by Claire Adams
“I’ve got to prepare you for something,” I tell her.
“What, the possibility of being sprayed with someone else’s blood?” she asks, a little pale.
“No, you don’t have to worry about that,” I tell her. “Just don’t stand in the first row or two and you’ll be fine. Even if some does manage to get on you, everyone who fights here has to have clean blood test results from within three days of a given match or they aren’t allowed to fight. We’re careful about that sort of thing.”
I may be fighting a losing battle here.
“What I’ve got to prepare you for,” I tell her, “is the volume. These things can get pretty loud.”
We enter the building, this time a foreclosed house without any neighbors for a quarter mile, and we make our way through the empty space to the stairs. The basement is large, open, unfinished. Everyone’s congregated where the family room was supposed to be.
“This feels weird,” Ash says. “I don’t think I’m really comfortable here.”
“The fights haven’t even started yet!” I exclaim, drawing the attention of the group.
“Why are they staring at us?” Ash asks in a near-whisper.
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “Let’s just pick a good spot to watch and I’m sure you’ll blend in just fine.”
I appreciate the fact that she got dressed up nice for tonight’s festivities, but I probably should have told her that these gatherings aren’t exactly formal. Personally, I think she looks great in her short, black dress, but she can’t be too comfortable seeing that most of the people in attendance didn’t even bother wearing a shirt.
“So do women like never come to these things or what?” she asks.
“Women are here all the time,” I tell her. “They make up almost half our fights.”
“That’s sick!” Ash blurts.
“How so?” I ask.
“You make women fight for your entertainment?” I ask.
“First off, we don’t make anyone fight,” I tell her. “Second off, we’re not going to bar a whole gender from a sport. That’s incredibly sexist, don’t you think?”
Yeah, this isn’t going how I’d hoped. I’m just crossing my fingers that she starts to have a little more fun when the first fight gets going. We don’t have to wait long to find out.
The first match is between two bantamweight guys who end up talking crap to each other for most of the first round. By the time the first punch is thrown, Ash is ready to go.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to understand this. How many points do they get for leveling criticism at their opponent?” she asks.
“None,” I tell her. “Some guys do that to puff themselves up, but most people who get in there have a little better sense than that.”
“Okay, so what we’re really here to see is the violence?” she asks.
A couple of heads turn in our direction, each with a single eyebrow raised.
“We like to think of it more as sport than simple violence,” I tell her and the people eavesdropping on our conversation turn back toward the fight.
In the middle, the two guys are into their second round and the one with the long, blond hair is getting pounded by the one with the spiked, black hair. I don’t know these two. I’ve never seen them before and there’s a decent chance I never will again.
A lot of people come here the first time and either they don’t get to fight so they lose interest, or they’re so viciously mocked before, during, and after the fight, they can’t bring themselves to come back.
Imagine: Someone spends hours in the gym every week, years with trainers or coaches or senseis—often all of the above—and when it comes down to it, they decide taunting strangers are too great an obstacle to overcome.
Amateurs.
Longhaired blond guy manages to get to his feet and he catches black spiky hair guy hard on the chin, the latter’s knees buckling with the loss of consciousness.
The crowd of about two dozen erupts and Ash is covering her ears. If I can get her to stay for at least another fight or two, I have no doubt she’s going to start getting into it.
A lot of people are turned off by MMA the first time they see it because it’s so brutal, but the people who give it enough of a chance almost invariably end up hooked. I just need to find some way to convince her that it’s worth it.
The initial burst from the crowd has died down, but the basement is far from quiet as over twenty voices all try to talk over each other.
Ash is still covering her ears, and I’m not entirely sure what to do here. I give her a pat on the shoulder to let her know that I’m still here and she turns toward me, hands over her ears, yelling, “How many more fights are there?”
“I’m not sure,” I answer. “We’ll go until the energy levels start to drop. It could be as few as five, as many as ten.”
“What?” she asks, partially uncovering one of her ears.
“It’ll be going for a few more hours,” I tell her.
“Oh,” she says. “Do we have to stay the whole time?”
Only a few people turned before, but with Ash’s question, nearly the whole basement is looking in our direction. It’s not a response of anger, but one of confusion.
Why would someone be here who didn’t want to be here and how the hell did they get in?
The answer, obviously, is that I could see myself really getting into Ash as we get to know each other better, and I don’t want her to run for the hills before we’ve had that chance just because I choose to fight. To the pit, however, this is an intriguing and unique scenario.
“Why are they staring at me?” Ash asks quietly, lowering her hands.
The good news is that the people here tend to have short attention spans when it comes to anything that isn’t fighting, so they quickly start to turn back to the middle in anticipation of the next fight. Still, I think this may have been too much, too soon for Ash.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You’re fine. You’re just new, that’s all.”
“Yeah, but…” she trails off.
“I’m here,” I tell her. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“So if you weren’t here, something would happen to me?” she asks.
