Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (17 page)

As much trouble as my
parents have caused me, I’m sure I could live with them doing a little time if
it got them to straighten themselves around. That said, they’re still my
parents.

The more immediate issue,
though, is what am I supposed to tell Mason?

The only reason I’m
hearing about this from my mom instead of the ten o’clock news is that the
arrests haven’t happened yet. Dad paid off someone in the DA’s office about a
decade ago, ensuring that the two of them would always have a heads up in case
the hammer—or gavel as the case may be—was about to drop.

If I’m going to keep on
dating Mason, I’m going to have to tell him. Maybe it would be different if I
hadn’t already told him who my parents are, but the one thing you can count on
with the media is that they’re going to squeeze every drop out of this sort of
thing.

Maybe it doesn’t have to
be tonight, though.

There’s time, though
exactly how much. Right now, only the police, the DA, whoever filed the charges
and the criminals they’re trying to nail to the floor know the wealthiest
do-nothings in the state are going to be arrested.

As soon as the story breaks,
it’s never going to unbreak.

I can’t deal with this
tonight, though, and I don’t think Mason would thank me for piling on, so I
slowly start making my way back to the bar.

The worst thing is that
mom wouldn’t be calling me if they hadn’t found some way to involve me in it
all somehow. They’ve never gone past a certain line, but this isn’t the first
time I’ve had to talk in code over an unsecured line.

I get back in the bar
and, if anything, it’s even more deserted than when I left only a few minutes ago.

Mason’s still sitting at
the bar, though right now, hunching may be the more appropriate term.

I walk over to him and
sit down with little more than a quiet, “Hey.”

He looks over at me, his
eyes not quite open and not quite closed, either. “You’re back!” he says.
“How’d it go? Everything all right with your m—”

“I think Neptune should
be open by now,” I interrupt. “Did you still want to check it out or do you
just want to call a cab and find a hotel for the night?”

“Let’s go to the club!”
Mason says way too loudly as he gets up from his chair and immediately starts
staggering his way toward the door.

I’ve never seen Mason
drunk before. It’s actually pretty entertaining.

Right now, we’re the
perfect pair: He’s drunk and wanting to drink more because his ne’er-do-well
brother is in the slammer. I’m not drunk yet, but in an hour or less, I will
be.

After all, it looks like
I’ve got a couple of ne’er-do-wells of my own to try to drown with liquor
tonight.

What makes me nervous is
that neither one of us is talking about it.

I pay the tab and hurry
after Mason. As I’ve never seen him drunk before, I don’t know how worried
about him I should be.

“You know,” he says, “I
never really got into the whole drinking thing, but if this is what I’ve been
missing, I might just have to quit going to the gym and become an alcoholic
instead.”

I laugh even though it
doesn’t look like even he thinks what he’s saying is funny. Once I laugh,
though, he laughs.

That’s where we are:
We’re both in very obvious denial, just trying to make sure we’re not the first
to forget the rules and start dealing with the reality. I just hope I’m good
and blackout drunk when we do finally get there.

Mason takes a quick break
from walking to vomit copiously into a nearby trash can.

“This is great,” I say as
I look up at the sky. The lights of the city give the clouds a sickly orange
tint. “I don’t know about you, but I’m having a blast.”

When Mason finishes his
purge, we just start walking again. I don’t really know what I’m feeling as I
look up at those clouds, pretending there’s something inspiring or beautiful to
see up there. It’s a kind of disconnect that I can’t quite put into words.

We don’t talk about
anything real the rest of the night.

Chapter Fifteen

Dragging

Mason

“Come on, man,” Logan
says, standing over me. “You’re twenty-two percent off your max and you’re
acting like I’m telling you to lift a semi-truck, now put something into it!”

Logan’s never been good
at any kind of math that can’t be applied in a gym. When it comes to lifting,
though, the guy’s a savant.

It’s also possible he’s
just making up numbers that sound plausible.

I heave through the final
three reps of my set and Logan helps me get the barbell into its cradle.

“What’s with you?” he
asks. “Usually, you’re cruising right through, at least until the last few
reps. You haven’t done a solid set all day.”

“I’ve done everything,” I
tell him. “It just wasn’t pretty.”

“You’re right about
that,” Logan says. “So, are you still thinking about going forward with the
tournament?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I
ask.

“Good,” he says. “You gotta
get that last match out of your head. You still in, or did that last set make
you piss your panties?”

He’s not much for nuance.

“I’m still here,” I tell
him.

“You up for some light
sparring?” he asks.

I smile, saying, “You
know I’m always ready to kick your ass.”

He bellows laughter. He
knows at least as well as I do that it’s a good thing we’re a couple weight
classes apart.

