by Nikki Bella
There was also the possibility that, if it turned out to be a trick, that I could make that the story. There was always a way to spin the narrative to suit you. I just hadn’t ever had to do it that way, but I think part of me had always known that it could happen. I didn’t want it to happen to one of my dad’s fighters, though.
But I would. He was too much. If it turned into an exposé on him, rather than some puff piece of flattery and fluff, so be it.
When I walked in the gym was full of guys. No surprise there. Women were making impressive inroads into MMA, but were still in the minority. A few of them stretched on the edges of the room, preparing for training sessions that could last anywhere from one to four hours. This was the second or even third session of the day for many of them. Some of the fighters were working heavy bags or hitting the pads with their trainers. Others were grappling, twisting each other into knots that looked like the height of discomfort. So maybe I would never know how to strangle someone, there were still good things about me, right?
The unifying theme, however, was that they were all, men and women alike, sneaking peeks at what Braden was doing, even though he was just shadowboxing in a corner. The man had presence. It wasn’t just that he was so good-looking. It was more like...how can I explain it? Whenever I watched a movie that Christopher Walken was in, whenever he was on screen, even if he wasn’t the star, I just couldn’t see anyone else. I don’t think he’s ugly, but he’s certainly not that stereotypical leading man, Disney prince type of handsome. But it’s like he shoves everyone else off the screen. Presence.
Having Braden in the room seemed to collapse the world. He had a magnetism that pulled everyone’s eyes towards him. Everyone wanted to know who that guy was, how he did what he did, and how could they get some of it to rub off on them. It didn’t hurt that he was the closest of anyone in the gym to making a big leap up in the fighting world. He was already on top of his division. Or, as close as he could get while he waited on Vlad to head up. Everyone looked like they either wanted to learn from him or be near him, just to soak up some of the aura.
I didn’t want it to rub off on me. As I watched him bob and weave and duck and twist, in that moment I just wanted to rub him on me. Damn him, it was some dark magic. His hands were moving so fast that I couldn’t see them. His shirtless body was streaked with sweat as he danced back and forth in zigs and zags. Every punch and kick he threw sent ripples through his body, out into the room, and straight into me.
I don’t know if he sensed me, or saw me in a mirror, but suddenly he stopped moving, turned around, and trotted over to me with a big smile on his face. It was like nothing bad or obnoxious had ever happened between us. Like he had never dropped his towel and dared me to get in the shower with him.
He bowed to me like he was my butler. “Hi, welcome!” he said, putting out a hand. I shook it and felt sweat ooze out of his wrist wraps. “Let’s go sit back here, Mason said I could use his office. I’m sure you know the way.”
I sure did. I used to go to the office on my breaks and read my dad’s books, or look at his old military pictures. My private father rarely opened up. His office was as close as most people would get to seeing what actually made him tick. The room was full of mementos, medals, framed letters and commendations from his commanders, and of course, pictures of all of the fighters he had trained. I had always loved that he had signed photos of them all, even the ones who had washed out, never won a fight, or who had blamed him for their own failures.
“I respect anyone with the courage to step into that cage,” he always said. “And I continue to respect them until they give me a reason to stop.” He was generous, but his patience was not endless.
Except with me.
I followed Braden to the office and set up my microphone on the desk. We sat in two recliners facing each other. He hadn’t felt the need to put a shirt on and apparently I hadn’t felt the need to suggest it. I wondered what my dad would have made of this scene. The room seemed impossibly small. I ask myself vaguely why I wasn’t sitting on his lap, then checked myself. The interview. The interview. His lap would have been hideously sweaty, so there. Nope, I definitely wanted no part of it.
I wondered if someone might barge in while we talked, screwing up the recording. Then I got annoyed that someone might barge in while I was having alone time with Braden. Then I got annoyed with myself for thinking any of that.
Braden got up quickly and knelt by the small refrigerator. He took out a Gatorade and offered me one, which I politely declined.
He unscrewed the cap, took a sip, and sat back down. “So what do you need from me?” he said, leaning back in his chair, which displayed his abs in a fashion he was obviously aware of. What must it be like to know the effect you had on people at all time? It was a hell of a bargaining chip, depending on whom you were bargaining with. “I am at your service.”
“Honest answers,” I said, checking my equipment and running through a couple of sound tests. “The rest tends to take care of itself. It’s always great if things feel conversational. You know, more like a chat and less of an interrogation? Some of the best stories turn out not to be the stories I thought I was doing. Things can take surprising turns when people are honest. In other words, nothing that is actually revealing gets revealed when there is a script.”
“Makes sense. Anything else I should be aware of? By the way, I love your hair like that.” Braden stroked his chin and studied me. He sounded completely sincere and suddenly I felt like an item on an expensive menu, somewhere between the halibut and the filet mignon.
I felt myself flush, and then realized that I hadn’t done anything different with my hair. It wasn’t bad but it certainly wasn’t worth pointing out. But point it out he had. Ugh, was it really this easy with most women? I was geared up to resist him and still, it was working on me. Was he maneuvering, just trying to be nice, or buttering me up for his own purposes? Maybe it was all three. I wasn’t sure which ones I wanted to be most true.
