by Emilia Finn
“I appreciate that.” I take her hand and shake. “I’ll get changed.”
“Okay.” She watches as I release her hand and begin to move in the direction of the hall. “Oh, Iowa?”
I stop and spin.
“I grew up in this gym. I went to the school Lyss now attends, and after, I came here. I started training when I was so young that I was still crapping my pants during the night.”
“Gross visual.”
She snickers. “I know Lyss is looking at dance, but it doesn’t have to be one or the other, ya know? Just look at Bean. Get your girl in here, buy her a pair of gloves for Christmas, and watch the magic happen. And if she doesn’t like it…” she shrugs. “Well, that’s okay too. There are still a bunch of kids running around here keeping busy. This gym is family-friendly, that’s all I’m saying. We knew you were a package deal. So don’t be afraid to bring her in here if you’re in a bind. You won’t get shit for it.”
“Okay…” I back up slowly. Nod. “Thanks.”
She winks. Turns to Ben, throws her arms around his neck, and presses a kiss to his panting chest.
I turn on my heels and dash into the hall, then into the locker room. I find an open locker, fuck around with the keypad for a minute until I figure it out, then change into shorts, a tank, sneakers, and a hat. Normally, I would leave my phone behind, but Lyss… school… so I bring it with me and pray it doesn’t ring.
I slam the locker in a rush, make sure it locks, then I dash back into the main room to find Ben, Mac, Lucy, and Evie standing in a line. Wicked grins, cocked arms.
As soon as I come into view, Evie announces, “Go!” and they race through reception and out the front door.
“Fuck.”
I switch my mind into gear and take off out the door and into the heat, only to find them already half a block ahead. The four of them, a team, and I’m the punk at the back trying to keep up. My sneakers slap against the gravel parking lot, then the black tar road as I race to catch up. I pump my arms, do my damned best to not toss my phone by accident, and in the second block, I catch up and slow a little until I find their pace.
“That was mean.”
Barely panting, Evie laughs and runs between Lucy and Ben. “Gotta make sure your cardio is up. Plus, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Even though it takes a few miles in the putrid heat, our group laps past the school, around the high school’s track, and then to the smaller side so I see Lyss playing hopscotch under the shade of massive trees. She plays on her own, but that boy – the overgrown excuse for an eight-year-old from the Jackhammer’s house – sits nearby and keeps watch.
“Feel better?” Evie switches places and runs so her shoulder bumps mine. “Is that Lyss in the skirt?”
“Yeah.” My breath comes fast, hard, and hurts my chest. But my smile… “The one with the light-up shoes. Jesus, she’s the light of my fuckin’ life.”
“She’s safe, big daddy. Now you can train without guilt for the rest of the day. At three, you get to be waiting at the front doors to sweep her off her feet. As a self-admitted daddy’s girl, I can assure you, being there and hugging the shit out of her when she’s done – she’ll never forget that.”
Ten miles in the blistering heat, then floor drills under Evie’s tutelage – the daughter of a Jiu Jitsu legend – we work on the mats for hours on the weaknesses she swears she spotted after watching me fight at two Stacked Deck tournaments in a row. She says I have the feet, the takedown, I have the skills, the speed, the strength, but I lack the details.
And shit if that ain’t true. It’s hard to learn Jiu Jitsu when you train on your own in the yard outside a run-down apartment building. You can learn as much as you want by watching videos online, and you can practice the technical sides, you can even lay your toddler on the floor and ask her to play with you so you can try to get the positioning right, but the application of such skills come from doing the real thing with real fighters.
Evie spotted my weakness when no one else did. So now, she vows to fix it.
If I’m her fighter, she says, she can’t send me to war with weaknesses.
At noon, we eat in the gym kitchen, and though I’ve packed my own sandwiches, Ben unveils grilled chicken and all of the good shit that I can’t really afford on my own.
