Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (12 page)

“Okay,” she says and
nods, only the rim of the boat where she’s holding on is below the surface of
the water now.

I swim around to the
other side of the boat, holding my breath. When I get to the other side, I
reach down to grab my half of the boat.

“Okay,” I tell her. “It’s
far enough down now that we’re not going to be able to lift it all the way,” I
tell her as she holds on with one hand now, using the other to tread water.
“Let go of your side and push it down. I’ll—”

“Push it down?” she
shouts. “Are you insane?”

“You push your half down
and I’ll pull my half up, that’ll get it rotating,” I tell her. “Once it’s as
close to on its side as possible, swim closer and grab next to where I’m
grabbing. We’re going to have to see if we can…”

I stop talking. The boat
is too heavy even to hold onto, much less to get out of the water.

“It’s okay,” I tell her.
“You can let go.”

“No!” she says. “We’ve
got to save the boat! How are we going to get back to shore?”

I let go of my side and
say, “Look around. There’s land everywhere and both of us can swim. We can’t
save the boat, but as soon as you let go, we can get to land.”

It’s hard to tell whether
she let go on her own or she lost her grip, but it’s all right either way. She
nods and we head back in the direction of the boat shop.

As we go, I stumble into
the realization that if I don’t slap the water, but guide my hand into it and
then complete the stroke, I can take a breath without feeling like I’m
drowning.

The boat took maybe three
minutes from the time the boat rental guy started shouting to when Ash let go,
but it felt like an hour. The swim back to shore, by contrast, seems to take no
time at all.

We get to land and Ash
and I crawl our way to shore, lying back on the grass once we’ve pulled
ourselves out far enough. We’re both breathing heavily, trying to recover from
the ordeal.

I roll over onto my side
as soon as I’ve regained the energy, and I stroke Ash’s face as she looks at
me.

“That turned into a bit
of a thing, didn’t it?” I ask.

She coughs laughter, but
cuts it short, saying, “I’m so sorry about that.”

“What are you sorry for?”
I ask. “It’s at least as much my fault as it is yours.”

“No,” she says. “If I
hadn’t pushed you over, we’d both still be in the boat, dry,” she breathes, “
not
exhausted, drenched and lying by the
side of the lake like bodies drift ashore.”

“You make pretty mouth
words,” I tell her.

This time, she full on
laughs, and I laugh with her.

“We both had good
intentions,” I tell her, “but something bad happened. What matters is that
we’re all right.”

“Yeah, but you’re going
to have to pay for that boat,” she says. “The whole thing’s in your name. I’m
just down as a passenger.”

“Hopefully the security
deposit covers catastrophic loss of boat,” I respond. I kiss her on the lips.

She smiles. “Thanks,” she
says.

“For what?” I ask.

“For not being a dick,”
she answers. “You helped me snap out of it when I was too freaked to realize
what was happening was happening, but you weren’t mean. You said what you
needed to say and you were very reassuring, thank you.”

“You taste like lake
water,” I tell her. “Gross.”

She smiles, chuckles,
shakes her head. This might be the closest we’ve ever been and I only had to
sink a boat to do it.

Actually, I’m not going
to tell Ash this, but I’m pretty sure the whole thing’s her fault.

Shh…

“Well, I’m glad someone’s
having a good time!” a voice comes from toward the shop.

Ash and I look over and there’s
the boat rental guy in full scuba gear, holding the hooked end of a rope on a
wench.

I feel bad for the guy, I
really do, but the sight is just too much and I start laughing. That might have
been forgivable, but the fact that I’m in hysterics has caused Ash to start
busting a gut, and I think we might be giving boat shop guy the wrong
impression.

“I’m—” I laugh.

“We’re so—” Ash cracks
up.

I try again with, “We
didn’t mean to—” but it doesn’t work. The very fact that we can’t get through
what we’re trying to say because we’re laughing is only making us both laugh
harder.

“I’m keeping your
deposit, Chuckles!” the man shouts before putting his mouthpiece in, his
facemask on and walks into the lake, grumbling in muffled grunts as he slowly
disappears into the water.

“You know,” I tell Ash, “
that
might have been the most amazing
thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I know! He’s like Mr.
Underwater Tow Truck, isn’t he?” she chortles.

I kiss her again and then
lie back and look at the sky above, making sure my hand finds Ash’s. She scoots
over next to me and rests her head on my chest.

