
Nicholas and I were sitting on the steps leading up the Lawrence Hall of Science, buying time before I drove them back to the airport. Dad wanted to leave before Mom went to bed so the jet was already waiting on the tarmac.
“I’m surprised that Matteo’s so relaxed about your heart condition.” My brother was saying as we eyed Dad talking to Walter, the football program director of Berkeley, who just happened to show up a few minutes after we’d walked into the campus.
Dad probably alerted him that he was here. That or all the social media tags flagged him as being on site.
Dad introduced us to Walter, a man who was in his seventies and was part of the defensive coordinating team at CSUF where Dad had played in college.
My heart pitter pattered at my brother’s words. “Why do you say that?”
“Well.” Nicholas waved at a bunch of girls who were checking him out. “Normally Matteo would freak out about something like that, he’d be calling me at all hours and going crazy about what he’d do. Especially when it came to you. Maybe he’s really growing up.”
My brother’s nonchalant laugh made me cower inside my skin.
“Let’s go kiddos,” Dad called out. “Your mom’s texting me.”
Saved by the bell.
Again.
Nicholas stood up and hugged me on my side.
“I’m glad Dad and I came,” Nicholas said.
I agreed, “Me too.”
“You’re good for him, Ali,” Nicholas said before we reached Dad. “I’ve never heard him happier. Free. And so weightless after all these years.”
“I love him.” The only words I could say to describe how I felt for his best friend.
“I know.” Nicholas’ eyes gleamed with joy, and maybe relief. “He loves you, too. Otherwise he wouldn’t risk my friendship or our family’s friendships…for just a fling. I knew that he was serious about you when he took personal responsibility of you when you stayed in Vegas for the summer.”
“Aunt Ava did…” I rejected Nicholas’ assertion.
“No.” Nicholas persisted, we were now a few feet away from Dad. “You think Greyson or you could force Matteo into allowing someone to shadow him, learning the ropes of the business under him? He could have pawned you off to anyone at T & T. No one can make him do anything. Not even his parents. If there’s one thing I know about my best friend – it’s that he only does something if he really wants to.”
As I said goodbye to my dad and my brother, I reveled in the words that my brother left me with.
Matteo loves me.
I knew it with the deepest fiber of my being.
I just had to be brave enough to tell him everything about me.
And hope…
Hope that he would feel the same after everything I had to tell him.
Matteo
Tonight was fight night.
It was the biggest event in SWF. My dad had established Supreme World Fighting Championships to be at the top caliber of the MMA world.
The Grand was an apt venue for tonight, and from the way my dad looked this morning, he was confident that his fighters would perform well against Domination Sports – the burgeoning MMA company on the East Coast, the one that had been talking smack about my Dad and SWF, but Dad just shrugged it off like water off a whale’s back.
Being in the business for fifteen years, Dad was used to all sorts of shit. It was far from the congenial world of swimming that he originated from.
The world of MMA was all about egos, rumors of performance-enhancing drugs, and steroid-induced press conferences.
Other employers encouraged all of that, but my Dad was different. He left the training to the coaches and once in a while, he would give them suggestions, but as an owner, he stayed back and let the fighters do the talking inside the cage. And he never tolerated drugs of any kind. He had a zero tolerance policy for them; if you tested positive, pack your bags and leave SWF before he told you to.
Two dozen championships later and Milo Tanner had become the country’s most respected president of a fight club. A club that had been a source of resentment for him when he was a young athlete, desperate to preserve the charity in honor of the family he and Aunt Brynn had lost. A fight club that had been the reason why my mother’s father had been ex-communicated from us until Reece and I were old enough to ask about our grandparents. If we had any living ones. Mom and Dad shielded my sister and I from Grandpère Maxwell. Until my sister and I asked to meet him. My grandfather showed my sister and I love. He bought us all the toys when we stayed in his house in France, but Mom and Dad had been truthful to us about him.
He wasn’t a good man.
He was the reason why Mom couldn’t say goodbye to our grandmother.
He was a conniving bastard and even from a young age, I knew I never wanted to be like him. I had a good father and he was more than enough of a role model for me.
“What time are they showing up?” Klaus Sturgens’ voice disrupted my thoughts of the past. I’d forgotten he was there for a minute. I’d been so busy with phone calls and e-mails that I didn’t see him walk up next to me.
“Ali said they’ll be here in a minute.” I hadn’t seen her for eleven days, and I was itching to get inside her the minute her plane landed last night. I wanted to rush over to the Liberty Hotel where she was staying with her sister and Geneva, but Ali had been very clear that she needed girl time and that she wouldn’t have that if I was around her.
“So. You and her, huh?” Klaus’ brows had risen up, his eyes reminiscent of his dad, Leif, my dad’s best friend.
Klaus went to my high school. We’d been close friends, but when he moved to Germany for college, we’d lost touch.
We’d only reconnected in the last two years, when he’d approached me on having his company, Sturgens’ Brewery, sponsor the alcohol at T & T Inc. as part of their promo tour. He and I hashed it out and his brewery was the official beer of our European hotels.