My daughter needs the good food, the clean food, the unprocessed stuff where we can be certain there are no allergens anywhere near where it’s made. If I didn’t spend the bulk of my grocery budget on her, then she’d go hungry. My lack of special dietary needs means I get pastrami sandwiches, bagged chips, and a glass of milk. Not the best diet for a fighter, but a bag of chips and processed meat on bread is better than nothing.
But that rule doesn’t apply to me today. Not when I eat with the Rollers.
Ben serves up grilled chicken with an almost spicy seasoning that hits in all the right places, a salad that is as tangy as it is refreshing, protein shakes in lieu of soda, juice, or water, and when we’re done, he slides protein bars along the park-bench-type seat we eat on.
The five of us are a brotherhood of sorts, even if almost half of us are girls.
The two hours following lunch include gymnastics-type stuff – muscle-ups, ring rows, handstands that end in laughter when we try to stay up without help.
Lucy, of course, nails hers and walks like she was born to walk on her hands. But the guys – me, Mac, and Ben – struggle. It’s a workout that’ll make my shoulders burn when I wake tomorrow, but it’s filled with laughter, and I can’t say I’ve ever known training that included laughter.
At a quarter to three, Evie calls time, I bust ass to get in and out of the shower in two minutes, and with a slap of hands as I race away, I dive into my car to make tracks across town to get my girl.
Now I stand at the front of the school, back in my jeans, with wet hair and a black shirt that sticks to my chest despite the fact I’ve showered. I’ve stopped working out, but my heart rate is still catching up, my body is still revving, which means I’m still sweating, and the late summer sun ain’t helping.
If this is a snapshot of the rest of my life, I’ll take it. Me and Lyss, a nice home, security in a job that makes me so fucking happy that I catch odd looks from passing parents.
When the bell goes off, and children spill out of the school, I push forward and wait.
I wait. And wait. And wait. I wait for my girl with a grin that makes my face ache.
And when that waiting feels like an eternity, and my smile falters, my girl bursts from the school like she owns the fucking place. Backpack on, hair like she’s been through the drying cycle in the laundry at least once today, and a grin that makes everything worth it. Every minute, every worry, every time I worked myself to exhaustion, every night I’ve shared a bed with my baby, and every morning that I’ve considered the job that I hated, but knew I had to go so that we could keep the electricity on. Every single minute was worth it.
As I walk forward, Lyss races down the concrete steps, and when she’s ten feet away, too far, she launches and forces me to sprint to catch her before she slams to the ground. “Daddy!”
“Baby. Jesus, Lyss. I missed you so much.” She smells of sweat, dirt, something else that’s kind of gross and unknown, but she also smells like home.
Her arms squeeze me the way they squeeze her doll when she’s a little scared, and her light-up shoes wrap around my hips so she’s plastered to my body from top to toe.
“Did you have a good day today, baby? Tell me.” I pull back, but only to catch her eyes and push her hair back. “Tell me everything.”
“I ate all of my lunch,” she announces proudly. “And there was a boy in my class that thought it was weird that I didn’t eat the cafeteria food.”
“He did?”
She nods with massive, head-bobbing movements. “Yep. He was gonna touch my chicken, but Charlie grabbed his hand and pushed him away.”
&nbs
p; “He didn’t!”
Pursed lips and more head bobbing. “For real life, Daddy. He told the boy to rack off.” She stops. Colors. Whispers, “Is rack off a swear?”
“Uh…” I consider. “I’m actually not sure. Maybe don’t say it to any of your teachers. And not to any of the Miss Kincaids. But you could probably slide it into rotation when talking to Benny and them.”
“Okay! Can we go swimming when we get home?”
“Uh… sure. I guess. They said we could, huh?”
She nods.
“Do you have any homework?”
She shakes her head. “Miss Parker said we’ll get a folder soon for all of our notes and stuff. Homework will be in there, but she didn’t have them yet. She said that we have to read every night. To practice.”
“Oh, well, that’s perfect, then, isn’t it?”
