One Step Away (A Bedford Falls Novel Book 1) (19 page)

Alex imagined throwing a left jab to Brad’s
face and feeling an adrenaline rush that urged him to follow it up
with a right hook. But since Brad would give a good fight, they
would both end up on the ground, throwing punches at each other
until a pair of beefy bouncers pulled them apart. The confrontation
would likely result in getting arrested and thrown in jail.

Nevertheless, Alex wanted to find out if
Brad could back up his tough-guy act. “What are you saying? That
Marisa won’t have sex with you…because of me? Can’t say that I’m
surprised. We’re best friends. We share secrets. How much more
intimate can you get than that?”

“Yeah, right?” Brad laughed. “That’ll be the
day.”

“Then have you considered that she won’t
touch you because you’re just pathetic in bed?”

Brad flinched as if hit. He narrowed his
eyes. “What?”

“Best friends tell each other everything,
right?” Alex looked undecided. “Or do they? I mean, you get more
intimate with Marisa than I do. Only you know the truth, am I
right? Yeah, it’s probably best that you keep it to yourself.”

Brad threw a right fist.

Alex expected the blow. He ducked and jumped
out of his seat.

Thrown off balance, Brad’s mid-section
slammed into the counter, and he bounced backwards into a stool,
knocking it to the ground.

“Hey,” shouted a thick-necked,
broad-shouldered bouncer, charging up to them. He intercepted Brad
just as he righted himself, prepared to lash out at Alex once more.
The bouncer clutched Brad’s shirt, tugging him toward the exit
without much effort.

Brad pushed himself away from the bouncer,
turned back towards Alex, and pointed at him, glaring. “I’m going
to finish you!”

As Brad turned and exited the building, Alex
had a difficult time fighting off the adrenaline rush. Since Brad
seemed intent on fighting him, Alex had to find a way to get over
his anxiety that he might hospitalize his opponent, because if they
did exchange blows and Alex held back, he might be the one getting
hospitalized.

He had to find a way to meet Brad’s desire
to fight with total control. Otherwise, Brad would consider him a
coward, which he would no doubt mention to Marisa, if he hadn’t
already.

And when he thought about her, something
shifted in his thought process, something that he’d never
considered before: other than his reluctance to injure an opponent,
he realized that a part of him felt inferior to every man Marisa
had dated, because she’d chosen them…and not him.

This conclusion hit him like he’d just
gotten zapped by a shock of electricity. Never before had he
considered this possibility, probably because he didn’t want to
believe it. Heat rushed into his cheeks at this newfound insight.
Summoning his father’s comment a few weeks ago that Marisa felt
something for him, which Damon reiterated a short time later, Alex
wished that he’d done more dating over the years so he could have
picked up on what Marisa was subconsciously trying to tell him all
along.

Not only that, but because Marisa had more
experience than him in the dating world, he felt that he couldn’t
measure up to her expectations; he hadn’t picked up the practical
knowledge of how to relate to her as a boyfriend, since he’d never
been in a long-term relationship before. It made him think that
she’d compare him to every man she’d dated, and he automatically
felt incapable of giving her what she needed.

He remembered Damon talking about how women
tested the men in their lives, but only now did he understand why
they did so: these women wanted to determine if these men were
worthy of them. They constantly challenged a man’s masculinity by
arguing, throwing tantrums, or trying to take control of the
relationship – even when they didn’t want to, all to see if the man
in question showed that he had the balls to challenge them right
back.

And Alex now realized that, although he and
Marisa weren’t a couple, she had called him out on these very
issues – and he’d always caved in to her opinions and requests for
various reasons: it was that time of the month; she’d had a bad
day; she was stressed out, etc.

These reasons explained why Alex felt
uncomfortable with Marisa when it came to romantic gestures. Deep
down, he felt like every other single man had an advantage over
him: experience. And since he had no idea what she was really
trying to tell him, rather than being nicer and more lenient when
she tested him, which only exacerbated the situation, Alex could
have reversed the dynamics of their relationship if he’d simply
told her how he felt. Only now did he realize that, because he
failed to be himself, she lost some respect for him as a man.

