by Emilia Finn
All it takes is for one mom to be packing a PB&J for her kid right now, to be having this same “Are you excited?” chat with him as they make their way to the car, and for that kid to not wash his hands after lunch. Maybe they end up in the same class, maybe they share a pencil, or he hugs her, because he’s a boy and she’s too pretty for her own good.
No one will know anything is wrong until she’s already choking.
“God.” I rest my forehead on the steering wheel and breathe through the tightening of my own throat. “Maybe we should try home school?”
“Daddy, no.” Lyss lifts her foot to the back of the chair in front of her, and kicks it forward. “Daddy, let’s go. I’m already nervous, and you’re making it a little bit scary.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I lift my head and catch her eye in the mirror. “I’m sorry. This is gonna be great, right? It’s gonna be totally fine.”
I switch the ignition on and back out of my driveway after making sure the little road behind us is clear. Britt’s car is already gone, as are most of the others – the fighters – since they tend to start their day earlier than what I negotiated.
Fighting is my passion, it’s what I want to be doing until I can’t do it anymore, and if I didn’t have my daughter, I’d already be at the gym. But six years ago, my life changed. My new role means she comes first. Always. Because there’s no chance we’re going to look back fifteen years from now and realize that I worked and trained more than I hung out with her. We won’t miss daddy-daughter dances, we won’t miss any of that stuff in my pursuit of sporting greatness.
I had my chance, and I made choices that made that impossible. Now it’s Lyss’ turn to be amazing.
I pull up to the security gate and flash my pass card at the box on the inside – a log, they said, so they know who’s coming and going, now that the family has grown – as Boyce Avenue plays softly through my car speakers. Lyss drops her feet from the back of the chair, sits up a little taller, and watches out the windows as we pull through the gates and move onto the winding road we discovered almost a whole week ago.
“Are you nervous, Daddy?” Lyss’ voice is soft, melodic, like a baby fairy’s, making me smile. “It’s your first day too.”
“I’m not nervous,” I answer truthfully. “A little bit, but not much. It’s hot out, so I’m a little nervous it’s gonna make Daddy puke.”
Just as I expected, Lyss breaks out into belly-rolling giggles that help eradicate the nerves floating between us. “Maybe take some juice to work,” she suggests. “It’ll make you feel better.”
“Maybe I will, baby.”
Ten minutes later, and three separate trips back to the car once we park in the school lot, we make our way up the front steps of the main building and slip between rushing students. The way I understand it, this school technically houses kids from kindergarten all the way up to high school graduation, though they separate the smaller kids from the bigger ones.
With Lyss’ hand clutched tightly in mine, we move through the colorful hall, past screeching kids, and doors with numbers and letters on them – 1W, 2L, 1H – until we stop on 5T. We’re supposed to go to the principal’s office, but instead, I go in search of Britt. Her last name now is Reilly, but the T stands for Turner, I believe. Her maiden name, and the name of the local chief of police – her big brother.
Knocking on the door, I wait a moment, then open it to reveal Britt – the woman I live across the street from now, the woman who, at home, is a little bit rock chick, a little heavy with the makeup, the ink, the piercings, and the quick wit when her kid or her husband is giving her shit. But now she stands in a business skirt, sensible heels, and hair tied back in a matronly bun. She’s still beautiful, but if you didn’t know the at-home version of her, you’d never believe this woman could kick your ass on a skateboard or in a shit-flinging argument over petty bullshit.
“Hey!” She closes a laptop with an enthusiastic snap, comes around her desk, and lowers into a crouch to speak to Lyss. “You look beautiful! Holy cow, I wish I could wear a skirt like that to school.”
I don’t think she’s lying.
“Do you like my shoes, Miss Britt?” Without waiting for an answer, my baby jumps and stomps back down to activate the lights that are dying a slow death via old batteries. “They light up.”
“They really freakin’ do! Being grown up means we don’t get to wear shoes like that anymore. It stinks so bad.”
“You should buy some.” Lyss throws a fast glance up to me, then back to Britt. “You’re a grownup and have your own money from work. You should buy some.”
