Brawler, Page 3

  “You don’t sound like you’re from here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t have the southern accent thing going on.”

  “My parents were originally from Chicago. They didn’t speak with an accent, and they thought if we did it would make us sound uneducated. We had to take speech classes when we were kids so we didn’t sound like idiots.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Dead serious.” He chuckled. “My father’s a hard ass.”

  I knew all there was to know about having a father who was difficult but wasn’t prepared to discuss it. At least not yet.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “Omaha, Nebraska. I was on my way to the beach and ended up here. Been here ever since.”

  He steered the truck into the other lane, and then looked at me. One of his eyebrows raised slightly. Not much, but just enough to express his interest. “You were on your way to the beach?”

  It still thrilled me to think that one day I would see it. Feel the wet sand between my toes. Feel the waves against my skin. “Yeah. I’ve never been. So, after high school I headed that direction. But, I only got this far.”

  “The bad thing about seeing the ocean is that it’s hard to leave,” he said, his voice trailing off as if his mind was searching for fading memories. “There’s something about it…”

  My eyes went wide. “You’ve been?”

  He nodded. “When I was a kid. And then on spring break. It’s…it’s awesome.”

  “I’m going,” I said. “As soon as I can afford it.”

  I felt more comfortable with him now that we were just talking like two old friends. He was still extremely good-looking – and intimidatingly so – but his demeanor made me feel like he had no idea how handsome he really was. As he pulled into the parking lot of the coffee shop, my curiosity got the best of me.

  “So, are you single?”

  He parked the truck and then his eyes searched my face. After a moment, he seemed to find whatever he was searching for. “Yeah.”

  His hesitation made me feel like he was either lying or hiding something. I pressed a little further. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. It’s just…”

  “Just what?”

  “My last relationship ended kind of...I don’t know…it just. It was kind of,” he stammered. “I wasn’t ready for it to, and it just ended.”

  He couldn’t say something like that and not expect me to pry a little further. So, pry I did. “What happened? I mean, if I can ask. I had a pretty bad one too, and believe me, that fucker just ended. From great to gone in one day. It sucks, but life just kind of sucks sometimes.”

  “I don’t think life sucks. I think things happen. Things that are out of our control.”

  Now he had my complete interest. “So are you going to tell me what happened?”

  He gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead, out into the street. I waited for him to drop the bomb, expecting something totally insane. Expecting a story of how he caught his girlfriend with one of his friends, or that she gave him some weird STD, I sat quietly and waited. While I formulated my response in advance for whatever it was he was going to tell me, he closed his eyes and let out a sigh.

  He opened his eyes but didn’t look at me. “She uhhm. She was getting gas. And some guy came out of the gas station and just started shooting. He’d robbed the place. They said the bullet ricocheted off the pavement. It. It uhhm. It hit…”

  He tapped his temple with the tip of his finger.

  Openmouthed and speechless, I sat and stared. My stomach turned. I felt sick, and I wished I hadn’t pried. I wondered if she was paralyzed or had died, but there was no way I could ask, even if I felt I wanted to.

  “We’d uhhm. I used to smoke, and she hated it. We’d been in a fight about it. She told me to quit, or else.” He coughed out a dry laugh that quickly got emotional. “I uhhm. I never cared much for someone giving me an ultimatum, so I told her I’d quit when I was ready. She left, and it was the last time I saw her alive.”

  I stared down at my bag, not really knowing what to say. I tried to swallow, but my dry mouth prevented it. A long silence followed. It wasn’t a tremendous amount of time, but it was enough that I grew uncomfortable and filled with guilt.

  “You know,” he said. “I wonder about things. Like if I would have agreed to quit, she never would have got mad and left. If that would have happened, she’d be alive, you know.”

  His thoughts must have weighed heavily on him, because he paused for what seemed like an eternity before he continued. “If I wouldn’t have been so stubborn, I wonder if things might have been different. Eventually, I always seem to remember what the pastor said in church when I was a kid about this world being God’s world, and not ours. And then I think that for whatever reason, God decided it was just her time.”

  He looked right at me. “Either way, it sucks.”

  Sometimes I wished I could just haul off and kick life right in the balls. He was right, it sucked. I was glad he told me the story, but felt terrible for all but forcing him to do so.

  “You’re right,” I managed to say. “It does suck. And, I’m sorry.”

  Saying I was sorry seemed shallow and simple, but I didn’t know what else to say. I wanted to console him, but knew there was really nothing I could do or say to provide him with any degree of comfort beyond what he already felt.

  I decided to try anyway. His eyes seemed distant and sad, which didn’t surprise me at all.

  “You quit smoking, right?”

  He held my gaze. “Yeah.”

  “I bet wherever she is, she’s proud of you.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was all I could come up with.

  His eyes narrowed. He appeared to be considering what I said. After a moment he shifted his focus to the street. Then, he chuckled. It seemed strange to hear him laugh, but I accepted it as being better than a lot of things he could have done.

  “I never looked at it that way,” he said. “I like that. Thank you.”

