by Shay Savage
“You’d seen her before, asshole,” I growled. “You knew who she was.”
“What, ‘cause she brought him a basket of onion rings once?” Wade grinned. “Dude, I never saw any higher than her tits when you brought her over here.”
I took a step forward, about ready to beat the shit out of him. Two minutes after he walked in the cage, I’d already pounded the fucker who came all the way across town to challenge me. I had plenty of energy left and balled my hands into fists as I moved toward the bouncer.
“Easy, Teague,” Wade said. He held his hands out in front of him, surrendering. “I’m just messing with ya. I’ll point you out to her as soon as she shows up.”
“You do that.” I snarled.
I was in a shitty mood; there was no doubt about that, but I couldn’t pinpoint a cause. I won the fight without a lot of trouble and barely a bruise, so that wasn’t it. Yolanda was getting on my nerves, but I also knew she wasn’t doing anything she didn’t normally do. Her usual banter was just pissing me off.
If I were going to admit it, I would have had to say I had been feeling tense since I dropped Tria off two nights ago. It started the very next day after a shitty night of sleep. I went for my usual morning run and found myself walking a little slower past her apartment both before and after my run, kind of hoping she would suddenly walk out, but she didn’t. I also started taking smoke breaks just outside the building instead of on the fire escape with Krazy Katie just in case Tria came out the door or maybe back home from a class or something.
That didn’t happen either.
I had no fucking idea why I was even doing these things. Normally, if I wanted a girl’s attention, I just did a little flexing, let her feel my abs, and then asked her to come back to my place to fuck, but that just didn’t work in this situation. For one, my place was just too damn close to hers and asking her to come upstairs with me seemed weird. Besides, Tria was a small-town girl, and she didn’t seem like the “just fucking” type. I didn’t do relationships—never, ever again—so there was only one thing I was interested in, and I was always honest about that.
I definitely needed to get laid.
This brought me to the next conundrum—if I did do the casual sex thing with Tria and it didn’t work out, she’d still be right there in the building, and she would still need someone to walk her home. The idea of her walking by herself brought out a seriously pissy side of me that wouldn’t have anything to do with the very thought of it. If I did something to piss her off, who was going to get her home safely? Not that fucker who employed her, that was for sure. He hadn’t even managed to post the position for a new server during her shift yet.
I dropped my ass onto a bar stool and accepted a beer from some random fighting fan. He was going on about the details of the fight while the chick he was with eye fucked me under the pretense of checking out my tats. I alternated between watching the door and watching the time, knowing Tria was due soon. She finally appeared at the door. According to my internal clock, it was hours. The actual clock on the wall said it had been only ten minutes. I jumped up without excusing myself and moved through the crowd to meet her.
“It’s about time!” I growled.
“I just got off work,” she explained. She shoved her hand into the Titan’s Knapsack and pulled out a bottle of hand sanitizer and rubbed a bit around on her palms.
“I’m going to have to come and meet you there,” I grumbled. “You probably shouldn’t be walking to this place on your own, either.”
“It’s a block away, and there are people all over the street out front,” Tria pointed out. “The streetlights all work out there, too. I was fine.”
“This time.”
“You said you were obligated to hang out here until two,” she reminded me.
“I am. I could still sneak out for a few minutes—take a smoke break and a walk. No big deal.”
“No,” Tria said. She shook her head as she crammed the bottle back into her bag. “I never seem to get out of there on time, and you already do enough. I don’t want you getting in trouble for me.”
“Whatever,” I grumbled. “There’s a half hour left before I get paid and can get out of here. You want a drink?”
“I’m not twenty-one,” she reminded me.
“You must be,” I said with a smile. “Otherwise you couldn’t get in here.”
Tria rolled her eyes and followed me as I moved back through the crowd, which was starting to thin out a bit. We made our way to the edge of the bar where I liked to hang out after fights. It was a good combination of a place where people could see me and come up to talk but also a little bit sheltered so people didn’t get too crazy on me. It didn’t happen often, but every once in a while, I’d get a nutty fan or a fighter who wasn’t happy about losing, and they’d make a scene.
I stopped and turned back around to face her and saw her eyes on the cage. I stood up a little straighter as she looked it over, and an odd sense of pride came over me along with a touch of apprehension. I didn’t have a clear sense of what she thought about cage fighting, and she wouldn’t be the first chick I had known who hated the whole idea of it.
“Pretty cool, huh?” I gave her a half smile and raised my eyebrows at her. My heart was pounding, and I felt a slight chill against the naked skin of my chest.
“That’s where you fight?” Tria asked and she stared wide-eyed into the enclosed space.
“Yeah, it is,” I replied. Something about her tone seemed off, and I took a slight step away from her. I leaned on a nearby barstool and watched her, feeling a little wary all of a sudden. “What do you think?”
“I thought it would be…bigger,” she said. “There isn’t even any room for you to move in there.”
“There’s plenty of room,” I told her. “I can move around pretty easily in tight places.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“Nice.” Yolanda piped up before I could try to take back the words. She walked out from around the edge of the cage and came over to us. “Liam’s finally admitting size matters, huh?”