“Yep, I already know how to read.”
“You sure do. Alright, let’s go home. We’ll go for a swim, then after that, Daddy has to train a little more, so you can read while I do that. Then tell me about the story you read.”
“Okay!” That’s how my girl learned to read in the first place. Because watching Daddy work out day in day out can get a little boring after a while. “How was your day, Daddy?”
“It was good. I saw you earlier!”
“For real?”
I turn toward the parking lot and keep hold of her. “For real. Daddy and his friends had to go for a run to warm up, so we ran past the school. I saw you playing hopscotch.”
“So cool…” Her voice is an awed whisper. Reverence. “Do you think you’ll do it tomorrow too? I’ll wave to you.”
“I’m not sure, baby. But if we do, I’ll call out.” Until her teachers get mad that I’m disrupting everyone’s day. “Don’t wait for me. And don’t come to the fence looking for me.”
“Okay. Can we get sorbet now?”
“I thought you wanted to swim?”
“Sorbet, then a swim,” she bargains with a sly grin. “Please, Daddy? Just for today, since we were both brave.”
“I can’t argue with that.” I reach the car and let my breath out on an exhale. “Alright, baby, because we were brave. Let’s go.”
Brooke
Where Fantasy Meets Reality
My hands fly over my keyboard, purple nail polish glittering in the sunlight streaming through my windows, as words fly onto my screen a mere second after I think them.
Opening crusty eyes to the nighttime darkness, my heart thunders in my chest as adrenaline and fear skitter through my blood. I remain still, but my eyes wheel around to take stock of my surroundings. Dense forest, towering trees, and a small, artificially made campfire; no fuel or accelerants required. Soldiers roam our campground to keep us safe. And yet, my hand wraps around the hilt of my beloved dagger. Hair sticks to my face and lips. But I notice the blanket laid out over me, the blanket that smells like him, and is tucked in tight at the sides to keep me warm.
“Go back to sleep,” Roman’s deep timbre rumbles near my ear. “Everything is fine.”
“Jump in, Daddy!”
Torn away from battlegrounds, away from my soldiers and the war that will come at sun-up, my brows furrow with annoyance as my fantasy world is slashed open by the blandness of the real world.
“Let’s go, Daddy! Do it.”
“Move aside, baby!” His voice, his voice, is filled with laughter, with playfulness, and then it’s followed by a loud splash that sends water slamming against the concrete surrounds of the pool in my backyard.
Of the seven houses on my family’s estate, ours is the only one with a pool – I suppose the people that built it figured mi casa es su casa. If they’re going to live in a gated community together, then they probably like each other enough to share a pool. Our home has always been the one where everyone congregates, the kitchen we all huddle in while we smash pancakes into our systems, the living room we all crowd into for movie night, and the yard the kids race around whenever our families decide to cook outside – which is at least a few times a week in every season except winter.
The fact there are people in my backyard while my family is supposed to be at the gym is hardly alarming, but his voice, and her voice…
I push my laptop off my legs and onto my bed, and climbing to my feet with a groan – reaching tall, to stretch out the body that has been contracted and bent in terrible posture for hours – I wait for my joints to pop, for my lungs to fill with fresh oxygen, and then for my collarbone to pop to fight the way I hunch when I work. Then I make my way to my window and peek through the lace curtains.
My bedroom overlooks my yard, the pool, the tree swing at the back of my yard that hasn’t been used in years. It overlooks the gate that leads into the forest surrounding my home, the forest I’ve used and adapted for my story, and beyond that… eternity. The sun is still high outside, still painful and blistering and hours away from quitting on today, but the couple in the pool seem oblivious.