“We should probably wait
and help him get the boat drained and back wherever it needs to go when he gets
out of there,” I say.

“You’re such a Boy
Scout,” Ash says, patting me on the chest.

“We
did
sink his boat and then laugh in his face uncontrollably about
it,” I tell her. “It just seems like common courtesy to give the guy a hand.”

When the owner of the
boat rental shop surfaces, holding the line between the boat and the wench to
make sure the connection stays taut, Ash and I get up and help him. Until that,
though, we’re just lying here on the cool grass huddled together both for
warmth and affection.

By the time we finish
helping the owner of the boat shop, Morris, undo most of the damage that we’d
done, he’s offering to give us our deposit back. We turn it down, though. He
definitely earned it.

The world is a great,
gorgeous fairy tale until we’re driving back to my place and we have to pull
over before we get there.

There are five police
cars in front of my house—two in the driveway, two off the curb and one on the
front lawn—and the near-immaculate moment Ash and I were enjoying together
craters into brimstone.

Ash gets out of the car,
but I hesitate.

I know exactly what
happened. Maybe not the specifics of what he did this time, or even whether
this is just the fallout of another scam-gone-bad from who knows when, but the
police aren’t there because someone broke into my house.

I get out of the car,
more for the sake of not leaving Ash out there by herself than anything, and
policemen start coming out the front door of my house.

“You don’t have anything
in there that would give you away as a boxer—fighter,” she sighs. “You know
what I mean.”

“No,” I tell her.
“There’s a lot of MMA stuff, but nothing that would give away anything. This is
all him.”

When they bring Chris out
of the house, Ash grabs my hand. We’re in front of the neighbor’s house, but he
sees me. I don’t know what the look on his face is, but there’s almost a ferocity
to it back somewhere beneath the expressionless face itself.

I don’t try to get closer
or try to stop it. I don’t call out that I’ll have his bail tonight or that
everything’s going to be okay.

I don’t want to lie.

We just stare at each
other until he’s put in the back of a police car.

Chapter
Twelve

The Fourth Letter in the
Alphabet and the Longest River in the World

Ash

“Good morning!” Mason’s
voice comes out of a dream and into my irritating reality.

“Why are you waking me up
ever?” I drone, my face a little more than half covered by the pillow.

“It’s nine,” he says.
“It’s late. Come on, I made you breakfast.”

“Great,” I moan. “You can
eat it yourself, which should give you the strength to try again in another
three hours.”

“Come on, Ash,” he says
cheerily. “It’s a beautiful day outside.”

I put my whole face in
the pillow now and wonder if I have the resolve to be the first person to
intentionally smother
herself
with a
pillow. After a couple of seconds with decreased oxygen, though, I decide to
live. Even if that means I have to get out of bed.

I turn my head to the
side, catch a bit of sunlight too directly in the eye, and I’m strongly
reconsidering my options.

Mason’s been Mason for
the most part, but that’s kind of the problem. For the first hour or two after
Chris got taken away, Mason just said he didn’t want to talk about it. After
that, it was like a switch just flipped and everything was fine.

Now, when the topic of
Chris comes up, he says, “What happened is what happened.”

Breakfast out of bed at
nine o’clock in the morning on my day off, though? This must be stopped.

My knuckles hit the floor
shortly after my feet do as I drag myself out of bed. It’s been nice staying at
Mason’s, but he’s got to stop picking my clothes off the floor before I’ve had
a chance to get up in the morning.

I walk over to the
dresser where my clothes are all folded neatly—okay, the folding is new—and I
get dressed. The television is on as I enter the living room and Mason’s just
coming around the corner from the kitchen.

“Oh hey,” he says. “I
didn’t know if you fell back asleep or not. Breakfast is ready when you are.”

“Mason,” I tell him. “You
have to let me sleep.”

“Ooh,” he says, “come
check this out.”

He grabs my hand and
leads me into the kitchen. I’ll give him this much, breakfast does smell really
good.

Sleep smells better.

“Look,” he says. “There’s
been a chipmunk going up and down that tree all morning. I’ve never seen it
before.”

“That’s because only chipmunks
and the elderly are awake this early,” I tell him.

“It’s nine o’clock,” he
says. “Most people are at work by now.”