I smile. “No,” I assure her. “Despite clear evidence to the contrary, these are generally peaceful people.”
About then, the next match starts and these guys don’t waste time trash talking, they go straight to blows.
After each thump or smack, admittedly rather loud in this enclosed space, Ash winces. I think it’s probably time to get her out of here before she ends up psychologically scarred.
I really thought someone training to be a nurse would have a bit more stomach for this sort of thing. Then again, it’s entirely possible that she can see the damage these guys are doing to each other more clearly than anyone else here because of her medical training. I can imagine that being worse.
There’s a loud thud as one fighter slams the other to the ground, and instinctively I turn back toward the center. I don’t know the guy who just got put into the ground, but I’ve chatted a bit with the one standing over him with a grin. That’s Paolo Menendez, and I’m just glad we’re a couple of weight classes apart.
I kid around with Logan, but Paolo is vicious and unpredictable. He’s gotten better in the time that I’ve known him, but at first, there was about a fifty percent chance that half the guys in the pit would have to pry Paolo off of this opponent or that after he’d already won the fight. It wasn’t until he was threatened with being banned from all future matches that he started to clean up his act.
Still, you never know what’s going to push him over that edge.
Paolo’s hesitation lasts less than a second, but I’m distracted long enough I don’t even notice Ash is gone until I look back to my side to find she’s not there.
This can’t be good.
I make my way through the people who got here after Ash and me, and head up the stairs.
My phone’s in my hand now, and I’m calling Ash’s number as I make my way the rest of the way out of the house. It rings a couple of times and then goes to voicemail.
I come out the front door and ask the bouncer, Big D, if he’s seen a shorter brunette with blue eyes leaving the house.
“She didn’t look happy, bro,” D says. “I’d give her a little time to cool off. She seemed pretty freaked.”
“Did you see which way she went?” I ask.
“Why is it nobody listens to me when I’m trying to be the voice of reason?” D asks.
“D?” I press.
“Right at the sidewalk,” he says. “I didn’t really pay much attention after that.”
“Thanks, D,” I tell him and start off after Ash.
I pull out my phone again and call her, but after a couple of rings, it goes to voicemail again. This time, I leave a message.
“Hey, Ash,” I say into the phone. “You just left the fight and I’m trying to catch up with you. I’m sorry if that was a bit much for you all at once. We don’t have to go back or anything, but I don’t want to have things end like this to—”
“You have reached the maximum message time available for this mailbox,” the robotic voice says.
I didn’t get everything I wanted to say in the message, but it pretty well covers the bullet points. Maybe I’ve just been trying to idealize Ash because of my physical attraction for her. Maybe she’s one of those people who get turned off by MMA and stay turned off to it, regardless of how familiar with it they become.
As I call a third time, now being forwarded directly to voicemail, I’m starting to think this whole thing with Ash is just a failed experiment.
I walk along the side of the road where D had seen Ash heading for a while, but break off my efforts before too long. I’m not going to spend my whole night going after her when she’s making it clear she doesn’t want to talk to me.
It’s not the end of the world if this is the end of the relationship—we’re still just getting to know one another—but I had hope for this one. She really seemed like my kind of chick, but maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see.
At least we didn’t get too deep into the relationship before the cracks started to show. That’s something, right?
Chapter Four
Callbacks
Ash
It’s been a long week.
First I went AWOL at that fight Mason took me to and then, ever since I came home, it’s been all Starbright—Jana’s mom’s latest nom de plume—all the time. Right now, I’m just thankful the woman sleeps as much as she does.
“Why is she here, anyway?” I whisper to Jana, looking up from the open textbook in front of me.
“What do you mean?” she returns at full volume.
“Your mom,” I whisper back. “Did something happen? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine,” Jana says. “I’ve noticed you haven’t been seeing too much of Mason lately. Did something happen there?”
“I just don’t think he’s really my type—” I start, but the question, apparently, was rhetorical.
“You know, I almost freaked out when I saw him,” she interrupts. “I really didn’t think I was going to see him again.”
“Well, it’s not like this is the biggest city in the world,” I tell her. Leaving my textbook open on the coffee table in front of me, I get up from the couch to follow Jana as she tries to squeeze all of her chores into the next five minutes.
“I know,” she says, “but we run in such different circles we’d made it from breakup to a couple of weeks ago without running into each other once.”
“I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about running into him anymore,” I tell her.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie,” she says and pulls me into a strange embrace.
“Why are you sorry?” I ask, trying to pull away but being unsuccessful.
“I know you were really hoping things would work out. It’s been so long since anyone’s even looked at you, much less asked you out, and to be rejected like that so soon…” she says. “I don’t know if I could get out of bed in the morning.”
“He didn’t ‘reject’ me,” I tell her. “I just didn’t like how violent his world is.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, releasing her hold on me enough that I’m able to work my way out of it.
