Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (5 page)

The initial burst from
the crowd has died down, but the basement is far from quiet as over twenty
voices all try to talk over each other.

Ash is still covering her
ears, and I’m not entirely sure what to do here. I give her a pat on the
shoulder to let her know that I’m still here and she turns toward me, hands
over her ears, yelling, “How many more fights are there?”

“I’m not sure,” I answer.
“We’ll go until the energy levels start to drop. It could be as few as five, as
many as ten.”

“What?” she asks,
partially uncovering one of her ears.

“It’ll be going for a few
more hours,” I tell her.

“Oh,” she says. “Do we
have to stay the whole time?”

Only a few people turned
before, but with Ash’s question, nearly the whole basement is looking in our
direction. It’s not a response of anger, but one of confusion.

Why would someone be here
who didn’t want to be here and how the hell did they get in?

The answer, obviously, is
that I could see myself really getting into Ash as we get to know each other
better, and I don’t want her to run for the hills before we’ve had that chance
just because I choose to fight. To the pit, however, this is an intriguing and
unique scenario.

“Why are they staring at
me?” Ash asks quietly, lowering her hands.

The good news is that the
people here tend to have short attention spans when it comes to anything that isn’t
fighting, so they quickly start to turn back to the middle in anticipation of
the next fight. Still, I think this may have been too much, too soon for Ash.

“It’s okay,” I tell her.
“You’re fine. You’re just new, that’s all.”

“Yeah, but…” she trails
off.

“I’m here,” I tell her.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“So if you weren’t here,
something
would
happen to me?” she
asks.

I smile. “No,” I assure
her. “Despite clear evidence to the contrary, these are generally peaceful
people.”

About then, the next
match starts and these guys don’t waste time trash talking, they go straight to
blows.

After each thump or
smack, admittedly rather loud in this enclosed space, Ash winces. I think it’s
probably time to get her out of here before she ends up psychologically
scarred.

I really thought someone
training to be a nurse would have a bit more stomach for this sort of thing.
Then again, it’s entirely possible that she can see the damage these guys are
doing to each other more clearly than anyone else here
because
of her medical training. I can imagine that being worse.

There’s a loud thud as
one fighter slams the other to the ground, and instinctively I turn back toward
the center. I don’t know the guy who just got put into the ground, but I’ve
chatted a bit with the one standing over him with a grin. That’s Paolo
Menendez, and I’m just glad we’re a couple of weight classes apart.

I kid around with Logan,
but Paolo is vicious and unpredictable. He’s gotten better in the time that
I’ve known him, but at first, there was about a fifty percent chance that half
the guys in the pit would have to pry Paolo off of this opponent or that after
he’d already won the fight. It wasn’t until he was threatened with being banned
from all future matches that he started to clean up his act.

Still, you never know
what’s going to push him over that edge.

Paolo’s hesitation lasts
less than a second, but I’m distracted long enough I don’t even notice Ash is
gone until I look back to my side to find she’s not there.

This can’t be good.

I make my way through the
people who got here after Ash and me, and head up the stairs. My phone’s in my
hand now, and I’m calling Ash’s number as I make my way the rest of the way out
of the house. It rings a couple of times and then goes to voicemail.

I come out the front door
and ask the bouncer, Big D, if he’s seen a shorter brunette with blue eyes
leaving the house.

“She didn’t look happy,
bro,” D says. “I’d give her a little time to cool off. She seemed pretty
freaked.”

“Did you see which way
she went?” I ask.

“Why is it nobody listens
to me when I’m trying to be the voice of reason?” D asks.

“D?” I press.

“Right at the sidewalk,”
he says. “I didn’t really pay much attention after that.”

“Thanks, D,” I tell him
and start off after Ash.

I pull out my phone again
and call her, but after a couple of rings, it goes to voicemail again. This
time, I leave a message.

“Hey, Ash,” I say into
the phone. “You just left the fight and I’m trying to catch up with you. I’m
sorry if that was a bit much for you all at once. We don’t have to go back or
anything, but I don’t want to have things end like this to—”

“You have reached the
maximum message time available for this mailbox,” the robotic voice says.