“Let me guess, next you’re going to say I have nice eyes? Something else you learned from a Reddit Ask Women thread?”
His eyes moved up and down my body quickly but not in a way that felt creepy. He gave me a big toothy grin. “It’s just a fact. Not personal! Science basically says that you’re a gorgeous, brilliant woman. You think I need Reddit to tell me that? I am all about the results. Oh, and I only read Reddit to see all the nasty things people say about me.” Somehow, the smile got even bigger. Worse was the fact that it seemed genuine. I needed to focus and this was making it impossible.
“And what result are you after here?”
“I just want to make you feel good. That’s it. No motive. Most people like feeling good. You should try it.” It would have sounded cocky coming from him the other night, but now it felt like genuine flirting. Stay on track, Alyssa.
“You know what?” I said. “There is something you can do for me.”
“Say the word.”
Time for a test. I swallowed hard and bulled ahead. “The word is that I know you’re just turning on the charm to try and you can get in my pants. If you can’t do this professionally, I walk. And don’t tell me you like to watch me walk away, I want to be done with compliments for now, sincere or otherwise. I know you don’t need the interview like I do, but it can still help you. But please, let me do my job and don’t make this about my eyes, my hair, or all the things you’re thinking about doing to me.” My little speech made me blush, but I meant every word.
Braden actually looked surprised. “What makes you think I’m thinking about doing things to you?”
Oh God, had I actually said that? “I, uh—”
“You know, you don’t seem like all of the other fighter groupies,” he said. “No, no, don’t get mad, I’m kidding, mostly! I didn’t mean that you’re a groupie at all. But with your background, you’re obviously into the fight game. You’ve got to understand, everyone I talk to—and I mean almost everyone—wants someth
ing from me. The only interesting question is what they want, but I usually know. It’s not an easy thing, feeling like you’ve lost the ability to make small talk. I know I can be a little in your face and I’m not always a gentleman, but part of it really is about protecting myself.”
I turned on my recorder. “Fair enough. And you’re right, I certainly don’t have any point of reference for what you’re talking about, even though I’ve been around the sport for a while. I’m not sure I’d say I’m into the fight game, but I know a lot about it. Let’s get started, Braden, are you ready for the first question?”
“Hold on a second. I’m cooling off and getting cold.” He went to the corner and took an official gym sweatshirt out of the box, then pulled it over his head and covered up that banging body. All for the best, I supposed, as far as the interview went. “Go for it.”
“What would you say to someone who told you that there are far more important things than fighting? I saw a T-shirt the other day that said ‘Fighting solves everything.’ It was from a local MMA gym. I bet you know just who that guy is, even though you probably don’t actually know him. That guy obviously thinks fighting is the most important thing. How would you respond?”
What I imagined was that Braden would bristle, and pound his chest, and say that anyone who said such a stupid thing was a coward who fought from behind a keyboard as he posted on internet message boards, that pacifism was a position reeking of intellectual poverty and an acute lack of pragmatism, and maybe then he would turn over the desk and demand to see anyone who suggested that fighting was not the most important thing in life.
“Oh, I think that nearly everything is more important than fighting,” said Braden. “I like what I do, love it, in fact, but let’s not make more of it than it deserves. And of course, it depends on what you mean by fighting.”
I nearly fell out of my chair. His entire demeanor had changed. It had to be another ploy, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t disarming. “Really?” I said with a squeak, fully aware of how mousy and silly I sounded. “You know I turned on the recorder, right?”
Braden nodded and then laughed. “Oh yeah. It’s hard to get away from. This might surprise you. Hell, it will probably surprise anyone who has known me for long, but a lot of the time I feel like I fight to prove something. I know I’m good at it, but I really can’t see myself ever feeling like I’ve improved enough to make up for certain things. I fight with a huge chip on my shoulder. It’s heavy and I spend plenty of time wishing it wasn’t there. I’m not always sure I know where it came from, but I carry it every single minute. It’s great in a fight. It’s a burden everywhere else.”
It was like I was alone in the room, like he wasn’t even talking to me. Braden was staring at something I couldn’t see. Something in the distance, or the past. I wanted to wrap my arms around him, turn off the recorder, and say that he could tell me anything.
“It definitely surprises me,” I said. “Forgive me for saying so, but you seem like the kind of guy, a lot of the time, who gives people the idea that there’s a fighter stereotype.”
He looked up. “What do you mean?”
I plunged in. I had done a ton of interviews, but I couldn’t remember if I had ever had a subject who felt this vulnerable and open. If he had a game, I couldn’t see it. “You know. Overly aggressive. Macho to the max. An alpha even in a room full of alphas. Someone with...well, you said it. Someone with something to prove. What are you trying to prove?”
“That’s a great question. You listen to fighters talk for a while and the promoters are always trying to bait us into trash talking our opponents to sell fights. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes there’s legitimate animosity. But the clue to the guys who are doing it just because they have to is in the clichés.”
“Interesting. Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this. Can you give me an example?”