“Ya know what?” Britt nods. “I really should. I might go to the mall after school and see what I can find.”
“If you can’t get them, maybe ask my daddy. He’ll get some for you.”
Britt’s breath comes out on a quiet laugh as she pushes straight and meets my eyes. “I know that light-up shoes are cool and all, but light-up shoes paid for by someone else…”
I chuckle. “If you find shoes that light up and fit, I’ll pay for them. Get ‘em fast while my bonus is carrying us.”
She laughs and presses a gentle hand to my bicep. Finally, her eyes turn serious. “You’re so tense you’re going to snap. It’s gonna be okay. It’s just school.”
“I’m trying real hard to be okay with this.”
“You’ll be at the gym with my husband, and I’ll be here with your girl. Fair trade?”
“Is your husband six years old with a deadly food allergy?”
“Sure feels like it sometimes. The six years old thing,” she adds on a laugh. “It’s going to be fine. Principal West called a staff meeting this week about our new student. Lyss is our only allergy of this complexity.” This lethal, she means. This instantaneous. “Everyone knows who she is, what she’s allergic to, and how to help if we have a problem. The nurse’s station has her pens.” She moves back to her desk and opens the top drawer. “I have my own, just in case. It makes me feel better to have one, just in case, despite the fact she won’t be in my class. Lyss and I will be in the same building for all of her classes, and I’ve volunteered to supervise the cafeteria for this week.”
She closes the drawer again and comes back to the door. “I want to be close for the next little while, just to get a lay of the land, so to speak.” She tilts her head a little to the side. “We’ve eaten together a few times this past week, Iowa. I’ve watched you. I won’t pretend to know even half of what you know about this, but I promise I’ve been working on educating myself. I will do my best by your baby, I swear I will.”
“Yeah, well…” I draw in a deep breath, only to let it out on a gust of acceptance. “I guess that’ll have to be good enough, since I can’t keep her home any longer.” I turn to Lyss, crouch down to meet her eyes. “You ready to go meet your teacher?”
“Will Miss Britt come too?”
“I sure can.” Britt smiles and folds her arms so a glittering bracelet dangles from her wrist and shows off a Bambi charm. “I’ll be with you until the bell, I promise. Oh wait. First…” She dashes back to her desk and whips up her phone. “Did you guys take a picture before you left this morning?”
“Uh… no.” I look around the room, then back to her as she points the phone at me and Lyss. “Should we have?”
“Of course! It’s the first day, Miles. Geez. Say ‘cheese’.”
“I’m not allowed cheese,” Lyss announces with pride. Then she giggles. “It’s a joke.” She nods. “You get it?”
“I get it, baby.” Shaking my head, I lift her up and nestle her on my hip. She’s definitely too old for this, but I can’t not pick her up like she’s a toddler. I can’t let go. “Look at Miss Britt, babe. Big smiles.”
Half an hour later, I say goodbye, trust my baby to the care of a school for the first time in our lives, then head across town and pull into the gym parking lot.
I’ve been here a handful of times over the past week, but they were visits, a
tour of sorts, and with Lyss right by my side. Today, I have to walk in alone with my training bag flung over my shoulder, and my car keys in my hand like I’m going to hear Lyss if she cries out for me.
My stomach feels too warm, my chest, too tight. But this is our reality now. And whether we’re here or back in our old town, today would still be the first day of school. I would still feel sick, I would still be tired from lack of sleep.
So since I don’t get much choice, I lift my head and walk through the heat of the parking lot, only to step into the gym and groan at the lack of cooling. It’s almost as hot in here as it is outside.
“Iowa!” Evie Kincaid power walks from the space just around the corner – the boxing ring, I know from my visits – into the empty reception space.
A desk takes up a third of the area, a mini fridge, a water fountain, and on the wall opposite the desk, glass trophy cabinets filled to the brim with the very reason coming here to train was such an easy decision.
If Bobby Kincaid pulls you aside – you, a lonely fighter out of nearly five hundred – and asks you to consider relocating to fight for them, you pack your shit and move. You wait until you’re alone, then you dance around your shitty hotel room with your daughter amid bubbling laughter and whooping cheers, because your life officially just changed for the better.