“Yep. Me and Ali.” I grabbed the glass I’d set on the table and finished off the water. I was saving the alcohol for later when my woman was around me. I set a limit to the number of drinks that I had now. I’d never go down the path to destruction again and even though alcoholism didn’t run in my family’s veins, I’d rather not start.
“She’s always been a beautiful girl,” Klaus said in a hushed voice. Almost reverent. I had to turn my head to look at him.
“What?” The smirk on his face was enough for me to shake my head.
“Don’t start.”
“I’m just sayin’ Ali’s always been hot.” This time the solid punch I delivered to his shoulder was deliberate. “Shit, man. You can’t deny that she’s a looker, and I’m a man, so I’m looking.”
“You’re also my friend which means that hot should never come out of your mouth when it comes to my girl,” I said, but the bite in my tone wasn’t there. He was only telling the truth. Ali was beautiful and other men looked twice, thrice in her direction.
I had no reason to be jealous of Klaus, he wasn’t a douche like Deckard.
The Deckard who took my girl on dates when I was pining for her. Granted he didn’t know and he’d been out of the picture since Ali and I went bowling with him and his friends. But sometimes pettiness became me. I saw him at the new Lamborghini showing last week, and I pretended that I was busy with a phone call when he’d waved at me.
I didn’t tell Ali that I saw him.
It still grated on my nerves that she went out with him.
Twice.
Klaus and I were in the discussion of which European stocks were hot when we heard a gaggle of female laughter from the west side of the building.
It was still early that not a lot of
people were around, only the event planners and security were milling about. I waved at Dad, Mom, and their friends when they entered the building ten minutes ago.
I could watch Ali walk towards me, but I wasn’t missing another second without her in my arms, so I gestured for Klaus to walk with me.
She was wearing a tight white satin dress that showcased her long legs and her precious cleavage. I immediately had to grab her waist to hide the stiffness in my pants.
Her mouth was on me as soon as she was within an inch of me.
I heard Klaus’ booming laughter as he said, “Lovebirds” to Sofia’s “Gross.”
Geneva joined in and said, “Ali, give the guy some room to breathe.”
To which my girl reacted by pulling away from my mouth, “He’s the one who attacked me.”
I laughed into her bare shoulder, sniffing her scent and thinking that we could skip the fight and spend all the time in my suite instead. “She’s irresistible. What can I say?”
Geneva, who I now saw to be wearing black like Sofia, said, “Oh please. If you start talking mushy, please warn me because I will need some liquor for this.”
Klaus eyed Geneva with interest.
“Geneva, this is my friend, Klaus. Klaus, Geneva. Daughter of Xavier Lockheed,” I said Uncle Xavier’s name both as an introduction and a warning to my friend. Uncle Xavier was well-known in the business field, and he was also my dad’s friend, facts that Klaus was aware of.
Klaus reached for Geneva’s hand and placed it to his mouth, “Nice to meet you, Geneva.”
I couldn’t tell if Geneva was blushing because the lights were dimmed, but I felt Ali giggle in my arms.
Sofia motioned to Klaus and opened her arms for a hug, his big frame dwarfing her, “Look at you. All grown up and clean.”
“Oh shit. You remember?” Klaus’ eyes bulged out of their sockets.
“Oh I remember, Klaus,” Sofia grinned and her smile reached her eyes. “You were showing off your BMX skills to everyone when you fell into the ditch.”
I burst out in laughter as Ali’s left hand touched my jaw. “I don’t think you were there, babe. You were hanging out with Reece inside our house when Klaus here thought he could be the next Tony Hawk and started showing off to the girls.”
Sofia added, “More like Tony Hawk, toddler version, including the poop that got stuck on his clothes when he fell into the ditch.”
“Poop?” Geneva’s eyes were questioning.
“Yeah. The ditch was the unofficial dog poop toilet in the area. None of us knew that until Klaus here gave us all the evidence.”
The women hooted in laughter as my friend took it all in stride.
We traded childhood stories until we were seated in our seats and the announcer boomed over the speakers, “FIGHT NIGHT!”
“Babe, can we go now?” I’d spent half the night cheering on the fighters and a quarter of the time congratulating them in the suite reserved for the after party.
My dad beamed with pride and happiness and my mom shared the spotlight with him.
They’d both gone home for the night.
And so would my woman and I if it were up to me.
“Hold on, Matty.” Her violet eyes looked tired, but she wanted to spend as much time as she could with her sister and her best friend. I understood, but I was also selfish when it came to her. “I’ll congratulate Khalil and then we can go.”
Khalil was the breakout star of the night.
He KO’d Crimson Murphy and won the lightweight championship belt tonight. Crimson had held the title for three years and he was the highest paid fighter in the league. He was also the shittiest human being on earth, so I was glad that he was knocked off his pedestal. He used to fight for SWF, but Dad let him go when a video of Crimson surfaced showing him punching a woman half his size and putting her into a coma. The sports commission fined him, but my Dad thought it wasn’t enough. He was signed by Dominion, and the fight had been the talk of the town for three months leading to tonight.
