The Clinch

by Nicole Disney

  “Yeah, remember how she used to always talk shit about how you were so technical and in your head like it was a bad thing?” he says. “You’re fancy. When you fight it’s beautiful. It’s over her head, and it scares her. If you go in there and throw a few wicked fast, high level techniques, she’s going to remember you’re the elite of the elite, and she’s a brawler. She’ll start backing up.”

  I remember Brooklyn calling herself “a brawler” at Emerald Tiger and telling her she’s more just seconds before our first kiss. Even the memory of it makes a shiver crawl over me. Arlo’s right. That is how she thinks of herself, and she’s insecure about it. If I can make her feel that way, it’ll give me an edge, but the idea of intentionally making Brooklyn feel less-than makes me sick. Her soft spots that I found out about in intimate moments can’t be fair game. Then again, Arlo figured it out easily enough, so maybe it is.

  “Thanks.”

  He laughs. “What, have a million people already told you that?”

  “No, why?”

  “Because you’re so clearly not into it. It’s gold, I swear.”

  “Sorry, Arlo, I know it is. It’s just weird for me. I’m still getting used to the idea of competing with her again.”

  “Roger that. You’ll get used to it real fast when she’s trying to take your head off in there. Don’t forget what I said, huh? And don’t let her get her hands on you. Don’t clinch with her.”

  “Thanks, Arlo. I hear you.”

  “So, if you’re not calling for my wisdom, what can I do for you? You just miss me?”

  I wish he was here so I could hug him. “I do miss you. And I did call for your wisdom. I’m expanding and renovating Emerald Tiger. I’m buying the space next to us so we can have a full MMA side.”

  He whistles. “Look at you finally spending some money.”

  “Yes, sir, a lot of it. I’m calling because I want to offer a full MMA curriculum. People don’t want to have to go to more than one gym. I need a Jiu-Jitsu coach. A good one.”

  “And you’re looking for recommendations?”

  “I’m looking for you,” I say, my pulse picking up. “I know you have a life out there and your own coach and all that, but you’re always talking about wanting to come back to the States. You were an incredible coach to me for my fight with Brooklyn, and we get along. What do you think? I do the striking. You do the grappling?”

  It feels like the silence goes on in an endless expanse. I even look at my phone to make sure he’s still connected.

  “Not so much, huh?” I don’t want to let him off the hook so easily, but it seems like the decent thing to do.

  “I’m sorry, Eden,” he finally says. I roll my eyes and sigh. “I love you to death, girl, and I’m beyond honored. I’m just running out of time to get a title. I’m close right now, but if I screw up, it’s over. I can’t afford to switch teams or be distracted right now.”

  Jesus, what a familiar sentiment. “Okay,” I say. “I get it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He sounds so upset I force myself to be more upbeat when I answer him. “No, don’t be. The gym isn’t going anywhere. Maybe later.”

  “I’d love that.”

  “All right, I have to run.” The end of the call is abrupt, but he doesn’t fight it. I hit the end button and lean back in my seat. I’m already parked at the gym, but I can’t bring myself to move yet. I try to turn my attention back to the huge win I just had with Mateo’s dad, but this still stings. I need a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu coach, and I had myself convinced Arlo would do it, that the whole picture was going to magically fall into place just because of how perfect it looked to me. But then, Arlo isn’t the perfect picture, is he? Letting myself imagine it makes my entire being ache for what I can’t have, but it’s a truth that’s screaming in my face. My Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu coach should so clearly be Brooklyn.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Jin has a demeanor that is both hard and soft. He’s kind and nurturing but also demanding and intolerant of weakness, especially weakness of will, and I’ve run his patience dry. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the wrong end of Jin’s skills, but he’s using them now to take me to task in a most unforgiving way.

