by Nikki Wild
Despite the laughable name, the interior was actually pretty badass. Leaving the walls white meant that Luke could pick a pretty hardcore color combination for everything else, and he had settled on red and black – classic renegade. He’d even slapped a fresh coat of paint across the walls in the meantime, just to freshen everything up.
The walls stayed white, but he’d had some painters come in and slap black across the ceiling – making the place somehow seem wider, which helped the visuals. Meanwhile, the pads were all red, the fitness gear (besides the weights) was all the standard black metal, and the cage…
I couldn’t help but gaze at the beautiful cage. Luke had followed my instructions to the dotted line and spared no expense to build one of the most beautiful cages I’d ever seen. Tracklighting hung above the wide ring, a forty-foot wide octagon of black fencing that was trimmed with thick red padding across the top and lining the brawl floor. Everything else about it was black – the stairs, the platform walls, even the popping logo for the gym across the center of the ring.
The cage absolutely dominated the back of the gym.
He hadn’t changed a thing about it, and either he’d replaced a few things or kept it as pristine as the day it was fresh. I remembered how he insisted on cleaning it after every brawl himself – which was no easy feat, given the chain-link approach to the walls.
I heard some scuffling from out of sight, and a door popped open. Lights flicked on across the ceiling in a wave, staggering the illumination of the ceiling rows until we were bathed in light.
“Darren! Great to see you, man! What brings you…here…”
He paused, rubbing his eyes as he walked towards us. Luke looked visibly a few years older and chronically tired, but he was still classic Luke – dreadlocks and all.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he exclaimed, peering at me like I was a ghost. “Goddamn, is that the Bonesaw? I thought I’d never see you again, you son of a bitch!”
He stabbed his hand out, and I shook it with a smile. “Glad to see you’ve kept the place together, man,” I glanced around again. “Looks to be in top shape, too.”
“Yeah, well, what can I say?” Luke grinned sheepishly. “I just can’t let the old place die on me, now, can I?” He turned to Darren with his trademarked crazy, wide eyes. “Where the fuck did you find this guy?”
“He’s back in town for a little while,” Darren answered, deferring the details to me.
“No shit?”
“Couple of months, maybe. I’m not staying.” I continued.
“Awesome news, man. Awesome news.”
It was apparent that he was holding just shy of begging me to come back to the gym, but luckily for Luke, I was already favorable to a few appearances.
“I was thinking…” I started, deciding for the last time if I was going to go through with it. “Think you’ve got some room to fit me into the roster?”
“Into the…?” Luke started, weighing the words. Knowing him, he was just making sure he’d heard me right. “What, you wanna fight in the cage again? Here?”
“No point in getting stale, I figure,” I conceded. “I’ll need something to keep me busy, after all. Is there room in the cage for an old friend?”
“Holy shit, YES!” Luke was beside himself. “Fuck yeah! That’s exactly the kind of thing this place needs to get back on top. I’m not gonna lie, shit’s been a little dry around here lately…I’ve got enough to keep this place going another six months or so, then that’s all she wrote. But with your name on a couple of Saturdays…wow. Yeah, when do you wanna start?”
“Haven’t given it any thought. Not tomorrow, obviously…maybe a few weeks from now. I’ll pop by and watch, see how it goes, and I’ll train in the meantime.”
“Goddamn, you were a fucking miracle before, and you’ve gone and done it again.” As tired as Luke had looked before, I could barely see it now. He must have been exhausted, trying to figure out how to hold the gym together, and with a classic contender in the ring…from his perspective, things were looking up. “And it’s not just that you used to fight here. I’ve been keepin’ an eye on you, man. You’re a legend in the underground cage fighting scene, you know that, right?”
“It’s crossed my mind,” I replied.