I didn’t get everything I
wanted to say in the message, but it pretty well covers the bullet points.
Maybe I’ve just been trying to idealize Ash because of my physical attraction
for her. Maybe she’s one of those people who get turned off by MMA and stay
turned off to it, regardless of how familiar with it they become.

As I call a third time,
now being forwarded directly to voicemail, I’m starting to think this whole
thing with Ash is just a failed experiment.

I walk along the side of
the road where D had seen Ash heading for a while, but break off my efforts
before too long. I’m not going to spend my whole night going after her when
she’s making it clear she doesn’t want to talk to me.

It’s not the end of the
world if this is the end of the relationship—we’re still just getting to know
one another—but I had hope for this one. She really seemed like my kind of
chick, but maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see.

At least we didn’t get
too deep into the relationship before the cracks started to show. That’s
something, right?

Chapter
Four

Callbacks

Ash

It’s been a long week.

First I went AWOL at that
fight Mason took me to and then, ever since I came home, it’s been all
Starbright—Jana’s mom’s latest nom de plume—all the time. Right now, I’m just
thankful the woman sleeps as much as she does.

“Why is she here, anyway?”
I whisper to Jana, looking up from the open textbook in front of me.

“What do you mean?” she
returns at full volume.

“Your mom,” I whisper
back. “Did something happen? Is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” Jana says.
“I’ve noticed you haven’t been seeing too much of Mason lately. Did something
happen there?”

“I just don’t think he’s
really my type—” I start, but the question, apparently, was rhetorical.

“You know, I almost
freaked out when I saw him,” she interrupts. “I really didn’t think I was going
to see him again.”

“Well, it’s not like this
is the biggest city in the world,” I tell her. Leaving my textbook open on the
coffee table in front of me, I get up from the couch to follow Jana as she
tries to squeeze all of her chores into the next five minutes.

“I know,” she says, “but
we run in such different circles we’d made it from breakup to a couple of weeks
ago without running into each other once.”

“I don’t think you’re
going to have to worry about running into him anymore,” I tell her.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie,”
she says and pulls me into a strange embrace.

“Why are you sorry?” I
ask, trying to pull away but being unsuccessful.

“I know you were really
hoping things would work out. It’s been so long since anyone’s even looked at
you, much less asked you out, and to be rejected like that so soon…” she says.
“I don’t know if I could get out of bed in the morning.”

“He didn’t ‘reject’ me,”
I tell her. “I just didn’t like how violent his world is.”

“What do you mean?” she
asks, releasing her hold on me enough that I’m able to work my way out of it.

“Did he ever take you to
one of those fights?” I ask. “One guy in the first one got knocked out. In the
second fight, it looked like one of them was seriously considering murdering
the other right in front of everyone, and with his bare hands. I’d call that
pretty intensely violent.”

“Oh, but that’s not
Mason, though,” she says.

“What does that mean?” I
ask. “He’s the one that took me there. He said that he fights there all the
time. It seems to be a pretty big part of his life.”

“No, well I mean, yeah,”
Jana says. I could do without the stammering right now. “I just mean that he’s
not a violent person.”

“Still not making any
sense,” I tell her.

“He fights the way other
guys play football with their friends on the weekends, only he puts more effort
into it. Outside all that, he’s really quite the gentleman,” she says. “He’s
always just so nice to you and he holds doors and stuff. I mean, we didn’t
really hang out that much for that long, but I always got the feeling he was
just a really easygoing kind of guy.”

“Didn’t seem like it to
me,” I tell her.

“Was he rude or aggressive
at all?” Jana asks as she opens the dishwasher and starts unloading it.

I think back.

“Well, no,” I answer.

“Woulda surprised me if
you said he was,” she tells me.

“It’s weird hearing you
talk about him like that. The first couple of days after we saw him, you seemed
like you hated the guy,” I respond.