“Whatever,” I tell him.
“The chipmunk’s great and everything, and I’m sure the two of you are going to
have a blast, but I’m going back to bed and I need to know that you’re not
going to bother me again until I awake naturally, fresh and healthy, ready to
start my day on my own terms. Failure to abide by this very reasonable request
absolves me of any responsibility of what I may do in retaliation.”

“All right,” he laughs,
putting his hands up. “Go back to bed. I just thought you might want to taste
my first attempt at breakfast-stuffed mushrooms.”

“What the hell is that?”
I blurt.

“I remember you said you
liked portabella mushrooms, so I picked some up from the store,” he says.

“You’ve already been to
the store this morning?” I ask. “When did you get up?”

“Ah,” he says. “This
close to a fight, my natural schedule changes a little bit. I probably should
have told you that.”

“Are you sure that’s all
this is?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “Why?
What else would it be?”

“First off,” I tell him,
“I’ve seen you before a couple of fights now, and I’ve never seen you go manic
like this. Therefore, I’m going to really take a chance and guess that the
fight doesn’t really have anything to do with it.”

“Oh,” he says. “You think
I’m up early because—” he laughs. “No, I just got up early,” he says. “That’s
all.”

I’m no less tired than I
was a few minutes ago, but that short amount of time spent standing in this
kitchen has awakened some of my finer senses.

“What’s in the mushrooms?”
I ask.

“Bacon,” he starts.

“Sold,” I answer. “I’ll
have some and then I’m going back to bed. You are a foul temptress. I guess it
wouldn’t be temptress, though, would it? That’d be the feminine version. Would
it be tempter? Now I’m starting to do it.”

“You’re waking up,” he
says. “Want some coffee?”

“No,” I snap. “I’m
delirious because it’s my day off and I’m not used to waking up before noon on
my days off and you’re in denial because you’re upset about your brother
getting arrested, but you’re so pissed at him for it that you won’t let
yourself admit
to
yourself,” I
repeat, “
to
yourself, mind you, that
Chris getting arrested bothers you. There. I’ve done my good deed for the day,
now point me to my mushroom and I’ll be on my way.”

“I’m not in denial,” he
says. “I’ve just been expecting it for so long that it really just doesn’t
bother me that much.”

“I’m sure that’s part of
it,” I tell him, “but you’re acting like it doesn’t bother you at all. That’s
your brother. I don’t know if you’re pissed or depressed or disappointed or
scared or what, but it’s not the guy making stuffed breakfast mushrooms which,
if I could just get a plate—” he hands me a plate “—thank you,” I say. “It’s
not the guy making stuffed breakfast mushrooms and chipmunk-watching.”

“I thought you said you
were going back to bed,” he says. “Why are we still talking about Chris?”

“Fork?” I ask.

He hands me a fork, at
which point I cut off a piece of the stuffed mushroom and watch as cheese oozes
out of it.

“Yeah, it’s not just
bacon,” he says, “although that was a bigger part of the process than you’d
think. You have to cook it to just the right level of crispiness: Too little
and it won’t break apart in pieces small enough to stuff a mushroom, too much
and crumble it all you want, it’s burnt bacon.”

“Are you not hearing
that?” I ask.

“I’m fine,” he says.

I gather my piece of
stuffed mushroom with my fork and blow on it a little before putting it in my
mouth.

There are hints of bell
peppers, provolone cheese, small-but-crispy bacon bits and I don’t even know
what spices. The whole experience of it is almost enough to make me want to
stay awake.

“The reason,” I say,
swallowing, “that I’m still talking about Chris—”

“Oh god,” he groans.

“The reason I’m still
talking about Chris is that, tired and irritated enough to seriously consider
your untimely demise as I am, I care about you more than that,” I tell him. “I
know you were mad at him, and I’m sure you probably still are, but you can’t
pretend like it doesn’t affect you. I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe that’s how you
deal with things, but I think it’d be better if you let it out.”

“There’s nothing to let
out,” he says. “He broke the law for a long time and it caught up with him. I
don’t know that there’s really anything else to say about it.”

“All right then,” I say,
walking out of the kitchen on my way back to the bedroom. “I’m going back to
bed, then.”

“You said ‘then’ twice,”
Mason teases.

“My mind and my ears are
shutting down now, thank you,” I tell him. “Good night.”

“You’re taking the mush—”
I close the bedroom door behind me.

I set the stuffed
mushroom on the nightstand and I collapse back into bed. If it weren’t for the
knowledge that the beautiful culinary work sitting next to me will become
inedible if I just leave it and fall asleep, I wouldn’t bother opening my eyes
again.