“Yeah. You’ll hear a lot of guys say ‘I’ll let my fists do the talking.’ Well, okay, but what you’re actually hearing is that guy saying ‘I’m sick of saying the same old thing again in yet another interview. Can’t someone please ask me a new question?’ And that’s what you’re doing with me. You’re asking me questions no one else has asked. Maybe that’s because your mind is different than anyone else’s.” He folded his hands in his lap and nodded for me to continue.
Now this was more like it. Enough about my eyes, more about how my mind is different from anyone else’s. Wait. Unless he meant that I was weird, that I was a freak unlike anyone else. Focus. Compliments later, interview now. “Do you really think that you don’t know where the chip on your shoulder, as you put it, comes from? What do you think you might be trying to prove. Please speculate, if you’re willing.”
Braden sighed. “I’m willing. I think I want to believe, to show myself, that I’m worth as much as my brothers. I fight for money. Sean and Ryan…those are my brothers…they fight for something bigger. They’re soldiers. Marines, to be precise.”
“And why does that matter to you?”
“Because I wanted the same thing they did. Our dad was a lifetime military guy. I always wanted to be my dad. Lucky that way, but he died when I was really young. And I was going into the military when I got swept up in fighting. I wanted to devote myself to something that mattered. But I wound up devoting myself to myself. Whatever I am is whatever you see. There’s nothing more to me. But if you saw my brothers, you’d see versions of me with a little something extra. They’re the kind of men you’d be proud to be with. I’m just the guy you want at your party, if you’re that kind of person. Not that there’s anything wrong with a party, but you know.”
I almost turned off the microphone and put my arms around him. I couldn’t have been more shocked by this turn of events if he had pulled out a tutu and told me that his real dream was to be the prima ballerina in New York. I couldn’t shake the idea that this was all just some strategy of his, but if he was trying to turn me on, it was working. It didn’t feel that way, though. Again, it was like I was barely there. I almost felt like we were in a confessional booth and I was his priest. At any moment he’d snap back into reality and demand that I erase the recording.
It looked we had both been pushed into our careers and never thought we would be good enough. My father had steered me towards my job, but I’d never be good enough because I wasn’t the son he had wanted. A good enough girl still wasn’t a boy. And Braden would never measure up to his own expectations because he wasn’t pursuing his own dreams. All of the posturing—well, at least some of it—was a smokescreen. It was rare to find a guy who could admit he was compensating, but a fighter who admitted it? Now that was an odd bird indeed.
Take it easy, I told myself. It could still be a trick. But I couldn’t quite believe it. It was almost like he’d gone into some sort of trance. Maybe he’d snap out of it at any moment and realize what he’d been saying.
But that didn’t happen. And even if it had, it would have been worth it just to see the
walls come down for a few minutes.
Chapter 6
I woke up feeling hungover even though I hadn’t touched a drop of anything. Sensitivity to light, dry mouth, a general sense of bafflement over what had happened the night before.
Alyssa. Alyssa.
Her name was going through my head like someone had injected it into my skull. No, that makes it sound like it was something bad, which wasn’t exactly true. But I could not stop thinking about her. And me. As in, what the hell had gotten into me last night? My pulse was racing at a pace somewhere north of feeling anxious.
It had been so long since I had had something to anticipate outside of my next fight. My next one night stand. The next compliment someone would give me to or the next check they would write to me.
In the fight game, image isn’t everything—I mean, you could do whatever you wanted to outside the cage. As long as you won inside of it, no one could say anything about it. The result was obvious. But image wasn’t n
othing, either. Perception mattered, and even though I had something of a bad-boy reputation, and even though I had had a year (just one!) that failed to live up to my potential, I had done a pretty good job managing my image as an iron hard warrior, ruffled by nothing. There had never been any reason for me to broadcast my insecurities to the world. It was nobody’s business but mine and even I couldn’t acknowledge them as often as I probably should have. I had always found a way to bury them under training, work, one extra mile, one more round.
But now it was apparently Alyssa’s business too. Like she was a skeleton key that had opened me up, letting everything I tried to keep private ooze out onto the desk between us. I hadn’t been able to shut up!
After I spilled my guts, she had asked me a few more questions and then turned off the recorder. “Do you want me to delete any of that?” she had asked. That was sweet. I could tell she was moved and surprised, but only to the extent that I was aware of anything. I felt like I had come back into my body after going into a trance. I heard someone say that you’re only as sick as your secrets. Did this mean I was cured?
“Do you want me to delete anything?” she repeated.
An earlier version of me wouldn’t even have gotten to the point where she would have needed to ask. I wouldn’t have started blabbing in the first place. But I was surprised to hear myself say no. She could keep it all and use it however she wanted. And I meant it! For the moment at least, I really didn’t care what anyone thought about it, or who might hear it. What had she done to me?
I had to do something. She had put me in motion and now I couldn’t stop circling her, like a shark that won’t be able to breathe if it takes a break and stops swimming.
After my morning session at the gym I waited to catch my breath and then I called her, a million questions running through my mind. I had a horrible moment where I imagined her laughing about how much I had opened up, how I had become less of a man in her eyes...but it was better to just do something than to stay afraid of it. I called her before I could second-guess myself anymore.