Except for the day my daughter was born, Bobby Kincaid’s question might have been the next best day of my life.
Evie is already sweating, already red from the heat, and splotchy from taking hits to the chest. Her hair – wild, blonde curls – is tied back into a braid, but it’s already turning to frizz because of the sweat that moves through it. She wears black and purple booty shorts today, just like she has every other day I’ve seen her, and a sports bra that in no way looks sexy.
It’s sporty, it’s practical, so seeing her in the equivalent of underwear… it doesn’t get my blood moving the way others might.
“You’re here.” She comes to a stop in front of me, exhales hot air onto my arm because she’s so close, then brings wrapped hands up to swipe at her brow. “How’d Lyss do?”
“She’s good.” I fix the bag on my shoulder and fall a little more in love with my new life. I’m their fighter, I’m paid to be here, I’m late for my first day, but instead of screeching at me to move my ass, she asks about my girl. “She wasn’t too nervous, really. And Miss Britt was with her the whole time I was there.”
“Who’s her teacher this year?”
“Miss Parker?” I shrug. “Forty-ish, nice enough, doesn’t come across as a total bitch.”
Evie barks out a fast laugh and turns to walk with me as we head into the gym. “Most of the teachers there are pretty cool. She’s in good hands no matter who she gets.”
“You went to that school too?”
“Uh huh. I was in Miss Britt’s class when I was younger. That was the year she and Uncle Jack hooked up. I like to think of myself as the matchmaker.”
Chuckling, I follow her into the main room. “Sexy, setting your aunt and uncle up.”
“Walking in on them a dozen times over the years wasn’t sexy. I learned real quick to knock before entering a room, which, by the way, I didn’t have to do previously. Miss T came along and ruined everything. But, ya know how it goes, she makes him happy, she built us the halfpipe in the driveway, blah blah blah.” She laughs. “We learned to accept her as one of our own.”
“Iowa.” Mac Blair – Lucy’s man – crosses the room when we emerge into a cacophony of men and women slamming each other to the ground. On the mats, in the ring, against the padded walls.
He wears shorts only, and wipes a towel over his chest – a chest that bears a scar that has always scared the living shit out of me. Heart transplant survivor, they told me. He was fourteen when he dropped dead in the very boxing ring that stands twenty feet in front of me, the same ring I’m expected to train in. But he lived – obviously – got himself a new heart, and then he stepped up to me in the first ever Stacked Deck Tournament and forced me to choose between him and Lyss.
There is zero beef between me and Mac, and even after the fight, zero grudges held. But that night, the night we fought, I aimed for the target on his chest and did what I had to do to keep my family intact.
Eighteen months later, he moves toward me with a lopsided grin, takes my hand when I offer it, and pulls me in for a fast hug that ends with him slapping my back before he steps away. “We’ve been waiting on you.”
“Yeah?” I look around in search of the rest of their typical group. I find Ben in the ring sparring with someone else, but the dancing chick… “Lucy ain’t here?”
“She is, actually.” Mac lifts his chin, so I follow his line of sight and catch a glimpse of her speaking to another woman. “She’s normally at the studio during weekdays now, but she wanted to be here for today. She wanted in on your first day.”
“You’re quite the attraction,” Evie says with a grin. “I mean, we get new folks signing up here every single day, but so few of them actually stick. And fewer yet are any good. You got a written invitation from my uncle, and I don’t know if you know, but that’s kinda special. Of course we’re gonna be here to watch.”
“Did that have anything to do with you guys?” I look from Mac, to Evie, to Ben as he lays his opponent out in the ring and glances up in search of his girl.
His eyes lock onto mine, fiery, hungry for the win, even if it’s just training, but they soften after a moment, and his lips quirk up into a grin as he brings his hand up and pulls the Velcro open on his gloves.
I look back to Evie. “Did Bobby asking me to come here have anything to do with you guys?”
She grins and lifts a shoulder that I’m certain is seductive when she does it for Ben. “I maybe told my dad what I thought about your fighting ability. He might have discussed it with Uncle B. The rest was up to them.”
