by Rome, Ada
I clutched his back, digging my fingernails into his flesh with each agonizingly pleasurable thrust. He moved faster, our bodies locked in a steady pulse. I spread my legs wider apart and dug my fingernails deeper into his bare skin. We panted and moaned together, grinding and thrashing with abandon as we both reached the peak of orgasm. I opened my mouth with a guttural cry as my thighs tensed around him, holding him tight and strong. He came inside me with a thick, hot wave and a staggering throb of release.
We were both sweating and breathing heavily. Trent rested his head on my chest. I lifted my fingertips from his back, where my nails left red half-moons, and twirled them in the thick, black waves of his hair. His hips rested comfortably between my thighs. I crossed my ankles over the small of his back.
“How do you do this to me, Kat?” he asked softly.
“What do you mean?”
He lifted his head and placed his palms flat on my chest, resting his chin on the backs of his hands. “How do you make me lose control? No woman has ever done that to me before. I am always the one in charge. With you, I’m not so sure.”
I was surprised to hear him say this. To my understanding, he was the one in charge. I was merely the one following along like a lovesick puppy. I didn’t feel that I had any measure of control over Trent. His whims and desires were in full control of both my body and my heart.
“Why does anyone have to be in charge?”
Trent flashed a wide and rakish grin, luminous in the moonlight.
“Sweet Kitty Kat,” he said soothingly. He wrapped his lips around each of my nipples and smiled again. “Someone always has to be in charge.”
He lowered his head onto my chest, his ear pressed against my heart. I stroked the back of his head with absent-minded gentleness as I wondered whether I really knew Trent at all. I walked on perpetually shifting sands whenever he was near. Just when I thought that I understood him, I was knocked off balance by a new facet of his personality, a new depth of emotion, or a new and nagging doubt.
“I can’t shake the notion that I’ve seen that Hades guy before,” Trent said, smoothly changing the subject. “I keep racking my brain, but I can’t figure it out. Maybe I’m imagining it. I should have been the one to fight him, not Oscar.”
“And then you might be the one lying in a hospital bed in Brooklyn. How does that solve anything? Plus, you tried to switch numbers with Oscar. You gave him the option.”
“I should have tried harder. I should have stopped the fight. I knew it was all wrong. I knew that something terrible was going to happen. I’ll understand if Ezzie never forgives me.”
“I don’t think that Ezzie blames you. No on blames you. And you shouldn’t blame yourself.” I lightly tugged at his hair so that he would lift his eyes to mine. “Do you hear me? Don’t fixate on it. You can’t change what happened. And you are not at fault.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I leaned forward and kissed his forehead.
“Besides, there may be nothing to forgive. Maybe Oscar will be fine. The doctor said that they still don’t know the extent of any damage.”
“Kat, I saw him.” Trent’s eyes were solemn, his face taking on a pained expression. “Oscar is not going to be fine.” His shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. His heart beat against my stomach. “I thought he was dead at first. He wasn’t breathing. His eyes were half open. His neck was twisted at an odd angle. In that moment, I really thought that was it. I thought I’d lost him.”
“But the doctors got him breathing again. You said yourself that Oscar is as tough as they come. He will recover. Don’t lose hope yet.”
Trent chuckled ruefully. “Hope, huh? When has hope ever saved anyone? There was a time when I was naïve enough to think that way too. But I outgrew it. So should you, Kat, for your own good.”
His words pierced my heart with a bitter sting. He spoke to me like I was a child or a fool.
“You’re being cruel.” I swallowed back the tears that threatened to spill down my cheeks.
“It’s not cruelty. It’s reality. If you always expect the best, then you’ll never be prepared for the worst. People will use you and exploit you. Those you trust most will betray you without a second thought. You have to be ready, or you’ll never survive.”
“This isn’t about Oscar at all, is it? It’s about Kill.”
“Yeah, maybe it is.” He paused for a full minute. “I’ve been good to him. I handed him a career when he was struggling. I just don’t understand what he wants from me.”
“He doesn’t want anything from you. He wants to be you. Don’t you get it?” Now I sounded condescending. I checked myself and relaxed my tone. “You told me that Kill was the star when you two were in college together. He was the one destined to do great things. Then you surpassed him. He never got over it. He never stopped imagining himself as the big shot, the leader. When you were arguing that night in the office, you said that he was jealous. You were right. He is jealous. He’s jealous of you. He envies your life. He wants your life. That kind of jealousy can be dangerous.”
Trent knit his eyebrows in thought.
“You really think so?”
“I do. You have this idea that you owe him some debt of honor because he helped you fifteen years ago. He didn’t do anything that a hundred other people wouldn’t do for their best friends. And if you ever did owe him a debt, you paid it back tenfold. It’s time to let him go. People change. Friendships change. The past is the past. If you cling too tightly to it, you may only succeed in destroying the present and the future.
My words hung heavily in the midnight silence.
“You’re smarter than you look, Kat Raney.” His lips parted in a sly smile, a shallow dimple popping into his unshaven cheek.
“Thanks. I wish I could say the same.”