  I decided at least for the time being that silence ruled, so I simply smiled and chose not to speak.

  He smiled in return.

  On that night, his laughter and his smile satisfied me so deeply that I believed moving to Austin was for that reason and that reason alone.

  FOUR

  Jaz

  Day fourteen.

  My mind drifted to thoughts of many things the instant I saw Ethan – all of which included his cock. I had an unmistakable sexual attraction to him, and his lack of expressed interest in me only seemed to make matters worse.

  Backing down in the ring – or in life – wasn’t an option. I had always fought for what I believed in, and I believed we needed to be fucking.

  It wasn’t any one characteristic that attracted me to him, it was everything. Each individual thing about him made him attractive, but everything combined made me long for him sexually. I didn’t want him to fuck me to simply satisfy a sexual void, it was more of a desire to have him claim me.

  So I could claim him in return.

  He ran his fingers through his perfectly fucked up hair. It was going in every available direction, like it always did. It was brown, short, and permanently uncombed, but undeniably sexy. Bedroom hair. He had bedroom hair. I tried not to stare and made a point to make sure my mouth wasn’t hanging open.

  He leaned into the back of the booth and pushed his uneaten food to the side. I glanced at his plate. Half of his hamburger stared back at me, taunting me to eat it.

  I eyed the burger. Pieces of bacon jutted out from between the bun and the thick patty of meat. “You’re not going to finish it?”

  “I’m full,” he said, his tone of voice expressing his lack of interest in finishing the meal. “Do you want it?”

  He must have seen the hunger in my eyes.

  “I don’t want it,” I lied. “But I’d hate to see it go to waste.”

  He pushed
the plate toward me. “Here.”

  “You sure you don’t want it?”

  “I’m not that hungry.”

  I shrugged as if it was no big deal, and that I was simply making my contribution to minimize the food waste that hindered the city’s sanitary engineering department. A few seconds later, and the burger was gone.

  He grinned and nodded his head in my direction. “You eat a lot.”

  I didn’t live on a limited budget. With my shitty waitress job, I would describe it as more of an ongoing economic strain. I couldn’t buy gas for my car, pay my rent, and eat, so I often had to decide if driving or eating was more important. I typically chose to shoulder my backpack and walk, which made me even hungrier.

  More often than not I felt like I was losing the battle, and lately it seemed to be much worse. Although I had always exercised, the addition of my boxing training to my typical daily routine had me needing to consume far more calories than what I was used to. My income, however, prevented me from the luxury of doing so. I needed to win the lottery, but spending the money on a ticket wasn’t necessarily in my budget.

  I wiped the corners of my mouth and took a drink of water. “I’m burning up all my calories in the gym.”

  “How long are your workouts?”

  “I’ve been going for three hours a day.”

  “Three hours?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Maybe I’m making up for lost time.”

  Considering how rewarding I found the sport to be, it struck me as odd that I had spent so much time away from the gym.

  “How long has it been since you boxed, again?”

  “Eight years,” I said, although I wasn’t really sure.

  “Why’d you stop?”

  It was a good question. I didn’t want to, but at the time, I felt I had no real alternative.

  “My trainer got cancer,” I said. “And he died. Like almost immediately.”

  The look on his face did little to hide his guilt. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. It was just one of those things. Part of life.” I shrugged. “He hated the doctor, so he never went. Ended up getting colon cancer. If he would have gone in for one of those scope things they probably would have caught it. But, by the time they found out, it was too late.”

  “And you couldn’t find another trainer?”

  My father hated the fact that I chose boxing as my sport of interest, but I did it primarily to stay away from him and his abusive behavior. He’d wanted a boy, and was forced to accept me as his only child, as my mother died of complications while giving birth. Initially, I felt my involvement in the sport would make him proud, but he never once expressed it.

  Freddy stepped into my life as a trainer, but ended up playing the part of a mentor and a fatherly figure both. During years I trained at the gym, my father’s harsh physical abuse slowed considerably, but never stopped. I suspected he feared Freddy’s retribution and I even wondered if he had threatened my father at some point. When he died, my dreams of being a professional boxer – and of escaping my father’s abuse – vanished.

  Accepting the death of a man as close to me as Freddy when I was sixteen was something that took time. He treated me like a daughter, and his eyes filled with excitement when he spoke to me or about me – similar to the way Ripp’s eyes looked after he saw me beat the guy at the coffee shop.

  I never sought out another trainer, and my way of dealing with my father’s abuse changed from going to the gym to leaving home as soon school was over.

  “I could have,” I said. “I guess I just didn’t want to at the time.”

  “What made you decide to now?”

  My response came easy, and seemed simple as a result. “I liked the way Ripp seemed excited when he talked about my mad skills. He reminded me of Freddy.”

  He smiled and nodded, although I doubted he fully understood my attachment to men who acted like Ripp. The hole my father left in my life was something I felt a need to fill, and men like Freddy and Ripp filled it – and did so very well.

