Alpha Fighter (16 page)

But I will get lost in the crowd and I will go unnoticed. This time, I will keep my focus and leave my emotions out of it. I can’t afford to feel things. I can’t afford to indulge my desire for social comfort. I can’t afford to make friends and absolutely, in no way, can I afford to get involved with someone. After Cooper, I really don’t want to. I don’t think I could find another man like him and I sure as heck don’t want to. I couldn’t have the man of my dreams and can’t, and don’t want, to have any other man.

It was completely foreseeable. I went in knowing that I shouldn’t get involved with anyone. I went in knowing that my past was too dangerous, and still played too big a role in my present, for me to dare to think that I could possibly be free enough to let someone else into my mess of a life. I knew that I should have done something, anything, to not have to take the room in Cooper’s apartment. Failing to do that, I should have done whatever it takes to not talk to him and not get close to him.

I made a series of terribly ill-advised choices, even though I knew better, and now I’m paying for it. The only thing that I can do now is make sure that I never slip up like that again. That, and hope and pray that I meant a lot less to Cooper than he means to me. I don’t want him to be hurting about me leaving. It’s just not fair.

But even if he is hurting, it’s a lot less than he would be hurting if he stayed with me and Daddy’s thugs, or the Moreno thugs, got to him.

I’m making the right decision now, and I know it. I just wish it didn’t hurt so bad.

I try to distract myself a bit by looking out the window at the unfamiliar landscape rolling by. Each hour, I’m getting further from my past, further from Cooper, and closer to safety as no one, a girl who means nothing to anyone. I’m getting closer to my future.

I draft a plan as the miles roll by. I’ll buy a newspaper at a corner shop, find an apartment in the classifieds, and try to move in immediately. If a same-day move-in doesn’t work, I’ll stay at the cheapest hostel out in Harlem or the Bronx until I can move in—hopefully within the week, because I have a feeling that even a hostel out in the projects isn’t going to come cheap. I don’t know, though. I’ve only been to New York City once when I was little, and I was there with my rich parents who were fine with expensive and covered everything, anyway, since I was a little kid. But big city prices are infamous and I’m just hoping the pay matches up.

I’ll look around for a job at a tattoo parlor, but apply at diners and fast food joints, too, if I can’t get one. A waitressing gig at a ritzy place in Manhattan would, of course, be the best pay-wise, but I’m also incredibly unlikely to get it. Having had no jobs as a high school student, and thus no experience as a waitress or cashier, is making it a lot more difficult to find part-time gigs to hold me over. And since I didn’t even get a chance to resign from The Ink Joint, given how quickly I fled town, I’m screwed if they want a reference from my last employer.

Whatever. That’s not my biggest problem, and I’ll figure it out and work my way up from the bottom again, if need be. It’s not like I have anything else to do.

Cooper

I
can’t sleep. Eventually, shortly after four in the morning, I decide to cut my losses and go on a run. I turn left where I normally turn right and find myself running through the city’s slums, headed for the trailer park where I grew up. I haven’t been back in years, not since shortly after I started training with Vlad and decided to put my past hangups about being the ‘white trash kid’ behind me.

But here I am again, running through the same streets that I spent the days of my childhood playing on. I have come so far, despite all the hurdles that I have faced. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps to make it into the Navy SEALs and picked myself up again after I couldn’t be a SEAL anymore, and the girl who I thought was the love of my life betrayed me. I trained hard and fought my way to the top off the MMA.

And now, for a girl who couldn’t even bother to leave a note or say goodbye, I lost rank and sponsorships for this year’s tournament. I was stupid and I went against my best judgment. Emotions are nothing but trouble and women are nothing but trouble if you try to do anything more than just fuck them and send them on their way.

She’s just a girl. I should have known better by now. Didn’t I learn my lesson?

I haven’t thought about it in a while, but this brings it right back to my mind. I remember every painful detail, even though the emotions for Sarah are all long dried up and gone.