He laughed and shifted higher up on my body until our faces were even. He kissed me long and slow. With his fingertips, he brushed my disheveled hair back from my forehead and cupped my cheek within his palm. He kissed my temples, the tip of my nose, and my chin. He kissed the shadow beneath my ear and the hollow between my neck and shoulder. I closed my eyes, and he lightly kissed each of my eyelids as my lashes fluttered from the warm tickle of his lips. He rested his cheek against mine, the coarse sandpaper of his stubble rubbing against my skin with a pleasing roughness.
I love you, my soul spoke softly while my voice remained silent. I placed my hand on his smooth back. My heart already rested firmly within his grasp.
Chapter 14
I switched the plastic bag of groceries to my other hand and knocked on the white aluminum screen door of a row house in Queens. A red plastic tricycle, faded from the sun and rain, sat on the front stoop next to a statue of the Virgin Mary and a sleeping orange cat that flicked its tail now and again as it dozed.
“Kat! Come in.” Esmeralda propped open the screen door and waved me inside. I stepped over the threshold and heard the sounds of cartoon chatter from the living room.
“I brought you some things. I figured you wouldn’t have time to get to the store.” I held out the plastic bag, filled with essentials like bread, milk and eggs, along with a few candy treats for the kids.
“Oh my god, thank you.” Esmeralda wrapped my shoulders in a tight hug and took the bag from my hand. I followed her into the kitchen as she spoke over her shoulder. “And thank you so much for agreeing to watch the kids. I can’t bring them to the hospital…I don’t want them to see their daddy that way…but I also want to be there when Oscar wakes up.”
I could tell from the dark circles under her eyes that she had been getting very little sleep. I knew that she had been keeping near constant watch at her husband’s bedside since the fight thirty-six hours earlier, sleeping in fits and starts in an armchair.
“It’s no problem at all. If there is anything I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
She poured a mug of coffee from a pot on the counter and handed it to me. I sat at the ki
tchen table, a rickety dinette that was half covered in sheets of paper with children’s crayon drawings.
“There is still no change with Oscar.” She leaned against the stove and smoothed tendrils of long hair that had escaped from her haphazard bun. “The doctors say that he is safe for the moment, but they won’t know more until he wakes up. The damage to his neck is bad. I saw x-rays.” She gestured with her chin toward the living room as she picked up a mug from the counter and took a slow sip. “I haven’t told the kids anything yet except that Daddy has to stay in the hospital for a little while.”
A little girl ran into the room, her bare feet slapping on the scuffed vinyl flooring. She wore a nightgown covered in rainbows and unicorns. In the crook of her elbow, she clutched a rag doll with black button eyes and yellow yarn for hair.
“Mommy, can I watch my show? Hector says I can’t.” She rubbed one eye sleepily with the back of her hand and peered curiously at me with the other.
“Lily, this is Kat. She’ll be watching you and Hector this afternoon while I visit with Daddy at the hospital.”
“Hello,” Lily said shyly.
“It’s nice to meet you, Lily.”
She turned to her mother. “When do I get to see Daddy?”
“Soon, baby girl.” Esmeralda spun her toward the living room and patted her lightly on the head. “Now go tell your brother that I said you can watch your show, ok?”
Lily smiled mischievously.
“Mommy said so!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, the sound receding as she sprinted into the living room.
“They can be a bit of a handful sometimes.” Esmeralda gave a closed-lip smile. “Oscar’s mother is at the hospital with him right now.” She shook her head and took another sip of coffee. “I don’t know what we’ll do if he’s really badly hurt. I’m trying not to think about it yet. I never wanted him to do this fighting. He was a boxer when we first met, but then he gave it up when we got married and had the kids. I thought it was out of his system.”
“How did he get involved with the underground ring in Brooklyn?”
“Trent.” She pulled a chair out from the table and sat down with a tired huff. “Oscar was training at his old gym. Trent happened to be there too. When the recession hit, Oscar was in and out of jobs. He worked in construction, and the downturn hit hard. Suddenly, he couldn’t find steady work anywhere. He had this idea that he could start fighting again. I humored him. I didn’t think he would actually do it. I didn’t want him to do it. But Trent can be very convincing. I guess you know that.”
I lowered my head, trying to hide the blush that I felt spreading across my cheeks. I cleared my throat and raised my head again.
“Why didn’t you want Oscar to fight?”
She paused and tapped her manicured fingernails against the side of her mug.
“It’s very difficult to watch the person you love get punched and pummeled on a regular basis. Every time he gets hit, I feel it myself, in my bones and my flesh. I also knew that he wasn’t the fighter that he once was. I feel terrible for saying it, but it’s the truth. When we met, he was a young, brash, devil-may-care stud with supreme confidence. But he changed once he had the weight of a family on his shoulders. I work on and off, but my jobs are never enough to support us. Oscar bore the brunt of the pressure. It made him careful and wary in the ring. It made him nervous. It stripped him of the belief that he would always win because life had since taught him otherwise.”