  I stared at the miscellaneous uneaten garnishments on Ethan’s plate. Not because I wanted to eat them, but because focusing on them prevented me from staring at Ethan.

  “I think I fight to get rid of my anger,” he said.

  He seemed so peaceful and kind. In fact, I attributed his lackluster performance in the ring to the absence of anger. “What anger?”

  “My father,” he responded. “He was an asshole. Is an asshole. I mean, he still is. I just don’t see him much anymore.”

  I shrugged. “Mine too.”

  He leaned forward and looked right at me. “Mine was really demanding, and he’d whip us for no reason. Sometimes I thought he did it just because he enjoyed it.”

  “Trade ya,” I said.

  He leaned away from the table and returned a confused look. “Huh?”

  “Trade mine for yours. Mine used to beat me with his fists. When I got older, I’d hit him back. It made me feel better, but it just made him hit me harder.”

  “He hit you? Like…” He clenched his fist and raised it in the air. “With his fist?”

  It wasn’t something I typically told people. And, as terrible as it sounded, it was true. True and disturbing. I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Holy crap.” His eyes fell to the table. For some time, it seemed he was trying to think of something to say, but he didn’t speak.

  Thinking about what my father had done to me, I sat silently while my hatred toward him grew. There was a long list of things he could have chosen to do that I would have been able to forgive him for, but beating me from the time I was a toddler until I decided to leave wasn’t one of them.

  After a very long – and rather awkward – silence, Ethan looked up. His eyes were red and seemed swollen. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  I stared back at him and forced a smile.

  You already said it.

  FIVE

  Jaz

  Day seventeen.

  According to Ripp, I was far too advanced to continue in the amateur circuit, but Kelsey didn’t seem to agree.

  So, roughly two weeks into my training, an amateur fight was set up between me and a girl from Dallas. She had only fought in the amateurs, but so far she was undefeated. I wasn’t worried, because although I hadn’t boxed since I was sixteen, I was still undefeated.

  “Throw those jabs like I taught ya. Find out what her technique is, and look for an opening.”

  I pressed my gloves into the side of my headgear and nodded.

  “You good?”

  I pounded my gloves together.

  He turned and nodded toward the ring attendant. I glanced at Ethan, who was standing beside the ring with a few other people I didn’t know. I raised my gloves and mentally smiled as we made eye contact.

  He smiled in return.

  The referee stepped to the center of the ring. Linda ‘Left Hook’ Lopez and I followed. Although he gave no fight instructions, he made us touch gloves. We stepped a few feet from each other and glared.

  The bell rang, signaling the start of the fight.

  She immediately rushed toward me, which was fine for my fighting style. I’d always felt I was a diverse fighter, and was equally as comfortable fighting offensively as I was defensively.

  She swung a well telegraphed left hook, opening up her right side. I’d been taught by Freddy to give an opponent some time to expose her strengths and weaknesses before I went in for the kill, and Ripp reiterated the same advice.

  I leaned away from the punch, and it swung past me. After a few light jabs on both of our parts, she swung the same slow left hook. I blocked the punch and looked at the gaping hole she left me to counterpunch through.

  Sorry, Ripp, but she’s asking for it.

  I tucked my chin into my chest and responded with a straight right cross before she recovered from the punch she’d thrown. The punch, probably one of my most powerful, landed directly on her chin.

 
Her legs went wobbly and her hands dropped.

  Hurts like a motherfucker, huh?

  I felt like I could have ended the fight right then and there, but I wanted whoever was watching to see everything I was capable of.

  A left hook to her ribs caused her eyes to go wide, and she looked like she would have forfeited the fight if she would have been asked.

  The problem, at least for her, was that no one was asking.

  And I was still hoping to impress whoever was watching.

  I followed up with a lightning-fast four punch combination, connecting each one right in the middle of her face.

  It was thirty seconds into the fight, and she hadn’t hit me once. I, on the other hand, had connected six powerful punches, and she was in trouble. I stepped back in hope of her coming to me for a little more. She teetered on legs that didn’t want to continue and feet that had other plans.

  She looked like she was planning on leaving.

  Just remember, this is only business.

  I knew she’d be expecting my left hook, so I threw it. Slow and without much strength, I didn’t throw it to hurt her – or to even hit her for that matter. It was more to get her to open up for my right. Having been hit by my left hand twice – and not wanting it again – she twisted her upper body to the left, undoubtedly hoping the punch would glance off of her torso.

  It was exactly what I wanted. With her facing to the left, and open to my right hand, I fed it to her.

  Hard.

  The punch caught the left side of her jaw. Her feet came up and she fell to the mat like someone had dropped her out of an airplane.

  The ref stepped between us and waved his hands over her, signaling the end of the fight.

  Excited, I glanced toward my corner. Ripp’s hands were held high over his head, and the expression on his face did nothing to hide his pride.

  The old man, Kelsey, was standing at his side.

  I rushed to the corner, proud of my accomplishment. Ripp removed my headgear and pulled my mouthpiece. “So much for using the jab to establish your opponent’s fuckin’ technique, huh?”