“You dropped off the face of the earth a month ago, man! Nobody knew what happened to you! I mean, it’s not uncommon for a fighter to hang tight for a few weeks or anything, but you disappeared off of social media and everything, man! People out there think you’re dead! There was some rumblings… You know… Out of New Orleans…”
“That’s a bit extreme,” I replied.
Darren seemed to agree, but not with me. “It’s true. Hell, even I thought that something had happened to you. I know we haven’t kept much in contact since Rio, but if it had been another week or two…I was starting to get kind of worried.”
“You’ve got fans, man!” Luke chided me. “I mean, fifty-five thousand people on your Twitter ain’t exactly nothing.”
It hadn’t even occurred to me to log into the damned thing for ages. I didn’t enjoy the marketing aspect, but I’d been convinced to just start up an account and post something for the fans from time to time. My fighting name started popping up in articles a month later – I didn’t give a rat’s ass about sounding like the toughest asshole on the planet, so I just posted whatever came to mind. Other underground fighters had a Facebook account. Some had Twitter, but they usually posted this super macho bullshit. Nobody in my industry was The Rock, being the cool, fan-friendly professional to the fans. They never did the selfies with their beloved audience. I didn’t go that far, but I treated them with respect and dignity, and through 140 characters every once in a while, I gave them insight into the way I saw things.
Well, some insight.
I hadn’t realized how much the fans ate that up. From a lowly couple of dozen followers, it had flown up well into the thousands over the couple of years I’d been using the thing – unexpected, a little flattering, but overall not my chief concern.
Of course, I was just “Bonesaw” to them – the name that they’d given me when I was just starting out here at Luke’s gym. Nobody outside of close friends knew my real name, and I intended on keeping it that way. The last thing I’d wanted was for my family or friends from the past to figure it all out. Back then I’d shaved my head and thrown on the darkest pair of aviators I could find. It was about as good a disguise as I could bother with, besides, if you’ve seen one cage fighter you’ve seen them all. I wasn’t too worried about being recognized. I just wanted to fight. I didn’t need anybody complicating things for me.
“I’ll make an announcement on Twitter,” I decided. “About time I let the fans now. Bonesaw, going toe-to-toe in the New Horizons cage. Sunny Pensacola. That should be pretty good for business, right?”
“I’d kiss you, man,” Luke grinned as wide as his face could go.
“That’s…not going to be chiefly necessary.”
“Would you settle for a quarter of the pot? Regardless of win?”
“Screw the money,” I told him. “I’m in good hands right now. Just keep this place going a few months longer.”
Darren crossed his arms, watching me with an interested glance. He knew that I was always in it for the cash, and no question such an out-of-character moment was suspicious…but he didn’t say anything.
“Man, they say 24 hours can make shit pull a 180,” Luke chuckled. “Horrible to awesome in a day. But every time you show up in my life…you pull it off in 20 minutes, man!”
A feeling of dread overcame me.
What happens when that stops?
Thirteen
Saffron
Pensacola, Present Day
The driver, a young, perpetually smiling Asian chick, took me around to New Horizons when I asked. It looked to be a fitness gym, not too terribly far into town, and it actually looked pretty sleek from the outside. As I pulled up, the lights were on, and I could see what looked l
ike Sawyer and a couple of other guys standing around near the front. The entire front wall was glass, showing off rows of solid, newish equipment…and way in the back, as we drove past and slowed down, I could make out a large cage fighting ring.
Huh. What’s he doing in a place like this, so late at night?
There wasn’t any benefit to creepily hanging around, so I had the driver just take me straight home. I was just getting ready for the shower when I heard motion downstairs – poking my head around the top landing, I could see Sawyer moving about, oblivious to my attention.
I considered calling out to him, but I was still unwilling to cross that bridge until he looked remarkably less angry than usual.
From that point on, Sawyer was around a lot more often. As quickly as the next day, he even seemed more relaxed around me, and unceremoniously broke the silence one early afternoon a few days later, after a particularly late night out. I caught him shirtless in the kitchen, fiddling around on the stove, and turned to leave when he suddenly addressed me:
“Want some lunch? Nothing too fancy, but I’ve got some spaghetti at the ready if you’re interested…” Sawyer remarked casually, draining a hot pot into a colander.