And how could he blame her for that? After
all, he wasn’t being true to himself. In essence, he was lying to
both of them. The notion made him feel useless, worthless. How had
he been so oblivious for so long?

If he hoped to have Marisa as a girlfriend,
he had to feel that he deserved her love and respect. Yet he knew
how many stronger and more attractive men had attempted to win her
affections. And in order for Alex to feel like she couldn’t do any
better than him, he had to take charge and remain in control of any
and every situation.

He already knew he needed more
self-confidence, but felt frustrated to discover how difficult it
was to implement such drastic change in his life. After
brainstorming about additional ways to help improve his confidence,
he took to Google for ideas and soon stumbled across an activity
that made him smile.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The next morning, after researching martial
arts academies and dojos online, Alex watched a video featuring a
seven-time black belt instructor named Master Ulrich teaching his
students Combat Hapkido, a Korean form of self-defense that focused
on joint-locks and pressure points while also employing techniques
from other martial arts systems.

Rather than teaching fancy techniques,
Hapkido emphasized the importance of using the opponent’s weight,
leverage, and fighting approach against him, thus avoiding using
strength to fight strength. Alex found this method appealing
because Hapkido would allow him to remain calm in a fight, while
taking advantage of whatever striking methods his adversary might
use.

A short time later, Alex visited Master
Ulrich’s martial arts dojo. While many other instructors boasted
top-notch facilities, offered a wide selection of martial arts
curriculums, and had collected a massive student enrollment, Alex
had no interest in becoming just another nameless face in a crowd,
nor did he want to enter an austere facility. He needed an
instructor who engaged his students and took an active part in
helping them reach their full potential.

Alex lined up at the outskirts of the red
mats that stretched across the floor, standing beside a teenage boy
wearing a customary black outfit secured by a white belt,
indicating the lowest skill level in the class. After Master Ulrich
introduced Alex to the class, the group went through a variety of
stretching exercises before gathering the dozen or so students,
ranging in age from 14-72, all with various skill sets, and touched
on the basics.

Unlike other instructors who taught a set
curriculum, starting with the most elementary techniques, Master
Ulrich skipped around by mixing in black-belt maneuvers with white
belt exercises. This approach gave even the most accomplished
students a chance to challenge themselves while continuing to
perfect the strategies they had learned upon first entering the
school. It also presented newer students with the opportunity to
pick up maneuvers they might not learn until some point in the
future.

The students broke into pairs, and Alex set
to work with a fifteen-year-old girl with a long black ponytail
that reached her waist and dark eyeliner around her green eyes.
Since Alex held a 60-pound advantage on the 90-pound, frail-looking
teenager wearing a brown belt, he felt a little uneasy about
practicing the throwing movement Master Ulrich had just
demonstrated.

“What’s the problem?” she asked, smiling.
“Afraid to hurt a girl?”

“Well, yeah.”

“This is your first day. You couldn’t hurt
me if you tried.” She exchanged a knowing glance with Master Ulrich
and smiled. “Throw a punch,” she told Alex.

Alex threw a right jab.

She slapped his wrist, knocking it aside,
and whacked him upside the head before setting her arm just above
his elbow and leaning her weight against it. The tactic drove him
onto his knees, groaning in pain. Then she slammed a heavy chop
onto his back, spreading him onto the mat. A second later, she
hopped to her feet, looking down at him. “Still afraid to hurt a
girl?”

Master Ulrich looked down at him. “In
Hapkido, size doesn’t matter. Strength doesn’t matter. A skilled
technician will use her opponent’s size, strength, and balance
against him. Understood?”

