“That’s the very thing I’m supposed to get in the middle of. I’m part of the crew working security here.”
It was hard to read his expression. If he was surprised, he did a pretty good job not letting it show. He had close-cut brown hair and pale-green eyes. He was obviously in very good shape. He extended his hand.
“My name’s Shep.”
Shep. Where had I just heard that name? It took me a second, but then I remembered that was the name of the guy that the girls in the bathroom had been talking about. “Lena.” I shook his hand firmly, and he grinned when he let go.
“Quite a grip you got there!” he exclaimed, as if I had purposely been trying to crush his hand, which I had not. Most men, from my experience, seemed to expect a woman’s handshake to be soft, demure, to just let her hand be completely engulfed by his, no questions asked. Yeah—no, thanks.
“I’m not trying to infringe on anyone’s rights,” I said, “but we’re here to make sure that things stay orderly and nothing gets out of hand. Things were starting to get out of hand with that guy, and then he took off like that.”
Shep nodded. “People get a little heated sometimes. There are rival crews that come out here, people that still have a beef with each other. It can be a little cutthroat. That’s all I meant about you not getting involved. Because, you know, I wouldn’t want to see you end up getting mowed down by some dipshit.”
He was talking to me as if we were old friends, as if we’d known each other for years. I found this a bit disconcerting. He was exceptionally good-looking, too, which I also found a bit off-putting. He was probably used to women falling all over themselves, trying to get his attention. Guys like that were usually very entitled, usually felt like the world owed them something.
“So, you do security?” he said.
“Yes. I’m part of the security team here.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, it’s fine. Anyway… thanks for uh… knocking me down. I guess I’d rather be knocked over than run over.”
“No problem.” I started to walk away but then he said my name. I stopped and turned. “I realize this is going to sound completely out of left field, but… would you want to go out for drinks sometime? Or coffee or something?”
Was he joking? Was he trying to come off as Mr. Nice Guy and get me to agree to going out with him, just to turn around and laugh in my face? I mean, he was attractive enough to be on a magazine cover, and he was clearly literate and of sound mental faculty. Yet I still could not help but recoil. He noticed this and he laughed.
“Yikes!” He grimaced. “Wasn’t expecting that immediate of a reaction. A no would also suffice. I’m a big boy; I can take it.”
“Okay, then—no.” But I said it because it was like being on autopilot—there was actually a tiny voice telling me that I should accept this offer. When was the last time someone had actually asked me out like this? I couldn’t remember. And he had just saved my life, after all. “Actually, I mean… that might be okay. A coffee.”
He had an amused look on his face. “I’m not trying to force you into it,” he said. “If you don’t want to, it’s cool.” Not like there wouldn’t be five hundred other women who would probably be lining up just to go on a date with you. Which also made me wonder: why was he asking me? I wasn’t bad-looking, but I certainly wasn’t supermodel material or anything. And a guy like him could most certainly get with a supermodel, if he wanted.
But there was something about him that seemed genuine, that didn’t seem like he was going to laugh in my face if I actually did take him up on his offer.
“No, no—I didn’t mean to say no. It’s fine. When were you thinking?”
He shrugged. “Tomorrow? Late morning, say? Maybe around eleven? You have a favorite coffee place you like?”
“Not really. Wherever you want.”
“Okay… How about Juniper? You know that place?”
“Yeah, I do. Sounds good. I’ll see you there tomorrow at eleven.”
“Great.” He grinned and made a motion to tip his hat to me, if he’d actually been wearing a hat. I watched him walk off. When I turned, Cole was right there.
“Are you eavesdropping?” I asked. The gleeful expression on his face told me that yes, that’s exactly what he had been doing. I felt my own face flush.
“I saw you herding that group of kids out here. Thought I’d come out and make sure everything was okay.”
“I certainly don’t need you to babysit me. I handled it just fine.”
“Does Lena have a date?” he asked.
I pushed past him. “That’s really none of your business.”
“I saw that guy earlier with Kurt. I think he trains with him. What’s his name?”
I paused. I didn’t want to continue this conversation, but if I just ignored Cole, he’d continue to pester me, which I also didn’t want. “His name’s Shep.”
“Shep,” he repeated. “He looks nice. Handsome fella, that’s for sure. So. When’s the date?”
“Cole, please. Shut up.”
I lengthened my stride and tried to walk faster, but Cole just bounced right along next to me like some over-eager puppy. He was completely impossible to get rid of. “Don’t you have a girlfriend you need to go pay attention to?”
“She’s working.”
“Well… good for her.”
I had to admit, I was a little surprised that Cole’s girlfriend, Stella, was still holding down a job. Which probably sounded kind of awful, but really it was because her father was this billionaire, and after Stella met Cole, she decided that she was going to try to live like the rest of us and actually work for her money. But both the job and having Cole as a boyfriend seemed to be working for her. So, good for them, even if it did make Cole even more insufferably cheerful than he had been before, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.