“I didn’t expect to see
him,” she says. “When I did, I went into dealing-with-an-ex mode, and ya know
how that goes.”

I guess I did do the
right thing, choosing to break it off before it went any further with Mason and
me. If she’s interested in him, she can have him.

“He’s a really nice guy,
though,” Jana says, looking off at nothing. “And that kid could stick it in me
like you wouldn’t even—”

“Got it,” I interrupt.
When it comes to Jana and her stories of sex and seduction, it’s best to cut
her off quick, right at the beginning. Otherwise, there’s no convincing her to
stop and the woman has a memory for sexual detail that can drag a two-minute
story into a multi-hour epic, complete with props and distinct character
voices.

Who has the patience for
something like that?

“It’s not just about that,
though,” she says. “I kind of wish we’d stuck with it a little longer.”

“Why not call him?” I
ask.

“Nah,” she says. “We’re
too different. I’m all crazy energy and spontaneity and he’s more the laidback,
pseudo-romantic type. I knew when we first hooked up it wasn’t going to last,
but after we slept together... I guess I’m just waning a little nostalgic.”

“Waxing,” I correct. “By
the way,” I say, changing directions, “did your mom happen to mention when she
might be looking for a place of her own again?”

“Nah. She’s just settling
in, though,” Jana says. “It usually takes her at least a month before she can
wake up somewhere without screaming, much less think of going anywhere else.”

“What
is
that, anyway?” I ask. “It sounds like
she’s being tortured in there. And to tell you the truth, I’m a little freaked about
the fact our neighbors have been hearing a woman scream at the top of her lungs
every time she wakes up and nobody’s called the police yet.”

Jana says, “I don’t know
what started it. I don’t think she knows. I know she calls it her adjustment
period. Back in the day, I never used to hear a peep out of her between when
she went to bed and her first cup of coffee the next morning. I think it’s
waking up in a new place without dad that does it.”

“That’s actually really
sad,” I tell Jana. “Is there something they can do about that to make things
easier for her?”

“Like what?” Jana asks.

I don’t have a good
answer to the question.

“So you’re still pretty
into Mason, huh?” I ask.

“I’d just like to take
him for another spin or two, for old times’ sake,” she answers. “I think if we
left the bedroom, we’d probably drive each other crazy. That was our mistake
the first time.”

“You said he was so nice,
though,” I return. “Now you’re saying the sex was the only good part?”

“It was all ‘good,’ I
guess,” she says. “I just think he started getting annoyed that I’m always
going like a million miles an hour and everything.”

It’s true: While we’re
talking, she’s managed to get the dishes in the dishwasher half put away, the
countertop halfway wiped down and she’s got a broom in her hands, though its
bristles have yet to touch the floor. Jana’s problem isn’t the motivation to
start something; it’s the motivation to see things through to the end.

She continues, “He was
always just so low key, too. He was sweet, but he just never really moved fast
enough for me. I’d want to go, like, five different places in a night and he’d
just want to do like dinner or something. We’d just end up getting sick of each
other. Anyway, me, Darla, and Cindy are gonna go to the coffee shop and pick up
some things. You wanna come?”

By “things,” she means
guys.

“I’m not really in the
mood,” I tell her. “By the way, could you please tell your mom to stop eating
my cocoa butter? She’s gone through almost my whole jar since she got here.”

“It’s edible and it was
in the refrigerator,” Jana says, finally starting to sweep, though she stops
after only a couple of seconds and sets the broom down. “How was she supposed
to know?”

“Because I told her what
it is and why I have it when I came home that first night and found her putting
some on vegan paella,” I tell her. “I also told her after she used it with her
organic rye crackers, her free range donut holes, and she tried—unsuccessfully,
by the way—to dissolve it in her GMO-free almond milk.”

“Well, talk to her
again,” Jana says, grabbing her keys off the counter and heading toward the
door. “I’m running late.”

“It’s just that that
stuff’s expensive,” I tell her before releasing her into the night, “and it’s
the only thing I’ve found that’ll work for me year-round.”

