Submission Moves: An MMA Romance (22 page)

“Why would he be mad at you?”

She hesitated, unsure of how much she could share with her brother without crossing the line into awkward territory. But then, he probably knew the gist of it already. Nothing got past Chris. “I think he thinks I’m only using him for sex.”

“You sure that’s it?” he asked, sounding dubious but not surprised. “He doesn’t seem like the type who’d have a problem with that. Most guys wouldn’t.”

That kindled a spark of anger in her that burned hot and bright. Of course he’d doubt her. Who wouldn’t? It wasn’t crazy to assume that if there was anyone angling to turn sex into something serious, it wouldn’t be Nick, who could get any girl he wanted easily.

“Well, he told me I better go find another willing cock because he has more to offer and he deserves as much,” Rose replied.

Chris squirmed in his seat, clearly not comfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. It served him right for being so nosy. “So why don’t you like him then? We’re sort of friends now, I guess, and he seems like a nice guy.”

She didn’t doubt their budding bromance, but Rose could also detect a tiny bit of hero worship in Chris’ tone. She shrugged. “He’s not my type.”

“Okay,” he said, skeptical. “So what’s your type, exactly? Those docile and diffident men that you always seem to pick for yourself? Men who let you run right over them?”

She turned to him in surprise. She never knew he thought so little of any of her exes, and she took it not just as an attack on them but on her judgement as well. “Just because it didn’t work out with any of the guys I dated, it doesn’t make them bad men. They’re all still my friends, Chris.”

“I didn’t say they were bad men,” he insisted. “Maybe you genuinely admired them because they met all the conditions on some mental checklist you might have…”

Rose had an actual checklist in an Excel file in her computer, but she didn’t bother mentioning that to Chris.

“…but I never understood what you saw in them to begin with. It was clear that they were all wrong for you.
Everyone
could see it, everyone but you. Why do you think Mom and Dad are always trying to set you up? They don’t always get it right but, well, neither do you.”

Before she could reply, they were interrupted by another knock on the car window. Moira smiled and waved from the outside before letting herself in the back seat.

“What’s up? Are we having a meeting?” She leaned forward through the gap in the front seats, looking at them expectantly.

“Nick is mad at Rose because, apparently, she only wants him for his body and he wants more,” Chris summarized for Moira.

Rose shot her brother a withering glare while Moira’s eyes grew wide with astonishment.

“He slept with
you
?”

If Rose wasn’t so miserable, she would’ve been insulted at Moira’s disbelief.

“Please, please,
please
tell me he’s a rock star in bed and that hot body of his is not just for show.”

She couldn’t help herself. She gave Moira a smug look. “He’s fucking phenomenal.”

The other girl made a big show of fanning herself with her hand. “Is he big? Straight or slightly curved?”

“Hey!” Chris interrupted. “I’m right here. Don’t talk about that. That’s too much information, even for me.”  

Moira rolled her eyes at Chris and turned her attention back to Rose. “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “Most girls would kill for a chance with a guy like that.”

“Maybe so,” Rose said, “and maybe he’s better off with any number of them.” As the words left her mouth, a hot and ugly sensation that felt a lot like raging jealousy filled her. Funny, she always thought she was above such a petty and useless emotion. Certainly none of her ex-boyfriends had ever aroused such a primal reaction out of her. It seemed like Nick had a monopoly on her primal side–good or bad. She found the realization unsettling, if not downright scary. All the more reason getting serious with him was a bad idea. “C’mon, tell me you guys don’t see how utterly wrong Nick and I are for each other,” she persisted, needing them to agree.

“Yeah, I kinda don’t see what he sees in you,” Moira said. “No offense,” she hastily added when Rose glared at her.

Chris took his time and mulled it over. “Well, on the surface you guys don’t look like you have much in common, and I guess that could be a hurdle. But I see the way you look at him, Rose.”

“That’s just lust. Show me a girl who doesn’t look at Nick like she wants to tear his clothes off and—”        

Chris held his hand up in warning. “Do not go there. I don’t wanna hear that.”

The car door was pulled open once again. Moira scooted to the side as Anna climbed in beside her. “What are you all doing here?” Anna asked. “Rose, I didn’t know you were stopping by.”

“By all means, Chris,” Rose said dryly, “give Anna a recap of what she’s missed.”

He was only too happy to oblige. As Chris filled her in, Rose watched Anna’s reaction carefully through the rear view mirror, grateful to have an ally. Her best friend would surely understand where Rose was coming from. But what she said next was wholly unexpected.

“Rose, he’s the only man who’s ever managed to give you an orgasm. That must count for something.”

Chris put his hands over his ears. “Oh God, I did not just hear that,” he muttered.

“What? Say that again?” Moira said, eyes growing wide and her mouth dropping open in a frozen ‘O’ of surprise.

Rose ignored them and turned around to face Anna. “I don’t believe you. You don’t even like Nick. Where’s all this coming from?” Her best friend was even more of a hard-liner than Rose was. She expected support from her and maybe a pat on the back for not chucking her principles for a man.

Anna winced, looking embarrassed. “I’m big enough to admit when I’m in the wrong. I might have unfairly judged him. I mean, he does look like an unreconstructed misogynist. And he’s at the top of a sport that rewards and glorifies male aggression. You can’t blame me for having my doubts.”

Rose caught Moira and Chris sharing a look and rolling their eyes as Anna continued.

“But Nick and I got to talk a couple of times recently, and you could say I’ve been enlightened. Did you know that his mom worked two jobs to make ends meet while his dad stayed home to care for them?”     

