The Heart of Tony Winters

by P. S. Power

  She wasn’t exactly cuddly with him, though he wouldn’t have minded if she wanted to be. Both of them were sore, so he got the idea.

  “Hey… Um… So, how do you feel?” She didn’t really look at him, but he understood the idea. She wasn’t asking if he’d been beaten too hard or sprained something.

  He looked inside for a bit, then smiled at her.

  “Not bad? I mean, it wasn’t a win, but… It was never going to be one. The goal was for me to go in there and give Erlander enough of a fight to prove he was ready for the Morse rematch. I need to see the vid, but…” It felt and sounded about right to him, so he didn’t think it was a problem.

  Ashley just shook her head then.

  “You… are a pretty great person, Tony Winters. For real. I’d be half ready to slit my wrists if I’d lost tonight. Which isn’t a good thing, but is more common than you’d think after people lose. Even winning leads to depression most of the time. Here you are, peaceful and accepting. Is that an act?” She nudged him with her shoulder a bit then. The contact was nice. Not that he was really being starved for that kind of thing.

  The last few months had kind of been light on sex. The next ones would be as well, he didn’t doubt. Rick and Jen were nice people, but they were kind of responsible about things, most days.

  He smiled though, shaking his head a bit.

  “I’m actually fine. So far anyway. If that changes I’ll let you know? How about you? I mean, sure you won and that was straight up legit by the way, in case you’re worried. The way Fox handled it was… Not great.”

  “I feel like crap. Normally when you win, you don’t really. I mean, bruises and bumps, but not this… Still, it was a win and no one will expect me to walk back into that particular meat grinder any time soon. What’s next? In Tony-land I mean. School? I know that you’ve been tutored for the last bit.”

  He nodded, having an actual plan for that part.

  “Janine figures that I should be good with her until the new term, after the holidays. Remember, my birthday is January first.” Which was at least what his birth certificate said. Deidre, his mother, had gotten it when he was five and honestly didn’t recall the day he was born at all.

  So it was the first day of the year. That was probably several months off, at least. Maybe even years, one way or the other. Not that it mattered. He was the age he was. Even the doctor they had with them, or were supposed to, had said that. It was pretty close and probably would never really matter in his life.

  “Um… Where’s the Doc?” She’d come with them after all.

  He had to repeat himself several times, as he stood up, looking around. She wasn’t there, as far as he could tell. Moving carefully, he checked the very back then walked up front carefully. Even the bathroom was empty.

  “Rick! Where did Doctor Hampshire get to? Is she going back some other way?” As far as he knew she hadn’t been kicked out with the others. She also hadn’t been ringside during Nick’s fight. That probably meant something.

  What, he didn’t know. The woman wasn’t exactly helpless, or young. She was in her forties or so though, not a decrepit old woman who needed a walker to get around. Anthony tried to keep that in mind as Rick finally got up and looked around himself. Then, cleverly, he pulled his cell phone and called her.

  “Hello! We seemed to have missed you, we’re not out of town or anything yet, thankfully. We can be there in about ten minutes, I think? Great.”

  Then the fit man jogged to the front, in order to speak to Patrick, the driver. The sitting fellow just nodded, his head visible from the back, switching lanes in time to make an off ramp. Apparently one that made sense to use, at least for turning around. Instead of going back to the arena, they ended up at a medical center.

  The Doc was out front however, smiling as she got in.

  “I had to drop off some samples. It was a bit of work to get Ms. Rends to hold still for them, but we managed it.” She had a black eye, on the right hand side, which probably meant it wasn’t just a tiny matter, getting blood from the woman. There had been an actual fight to make it happen. A thing that their Doc had done for them, apparently.

  Tony nodded.

  “Good work. How long does it take to get the results?” Not that it mattered that much after the fight, he didn’t think. It would affect Fox, but not the rest of things. Even if she’d been cheating, she’d lost.

  The only real question was the character of the fight. Rends always used force instead of skill, but most of the fights weren’t nearly as vicious as the one that night had been. Tony had watched all of them, after all. More than once, since part of his job at the gym was pretending to be other fighters. One of those was Fox Rends, so he’d studied everything he could on her. Including the fights from when she’d been a man. Her skill set hadn’t changed that much, but there were two fights that had been different.

  More angry and violent.

  The one with Ash that night and Missy Holms.

  In that one the other fighter had shattered the woman’s jaw in three places. It had been so devastating that Holms still hadn’t returned to fighting. Which reminded Tony that he had something to do there. It had been mentioned before, in passing. It was his job to help people though, if he could. He’d done some research on the topic already. They had nearly a month and a half before he had to go do school as well. He was supposed to dress up in girl clothing and pretend to be Fox so that Missy could kick his behind until she didn’t fear the woman any longer. That was the idea anyway.

  Not that he was calling her up that night or anything. Really, that job was up to Rick, not him at all. It was something to mention, later, after they got back home. The night was dark already, since it was November. About halfway through the month. For a long time they rode in silence, no one doing much of anything. Normally they watched the fights and discussed them, but no one had a copy of it this time. Doc Hampshire would read things on her Kindle most of the time, but she didn’t pull that out, just sitting in the dark.