***
Sleep usually came easily after a work event, but that night it didn’t. I told myself it was because I had almost been hit by a car, but the truth was, it was because I was nervous about tomorrow. My dating skills were rusty. Even if we were just meeting for coffee, what if it was awful? What if it was awkward and neither of us knew what to say after exchanging initial pleasantries? What was I thinking, anyway? It wasn’t like I’d be finding true love with the sort of person who would attend a fighting event. A person like that would probably drink too much, expect his woman to cook his meals and clean up after him. I knew I was stereotyping, and unfairly so, but I couldn’t seem to shut that part of my mind up that was insisting that tomorrow was going to be a disaster and I just shouldn’t go through with it. There was no point.
Chapter 4
Shep
Setting up this coffee date had been a bit impulsive, and as I made my way to Juniper, I wondered if I had made a mistake. I guess that whole discussion with my family had stayed with me, and though I knew I didn’t really have time for a girlfriend, there was a part of me that did miss having a romantic relationship in my life. And if that would keep my family off my case about moving back, well, that was even better.
And just based on first impressions, this girl, Lena, she seemed a little different from other girls. Had it been a different girl that I had knocked out of the way of the oncoming car, well, the reaction probably would’ve included a little bit of swooning. I’m not saying I’m God’s gift to women or anything, but most ladies that I’d interacted with had a thing for a guy with muscles, particularly if said guy had just saved them from being hit. Lena, though, had reacted coolly, like my presence in that moment wouldn’t have mattered to her either way.
Which, yes, I did find intriguing.
I stepped inside of Juniper, the smell of roasting coffee beans heavy in the air. The espresso machine shrieked, there was chatter from the groups of people occupying several of the tables, and some sort of indie rock came through the speakers. I glanced around the space and did not see Lena. I decided to get a coffee and sit
at one of the empty tables. I’d drink the coffee, and if she hadn’t showed by then, I’d bounce.
The girl working behind the counter had a blond ponytail and a pale-pink-lipsticked smile.
“Hey,” she said, giving me the eye. “What can I get for you?”
“I’ll just have a coffee,” I said. “Medium. Black.”
She got me the coffee, her fingertips brushing mine as she handed me the cup. “It’s really hot,” she said, purposefully keeping her voice low so I’d have to lean in to hear her. Women had all sorts of tricks.
“Better that than lukewarm,” I said as I handed her a five.
She laughed, a little too loudly, showing two rows of perfectly aligned teeth. It seemed she was about to say something—usually it was to drop a not-so-subtle hint about being available and wanting to hang out—but before she could, I took my coffee and wandered over to an empty table.
And then I waited.
If she didn’t show up by the time I was done, I really would leave, and I wouldn’t take it personally, even if I’d never been stood up before. I had just taken another sip of my coffee and was setting the cup back down, though, when I saw her come in, sidestepping a guy with two full coffee trays who was on his way out. She stood there for a moment once inside and looked around; when her gaze landed on me, I waved and she walked over.
“Hey,” I said. I had about half of my coffee left.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, sitting down across from me. Her brown hair was pulled back in a plain ponytail, and she didn’t have on one lick of makeup. She was wearing a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans. “It’s not that I wasn’t ready or overslept or anything. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a get-together like this, and I was actually thinking about not even showing.”
I tried to hide my smile. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. But then I realized I don’t have your contact info, so I wouldn’t have any way of letting you know. And I’m not the sort of person who stands someone up like that.”
“Well, thanks for not ghosting me.” I found her candor refreshing. And the fact that she hadn’t felt the need to doll herself up.
She set her small black leather purse on the table and eyed my coffee.
“I wasn’t sure if you were going to show or not,” I said. “So I decided to order a coffee and if you weren’t here by the time I was done, I was going to leave.”
“I see. I guess it’s good that I wasn’t too late, then.”
“Would you like me to get you something?” I asked.
“I can order myself a drink, thanks.” She picked her purse back up and went over to the counter and got herself a coffee. I wanted to look over at her, maybe check out her physique a little more, but I had the strangest feeling that if I did, she’d choose that exact moment to look over at me. So I kept my eyes ahead. There was the weirdest feeling in my stomach, a sort of fluttering, almost like a hunger, except that it was pleasant, something I hadn’t really felt before. But could it really be because of her? That seemed unlikely, seeing as we barely knew each other.
She made her way back over to the table and sat down.
“I can’t remember if I thanked you for saving my life,” she said.
“Huh?” I said, then I remembered the car. “Oh. Well, I don’t know if I saved your life, but I sure as hell couldn’t live with myself if I saw a car about to hit someone and didn’t do anything to try to prevent it.”
“See, most guys would say something like that, but I don’t think, if it really came down to it, that all of them would act on it. I’d say you’re in the minority, actually. Especially if it was someone they didn’t know.”
She said this with such assurance that it made me wonder if perhaps she’d been in the situation before, where some guy had claimed he was going to do something heroic for her but then hadn’t come through. Then again, she certainly didn’t seem like the damsel-in-distress type.