It was after I found out that I couldn’t be a SEAL anymore. I decided to go home and try to win Sarah back. I would show her that I was better and that PTSD wasn't so scary. I would make her come back to me. I was walking out of a flower store with an enormous bouquet of pink and red, mottled roses, her favorite, when I saw her walk out of her gynecologist's office across the street. A man in an expensive suit and shiny shoes had his arm slung low around her waist. She had her hand on her stomach and when she turned to kiss him, I saw that it was swollen with a small, basketball-shaped bump high on her abdomen.

To be pregnant now, Sarah had to have been cheating on me while I was overseas. I didn't know where to turn. I didn't know what to do. Just like that, my whole world had fallen apart. I only survived because I had fighting to turn to and focus on. The MMA became my everything. I ate, slept, breathed, and lived fighting. With every fight I won, I was that much closer to recovery from both my PTSD and my heartbreak.

So to have been so stupid now, after all these years, is unacceptable. I shake my head and turn around.

I was stupid. But she’s gone now and I’m not making that mistake again.

Savannah

I
finally manage to doze off around four- or four-and-a-half hours into the ride and, shortly after I fall asleep, I am awakened by the driver announcing our arrival in New York City over the bus intercom.

“We’re pulling into Penn Station here, folks,” the driver drawls, sounding even more tired than I feel. “Please check the area around you and make sure you take all your belongings, children, and trash out with you. This bus is heading back west in just thirty minutes and it’s a huge help to us here at The Blitz Bus. Thanks again for choosing The Blitz Bus for your travels today. We know you have a lot of options when you travel and we appreciate you choosing us. Have a nice stay in NYC and see you again soon!”

I didn’t take any of my belongings out of my backpack, so I just pick it up off of the seat next to me, which stayed mercifully empty throughout the trip, and pull the empty cracker wrappers and wadded up napkins with apple stems from the seat pocket in front of me. Unloading the bus takes a while, largely because of what seems to be a retiree travel group coming to see the big city, but I’m not in a rush.

As soon as I step off the bus, though, I feel like I ought to be in a hurry, just because everyone else seems to be. I hold onto my backpack tighter as I’m jostled from all sides on the street corner, by people big and small, smelly and all dressed up. This isn’t the glittering New York City from television, nor is this the candyland New York City that I remember from my childhood trip, though I’ve since realized that I’m probably only remembering a trip we took to F.A.O. Schwartz. Instead, this is reality. It’s loud, it’s dirty, it smells bad, and it’s crowded. But it can also be what I make it. I push past a few people and over to the subway entrance on the street corner. It’s hotter underground, but I manage to buy a subway ticket for two dollars and seventy-five cents and swipe in. I locate a subway map by the telltale group of fanny-pack-sporting midwesterners huddled around it and find out that the Three train will take me right up to Harlem. Once I’m up there, I’ll be able to find a cheaper place to stay than here in midtown Manhattan.

I get off the train about twenty-five minutes later and climb back upstairs to the street. I step out into the mid-morning sun and look around. I see few banged-up windows, paint peeling on the front doors, and a group of four women sitting and standing on the front steps of a brick apartment building, talking loudly and rapidly in Spanish. I don’t really have any idea where I’m going yet, so I just choose a direction and walk down the street. Soon enough, I come upon a dated gas station.

The bell chimes as I walk through the door. “Hello?” I call.

A little Indian man pops up from a back room, accessed from behind the cashier’s counter, and smiles at me. “Yeeas?”

“Can you help me, please?” I ask. “I need today’s newspaper and the locations of the cheapest motels or hostels around here.”

I buy a paper, a cup of instant ramen, and a bottle of Coke from him. I am directed to a motel where I get a flea-bitten room for fifty-nine ninety-nine a night, and so begins my New York life. I flip right past the news, entertainment, comics, lifestyle, and sports sections, going straight for the classifieds. I need a place to stay and I need a job at a tattoo parlor. At least the latter should be easier to find, now that I have a fairly decent portfolio.

I pull it out to take a look at it again, hoping to make myself feel some excitement for this future, but seeing the snapshot of Cooper’s shoulder blade piece brings all the emotions crashing back down on me. For the first time since I saw Nate’s face on the poster last night—it isn’t even a full twenty-four hours ago, but it feels like a lifetime—I let the emotions wash over me. I let myself fall back on the hard, flat motel pillows and I let the tears run down my face, sobs shaking my body as I heave ragged breaths.