Khalil was a great fighter, and the fact that he’d welcomed Ali into his fold even when I told everyone not to engage with her showed me that he had guts. I’d talked to him about it when I found out and he’d said that he sparred with her because he wanted to protect her and save her pride. He complemented my woman’s fighting skills and it was then that I knew that he was an even better human being.
In this world of fists and ego, a man saying that a woman had excellent defensive and combat skills took honest guts. None of these men who bled for a living wanted to admit when a woman could beat them, so Khalil was one of the rare ones. He was also gearing up to enter Las Vegas University after a year in the community college. Meaning that he had bigger goals for himself. Fighting was the end goal for a lot of the SWF Fighters. But there were others who saw a future beyond fighting.
Khalil was one of them.
“I’m still upset at you,” Geneva said as she closed in on my side. “You’re an asshole for telling my best friend to not talk to Greyson, but you’re also the asshole who makes her happy. I don’t know if that evens it out, but you’re still an asshole.”
Geneva and Klaus had been trading flirty vibes all night, and I had a feeling that my friend was going to get lucky with the way Geneva had been dancing so close to him.
He was a cool guy and she was a good one so cheers to them. Sofia on the other hand had been warding off flirtations from the guys who approached her. She’d always been so focused on her goals and from what I knew of her, dating wasn’t one of them and neither were one night stands, so she was definitely flying solo tonight.
“Geneva –“ I started, but she held a hand to her face.
“Greyson has been there for her. He was there when you weren’t. How could you tell him to step away from their friendship?”
“I didn’t tell him to not be friends with Ali,” I said, my face tight and my voice contrite. “I just asked him for some time with her so I could establish something with Ali.”
“And you thought that you couldn’t do that while she’s talking to my brother?” Geneva wasn’t soft-spoken, she always spoke the truth.
“It might have come off like that –“ On a trip to Belgium, I’d gotten off the phone with Ali and she’d told me that she and Greyson were planning another trip to India in the summer. I was reeling from a negotiation that turned sour, and the news that Ali had delivered just made me more upset. I called Greyson and asked him why he kept hanging onto my girl. Greyson had aptly responded by hanging up on me.
I’d since apologized, but it wasn’t the same.
Ali had voiced that Greyson seemed to always be busy and he didn’t have time for her these days. It made her sad and it made me feel really shitty.
“It doesn’t matter if she and Greyson are friends. Ali has and always will love you.”
Love me?
“She hasn’t told me,” I responded. I didn’t know why I was talking to Geneva about this.
“Oh come on.” Geneva urged, “Ali’s always loved you. Probably more than you’ve ever loved her.”
Now there was edge to my tone, “Come again?”
I liked Geneva. Her family and my family had been friends for years. But who was she to tell me who I loved? And if I loved her less?
Before I could get another word out of my mouth, a helpless plea rang through the air.
“Somebody help! Ali’s on the floor!”
I couldn’t feel my body when I heard those words, but my feet moved to their own accord.
It felt like I was watching a movie where everything was happening around me, but it was all happening to me at the same time.
Sofia was on the floor, shouting, “Grab the AED! Call 911!”
My knees dropped to where Ali was.
Her mouth looked so pale and as I touched her hands, they felt so cold.
So cold.
Alissa
“Reece, I’ve done this a couple of times, but not this high.”
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Her green eyes smiled at me. Hers were a vivid green while her brother’s was more of grey green.
“Ali, you’re always telling me to go higher. Now that I’m here, you don’t want me to jump with you?”
It was cold.
The breeze was different from yesterday.
Yesterday, the Mexican sun was blistering, but today it was covered by clouds.
Clouds that looked so dark, heavy, filled with impending doom.
“Are you girls okay?” Matty called from the rocks below. He and Kassius had just jumped from the other side and they were on their way to another one.
“I’m gonna jump!” Reece shouted at her brother.
From here, I could see Matty’s eyes crinkle in confusion. “What? You’re gonna jump from that high?”
“Come on, Reece,” I said, jumping over the rocks so I could get to her. How did she become so fast? Maybe it’s all the cross country skiing she’d been doing. Sofia said that it helped develop stamina. I loved the beach. Reece loved winter sports. She was a better snowboarder than I could ever hope to be.
“Just this one time, Ali!”
And in a flash of a lifetime, her words were the last sounds I would hear.
There was a lot of darkness.
Darkness that I couldn’t get myself out of.
“Reece…” My mouth opened, but I didn’t think she could hear my voice.
A flash of light beckoned me.
It was so far away.
So far.
My heart felt so weak, but my spirit felt so strong.
“Who are you?”
I’d seen pictures of her from my Aunt Ava’s photo album.
She looked so still in them.
Now she was in front of me, smiling, filled with life.
She looked like Matty.
And Reece.
There was a light shining above her, and I raised my hand to touch it.
So much darkness. It was so cold.
So much light. I loved the warmth.