“Did he ever take you to one of those fights?” I ask. “One guy in the first one got knocked out. In the second fight, it looked like one of them was seriously considering murdering the other right in front of everyone, and with his bare hands. I’d call that pretty intensely violent.”
“Oh, but that’s not Mason, though,” she says.
“What does that mean?” I ask. “He’s the one that took me there. He said that he fights there all the time. It seems to be a pretty big part of his life.”
“No, well I mean, yeah,” Jana says. I could do without the stammering right now. “I just mean that he’s not a violent person.”
“Still not making any sense,” I tell her.
“He fights the way other guys play football with their friends on the weekends, only he puts more effort into it. Outside all that, he’s really quite the gentleman,” she says. “He’s always just so nice to you and he holds doors and stuff. I mean, we didn’t really hang out that much for that long, but I always got the feeling he was just a really easygoing kind of guy.”
“Didn’t seem like it to me,” I tell her.
“Was he rude or aggressive at all?” Jana asks as she opens the dishwasher and starts unloading it.
I think back.
“Well, no,” I answer.
“Woulda surprised me if you said he was,” she tells me.
“It’s weird hearing you talk about him like that. The first couple of days after we saw him, you seemed like you hated the guy,” I respond.
“I didn’t expect to see him,” she says. “When I did, I went into dealing-with-an-ex mode, and ya know how that goes.”
I guess I did do the right thing, choosing to break it off before it went any further with Mason and me. If she’s interested in him, she can have him.
“He’s a really nice guy, though,” Jana says, looking off at nothing. “And that kid could stick it in me like you wouldn’t even—”
“Got it,” I interrupt. When it comes to Jana and her stories of sex and seduction, it’s best to cut her off quick, right at the beginning. Otherwise, there’s no convincing her to stop and the woman has a memory for sexual detail that can drag a two-minute story into a multi-hour epic, complete with props and distinct character voices.
Who has the patience for something like that?
“It’s not just about that, though,” she says. “I kind of wish we’d stuck with it a little longer.”
“Why not call him?” I ask.
“Nah,” she says. “We’re too different. I’m all crazy energy and spontaneity and he’s more the laidback, pseudo-romantic type. I knew when we first hooked up it wasn’t going to last, but after we slept together... I guess I’m just waning a little nostalgic.”
“Waxing,” I correct. “By the way,” I say, changing directions, “did your mom happen to mention when she might be looking for a place of her own again?”
“Nah. She’s just settling in, though,” Jana says. “It usually takes her at least a month before she can wake up somewhere without screaming, much less think of going anywhere else.”
“What is that, anyway?” I ask. “It sounds like she’s being tortured in there. And to tell you the truth, I’m a little freaked about the fact our neighbors have been hearing a woman scream at the top of her lungs every time she wakes up and nobody’s called the police yet.”
Jana says, “I don’t know what started it. I don’t think she knows. I know she calls it her adjustment period. Back in the day, I never used to hear a peep out of her between when she went to bed and her first cup of coffee the next morning. I think it’s waking up in
a new place without dad that does it.”
“That’s actually really sad,” I tell Jana. “Is there something they can do about that to make things easier for her?”
“Like what?” Jana asks.
I don’t have a good answer to the question.
“So you’re still pretty into Mason, huh?” I ask.
“I’d just like to take him for another spin or two, for old times’ sake,” she answers. “I think if we left the bedroom, we’d probably drive each other crazy. That was our mistake the first time.”
“You said he was so nice, though,” I return. “Now you’re saying the sex was the only good part?”
“It was all ‘good,’ I guess,” she says. “I just think he started getting annoyed that I’m always going like a million miles an hour and everything.”
It’s true: While we’re talking, she’s managed to get the dishes in the dishwasher half put away, the countertop halfway wiped down and she’s got a broom in her hands, though its bristles have yet to touch the floor. Jana’s problem isn’t the motivation to start something; it’s the motivation to see things through to the end.
She continues, “He was always just so low key, too. He was sweet, but he just never really moved fast enough for me. I’d want to go, like, five different places in a night and he’d just want to do like dinner or something. We’d just end up getting sick of each other. Anyway, me, Darla, and Cindy are gonna go to the coffee shop and pick up some things. You wanna come?”
By “things,” she means guys.
“I’m not really in the mood,” I tell her. “By the way, could you please tell your mom to stop eating my cocoa butter? She’s gone through almost my whole jar since she got here.”
“It’s edible and it was in the refrigerator,” Jana says, finally starting to sweep, though she stops after only a couple of seconds and sets the broom down. “How was she supposed to know?”
“Because I told her what it is and why I have it when I came home that first night and found her putting some on vegan paella,” I tell her. “I also told her after she used it with her organic rye crackers, her free range donut holes, and she tried—unsuccessfully, by the way—to dissolve it in her GMO-free almond milk.”