Alyssa, the sweet cherub baby, is almost sheet-white from the sunblock her father must’ve slathered on before they left their house. She wears a baby pink bathing suit, with rainbow shoulder straps, and tiny rainbows covering the body. Her hair hangs askew, like it started in a high ponytail, but after hours of school, of running around and jumping into a pool, it’s been shifted to the side. A teddy bear lays on a reclining chair, sunbathing, while his human – Alyssa – and Miles Walker frolic in the water. Annie, my Uncle Jack’s elderly black Labrador, snoozes under the shade of an umbrella, and a Great Dane that somehow came to live with us in the last year, since Smalls’ dog had puppies and she needed to find homes for them, lays out beside Annie so their paws touch, and his tongue lolls out to the side – an effort, I suspect, to make the fragile Labrador smile.
I have battles to write, a love story to explore, and a murder to solve – busy life for a novelist hoping to make this her life’s work – but instead, I push the royal warrior, Tallulah Aurelia Della Katarina King – it’s a mouthful, I know – out of my mind and sit on the little reading seat by my window.
My curtains hide me from outside lookers, but it’s hardly necessary as father and daughter frolic in the pool and move so much that the water constantly sloshes over the side and into the drain.
Yellow and blue floaties lay on the side of the pool – Alyssa’s, my keenly tuned investigative skills deduce – but they lie discarded, unneeded, because her daddy is right there, ready to catch her.
Miles Walker is… an enigma, I suppose. Handsome. So handsome that he makes my heart race faster than it ever has for anyone else in my life. He’s a fighter, and I never thought I’d take a second look at one of those.
Most girls fall all over themselves to get a peek into my family’s gym, because oh my god, sweat and muscles and all that other swoony stuff, but I grew up inside a gym, smothered by fighters, as I watched my family’s mood shift depending on the outcome of a fight.
We would walk on eggshells in the days leading up to it, and then we were either flying on the win, or grumbling and strategizing on how to do better next time. I’ve grown up on that pendulum swing, having fighters watch every step I take, lest I fall victim to the usual craziness a teen discovers – No parties for you, Brooklyn. No boys. No drinking. No fun at all…
I never wanted to go crazy and party through my rebellion, but the fact I was so closely watched, and watched by fighters, nonetheless, it annoyed me so much that I was turned off for life…
Or so I thought.
I don’t want to fight, unlike my cousins. I don’t even want to go to fights, unless it’s my family fighting, and I’m there to cheer them on, not the sport in general. I write stories, but none of them include fighters like the kind I grew up knowing. Real life has plenty of those.
My father jokes that I’m his high-maintenance princess, his diva that requires bunches of money and attention to be happy. But it’s not true. I might be his easiest, cheapest child of them all. I don’t wan
t gym memberships, I don’t want tournament fees, travel expenses, the cost of gloves or sneakers or any of the million other accessories that come with being a competitive fighter. I only want a pen and paper to draw, write, and daydream in the pages between the covers.
I have a laptop, but I worked at the gym – joke’s on me – to earn the cash to buy it, and I forwent college and the expensive tuition there, simply because I spent hours, weeks, months even, staring at the list of degrees I could get, and not one of them appealed to me. Not even the creative writing classes.
I don’t want someone else to tell me how to write, how to be creative. Because then I’m just being creative their way. I have my own voice, my own ideas, and my own creativity I’d like to explore.
Did Vincent Van Gogh go to college to learn how to paint? I actually don’t know the answer to that – perhaps I’d have learned if I went to college – but I’m fairly certain Mark Twain wrote without a degree. Steve Jobs built his empire without a degree, and you don’t see anyone trying to posthumously convince him to put a banana on his devices, simply because that’s the fruit they think would look best.
My brother is the child that costs my family the most. Bryan’s the peacock of our generation, the loudest and most demanding of time and attention, but because I’m different – that is, not a fighter – Dad jokes that I’m the diva.
All of that to say, fighters have never held an appeal for me the way they do for most of the female population. All fighters have felt like my brothers, and that’s gross. I was able to walk through my gym, through tournaments, through black-tie functions that our family was obligated to attend, and not once did I do a double take that kept my attention long after the fact.