“Maybe I mentioned somethin’ too,” Mac admits. He shrugs. “I just said somethin’ to Lucy about how it’d be cool if you trained here.”
“She probably said something to uncle B,” Evie adds. “He was always soft for her.”
I chuckle. “So each of you went out of your way to put a word in for me, and now Bobby is hoping I don’t flake?”
“Pretty much.” Mac flashes a goofy grin. “And if you do fuck up, then I’ll take my happiness in watching that. Because maybe I’m all about fair fights and being a good sport and all that, but I’ll always be salty about our fight, so…”
“If I fall?”
He laughs. “I’ll probably point and laugh. It’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Fair call, I suppose. You got a locker room I can change in?”
“Yup!” Evie points toward the hall near where Lucy stands. “Down there, boys and girls. Pick the one that applies, get changed. Then we’re starting.”
“Do I go find Bobby?”
“Ha, no.” Finally, Evie lets her grin fly free. “Maybe Uncle B signed you on, but you’re ours. Stick with us as we train our way toward Stacked Deck, we’ll get you into the tournament, then you can prove whether you were a good investment or not.”
My eyes flash to Mac. “Uh…”
“I’m not fighting this year.” He presses a fist to his heart. “I’ve decided that I’m gonna step back. Chill the fuck out, stop stressing everyone out over my obsession with something that ain’t all that healthy for me.”
“Not competing?” My eyes, wide, flip from him to Evie. “What? You’re the whole damn point.”
He chuckles. “I’m flattered, but I’ve decided I have other, more important things in my life to work toward than killing myself over a tournament. I’ve gotta work, I’ve gotta be with my girl. I’m still gonna be here a lot, so we can spar and shit, but I’m officially done competing.”
“For now, anyway.” Lucy steps up behind Mac, slides under his arm, and wraps hers around his stomach. “Next year is a solid maybe.”
Mac shrugs, but he definitely
doesn’t push her away. “Maybe,” he agrees. “I’m more interested in watching my girl live her dreams. If I get bored with that, the door is always open to sign up for next year. And to be able to step up next year, or any year, I gotta continue to train. So…”
“So you train.” I look to his girl, to the hearts I see in her eyes as she looks up at him and squeezes extra tight. “I can live with that.”
“I understand that this is a relief for you,” Mac adds in a low timbre. “I know facing me was a scary thought, so I don’t mind making this sacrifice for your mental health.”
“Fuck outta here.” I shove his shoulder, but it’s accompanied by a laugh. “Scared, my ass. Give me a minute to change, then I’m all yours until three o’clock.”
I stop before turning away, and meet Evie’s eyes. She’s the boss. Maybe she’s surrounded by beefy fighters, maybe she’s a female in a man’s world, but as far as my employment goes, I now consider her my boss.
“I know I spoke to Bobby about my hours and stuff, and I know you would have overheard us, but I figure we really need to get it spelled out…” I swallow my nerves. I have a contract that says this is happening, but still, nerves flood my system. “I can only do nine to three. I know those aren’t typical hours for a fighter, but I don’t have a choice. My baby is only six. This is a new town, a new world for her, and she can’t get to and from school on her own. That means I do school drop-off and pick-up. Every single day. And during the summer…” I shrug. “Well, we have a whole year before that becomes a problem.”
I swallow again and lay it out plainly. “I need to be with my girl, Miss Kincaid. But I can promise to work out at home in the afternoons. I pick her up, we make a snack, she sits down to do her after school thing – homework or whatever – and I’ll work too. Just like I did back home. If those hours are a problem for you…”
“I heard you and Uncle B talking, Iowa. I saw the contract you signed. And I’ve met your baby. I’m not gonna force you to choose. I saw the contract before you signed it, and I saw it again after you signed. Everyone agreed to those hours, so it would be in bad taste for me to cop an attitude about it now. I know you have the drive to win. I know you’ve got the guts, so I trust you to take care of business. We’re good.” She offers a hand and a kind smile. “I’m not gonna move you here and flip on what was agreed.”