The germ of an idea formed in my brain as Esmeralda spoke. I thought of the fighters that I had seen swarming around that Brooklyn warehouse, all from different backgrounds and walks of life. I also thought of the family members who trailed them, cheered them, and suffered with them through losses and injuries. Each fighter had a backstory, a reason that he decided to risk his health and safety for the promise of ready cash. Some were thrill-seekers like Trent, but others were family men like Oscar who depended on their fighting abilities to keep food on their tables and roofs over their families’ heads.
Telling their stories could make for exactly the kind of unconventional journalism that KTFO was seeking. It was exactly the kind of edgy, outside-the-box story that could land on the cover of the magazine.
I rifled through my purse and drew out a thin marble notebook and a pen.
“I’m sorry. I have kind of a strange request, Esmeralda.” She raised her eyebrows and watched as I opened my notebook and clicked my pen. “I was wondering if I could tell your story. For the magazine, I mean. There is this contest, and the winner will be on the cover of the next issue.
She looked skeptical and pursed her lips.
“I can change the names and details so no one will recognize you,” I continued. “I really believe that stories like yours will resonate. Sports magazines always glorify athletes, but they rarely pay any attention to the people on the sidelines. We have to know those stories in order to get the full picture of what the sport means. That’s the full picture that KTFO needs. I think we could really make a difference.”
I sat with my pen poised over the notebook page. I figured she would either agree or throw me out of her house.
She stared into her half-filled mug. A clock in the shape of a sun clicked loudly into the silence from the opposite wall. The high-pitched voice of cartoon chatter and Lily’s light giggling wafted in from the living room.
“Ok,” she nodded. “I have twenty minutes before I have to head back to the hospital. Just ask me whatever you want to know.”
For the next twenty minutes, I furiously scribbled notes as Esmeralda told the story of her life with Oscar, from their first date at a pizza parlor to the anxious vigil at his bedside that had briefly ended earlier that morning and was ready to commence anew that afternoon. I felt that I grew to know Oscar through her stories and to understand the depth of their love and their devotion to one another. I also got a sense of the profound worry that she felt every time he stepped into the ring and the terror that she must have been experiencing behind her calm face as he lay fighting for his life in that hospital bed.
Esmeralda turned to check the clock behind her head.
“Well, it’s time for me to go.” She placed her palms on the table and pushed herself up from her chair.
“Thank you so much for this, Ezzie. I’ll do your story justice. I promise. I’ll do Oscar justice.”
She nodded sadly.
“I want you to know something,” she said. “I don’t blame Trent for any of this. I want Trent to know that as well. He has helped us a great deal, and I don’t forget that. He has been a true friend. Oscar knew what he was doing when he stepped into that ring.”
I closed my notebook and set my pen on top. “Trent blames himself. He thinks that he should have done more to stop the fight.”
“He couldn’t have stopped it. Oscar wouldn’t have let him. I know my husband.” She gave a thin half-smile, the corners of her mouth turned inwards. “Tell Trent that it’s alright.”
“I will.”
She grabbed a purse slung over the back of a chair and checked its contents, slipping her phone into an interior pocket.
“I know a few other people you might want to talk to. For your story, I mean. I can put you in touch.”
“That would be great.” I stood and hugged her. She was a good five inches shorter than I was, and her shoulders felt slumped and fragile.
“Keep an eye on those little terrors.” She jutted her chin toward the living room and winked.
The screen door crashed shut behind her as she left the house and picked her way along the broken cement path to her car.
***
Ezzie was as good as her word, texting me the names and contact information of several other sources before I had even left her house that evening. At six o’clock, a woman appeared at the door who looked exactly like Esmeralda but for the addition of about twenty years. She seemed surprised, and I quickly explained my presence.
“I’m Kat, a friend of E
smeralda and Oscar,” I told her. “I’ve been watching the kids this afternoon.”
Hector and Lily were politely eating the macaroni and cheese that I had just finished preparing for them.
“Grandma!” Lily yelled and ran to hug the woman.
“Nice to meet you, Kat.” She smoothed Lily’s hair with one hand and shook my hand with the other. “I’m Silvia, Esmeralda’s mother.”
“Grandma, Kat made us macaroni!” Lily returned to her bowl and spooned an oversized heap into her mouth.
“I see that, baby girl,” Silvia crooned. “I’ll take it from here.” She winked at me, a mirror image of her daughter.
I shouldered my purse, wished everyone a good night, and headed out into the humid summer evening.
***
As soon as I climbed out of the uptown subway at 110th Street, I got to work contacting my newest sources.
The first name on the list was Tanya Temple. I rested on the edge of a fountain in the middle of campus and dialed her number. A raspy voice answered. I explained the purpose of my call, being careful to mention that I had obtained her name from Esmeralda so she wouldn’t think I was just some journalistic interloper.
“Wait, are you the redhead?” she asked. “The one with that hottie, Trent Montaine?”
“Ummm…yes, that’s me,” I stammered.
She laughed, a droll tickling sound. “I believe that I handed you a wad of money a couple of weeks ago. Eugene, my husband, lost that fight.”
I immediately remembered the young woman with the fried hair and the bright red fingernails. Tanya was married to the lumberjack. I never would have pictured him as a Eugene. In any event, she struck me as friendly and forthcoming, so I made an appointment to visit their apartment in the Bronx after work the next day.