I glared at her.
“Not something I’ve ever worried about too much,” I replied coldly. My earlier annoyance with her returned, and I cocked my head to one side as I looked up at her with a “what the fuck do you want” expression.
Yolanda wasn’t fazed. She looked from me to Tria and back again.
“Is this her?” she asked. “The girl whose virtue you saved?”
Tria looked away for a minute, and I couldn’t see her face. I found myself taking a step forward—angling myself between Tria and Yolanda. I surveyed the whole room, taking my first really good look at the place since the first day I walked into it. The lights were dim, which only barely masked how shabby everything was inside. The barstools were frayed, and the felt on the single pool table was almost completely worn out. The people who frequented Feet First looked like people who came to drown their sorrows because that’s who they were. They were as shabby as the interior of the bar, and most of them were way beyond casually drunk.
“This is Tria,” I said. My voice was monotone, and I narrowed my eyes at Yolanda as I spoke. I didn’t like the way she was sizing up Tria as if she were a target.
Tria was a small-town girl trying to get herself an education and somehow make the world better. I didn’t think she had much more of a chance of achieving that shit than a lightweight did against me, but I couldn’t help but admire her spirit for trying. Yolanda was a whole other story.
“Hi, Tria,” Yolanda said. She didn’t take her eyes off me, though. Her expression matched mine, and she even went as far as to raise an eyebrow at me.
I mouthed “fuck you” at her, but she ignored me and turned to Tria.
“I’m Yolanda. Welcome to Feet First, but you are a little late to see my man in action here.”
“I was…um…working earlier,” Tria said, stumbling over her words a bit. “I just got off.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time that happened to a woman around Takedown.” Yolanda smirked. She looked back at me and put a hand on her hip. “I put your winnings in your bag and locked it in your locker. I’m outta here. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I said with a curt nod.
Yolanda sauntered through the crowd and out the front door, and I looked back at Tria, wondering what she was thinking. The look on her face told me nothing, but her words made it clear.
“So that’s your girlfriend,” Tria said matter-of-factly. “She’s really pretty.”
“She’s not,” I said.
“Are you kidding? She’s beautiful.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” I clarified. “Yolanda’s a fighter, like me. Well, she was before she fucked up her knee. We still work out together on the weekends.”
“I see.” Tria didn’t sound convinced.
“She’s been in the cage a lot longer than me,” I said. I didn’t know why it was important to me that she understand there wasn’t anything between Yolanda and me. “She helps me train. That’s it.”
Tria just nodded and glanced around the bar again. She hadn’t touched the bottle of beer sitting next to her.
“So, why ‘Takedown’?” she asked as she looked back in my direction.
I laughed.
“Um, well,” I started, “it’s not much of a story, really.”
Tria looked at me expectantly.
“Okay, when I first started fighting here, Yolanda told me I needed a catchy nickname of some sort. We toyed around with a few and figured “takedown” fit well with my name and sounded pretty tough.” I stopped and looked around, wondering if this was something I really ought to be advertising to the world, but most of the world had already departed—either in mind or body. “There’s a lot of theatrics about it, ya know? People remember catchy names.”
It all sounded kind of dumb when I explained it.
Tria blinked a couple of times.
“So, I started going by Liam ‘Takedown’ Teague.”
“You were right,” Tria said.
“About what?” I asked, confused.
“That isn’t much of a story.”
We both laughed.
Most of the crowd was pretty much gone, so I said goodbye to Dordy, grabbed my gym bag, verified the cash inside was right, and then we headed off down the backstreets and toward home. Tria seemed quiet and thoughtful, which kind of drove me crazy because I had no idea what she was thinking.
“So, what’s your impression of Feet First?” I asked.
“It’s…interesting,” she said noncommittally.
“That’s it? Just interesting?” I pressed for a better answer. “What kinds of places do you usually hang out at?”
“I haven’t spent a lot of time in bars, really,” Tria admitted. “I don’t have much to compare it to.”
“I thought every small town had at least one bar,” I said. “Did yours skip that little facet of entertainment? Had to be a really small town.”
Tria laughed quietly.
“I grew up in a trailer park outside of town,” she told me.
“So, like those little rows of houses all shoved up next to each other?”
“Not exactly,” she said quietly. “Everyone lives in those mobile homes, and it’s really more like a campground.”
“Bet you had a great view of the neighbors.” I grinned when she scowled at me. When she didn’t answer, I tried another tactic. “What did your parents think of you moving all the way from Maine to here?”
“Well…um…my parents split up when I was a baby,” she said. “I’ve only seen my mom a couple of times since then. Dad died when I was six.”
“Oh, shit…sorry.” I suddenly felt like an absolute ass.
“It’s okay,” she replied quietly. “It was a long time ago. Mom’s kind of a basket case, so I was raised by my dad’s friends.”
It seemed like she was going to say something else, but she didn’t. I considered pressing, but her mood had darkened a little. I decided to lighten it up.
“What’s your favorite color?”
