The Clinch

by Nicole Disney

  “He’s here,” Brooklyn says, something so far from anything I expected to come out of her mouth it takes me a second to follow her gaze and see Samson Shaw watching from the first row of the audience.

  Mixed emotions surge through me. It only took Théo about a month to start acting totally normal around us, another to graduate to a more comfortable relationship than I imagined possible where he comes over with beer and Chinese food to watch the fights and talks to me like a member of the family. Leandro isn’t there yet, but he did start awkwardly showing his face now and then three months after the blowout in the locker room. Brooklyn’s mom won’t see her, only talk to her on the phone, and every conversation is a fight, but it’s better than silence. It turns out the most accepting of them all is Nicolau, who found out while watching our fight from prison. He called Brooklyn the next day to tell her to keep her chin up after the loss, not mentioning the kiss at all until Brooklyn did, then bursting into laughter with a direct but easy, “Duh.”

  But Samson? No, not a word from Samson in an entire year. He publicly renounced Brooklyn and refuses to let the boys mention her in his presence.

  Having him show up now, on the most important night of her career is a glimmer of hope, a dream come true, really, but also a freight train of a distraction.

  “I have to win,” Brooklyn says, almost frantic.

  “You are winning. Look at me.”

  She looks back, her attention flooding to me.

  “You have her,” I say. “She’ll go down swinging, but you have her. Go put your jab in her mouth five or six times, right down the middle. When she sets her weight to throw hers, you drop the fucking cannon on her.” I grab her right wrist and look her in the eye as confusion passes through her face. I’ve never said this to her before. She’s never needed help going big. My instructions are almost always about control, but there’s a place for Brooklyn to unleash, and it’s now. She fights smart now. She has vision, and I trust she can look for the bomb without taking one herself.

  “Drop it, drop it?”

  I nod. “End it.”

  She nods as the break ends, and Théo and I leave the octagon. Brooklyn stands and waits for the ref to wave them into round three.

  “You sure about this?” Théo whispers.

  “She knows what she’s doing.”

  The round starts and Brooklyn closes in on Karinov, pushing her back into the cage as she powers through Karinov’s punches like she’s folding over flowers. She sticks a jab, and Karinov’s face changes. She knows she’s in trouble right away, and Brooklyn does just what I said, sticking it again and again. She keeps slipping through even as Karinov tries to cover up.

  She hits with patience, throwing more than the five or six I thought she’d need. Karinov finally opens up, pushing Brooklyn back, desperate for space, and tries to throw a jab back, opening up her left side. Brooklyn is already chambered for the punch. She sees the opening before it’s there, and the second Karinov’s hand extends away from her face, Brooklyn cracks her with a clean, devastating cross, and Karinov drops to the ground unconscious.

  It’s such a clean knockout, Brooklyn turns and puts her hands up as the ref lunges to call the fight off. She yells in victory with her eyes closed.

  It slowly comes to me that Théo and I are screaming too. When they let us in the octagon, she pummels into me and wraps her arms around my neck with tears in her eyes, holding me so tight I can’t move.

  I don’t want to let her go until I notice Dana White entering the octagon holding her belt. I squeeze her and let go, pointing her toward the moment she’s wanted so badly for so long. He fastens the belt around her waist as Buffer’s voice booms through the arena to insane applause.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the referee has called a stop to this contest at thirty-four seconds of the third round, declaring the winner by knockout, and your new undisputed UFC featherweight champion of the world, Brutalllll Brooklynnnnn Shawwww!”

  She looks like she may cry, but before she does it turns to smiles as she looks around the arena. I feel like I can see her cementing it all into her memory.

  Joe Rogan comes up with a microphone, beaming too. “I’m here with the winner and your new champion, Brooklyn Shaw. Brooklyn, how does this feel?”

  She grabs the mic, still a little breathless. “It feels so amazing. There’s nothing I could even say.”

  “It’s was a beautiful fight. You were able to impose your will. Did you stick to your game plan tonight?”

  “Mostly, yes,” Brooklyn says. “And I didn’t do this alone. I owe this to all the people who believed in me all my life. My brothers, Théo, Leandro, Nicolau, the best coach I could ever have and love of my life, Eden Bauer—” She’s clearly not finished, but the crowd cuts her off when they explode in cheers. They scream so loud she can’t continue for several seconds, but she doesn’t look irritated. In fact, she breaks into a huge smile and looks at me while they cheer. All this time she worried about what coming out would do to her career, and they absolutely love her. They finally settle down enough that Brooklyn pulls the mic back to her face.

  “Most of all, I owe this to the absolute legend sitting right over there.” She points at her father, and the crowd cheers again. “We fucking did it, Dad!” She yells it with such passion a shiver goes through me. She hands back the mic and climbs over the fence, heading straight for Samson. The cameras try to stick with her and put Brooklyn and Samson on the big screen just as Brooklyn gets to her father.