Rose scoffed, unimpressed. “Yes, I know. How convenient he found a way to mention that to you. You’ve always been suspicious of charmers, Anna. I can’t believe he won you over so easily.”

“Give me some credit here. I’m suspicious of guys who pretend to be nice but turn out to be sexist assholes with ulterior motives. But from what I’ve seen so far, Nick is freakishly nice to everyone. He’s even nice to me. He doesn’t have to be, and God knows, I haven’t made it easy for him. He’s probably one of those who can’t stand people not liking him and feels like he has to do something to change their minds. The fact that he beats people into a pulp on a regular basis made me wary of him at first, but maybe that’s his secret. Maybe if I’m allowed to hit people in the face from time to time, I’d be a much nicer person too.”

They all shot Anna doubtful looks. She was temperamental enough as it was, she shouldn’t be allowed to hit people under any circumstance. She might like it too much.

“It’s true, Rose. Nick’s a really good guy,” Moira said emphatically. “Paolo told me he paid off both his and Angelo’s student loans, and he bought their parents a house in a nice neighborhood.”

Three pairs of eyes looked at Rose, waiting.

“Fine. He’s a good guy. You can all date him if you want to,” she said petulantly. She was acting like a brat and she knew it. But she didn’t like feeling cornered, especially by people who were supposed to be on her side. “He’s just not the kind of partner I see myself with for the long haul.”   

“What are you looking for? A male feminist?” Moira asked jokingly.

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Rose said, looking at Anna for some sort of validation. Surely, she’d support her with
that
. That was non-negotiable.

“And how many guys who claim to be feminists actually are? Being a feminist is a lot more nuanced than we thought it was back when we were in college and belting out angry girl lyrics,” Anna said soberly. “It’s not some exclusive club. People don’t have to self-designate as feminists to be one. From what I’ve gathered, Nick was raised to support feminist ideals, and I haven’t seen him behave to the contrary. He
is
a de-facto feminist. I guess you could say he walks the walk,” she said with a nod of approval.

“What the fuck?” Moira said, wrinkling her nose at them. “Is this what passes as girl talk in your little clique? Please speak English. I was a cheerleader in high school and I didn’t go to some fancy college. I’m finding it very hard to keep up with the conversation.”

“What she means, Moira,” Chris said, looking straight at Rose, “is that Rose should stop being so dogmatic. She can’t hold Nick to impossible standards and expect him to instinctively adhere to principles she herself has spent years learning and marinating in.”

“What’s dogmatic?”

“It means ridiculous.”

“Oh,” Moira said, nodding. “That’s true, Rose. You’re being very
dogmatic
.” She said the word carefully and with great emphasis.

“And why am I expected to do all the compromising?” Rose demanded. “I know what I want and I’m allowed to pursue that. I don’t want to lose myself or compromise who I am for a guy. I certainly don’t want to be with someone who makes me feel diminished and dominated. That’s not healthy. That’s against everything I believe in.” Her voice started to tremble as the truth came spilling out. “I don’t like what Nick does to me, okay? I don’t like who I become because of him, someone weak and vulnerable. He makes me
need
him.”
And he makes me like it,
but she didn’t add that.

“From the moment I knew better, I promised myself I wouldn’t be the girl who would ever need anyone. I don’t want to lean on a man for support of any kind.”

“You mean like Mom?”        

Her silence was as good as an admission. It was embarrassing yet strangely illuminating to finally accept that all her relationship troubles came down to her mommy issues. Half an hour in a parking lot with an odd collection of people did more to help exorcise her anxieties than hours upon hours on a therapist’s couch had.  

“You’re being unfair to her, Rose,” Chris said in a much gentler voice. “My mother divorced Dad when I was a year old. She left me and my brothers and went on to live a life unencumbered by responsibilities. It was Diane who raised me. She’s as much a mom to me as Dad is a father to you. You shouldn’t judge her. She took good care of another woman’s children. She takes good care of Dad. They’re happy together. What they have works for them.
 

“People do a lot of freaky shit like have affairs or abandon their kids and call it feminism or empowerment or whatever,” he added. “No one will ever agree on what it really means. You get to define that for yourself. You can’t hold on to these ideals that are completely untethered to real life. The guy’s into you, you’re into him. Why must you overthink everything?”

“I once had an ex who smacked me around,” Moira offered in a deadpan voice. “He said no one would ever love me so I shouldn’t even think about leaving him. So you wanna talk about having a man making you feel diminished and dominated…” She trailed off with a shrug.

Rose looked down at her lap, ashamed. Her line of reasoning sounded much more convincing inside her head. Said out loud and bared to the harsh light of other people’s scrutiny, it sounded pretty lame and whiny.
 

“As much as I hate to admit it, Chris is right,” Anna said after a long, awkward silence. “You don’t have to subscribe to all feminist ideals, especially not when it’s at the expense of your potential happiness. That’s the purpose of feminist discourse, you find what works for your context. We all have to draw the line
somewhere
. We do that at work all the time, why are you so resistant to doing it now? I mean, you wear Spanx
and
you own a phallic-shaped vibrator. In some schools of thought, that’s a feminist betrayal right there.”

Chris made a garbled anguished sound like a small animal being tortured before flinging open the door and stumbling out of the car. He threw them one last look of horror. “I can never un-hear that,” he said before stalking off. The girls watched his retreating back, laughing hysterically.

“Just go over there and talk to Nick, okay?” Moira said when their laughter died down. “His fight is in two days and he’s flying out to Vegas tomorrow morning. Better not miss him.”