“My favorite color?” she repeated. “What kind of question is that?”
“A normal one,” I said. “Well?”
“Yellow, I suppose,” she said. Her cheeks tinged with pink, and I wondered what about the color yellow would make her blush.
“Why yellow?” I urged her to answer.
“It’s bright, like the sun in the summer,” she said quickly. “Yellow is warm and inviting. The sun makes the trees grow tall. It’s so hazy here all the time, and there aren’t any trees. I haven’t seen a single tree in this neighborhood though there are a few planted on campus.”
“There’s one,” I said. “It’s a few blocks away.”
“A tree?”
“Yep.”
“Where?”
“It’s about a mile and a half down, actually,” I told her. “It’s in an area that used to have a park in it when all the factories were still in business. I think it was set up for people to go eat their lunch or something. I go past it every day.”
“Every day?” she repeated.
“Yes, every day,” I mocked. She glared at me. Her expression made me grin—she was such a tiny thing but definitely had a temper to her as well. Even though I was still aware of the shitty closed-up storefronts, broken glass, and vulgar smells around us, everything else seemed to fade into the background as I talked with her. “I run in the mornings.”
“Do you work out every day, too?”
“Uh-uh,” I said as I shook my head from side to side and tapped my chest with my thumb. “I’m performing the interrogation here.”
I eyed her as I pulled a cigarette out of the pack in my pocket and lit it.
“You got a boyfriend back home?”
“No,” she said bluntly.
“Oh.” I didn’t really know what to say about that. She didn’t offer anything else, and again I got the idea I should find another subject. “Favorite flower?”
“Seriously?”
“Just tell me!” I snapped.
“I don’t know…um…orchids, I guess.” She reached up and pulled the band out of her hair, which then fell around her shoulders. “They’re so complicated. You can look at them for an hour and keep seeing new parts of them.”
“You could look at a flower for an hour?” I snickered. “You need cable TV.”
“I can barely make the bills as it is,” Tria replied. “No way could I add another forty bucks a month on top of it.”
“I’ve got cable,” I told her. “You could come watch a movie with me or something.”
She glanced away, and I knew I had said something wrong. Shit, it had probably sounded like I was coming on to her. I hadn’t meant it that way—not really.
Had I?
“My mom always taught me to share.” I started babbling to make up for what I was sure was a faux pas. “Since I share it with the neighbor, I could also share it with you, ya know? I mean, what else are big brothers for, right?”
I had no idea where that shit came from.
“Big brother?” Tria repeated. Her brow furrowed, and she brought her hand up to chew at the edge of her thumbnail.
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. I smiled, hoping it looked friendly and not incestuously creepy. “That’s kind of what I’m doing here, right? Helping you out and shit, like a brother would?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess that makes sense.”
She smiled then, and my heart sped up a bit when she turned it on me. I smiled back but was pretty sure my smile didn’t light up my face the way hers did. I was already regretting what I said, especially given her reaction to it. I looked away and down the street, somewhat surprised and not entirely happy to see our building looming closer and closer with each step. We were at the door less than a minute later, and right after that, we were s
tanding at the door to her apartment.
Again.
“So what time do you work tomorrow?” I asked.
“Six to closing,” Tria said. “I should be done by one thirty, but that doesn’t seem to be happening lately.”
“I should be done with my workout in the afternoon,” I said. “I could walk you to work.”
“It’s still light out then, Liam,” Tria said with a shake of her head. “I can’t take up all your free time.”
“I told you, it’s this or cable. Besides, walking is a decent cooldown after a long workout. I could use it.”
“Are you just saying that?” she asked. She stared at me through narrowed eyes.
“Mebbe,” I responded. I grinned and glanced away. “Really, I have nothing to do tomorrow evening.”
“No hot date?”
When I glanced at her face, she was already looking away, her cheeks red. She took a slow breath and blew it out through her nose.
“Sorry, I’m being nosy.” She reached up and gathered her hair together in the back as if she was going to put it back into a ponytail again. Then she released her hair, and it collapsed in waves around her shoulders as she shook it out vigorously.
“No worries,” I said, swallowing. “No, no hot date.”
“Well, all right then,” she said quietly. “If you don’t come up with anything better to do, I’ll probably leave around five thirty or so.”
“I’ll see you then.”
“Okay.” She turned and went through the doorway, her hands gripping the frame a little too tightly. “Good night.”
“Night.”
With long strides, I took the stairs two at a time until I hit the landing for my floor. I knew I wasn’t about to go to sleep, so I didn’t even bother changing. I hauled my ass out onto the fire escape and tossed my legs over the side. I set a half-full pack down beside me and lit the first one.
“What’s up, crazy bitch?” I asked.
Krazy Katie didn’t respond. She didn’t even acknowledge me at all. She was leaning forward with her head against the grate, making little waffle marks all over her forehead. Her stare was intense, but I had no idea what she was looking at. I leaned back on one hand and smoked with the other one, enjoying the slightly warmer air and wondering how much longer I was going to be able to get away with no heat in the apartment.