I am never going to see Cooper again.

Savannah

A
few days pass and I settle into a daily routine. Things aren’t great, of course, but they’re working out pretty well. In fact, things are going much better than expected, given my usual bad luck.

I found a place almost immediately and was able to move out of the ratty motel after only three nights. I’m rooming with three women in a small apartment in Harlem, all the way up on West 137th Street. It’s a fifth floor walk-up with no air conditioning and a cockroach problem, but at least there aren’t any bedbugs. I hope. Not a single one of the roommates speaks English, beyond the basic ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘hello,’ ‘mine,’ ‘no share,’ and ‘rent now.’ Honestly, I see that as a huge benefit. If they can’t talk to me, we can’t become friends. I don’t want friends. If there’s one thing you learn early on the streets, it’s that loving people only gives other people material to a use against you and ways to hurt you.

The job situation worked out somewhat less well. While I was able to get a job at a low-range tattoo parlor pretty quickly just by showing my portfolio, without needing a previous employer’s recommendation, I could only get twenty hours a week. There’s no way that I can cover my costs, no matter how many places I try to cut corners and even subsisting on canned beans and rice alone, so I find a second job that I can schedule around my hours at the parlor. I’m working mainly night and early morning shifts at Greasers, a diner specializing in breakfast foods. The manager claimed the name was because the diner is
Grease
-themed, for the musical lovers, but I am not convinced. There’s not really anything in the decor or menu that suggests any connection with or inspiration from
Grease
, but the food is dripping in enough of the stuff that I would be entirely unsurprised if actual grease were the namesake.

But a job is a job and I have about all that I can ask for.

Since neither of my jobs are high-paying, though, I need some other source of money. I don’t have any valuables to sell, except my locket necklace from my mother, so I finally decide that I have to sell it. It nearly breaks my heart in two as I walk over to the pawnshop, but I have no other choice.

“How much can I get for this?” I ask the pudgy bald man at the register.

He reaches out a grubby hand and everything in me screams no as I drop the necklace into his hand. He turns it over a few times, rubbing it between his sausage-like fingers, eyes gleaming. Then something shifts in his face before he looks up. His expression is calculatedly bored.

“A hundred bucks, tops,” he says nonchalantly.

“Bullshit,” I say, equally calmly. “Look again and stop trying to rip me off, or I’ll take it and leave.”

He looks a little surprised at how sure of myself I am, but I just stand there, back straight and chin set. Finally, he looks at the necklace again.

“Three hundred?”

“Eight hundred,” I say. “That’s solid gold.”

“Eight hundred?” he cries. “What do you think this is, Tiffany’s?”

“Fine,” I say, reaching out to take it back from him. “I’ll go somewhere else.”

He pauses for a moment, like he’s trying to figure out if I’m bluffing, and I just wiggle my fingers impatiently, like I have places to be and things to do.

“Fine,” he grumbles, “Seven hundred and that’s it.”

“Seven hundred and fifty, or no deal,” I say.

He makes a face like it’s physically paining him to agree, but he nods. “But we pay out on sale. You’ll get your money in anywhere from one to six months, depending on the market.”

“But I need it now!” I take a breath to collect myself. I take another breath, then I switch tactics. “Please, sir, I need to pay my rent and I’m new to the city. I really can’t wait that long.”

He gives me another look, then shakes his head and sighs. “Fine, I’ll tell you what—I’ll list it on the internet, too, and that should speed up the sale some. You’ll probably get it sooner this way, but no guarantees and I still can’t pay out until I’ve been paid.” He shrugs. “Money is tight everywhere. What can I say.”

“Deal,” I say. I can tell he is offering all that he can. It still hurts when I walk out of the store, leaving the last thing tying me to anyone that I love behind. I don’t have my mom, or even the one remembrance of her that I had, and I don’t have Cooper. I don’t have my sister, my brother wouldn’t want me, and my father would disown me.