After the food has gone
from plate to belly, though, I am out.

*
                   
*
                   
*

I wake a few hours later,
this time far less hostile. The only problem is that now my mind’s clearer, I’m
beginning to think there’s another possible explanation to why Mason’s so blasé
about Chris being taken away.

Getting out of bed, I rub
my eyes as I walk to the door.

There’s the metal clink
and clang of Mason’s barbell, and I find him out on the corner of the back
porch on his weight bench.

“Need a spotter?” I ask,
walking past the lawn chairs toward him.

“Sure,” he says, “just as
long as you can lift this thing off of my struggling, but useless body in the
event I misjudge my strength.”

“I’ve seen you lift
weights,” I tell him. “I’m pretty sure I could out-bench you.”

He wheezes laughter, the
bar swaying a little above him as he lifts it and sets it back in place.

“You almost don’t need a
gym membership at all,” I tell him.

“I need a new setup,” he says.
“The bar’s hollow. My dad used it. See how it’s gotten all bent and rusted over
the years?”

“Yeah,” I say, looking at
what he’s showing me, just wanting to keep him talking.

“The weights won’t come
off,” he says. “I’ve tried bending the bar back straight, but it’s too old, too
worn down.”

“You’ve never really
talked about him,” I say.

“Yeah, well he left when
I was just little, so I don’t really remember him,” he answers. “Mom said he
was an ass, though, so maybe it’s just as well.”

“Do you know anything
about him?” I ask. “Where he lives, anything like that?”

“No,” he says. “I don’t
really care, either. If he wants to come home, he’ll come home. I can’t say
he’s going to get a very warm welcome if he does, though.”

“This is where your—”

“Yeah,” he interrupts.
“I’ve lived in the same house all my life. The parents somehow paid it off,
although that might have been something grandpa did. He went bankrupt indulging
my mom. Anyway, other than property taxes and utility bills, this place is free
to own.”

“Why aren’t you reacting
to what’s happening with Chris?” I ask. It’s blunt, but I think it’s clear
enough.

“I don’t know,” he says.
“I guess I’m just so used to things going bad that when they do, it’s just, you
know. It’s normal.”

“What can I do?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says.
“I don’t see any reason to get upset about my not being upset.”

“I’m not upset,” I tell
him. “I’m just worried about you. If you bottle these things up, they come out,
you know.”

“Like in the form of
physical confrontation which, one might say, is the most fundamental aspect of
MMA?” he asks.

“No need to be a jerk
about it,” I tell him. “Just shut up and realize I’m being very sweet right now
and you’re very much not.”

“You’re right,” he says.
“I’m sorry. I was going to get in the shower. Care to join me?”

“Sure,” I tell him.
“Sounds like good, wholesome fun.”

He says, “I don’t know
how wholesome that really—“

“Yeah, I was going to say
‘clean,’ but I didn’t want to go with a pun so I winged it,” I interrupt. “Yes,
let’s go take a shower.”

“Okay,” he laughs and off
we go.

I’m worried about him.
He’s smiling and joking now, but even with something like fighting to get the
aggression out, it’s still good to talk this stuff through with someone.

Right now, though, I’m
not sure my approach would really help. After all, what do I know about this
sort of thing? My parents have always had their own, individual team of lawyers
so anything they might have done was dropped before it was picked up.

Now that I think about
it, I wonder if my parents only stay together because they don’t want to go
through the headache of dealing with the other’s legal team.

That’s slightly
unnerving.

We get to the bathroom
and we get undressed. As Mason turns on the shower and we get in, I decide to
bring up something other than Mason’s family for once. “Your hair’s gotten way
long,” I tell him.

“Yeah,” he says. “I
haven’t cut it since before you and I met. I’m going to have it taken way down
before my next fight.”

“We’ve been together for
what, two months? Three months?” I ask.

He smirks and says, “I’m
not stupid enough to answer questions like that without being able to tell you
the minute and, seeing as I don’t have my watch with me…”

“When we first met and
you were running around like you were fresh off of your latest mass murder, did
you ever think you and I would end up a couple?” I ask.

“Immediately,” he says
without hesitation.

“You sound pretty sure
about that,” I snicker.

He nods. “Oh yeah,” he
says. “As soon as you saw what brand of terrible I looked like and you didn’t
take off screaming, I knew you were a keeper.”