  An almost comical series of emotions pass over Samson’s face, surprise, anger, confusion, and pride, definitely pride no matter how many other things accompany it. She stops in front of him and slowly unfastens her belt, holds it across both hands, and extends it to him. Her motions are so slow and precise it looks like a ceremony.

  I squeeze Théo’s arm involuntarily. He feels like marble, and I’m positive he’s not breathing either as we wait for Samson to do something. Samson has spent a whole year publicly and ruthlessly attacking Brooklyn, yet she’s standing in front of him like it never happened. He’s unreadable.

  “He’s not going to do it,” Théo says.

  “Yes, he is.”

  The whole arena is still applauding in spite of the painful seconds passing. Finally, still stone-faced, he reaches out and accepts the belt from her. Without pause or hesitation, Brooklyn hugs him, tight and hard. He lets the belt drop to one hand and wraps his arms around her. The energy of the roaring crowd is incredible, and the next thing I know, Théo pulls me into a hug too. Life is more right than it’s ever been.

  ✥ ✥ ✥

  We cancel classes to have a blowout party for Brooklyn at the newly renovated Emerald Tiger. All the students and their families show up. Brooklyn isn’t only the star of the gym, she’s also been teaching Jiu-Jitsu classes when she isn’t in camp, so they know the sweet, patient heart underneath the badass they’ve seen on television, and they show up in droves to celebrate her.

  Even the Shaws show up, a fact that seems to be balancing on a razor’s edge, but they’re here. Zaira and Samson don’t speak to me. I do my best not to even be in their line of sight so they stand a chance of not getting worked up. All that matters right now is that they let Brooklyn back in. They don’t have to have a relationship with me.

  Brooklyn is off with them now, sitting together in the Taekwondo half of the gym while I mingle on the MMA side. I’m dying to know how it’s going, excited about what their presence could mean for the future, but I don’t delude myself. Right now, they’re far from over it.

  When I turn, I see Mateo is standing at the glass case that holds Brooklyn’s belt. Brooklyn insisted we set it up in the gym next to mine even though between having the replica here and giving the real deal to Samson, she doesn’t have one for herself. She said it should be next to mine for all to see, and it’s a display that gets plenty of attention. Even I can’t help but stop and look at it sometimes, blown away by the fact that it’s real, that we did
exactly what we set out to do.

  I cross the open floor and stand at Mateo’s side, looking at the gold face of the belt, the UFC logo across the center, the leather belt studded with gold buttons, the glittering stones and tiny flags around the outside.

  “You think I can ever win one?”

  I look down at him, but his eyes are glued to the belt. Mateo has gotten much more serious about martial arts since he moved into the completed student housing. I expected that, to an extent, but he’s surpassed even what I guessed might happen. He’s put on muscle too, a lot of it, the result of regular meals meeting ample training meeting a natural growth spurt. He’s not small and skinny anymore. I’m still trying to help him stop seeing himself that way. As devoted as he’s become, he’s never talked like this before.

  “Is that what you want?”

  He looks at me with big round eyes. It takes some measure of self-belief to admit you even want to be champion. It’s such a big goal, and people don’t stop laughing at it until you’ve damn near done it, but Mateo looks me dead in the eye and nods.

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “More than anything.”

  I tilt my head and nod. “Then you can do it.”

  “You’ll coach me?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I say. “Why, you got another coach in mind? ’Cause I’ll kick their ass, whoever it is.”

  He giggles. “No, I want you to do it.”

  “Good. But first, we have a party to enjoy. I suggest you eat some cake now, because in training there’s no cake.” He beams and beelines for the food table, nearly taking out Brooklyn as she heads my way. She turns to watch him go, smiling at his excitement.

  “We running out of cake?”

  “He is,” I say. “He just told me he wants me to train him to go pro.”

  Brooklyn raises her eyebrow. “Wow, how about that? Already moving on from me to the next champ, huh?” she teases me as she steps into a hug.

  “Hey, he’s half your champ. Don’t you let him get choked.”

  She laughs. “You got it. And you don’t let him get knocked out.”

  “Deal. How are your parents?”

  She tilts her head side to side. “They’re trying.”

  “I think so too.”

  “You don’t mind that they’re hiding from you?”

  “Not at all. They’ll like me eventually,” I say. “I’m irresistible.”

  She smiles and shakes her head, then leans in and kisses me. Her lips are warm and sweet and completely intoxicating even after a year of head-spinning kisses. “You really are,” she says. “They’re a tough case, though. It may take a long time.”

  “You have all of my time, Brooklyn.”

  “And you have mine.”

  She kisses me again, wrapping her arms around me and crushing me against her, and there’s nothing missing. It’s everything I could ever need.

  About the Author

  Nicole is a lifelong storyteller who loves exploring the hidden corners of life. She has a passion for stories that dive into the emotional and the unseen. She lives in Denver, Colorado, where she is a collector of jobs that inspire her writing and has worked as a 911 operator, police and EMS dispatcher, and martial arts instructor.

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