  It was, more or less, kind of dismal. Like they’d all lost. Finally, after hours of driving, Ashley fell asleep, using his left shoulder as a bony pillow rest. She had a small travel cushion between them, so it wasn’t all that close or anything. He let it happen, since the woman would be better off doing it that way than not resting at all.

  There was talking from the front seats, but no one was all that loud. It was, most likely, that people were going over the events of the day. Trying to work out how they could have improved what they did. He smiled. It was how you got good at things. You didn’t just slam into them over and over. No, you looked at what worked, what almost did and then found out why you failed, if you could.

  Everything was under that kind of scrutiny in their lives. Especially the fights, though not just that. No doubt the next week would be spent on coming up with better plans for future events. One of those should be a general agreement as to not storming the cage or ring like that. He got why it had happened, but it had been stupid. Jen had been fine, alone in there at first.

  Rick, Raul and Denny wouldn’t leave her there however, because she was a woman. That made some sense, by guy logic. You protected women, after all. So they went in. That meant Fox’s people and friends had to do the same to protect her. Sure, it had been her fault from the start, but once the escalation had started things had to ramp up. Everyone had been forced to protect their people.

  Tony had held back, which was probably going to get him in hot water later, when people calmed down a bit. They’d think it meant he didn’t have their backs. He did. If it had been a real fight, even just a fist fight, or if his side had been losing, Anthony would have been right in there, doing what he could.

  Explaining that to anyone was going to be hard. It sounded cowardly, even to him. Staying back to help Nick, seeing that it wasn’t a real problem like that. No one in the world would be gullible enough to think it was real. That meant…

  That was a thing he didn’t kn
ow. If it had been Deidre or her friends, they would have probably dropped him off in Vegas and just left him there. To them, failure to do stupid things could be seen as betrayal. With Rick and Jen it was almost certainly going to come out in a different fashion. Oddly, Ashley probably wasn’t going to care. She hadn’t been laying people out or even pushing them, herself. For her part the fight had been her sitting on the floor, not knowing what exactly was going on.

  Steve was working at the time, which probably covered him from harm from the fallout. Nick… That one was harder. Really, he should have followed his boyfriend into the cage. On the other hand, he’d managed to win big money, which was what he’d come for. Also, he’d won at all. It hadn’t really been certain, as hard as he’d trained for things. As good as he was, winning that fight had shown the world that he was one of the best. A thing that hadn’t been known before that point.

  So it would mainly be about Tony not stepping up.

  Which could mean anything really. Tony being sent away came to mind. Rick was just his uncle. Jenny wasn’t even married to the man, so that made it more likely that he’d be driven away for his failure. Anthony sat there for a bit, in the dim light as the road blurred past his window.

  Looking out at the world, Tony, the game he’d come up with to try and fool everyone into thinking he was a good person, smiled. After all, act or not, he knew something that Anthony just didn’t.

  What Rick would do over the whole thing, Tony not rushing in to help make a mistake happen a little bit worse, was nothing. It just wasn’t who the man really was. To him, even to Jen, the whole thing had been a giant, horrible mistake. One that had been nearly catastrophic for them. Being tossed out could lead to being blacklisted or worse, which would make getting fights in the future impossible. Until he’d gotten Nick to back off, then helped him as best he could through the fight.

  It probably would have worked even if Nick had lost. It wasn’t what he was used to in life, being around sensible people like that. Ones who were going to see him doing the right thing and simply be proud, not angry.

  So what they were probably going to do was… Really, they were going to be pleased with him. He hoped at least. Once the shock and misery of the night was worn away a bit. It made sense to Tony, but Anthony didn’t see it at all, even if the act in his head worked out what was going on perfectly. He wasn’t just safe, he was one of the heroes of the night.

  Even after losing like he had.

  Meaning the only person that had to feel bad about the whole thing was Anthony. The street kid inside that knew he’d failed them all. Even if it was by doing the smart thing. His people had needed him and instead of stepping up and fighting for them, Tony had held back, waiting. Like they were strangers or not important to him.

  That wasn’t the truth. In his entire life, no one had been there for him before. Not for real. Not like Rick and Jen had been. Even the others had his back. Ashley would have been in there if it had happened at his fight. He had no doubt of that. Steve…

  Well, it was odd, since the man hadn’t come out for Ash that night. Tony kind of thought that he would have if it had been him. It would have been a bad thing however, not one to wish for at all. It was too important for the man to look good all the time now. He was a fighter, sure…

  That kind of career was often short. Every single fight was a risk. Almost anything could, and just might, derail his chances. Steve could speak well enough to impress people on television however and looked good, which meant he could make it there, too. That was potentially long term and didn’t involve being slammed in the head hundreds of times to amuse the masses. If he could do that kind of thing, it was the better plan.