“I was actually supposed to be fighting,” I said. “I was on the card, and would’ve been in the cage at that very moment, but I had to scratch. So, you know, not on hand to throw down any superhero moves or anything.” I hadn’t thought about it like that before, but I realized as I was saying it that it was true. I had stepped outside right after the first round, because Andrew Boardman, who I would’ve been fighting—who was considered pretty equally matched against me—was doing so poorly that I probably could’ve beat him, even with my messed-up arm. He was losing so badly that it was hard to watch, and instead of staying in there and continuing to do so, I had gone outside.
“How come?” Lena asked. “Why’d you have to scratch?”
I lifted my left arm up. “I got injured a few days before. Nothing serious. But had to pull out anyway, which was too bad because I’d been preparing for this fight for a while.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That must be frustrating.”
“Yeah, it is. Things like that happen, though. This sort of sport, you kind of have to expect that an injury is going to occur at any moment, and do what you can to mitigate it.”
Except this injury wasn’t from anything to do with MMA at all, a fact which I was trying not to dwell on. Because if I did, the frustration would probably erupt—frustration at both myself and Holden. I wished he hadn’t even asked me in the first place; I wished I had been smart enough to tell him no.
“It certainly doesn’t seem like the sort of sport you could do well into your later years,” Lena said.
“For most guys, no. But there are a few who take really good care of themselves and who are phenomenal fighters and they’ve had long careers.”
“Is that what you want to do? Be a professional fighter?”
“I wouldn’t mind at least having a shot at it. Sometimes, I feel like I’m a little old for it, though, if you want to know the truth.”
She smiled. “Old? How old are you?”
“Thirty-four. Well, I’ll be thirty-five pretty soon, but I’m not there quite yet. What about you?”
“Thirty-four also. I’ll be thirty-five in November, and yeah, something about thirty-five has always sounded old to me. You’re definitely an adult once you hit thirty-five.”
We started talking about work; I asked her what it was like working at the security company, and she told me how she enjoyed it, but that it could be tough sometimes because there were so few women. When she asked me what I did, aside from fighting, I paused. Sometimes, I could just say that I was a bartender, and the girl might or might not ask where I worked. To be honest, most girls got a big kick out of the fact that I worked at a gay bar, even though I wasn’t gay.
“I’m a bartender,” I said.
Lena nodded. “I’m not much of a drinker myself,” she said. “But I bet the tips are good. I had a friend in college who basically dropped out sophomore year because she was making so much money bartending, and having fun doing it.”
“Exactly,” I said. “In terms of what I could be doing to make money—” I did not add anything here about what sort of ideas my family had for that—“it’s really not a bad gig at all. It’s one of those jobs that you never have to bring home, never have to stress about unless you’re there and it’s busy, but that’s honestly part of what I like about it. You pretty much lose all track of time when things are going nonstop like that, and then before you know it, shift’s over and you’ve made a decent amount of money. It’s not what I’m going to be doing forever, necessarily, but it works for me now, because then I can just focus on training.”
She asked me about fighting, how long I had been doing it, and we fell into an easy conversation. I was surprised when I looked up to see that we had been sitting here for over an hour—it didn’t feel like that long at all. She was really easy to talk to, in a way that I hadn’t experienced with a woman before. But I wasn’t sure how she felt about me—I actually couldn’t get a read on it at all, which was strange. Not to sound too full of myself or anything, but generally when I went on a da
te, my compatriots made it pretty clear how they felt, and that was usually that they were interested in going back to one of our places and getting it on.
Lena, though—that was definitely not what she had on her mind. I was intrigued. She was an interesting person, and the fact that I wasn’t sure how she felt about me made her all the more interesting.
“Let’s at least make this official,” I said. “Let me give you my phone number. I’d like to see you again.”
Her face remained relatively impassive, and I thought that maybe she was going to tell me that she wasn’t interested. But then she pressed her lips together and nodded, pulling her phone out of her purse as she did so.
“Tell me your number,” she said. I repeated the digits to her and she typed it into her phone. “I’m calling you right now.” The side pocket in my jeans started to vibrate and I went to reach for it, but then it stopped. “I’m not calling you to actually talk,” she said, but there was a hint of a smile on her face. “Now you have my number, too.”
“So I take it that means you wouldn’t mind hanging out again.”
“I would actually like that,” she said.
I grinned. “Best news I’ve heard all day.”
Chapter 5
Lena
I did not go home right away after Shep and I parted ways. Instead, I went for a walk, because I needed to burn off some of this swirling energy inside of me, and I wanted to replay the past hour in my head.
It had gone way better than I’d expected it would, and I was glad that I hadn’t skipped out like I’d been thinking of. Unbelievably, my mind was already thinking about when I might see him again. I tried to snuff that voice out promptly, but it was persistent—He said he wants to see you. Maybe he’ll call tomorrow! Who was this person? I had certainly never had this strong of a reaction to anyone, even the people that I’d gone on to date. Yet it was undeniable there was some sort of magnetic connection between the two of us, something that went beyond the mere physical.
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