During the next hour, Alex learned five more
elementary concepts before class ended and he set about acquainting
himself with his classmates. Every student smiled and welcomed him
with kind words. Afterwards, excited by the possibility of
improving his combat skills, Alex signed up to take three sessions
per week, twice on weekdays and one each Saturday.

Later, energized to think of everything he
would learn and already feeling more confident, Alex went home and
took his bike over to the local school parking lot. He set stones
onto the pavement at the same intervals as the cones at the driving
facility and practiced weaving around them until he managed to do
so successfully twenty times in a row. This accomplishment stunned
him. In the past, he’d never managed to complete the maneuver to
perfection more than a few times in a row.

This achievement, however, came with a
drawback. The repetitious nature and constant friction of
frequently cutting the handlebars from one direction to the other
produced the origins of a blister on his left palm. He found
himself continually pulling in to gradually release the clutch in
order maintain a slow but steady speed.

Nonetheless, he took to the streets, working
on leaning into each turn. The blister, and the pain associated
with it, would make practicing difficult over the next week. And
with the threat of winter fast approaching, he realized he might
not get a better chance than today to take the test – only one day
after he last failed.

In late afternoon, an hour before the DMV
facility planned to shut its doors, Alex arrived and waited a while
before meeting an instructor on the range. He listened to the
instructions and lined up to take the test, where he needed to veer
around a set of cones.

He took a deep breath, released it, and
closed his mind to outside distractions. Encouraged by his success
in the school parking lot, he released the clutch and turned the
throttle, starting out slowly, once more curving around the first
two cones without a problem. Similar to his last test, he told
himself to remain diligent with both speed and accuracy.

And once more, at the back of his mind,
Marisa told him that she didn’t care about him. But instead of
giving in and believing her, he thought back to this morning and
what he’d accomplished in Hapkido. It banished self-doubt, and he
concentrated on the task at hand.

He cut to the right a little too tightly and
his front tire ran over the base of the cone, but instead of
letting this mistake consume his mind, he let it go, and continued
through the other two cones. When he finished, he turned back
toward the instructor and discovered that each of the five cones
still stood upright. Confidence swelled inside him. Before long, he
completed the remaining four tests without incident and waited off
to the side as the instructor finished writing on the test
sheet.

Then she walked over to him, checking a few
more things. “Congratulations, you passed. I’ll meet you inside
where you can get your license.”

Her monotone voice only heightened his
excitement. After all, he guessed that most people who received
their motorcycle license hadn’t defeated their greatest fear.
Overcoming this mental roadblock opened up new possibilities in
Alex’s mind. If he could accomplish this feat, he could accomplish
anything.

Brimming with a newfound conviction, he went
into the driver’s facility, obtained his new license, and walked
out of the building, feeling…not so much like a
new
man, but
a more complete one; a man who could tackle any obstacle. Never
before had he felt so proud of himself. Never before had he felt
that a world of opportunities, rather than barriers, had opened up
for him.

*

On her way home after another grueling
workout at the gym (light weightlifting for half an hour, followed
by forty-five minutes on the treadmill), Marisa headed to Kelsey’s
new restaurant,
T
he Witching Hour
. Because she hadn’t
talked with Alexander lately, Marisa wanted an update, as well as
an explanation as to why he now wanted to be called Alex.

Outside her car, she heard what sounded like
a gunshot. She glanced out the windows, but nothing seemed out of
the ordinary, until the car began pulling to one side, and she
realized that one of her tires must have blown. She pulled over to
the side of the road, turned on the hazard lights, got out, and
circled the car. The right passenger side rear tire had blown into
pieces. She would have to remove the jack and get out the spare.
Only one problem existed: she’d never replaced a tire before.

Cursing her poor luck, Marisa got out her
cell phone and called her father. He didn’t answer. Annoyed, she
dialed Brad. Once again, no answer. A fitting response, considering
that they hadn’t spoken since he’d last visited her apartment. She
thought of calling Alexander…Alex, but decided against it. It
seemed too self-serving to say that she wanted no contact – except
when she needed help.