  They rode on into the night, stopped for gas halfway through, then carried on as the sun rose into the sky. Interestingly, everyone else pretty much had things to do then. Except Tony. All of them, as it turned out. Denny got the first call, his phone chirping quietly. That happened at about seven-thirty in the morning. Interestingly, though Tony was a bit away from the man, it sounded like it was someone from the press. Then everyone else started to light up, including Ashley, who had to muzzily wake up for her part of things.

  She did that thing with her tongue that was the international signal that she wanted to brush her teeth before she spoke. He hadn’t slept, but could still sympathize. It was a hazard of long car or bus trips.

  “Good morning?”

  They were all talking away, except for him. Even Raul was busily speaking to someone in Spanish. Tony only got every fifth word or so. That was why he knew it wasn’t in Portuguese, which was the man’s native language. Looking around he realized that Patrick was just driving, not talking on a cell while he did it. Which was good to know. Tony smiled, figuring that it was, in the end, a great thing. Everyone was being contacted and asked questions. That meant they’d get a lot of press or at least contacts out of all the garbage going on.

  Taking the chance, he got his school books out and did some math problems for a while, then moved into the history reading he had due on Monday. Janine wasn’t evil or anything, but once she’d worked out that Anthony wasn’t going to slack off just because he was in training, she’d loaded on the heavy topics. All of it was college level, which meant he knew the words, but had to research from time to time in order to follow all the information he picked up. At the moment he was covering European wars. Ones that were way before world war one. Battles fought with spears and arrows, in the main.

  It was kind of interesting, in a dry and boring way. Still, it was something to do, now that he had light. There was no way he was sleeping anyway. Not with all the chattering going on around him. Especially in a moving vehicle. At about ten they had to stop again, hitting a small country store that had a produce stand. People were still speaking, so wandered outside to stretch their legs, but weren’t bothering to purchase anything. He made up for that by spending ten bucks on fruit. Almost everyone could have it that day and people still needed to eat. Thinking about things, they needed water as well, so he sprang for that too. It cost a lot more, but was worth it, since hydration was important in life. Especially for athletes.

  He passed out the citrus first, giving everyone a bottle of water, working the caps off for most of them as they got back underway. Including their driver, since he was the one that had been working all night. Past the length of time he should, really. It just made sense to make certain he had something to drink.

  “Thanks! I’ve had enough coffee for now. We should be in at about four-thirty. We’re making good time.” The older man smiled, his eyes only a little bleary seeming.

  Tony nodded at him then.

  “We have some food. Fruit mainly since everyone is in training. Call out if you need something. I can peel an orange for you?”

  That got a laugh.

  “Doing a low carb thing, myself. Thanks.” To show he meant it, the man took a healthy swallow of water.

  That was the sign for him to back off, Tony figured. His job was to keep people going, if he could. To help them do their best. Patrick was a professional driver. He didn’t need Tony at the moment, so doing anything was just getting in the way.

  Really, the rest of them were probably in the same place more or less. They didn’t need a kid under foot all the time. That meant his place at the moment was to be quiet and not make more work for anyone. To that end he ate an orange, drank his water and made sure that everyone had what they needed that way, without interrupting their conversations. Some of them couldn’t eat really, since they were on the air. Even sipping water had to be done carefully, in those cases. It would be rude to glug into the phone after all. Especially if people at home had to hear it happening.

  People did get off the phone, then back on, several times. At about three, as they closed with home the landscape becoming a bit more familiar from previous trips, Rick walked up to him. Ashley was still right there, talking away in the seat next to him. That meant his uncle smiled, then waved for him
to switch seats. There was an empty one in the back.

  It wasn’t for a dressing down or welfare checkup either. At least not Rick doing that with him. The man had a phone pressed to his ear, listening for a bit.

  Finally, he nodded, looking at Tony.

  “He’s right here. Would you like me to ask him?” There was no sound of playing in his voice then. Which could mean anything from him being tired to the question being rude. His uncle crossed his eyes and looked over at him then. “They want to know if you’re gay?”

  Tony blinked then. He wasn’t, but it would help to know who was asking. At least it would make his answer a bit different. After all, he didn’t care if anyone thought he was. Not unless he was going to be locked up in prison. Hopefully he didn’t look that way, but if he did it wasn’t a huge problem for him.

  “Who’s asking?” He actually sounded happy enough about it, he thought.

  Rick shrugged.

  “Um… Some LGBTW… Something organization?” Rick wasn’t anti-gay or anything, but it was clear that the ins and outs of the political parts of that topic were outside of his comfort zone.

  So Tony laughed.

  “Oh… Nope? Tell them I would have said yes though, if it had been some bigot group. I have their backs.” That sounded gay, but the person on the phone didn’t take it that way or get mad that he’d said it. At least he heard laughter. It sounded like a woman. Which meant nothing at all anymore. There were more questions then, which all came through Rick, for some reason.

  “So… They want to know if you support Nick and Raul getting married?” Rick looked away as he spoke, his face a bit strained on the issue. The guy wasn’t ancient, but things had changed that way. When he’d been a kid, men didn’t get married like that. Tony was young enough that it had been coming his entire life.