  The sharp, hard ridge of his shin slips under my elbow and impacts my ribs so hard it racks my entire body and folds me nearly in half before I can recover and stand up straight. I wheeze in a flaming breath, aware the grimace I can’t control won’t do me any favors. His right fist is already on the way, and I get my hand up so late I don’t get a strong enough frame to stop him. My block folds, and I end up punching myself in the face.

  I try to circle out, but he’s a master of footwork. He cuts off my angle by switching his stance and spears me with a front kick to the solar plexus that puts me on the mat. Even as I gasp for air that won’t come, I expect him to jump on top of me and shower me with head shots, but he finally stops, not out of mercy, but anger. It’s all over his face. He circles the mat with tension all through his rigid body. When he turns back and sees that I’m still down, he looks even angrier.

  “Breathe,” he demands. Like I’m not trying. Finally, my diaphragm calms down enough I can suck in a gulp of air and force myself back to my feet. My arms feel like they weigh a thousand pounds. Just holding them up takes every ounce of effort in my body, but fear of the next shot I’ll take if I don’t is enough that I can fight through it. Jin makes a swatting motion through the air and shakes his head.

  “It’s no use with you right now,” he says. Laila tentatively approaches with a water bottle when she sees we’re stopping, but I can’t bring myself to take it. You have to earn water, and I haven’t.

  “I can continue,” I say, even as my body screams.

  “For what?” he snaps. “You’re not here.”

  “I am here, Sah Boo Nim.”

  The affectionate term translates to “teaching father,” and it softens him up just a little. He walks up to me until he’s very close, making me aware of how tall he is, as tall as I am, and fit as a man in his twenties.

  “Your problem is in here.” He puts his palm over my heart. “I warned you that you should not do this unless you were ready to win.”

  “I am ready,” I say, even as tears start to tickle my eyes, but he shakes his head.

  “We’re done here.” He walks away.

  “Jin.” My voice cracks. Jesus, Eden, don’t fucking cry. It’s a cardinal sin in the gym. But we’re just a week from the fight and my coach, my father, the man who made me everything I am is so disappointed he’s walking away at the eleventh hour. “Jin!” I yell in a rage as he leaves the room without even looking back. I turn and kick the bag as hard as I can, sinking into it so solidly even the sturdy heavy bag indents and swings away like it’s light. Pain rips through my side where Jin hit me with the same kick, burning through me hot enough I wonder if he cracked some ribs. The pain says yes, but Jin is a master. He doesn’t break you unless he means to, and no matter how angry he is with me, he’d never break me a week from a fight.

  I pace as I fume and kick the bag with everything I have again, ignoring the pain, then punch it with equal effort. I don’t care about form. I wind up like I’m in a batting cage. All I’m after is the satisfaction of causing damage. Laila slips next to me between blows and wraps her arms around my shoulders, pinning my arms to my sides gently but firmly. I’m just exhausted enough to let her.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself,” she says.

  “I don’t care.”

  “I know you don’t,” she says. “You need a break.”

  “Fuck a break.”

  “Please take a break with me,” she says. “Then I’ll train with you all night if you want.”

  When I finally look at her face and see all the compassion in her light brown eyes, a lump forms in my throat again, and I realize how fragile and fake this anger is. I nod, defeated, and she pulls me into a hug before she takes my hands and starts to free me of my gloves. She
tosses them on the mat and I unravel my wraps, letting them fall in a pile instead of winding them back up properly. She takes my wrist and pulls me across the gym and to my room.

  Laila’s only been in here for a minute or two at a time, but it feels good and right that she’s with me now. With Brooklyn and Jin both gone, she’s all I have, but it doesn’t feel like a stretch that she’s filling this role. We’ve run this gym together for years now, seen each other at our best and worst, in our moments of glory and crumpled into a pale pile of failure. She’s family. My students and my fighters are family. We go to battle together, and there’s nothing stronger.

  “Sit down.” She gestures at the couch while she walks to my kitchen. I obey, and only in doing so do I realize how sore I am. My quads protest as I lift my feet onto the small wooden coffee table. Laila fishes around in my freezer and returns with ice packs, pressing them against my ribs and neck.