“I…sure,” I decided, thrown off-guard by his less-than-brooding demeanor. “After you were done in here, I was probably going to figure out lunch anyway.”
“There’s plenty enough for the two of us. Would you give me a hand and shut the stove off? If it’s not done soon, I’m probably going to forget about it…” He indicated the stove with a nod of his head.
Pushing my confusion aside, I walked into the kitchen and checked the dials. “Smells good,” I told him, peering into another pot on the stovetop. Inside was a simmering red sauce, chunked full of cooked ground beef and spices. “I didn’t know you cooked.”
“I dabble,” Sawyer replied warmly, setting the pot aside and wafting his hand in the sink. The colander of spaghetti continued to vent steam as he brushed the heat aside.
A few minutes later, I was sitting at the dining room table as he handed me a bowl of pasta, topped with chunky ground beef tomato sauce, grated parmesan cheese, and a sprinkle of oregano. He sat down across the small table from me with a bowl of the same, and we began to chow down in an uncomfortable silence.
“This is really good!” I told him happily. “Do you use a specific recipe, or…?”
“It’s spaghetti,” he replied, giving me a look. “I mean, you have to be a complete idiot to fuck up spaghetti.”
“I know, I meant…like, the sauce,” I fumbled for words. He was still watching me flounder with an amused expression on his face. “You obviously did something with the sauce…”
“I’ll tell you my secret,” he smiled with that stupid, asshole smirk he liked to use. Oh boy, here we go. “It’s called salt, pepper, and garlic. Maybe a pinch of onion. I swear, Saffron, this is Culinary 101.”
It was my turn to simmer, as I bit back my tongue.
“You want me to teach you a few things? I can, if you want. We can start with the basics – toast. When you’re ready, we’ll start talking making a pancake.”
“Are you always an asshole?” The words spilled from my lips before I could stop them.
“Excuse me?”
“Can you just learn to take a fucking compliment sometime? I don’t know why I even try to be nice to you, you ungrateful, miserable asshole…” I stood up from the table, throwing my cloth down. “You know what? Forget it.”
“Saffron–” His expression was confused, which only made me angrier.
“No. I’ve had enough. You avoid me since the day we arrive, and the one time I muster up the courage to try and reach out to you, you just have to be a complete dick again. Forget it. Let’s just get through this stupid summer together, and go back to hating each other.”
“Hating?”
“I mean, you’ve obviously always hated me.” I remained at the edge of the table, ready to just lock myself away in my room with a book again. “You’ve hated me from the moment we’ve met. You couldn’t have made that any clearer if you tried.”
“You…you can’t seriously think that.”
“What the fuck do you care?”
In a spontaneous act of defiance, I shoved the bowl of spaghetti across the table. It slid towards him, but wobbled at the end of its run. Half the food slid out of the bowl and against the tabletop as it capsized, making a conspicuous rolling sound against the wood.
Sawyer looked uncharacteristically pained as he turned from the upended bowl of pasta to me. “Saffron…”
“Just continue doing whatever the fuck you do when you spend all your time out,” I told him furiously. “I get it, you know. I really do. You just hate me so much that you can’t even bear to be around me. So, here I am, relieving you of your duties as glorified reluctant babysitter. I don’t even know why dad sent you here. I’m an adult. I can handle myself! Just piss off. Spend the entire time out. I’ll tell them that you were here all summer and we had a great old time and really bonded.”
I stormed from the room, fighting my tears. How stupid could I have been? For just a moment, I thought that maybe we could get along…but I was kept so tired of his bullshit. If Sawyer just gave me a few conversations where he didn’t pull his macho condescending attitude out, then maybe we could actually have a normal relationship.