Logan is just one of
those guys you know is going to end up in the octagon someday. To him, there is
literally nothing but fighting. Eating is fueling up for the next training
session. Casually talking to people is exercising the mind, making sure he can
not only relate to, but spot facial cues. It helps more than you’d think.

I love fighting, but it’s
not the only thing in my life. It’s the only thing I want to do, but I don’t
have that single-mindedness Logan has.

He’s one of those people
who was put here for a single purpose. Ask him anything not fight or
training-related, and chances are he’s not going to have a clue what you’re
talking about. Bring up a topic in his wheelhouse, though, and he’s the
smartest guy in any room.

For now, there are a
couple of guys in the ring, so we wait.

“What’s the word on the
next fight?” I ask.

Logan smiles with half
his mouth. “You’re going to have your work cut out for you,” he says.

“Anyone I know?” I ask.

“Have you ever heard the
name Mitch Furyk?” he asks.

Yeah, I’ve heard the
name. “He’s next?” I ask.

“That’s good,” Logan
says. “You’re confident. Still, I’d start hoping you catch a second wind or
something, because if what you brought in here today is what you bring to the
fight, we’re going to have to scrape you off the ground with a pancake turner.”

“Spatula,” I correct.

“No,” Logan says. “I mean
a pancake turner.”

I’m not nearly interested
enough to argue. Even if I wasn’t in a particularly bad mood today, I still
don’t think I’d care.

“Mitch the Fury, huh?” I
ask. “Wasn’t he doing flyweight for a while?”

“Yeah,” Logan answers,
glancing up as one of the guys in the ring gets staggered by a hard right. “He
was flyweight for about a year. Before that, he was all the way up at
welterweight for a couple of years until he decided to go vegan and lost a ton
of weight. Word on the street is that he packed on the extra twenty pounds
because he heard you were in on this thing and he wanted the pleasure of
putting your head through the floor.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’m all he
thinks about,” I mock.

The guys in the ring
finally call it quits and Logan and I get our gloves and headgear on and
cinched.

“He
should
be all that
you’re
thinking about,” Logan says.

“Given that I just found
out who I’m up against, I’d say it’d be pretty hard for me to retroactively
obsess about him,” I answer, ducking my head as I step into the ring.

“Yeah, I don’t know what
any of that means,” Logan starts, “but you’ve got to get your head back, man.
One of the things that always made you a good fighter was that you knew when to
strike and when to save your energy. You waste an ounce trying to be the big
freak in the ring and me and your girlfriend are going to be taking turns
feeding you through a straw.”

“Her name’s Ash,” I tell
Logan, though I’m not sure why I bother. It’s not just math he can only do with
a fighting corollary; it’s pretty much everything.

“Whatever,” Logan says.
“You ready? Are we doing this
Rocky Two
style or do you actually want to have someone start us off?”

I’d feel better about the
punch I just threw as an answer if he didn’t easily duck it and start laughing
loudly enough to draw the attention of most of the gym.

“You’re a prick,” I tell
him.

“And you’ve got a fight
to train for,” he says. “Now quit throwing half-assed crap and hit me.”

The last word’s not fully
out of his mouth before a punch I swear I didn’t even see rocks me back a
little.

Okay, different weight
class or no, this isn’t going well.

“What are you doing?”
Logan taunts. “You acted like you didn’t even know it was coming.”

He throws a left hand,
followed up quickly with a right knee. I manage to dodge the strikes, but when
I go to counter, Logan’s prepared.

This is Logan’s play
time, though he likes to call it “giving back to the community.” That’s
condescending enough, but he likes to have people witness his generosity.

What that means for me is
that I’ve got until people start crowding around to watch us spar to put Logan
into the mat. Once he has an audience, he tends to become a bit of a showman
and it’s absolutely infuriating.

I give him a shin kick
just above his right knee, but I may as well be kicking a lamppost. He actually
smiles at me as he glances down toward where the blow had landed.

If this was a real fight,
I’d be pretty freaked out right now. As it is, his amusement at my attempts to
beat the crap out of him distracts me long enough to drop my guard just a
little, giving Logan the perfect opening. I know what’s going to happen before
it does, but there’s no stopping it.

Logan glances over my
shoulder to see if we’ve got a sizeable enough crowd for him to stop tooling
around and get it over with. As I’m picking myself up off the mat, I’d say
we’re pretty well there.

“Still in?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I answer, getting
the rest of the way to my feet.

“You sure?” he asks. “I
don’t want to push you too much before a fight.”

I’m pretty sure he’s
baiting me.

“How are things with your
brother?” he asks.

Yeah, he’s baiting me.

“Left,” he says, calling
his own punch to prove his martial superiority. “Right,” he says. I manage to
deflect the blow, but it catches the edge of my headgear, forcing me to lose
sight of Logan for the smallest moment.

It’s enough.