  “Water.” She nods at the water bottle I still haven’t touched. After the first sip, I realize how badly I need it and chug most of it.

  “Jin will be back,” she says.

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I guess.”

  “Come on, now. You know better than to think he’s just abandoning you.”

  “Awful close to the fight to be playing these games,” I say.

  “He’s just worried about you, Eden. He doesn’t want to see you hurt again. He was a mess when you were in the hospital after the last fight.”

  “Jin was a mess?” I raise an eyebrow at her.

  She nods and pulls at her hair like she’s afraid her spikes have flattened. “We all were. Even Brooklyn looked like a ghost.”

  “What?” I hiss. “Brooklyn?”

  Laila looks like she’s been caught. “Yeah. She was there for a while. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  I sigh. “No.” I go to the kitchen, taking the ice packs with me, and pour myself a glass of Patrón. I hold the bottle up at Laila.

  She smiles but hesitates, then finally makes a what the hell expression. “All right, Bauer. You’re on.” I pour her a glass and bring it out to the couch, sinking in beside her. Relaxation floods through my muscles with my first sip of tequila.

  “You want to watch the fights?” I ask. There’s a fight night programmed tonight, a smaller, non pay-per-view event. I’ve been training so much I’ve missed a lot of the recent events, but if we’re pulling the plug on training, we may as well.

  “Fuck yeah,” she says. I open up my membership that allows me access, but before I can scroll to the fight, featured right at the top of the screen is an interview with Brooklyn with the header, “Shaw Speaks on Bauer Rematch.” I cringe. It’s probably been out for weeks. I’ve been avoiding media like the plague.

  “Jesus.”

  Laila takes a sip of her tequila. The way she’s leaned way back on the couch, lazily putting her weight on her upper back makes her look like she’s a mile long. “Have you not seen it?”

  I shake my head. “Is it awful?”

  She shrugs. “No, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just not sure if it’s a good idea for you to watch her.”

  I can’t argue with that. “She call my first win a lucky shot?”

  “No.”

  “Say I’m weak and broken?”

  “No.”

  “That I’m—”

  “You know what, go ahead and watch it,” she says. I’m terrified of what Brooklyn might’ve said and what it’ll do to my stitched together heart, but I click the interview before either of us can change our minds.

  The screen opens straight to Brooklyn sitting in a tall folding chair with a giant print of our event poster behind her and a reporter with black hair and a fitted suit in a chair to her right. She looks incredible. I almost want to say better than ever, but that’s probably my imagination. She’s always been a showstopper with confidence that sets the room on fire.

  “Brooklyn, I’m so glad to have a chance to talk to you about your upcoming bout with Eden Bauer. There are so many things we all want to know, so I’m going to just jump straight in and ask what it’s like for you going up against Eden a second time and what you think makes this time different?”

  Brooklyn lets a long second pass before she answers. Her demeanor is already so different, serene. “Pretty much everything is different,” she says. “But I guess the biggest thing is that this time I know what I’ve gotten myself into.”

  “Are you saying you underestimated her last time?”

  She nods. “Definitely. I took her seriously then too, but you just don’t understand how good she really is until you’re in there with her.”

  “There’s been a lot of speculation about whether or not she’ll be returning as the same caliber martial artist we all remember. She’s coming off a serious injury, and you’ll be her first fight in almost a year. Do you think that’s going to be in her head or have an effect on her performance?”

  “I don’t see how it could not be on her mind, but I expect her to be better than ever.”

  Better than ever. Guess I’ll be falling short there. I slam the rest of my glass of tequila and get up to refill it as Brooklyn goes on.

  “Eden never comes unprepared. She’s a brilliant strategist. She never gets tired. She hits you with shots you didn’t know were there. She’s tough as nails. I mean, she won with a broken neck. She always finds a way to win. And now she’s fought me before and trained me. This is hands down going to be the hardest fight of my life.”