Blowing up at him might have been stupid, but I was sick feeling like I had to be on edge around him, and I was done with his crap. Sure, I had enjoyed it…when I was growing up. But it was the same stupid story as before, but now it just got to me. I’d been stupid to think myself, before we’d even come down here, that I could continue to enjoy this.
Maybe I would have been able to handle things if I wasn’t so angry with him for abandoning us. He expected everything to go back to the way it was before, like he hadn’t betrayed my trust. I’d made every reasonable attempt to reach out to him when we were growing up, and I’d started to want to let go of it all when we were stuck together…but it was clear that he just didn’t care.
No, I thought to myself, locking the door to my room behind me. Fuck you. I tried to push it aside and engage you in an actual relationship, and you’re just the same asshole that you always were.
I lost myself in my book for a few hours. I’d started up on a somewhat forgettable Victorian romance fantasy. It was more escapist that I generally tended to like, but the author was an avid lover of the time period, and gave some incredible descriptions of the relevant caste system and Victorian society as a whole.
I was reading a particularly juicy section with the servant girl lead giving the handsome young nobleman a reluctant, sexually charged bathtub scrub when there was a knock at the door.
“Saffron? Are you in there?”
A heavy sigh lifted from my chest.
“What do you want?”
“Can you come out for a moment?”
I bitterly moved my cherished bookmark into the paperback and set it on the end table. Climbing up from the bed, I unlocked the door and stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame.
“I’m reading. Can you make it quick?”
There was something about Sawyer that immediately drew my attention. This was the first time I’d ever seen him…glum. He looked absolutely miserable, and I relished the sight of it…even if it pulled at my heartstrings a little.
No, I had to remind myself. He did this.
“Saffron, I know that I’ve been…difficult.”
“Hah,” I snorted. “Difficult. That’s one word for it.”
“You don’t understand,” he confessed, averting his gaze.”
“What don’t I understand, Sawyer?” I demanded to know. “That you’ve treated me like a second-rate citizen since we met? That you’re an unapologetic prick? Fill me in by all means, because I think I pretty much get the gist of it.”
“Saffron.” He said my name with some backbone this time, his eyes glaring down at me.
; “Oh, look. He’s mad now.” I was enjoying this. I had never gotten to experience him at anything less than 100% unadulterated jackass, and it was a treat to see him…wait, was he nervous?
“I don’t expect you to get it,” he told me, clearly restraining himself from…something. What, I didn’t know. “But I want you to know that I don’t hate you. Not at all.”
“You’ve done a pretty shit job of communicating that for the last, oh, I don’t know, ever.”
“I know,” he continued. “But I promise I’ll be…better at it, from now on. I might have gone too far.”
“Yeah, you think?”
“Look…why don’t you come downstairs? We can sit down and chat for a while. I can explain some of the things that I’ve been up to, and you can tell me the same about yourself.”
“Oh my god. Sawyer Samuels wants a heart-to-heart.”
His expression darkened. Crap. I pushed him too far.
“Look, we’re going to be here for awhile, I’m extending a fucking olive branch, Saffron. If you don’t want it, then don’t get pissed when–”
“No, you’re right,” I suddenly cut him off. Something in me had changed, and I couldn’t let the opportunity get away. “That sounds nice. I’ll be right down.”
He nodded before walking down the hallway. I could hear the stairs squeak slightly as he descended, and I turned my back to the door.
Since when does he give a shit about me?
Mustering up every once of patience I had, I wandered downstairs. I wasn’t willing to lose this chance, so I played along…at least, until I figured out if he was just playing the long con now. Cautiously, I sat down at the dining room table again, realizing that every trace of the spilled spaghetti had been erased. I don’t know why it surprised me – maybe I just thought he wasn’t the type to clean much up himself.
“So, you wanted to…talk?” I asked, uncertainly.
“Saffron, would you like to know what I’ve been doing for a living?”