They tell you when you’re
thinking about learning something new to always have a mentor, someone who’s at
least twice as good at what you’re doing as you are. That’s a pretty good way
to get to the middle.

If you really want to
master something, the only kind of person who’s going to be able to get you
there is someone who’s mastered it themselves. If someone’s not at least ten
times better at what you’re doing than you are, you’re never going to get all
the way.

At least that’s been my
experience.

Logan isn’t my sensei,
but he’s done just as much, maybe even a little more to help me understand the
finer aspects of going toe-to-toe than any traditional teacher I’ve had.

In that fraction of a
second Logan’s not only in my head, but has pulled up a chair and is sitting
down with some coffee and today’s paper. It’s only a fraction of a second, but
it’s enough for him to surprise me with a body blow.

Once that’s landed, my
focus is back where it needs to be, but I’m playing catchup. My hands are up,
and I’m doing my best to anticipate Logan’s next move, but he unleashes a
flurry of light blows. It’s enough that it keeps me off balance, but not so
much that he’s risking knocking me out.

He’s just toying with me.
This is light sparring with Logan.

He’s got his right arm
cocked back, telegraphing his next blow, and he’s asking, “In or out?”

“In,” I answer and ready
myself for the punch he may as well have told me about last week. Only, that
punch doesn’t land.

He keeps his right arm
cocked back a little as he turns away, his left shin coming up and slamming me
hard in the head. I’m off my feet and on the mat, my headgear still partially
on, but not protecting anything.

“You’re done,” Logan
says, helping me up before it’s fully dawned on me that I’d been knocked down.
He sighs. “I don’t know what to do with you, son,” he says. “You’re taking some
pretty big steps backward. Is something on your mind?”

Seriously: Logan
fighting=genius. Logan with anything else=idiot.

As willing as I usually
am to swallow a little pride to gain a lot of insight, he’s so casual after
having humiliated me in front of pretty much everyone here that I’d punch him
in the face if I didn’t know with certainty that he’d more than return the
favor.

“I really don’t want to
talk about it right now,” I tell him.

“Whatever’s going on,
you’ve got to knock that out of your life, man,” he says. “The only way to have
an edge in a fight is to be better prepared. If you’re wasting all your time
and energy thinking about anything else when you’re up against Furyk, he’s
going to beat you down almost as bad as I did.”

“I think it’s your
humility I find most inspiring,” I mock.

We walk a few more steps
before I stop.

“What’s the matter?”
Logan asks.

“I don’t remember getting
out of the ring,” I tell him. “How are my eyes?”

Logan steps in front of
me and covers one of my eyes, then the other, watching my pupils closely.

“Ah, you’re fine,” he
says. “I knocked you a bit, but I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry
about. Do you remember me helping you up off the mat?”

“Yeah,” I answer. “I
remember that and our conversation starting from there and going all the way
until now, but I don’t remember getting out of the ring.”

“Oh jeez,” Logan groans.
“You had me scared there for a second.”

“What are you talking
about?” I ask. “I’ve never not remembered something like that after a
fight—even sparring.”

“You’re just distracted,”
he says. “It’s nothing, but it’s quite possibly the worst thing that could
happen. I’m telling you, man. You’ve got to put everything else on the back
burner or else you’re never going to make it past this round.”

“It’s not that easy,” I
tell him.

“Of course it is,” he
says. “Put it out of your mind.”

“It’s
not
that easy,” I repeat.

“No, it’ll piss you right
off,” he says. “At least you’ll be controlling it instead of letting it control
you. Put whatever’s got you looking like a kid who just got a wedgie away and get
your mind back in the game, son.”

“Yeah,” I say
dismissively.

Logan doesn’t understand
relationships the way most people do. To him, they’re just an occasional
distraction.

“What have you got going
after this?” Logan asks.

“I’m getting together
with Ash,” I tell him. “She’s been kind of weird lately.”

“What do you mean?” he
asks.

“I don’t know, man,” I
tell him. He’s really not the guy to go to for relationship advice. “I’m gonna
cut out of here. Thanks for the session.”

“Stop worrying about
picking yourself up off the mat and start worrying about making sure you’re not
put there in the first place,” Logan says. It almost sounds like mystical
advice, but he’s not being metaphorical. I’m not sure if he knows what a
metaphor is.

“Thanks,” I tell him and
head off to the showers as he returns to bask in the glory of his public
victory.

The fact that he’s got me
by forty pounds won’t come up once.

I get showered and
changed into my normal clothes before heading home. When I get through the
door, I pull out my phone and give Ash a call.

She answers, “Hey, you.
Are we still on for our picnic?”

“Yep,” I tell her. “I
just got back from the gym. I just need to get changed into some better clothes
and make sure I’ve got everything ready.”

“All right,” she says.
“Do you want me to head over now?”

“Sure,” I tell her. “I’ll
see you when you get here.”