“Just buy her some of
that milk-free, whey-free, hazelnut chocolate spread she likes,” Jana says.
“I’ve got to go. Do you want me to bring anything back for you?”

“Only if he’s an easy
millionaire who doesn’t believe in prenups,” I tell her.

“I’ll keep my eyes
peeled, but you know I’ve got first dibs on that shit, so you’d better hope he
has a friend for you,” she responds, walking to the door, but stopping before
she opens it. “You two did it, right?” she asks.

“Me and Mason?” I ask.
“No. We never even kissed.”

“Might wanna let the guy
throw you one before you stop answering his calls for good,” she says. “There’s
a reason he’s so popular and you, sweet, kinda prudish roommate of mine,
deserve a nice night.”

“I’ll take it under
advisement,” I laugh and Jana’s out the door.

I pull out my phone and
check my messages. There aren’t any from Mason.

This whole thing is a
little strange.

I wasn’t even interested
in him at first; I was just trying to do to Jana what she’s been doing to me
for the last five years. Mason and I started to hit it off at Sherry’s, but
after he took me to that fight, that was supposed to be it.

After hearing Jana going
on and on about him, though, I can’t help thinking I should have given him
another chance.

It’s probably moot,
anyway. He’s probably already moved onto someone more enthusiastic about his
hobby.

Besides, he and
Jana
used to be a thing. I give her a
lot of grief because most of the time she’s somewhere in the neighborhood of
intolerable, but, for the moment at least, I’m choosing to believe there’s more
to our friendship than proximity over time. Whether her feelings for Mason are
nothing more than sexual or there’s more to it than that, it’s probably not a
good idea that I try too hard to be too involved with my roommate’s former beau.

Then again, she did give
me her blessing. Maybe she didn’t put it in those exact terms, but I seem to
remember something like that.

I pull my phone out of my
pocket and find the number. My thumb hovers over the screen for five seconds,
then ten. Really, I just don’t know enough about Mason to have anything like
the confidence to make a firm decision about him either way.

The fighting is never
going to be my cup of tea, but maybe Jana’s right: Maybe there is something
more to him than all that. It certainly seemed like there was when we were at
Sherry’s.

I press the button and
the line starts to ring.

“Yeah?” the voice
answers.

“Hey, Mason,” I say.
“It’s Ash. You wanna get together and talk?”

Good god that sounded
lame.

 
“Ash?” he asks.

Yep. He’s already
forgotten about me.

“Never mind,” I tell him.
“I think you just answered my question.”

“I’ve got a few,” he
says.

“What?” I ask.

“Questions,” he says.
“You just took off that night and I haven’t been able to get ahold of you. I
figured the fighting was just too much for you.”

“It was,” I tell him,
“but I’ve come to understand that that’s not necessarily all there is to you…”
I’m butchering this. I’m absolutely butchering this.

“Yeah…?” he responds.

Why is this so weird?

“I just thought, if you
want, I could explain why I just left that night, or maybe you could explain
why you’re so into the fighting,” I tell him. “Not that you owe me an explanation,”
I add. “You know what? I shouldn’t have called. Sorry to bother you.”

“Hold on,” he says.

“What?” I ask, just
wanting this to be over already.

“Just take a breath,” he
says. “Relax. Go to your peaceful, quiet place a second.”

“My peaceful, quiet place?”
I ask.

“Yeah,” Mason responds.
“It’s a meditation thing. Just put your mind on the most relaxing and beautiful
surroundings you can imagine. It helps calm the nerves.”

I’m not sure if I’m
actually supposed to do that or not, so I just don’t say anything in response.

“Ash?” he asks. “You
still there?”

“Yeah,” I answer.

“We can talk if you
want,” he says. “But I’ve gotta tell you, I’m not a huge fan of the way you
just took off and then ignored me. You can be a pretty cool person,” he says,
“but I’m not really in the mood to be jerked around. So, if you’d like a few
minutes to really consider whether or not you really want to talk, I think that
might be a good plan.”

“Someone values their
personal time,” I scoff, not sure what else to say.