  “I’m glad you mentioned that, Brooklyn. For our viewers who aren’t aware, Bauer coached you for around five months before she decided to return. I think we were all shocked to see you two working together after how much you hated each other. You seemed to work well together, but now you’re rivals again. Can you settle for us once and for all if you two are on good terms or not?”

  “Nothing but respect,” Brooklyn says. “She’s still the champion. She’s never lost. You’re not the best until you beat Eden Bauer. That’s what this is all about.”

  “Nothing but respect,” I mutter.

  “Who do you think gains the advantage from you two having worked together?” the interviewer asks. I notice Laila watching me, attempting and failing to be discreet as she examines my reactions.

  “That’s hard to say,” Brooklyn says. “She taught me much more than I taught her. So, I have the advantage there. But she knows how I think and move and work. In the hands of someone with a fight IQ like Eden’s, that’s a massive weapon.”

  “All right, Brooklyn, we’re almost out of time here, so I have to wrap it up with the most important question. How do you win this? And how do you see it ending?”

  I sit up and study her face like it’s going to reveal some essential truth. How are you going to beat me, Brooklyn?

  “I have to be perfect,” she says. “Pick my shots. Save my energy. I burned myself out last time trying things that were never going to work, and you just can’t do that against her without paying for it. She’s a master of making you play her game. You have to find a way to fight your own fight.”

  “And your prediction?”

  “I think I get the submission in round three.”

  “All right, there you have it everyone. Thanks for joining us. Brooklyn, we can’t wait to see you in the octagon, March twenty-ninth in Philadelphia.”

  The video ends abruptly, and we’re back on the main screen. I scroll down and click into the fights without saying a word, but even as the event fills the screen, the air is heavy, and I take another sip of tequila.

  “Not bad, right?” Laila asks, her voice unsure.

  “All very…” I search for the word. “Polite.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “No.”

  “Aren’t you glad she didn’t come in swinging and flexing and all that shit?”

  “Mhm.” I am glad. I’m just also watching Brooklyn turn into a stranger. I’m becoming a person she
respects from a distance, a girl her dad told her to train with once upon a time, and it fits better than I thought it would. Our connection was so powerful I thought it was unbreakable, but it was also fleeting. I wasn’t even her coach long enough to claim to have much to do with whatever she goes on to be. I told Brooklyn I loved her, but she never said it back. Am I just a fling who helped her figure out her left hook? She knew we were never going to be permanent. Maybe that afforded her the presence of mind not to fall the way I did. It’s a little easier thinking of it that way. If I’m stuck in this thing solo, I need the fuck out, pronto.

  I stand to get another drink and realize I’ve picked up a buzz. “Whoa, hello.”

  Laila chuckles. “Feeling a little better?”

  “You know what? Yes,” I say. “I think I am.”

  “Thank Jesus. Come watch the fights.”

  I bring the bottle with me this time and sit close to Laila, leaning against her. She wraps her arm around me and squeezes me in a half hug as we watch the first fight.

  “You know it’s going to be okay, right?” Laila says.

  “I guess so. I just wish Jin hadn’t ended training like that. What’s he trying to do? Make me think I don’t stand a chance?”

  “Of course not.”

  I remember his disenchanted face. “Do you not think I can win?”

  “Of course, I think you can win, Eden.” She faces me, looking at me intensely as if it’s very important I believe this. “So does he. It was just a little tough love.”

  “He acts like I quit on him or something. I’m giving it everything every day. I’m in the best shape of my life, and I was no slouch before. He’s out there hitting me with shit that would send most people to the hospital. I don’t bitch about it. I don’t cry about it. What else does he want?”

  “We all know you have the skills. And you’re right, you’re training around the clock. You’re overtraining if anything. He’s worried about your heart. He told you that.”

  Laila never pussyfoots, but it still catches me a little off guard. “You agree with him, don’t you?”