Making Him Sweat

by Meg Maguire

  If Delante or Rich did indeed hit it big, win their upcoming matches and score major contracts with one of the MMA organizations, it wouldn’t fix everything overnight. The gym would have a reputable name or two as alumni, always great for attracting new members and maybe even some sponsorship. That might get their monthly balances out of the red, but it wouldn’t fund any of Mercer’s big plans for the place, not for ages. But he had Jenna on board, and for the first time since she’d turned his world upside down, he felt positive again.

  And for the first time since he’d passed, Mercer felt as though maybe Monty hadn’t made a mistake, leaving him in charge.

  The sun was dropping below the buildings when he pulled into his parking spot in the alley behind the gym. He wondered if Jenna had eaten yet. Maybe she’d like to grab something with him. His day had already been a success, work-wise. Add to that a date and another taste of that crazy chemistry they had...?

  After he locked his car, Mercer had to fight off an urge to sprint for the door. He wanted to see her. This was more than chemistry, more than a fling. It was way too soon to say it was anything bigger than a crush, but it was bigger than just the sex. It made him feel too many other things aside from lust. Made him feel excited and protective, possessive at the thought of her flirting with some other man, some button-up business guy or trendy designer-type, whatever sorts of men would be sitting down in that office to meet with her.

  His pulse thumped harder as he pushed in the door to the foyer. He’d never registered such an urge to win, as if he’d stepped into the ring with his worst enemy, but the competition was romantic. No wonder people did such stupid shit for love, if this was how it made them feel.

  The office was locked and dark, so after a quick trip downstairs to make sure Rich was all set with the evening session, Mercer headed up to the apartment.

  He unlocked the door, a grin already overtaking his lips, but it died the instant he walked into Jenna’s room and found her doubled over at the edge of the bed.

  She glanced up just long enough to acknowledge him, and for her tear-streaked, pink face to break his heart. He took a seat beside her and rubbed her back.

  “What’s wrong?” Who can I hit to make you feel better? his inner caveman demanded to know. Just tell me and I’ll find him.

  She raised her head with an undignified sniffle and wiped at her cheeks.

  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  After a few deep breaths, she managed to say, “The Spark standards overseer came by today. She won’t approve the space as it is.”

  He frowned. Did that mean Jenna would be leaving? Something twisted in his chest, different than the pleasant knot he’d just been feeling there. “How come? The area?”

  She wiped her eyes, finally seeming to get a proper breath. “No. The gym.”

  Mercer’s heart dropped to his gut. “Because it’ll look bad to clients?”

  “That’s the gist. Because of its history. Because it’s supposedly got one of Boston’s most infamous criminals’ name plastered right over the door.”

  Mercer’s temper flared, but he tamped it down.

  “I spent the whole afternoon tracking down the property manager,” Jenna said, “to find out if a separate entrance could be put in, so we wouldn’t have to share the same one. Like I could even afford it without a huge loan. But the building got historic status a few years back—cosmetic improvements only. I can’t do anything to the infrastructure. It was the only half-decent idea I had.”

  A week ago Mercer’s hackles would have shot up to hear someone denigrate the gym, but the thought passed through his head without stirring a thing. All he cared about was that this woman was crying.

  He registered what this meant, of course. The gym was officially dead, as of January first.

  He stroked her hair, feeling heavy and exhausted and the thing he hated most—powerless. “That sucks.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. It does.”

  “You’ve been dealing with this all afternoon? I wish you’d called me.”

  “I wanted to wait until I knew for sure that I couldn’t fix it.”

  The gym, gone. For real. All chances up in smoke.

  Come the tournament at the end of the month, Delante and Rich would likely be gone, too, off to pursue better prospects. Mercer would’ve been stuck here, keeping the gym’s heart beating until it all came to an unceremonious, inevitable end, until he shut the lights off for the final time in four months or four years—whenever the money had finally run dry. That wasn’t the way this place was meant to go out. Maybe this was all for the best. Mercer felt a sting in his eyes and squeezed them shut until it passed.

  “You had dinner yet?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He left her to grab a Chinese take-out menu from the kitchen, and jotted down Jenna’s request.

  “I’ll be back in twenty.”

  The restaurant was half a block away, and Mercer placed their order then walked to the liquor store for a bottle of wine.

  Jenna was still on her bed when he got back, but she joined him at the dining room table, where they ate in near silence, neither acknowledging what her news signaled. He poured her a glass of wine and they turned on the TV, still not speaking. At long last, he couldn’t stand it any more—not the elephant in the room, or letting her suffer this way.

  “Don’t feel guilty,” he said quietly.

  She met his eyes with her teary ones. “How can I not?”

  “It’s better to know now, instead of throwing more money at the leaks when the gym’s doomed to go under, sooner or later. Sooner’s better. Sooner’s a mercy.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way. Not anymore. And not since I found those letters.... I don’t know what to think of my father anymore. Or the gym.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I know he wasn’t the best guy. But I had him so wrong in so many respects.”

  Mercer felt queasy, remembering that letter he’d been working so hard to put out of his head this past week.

  “And I mean, you must feel awful. I don’t know how you can even stand to sit next to me right now.”

  It wasn’t easy, that was true. But not because he resented her. His being here only seemed to make her feel worse.

  They watched TV for a little while, then Jenna sighed, rubbing her face.

  “You okay?”

  “Calmer, I guess. But I feel so awful. I think I need to read a few more of my dad’s letters.” She was calling Monty “dad” now, Mercer realized.

  He decided to leave the two of them alone. He had a ton to process, too, and that was done best with gloves on his hands. Just after ten, he excused himself to head down to the gym. Members were spraying bags and gloves with disinfectant, mopping sweat off the mats and swiping their membership cards at the desk as they headed home. Mercer clapped them on their shoulders as they said good-night, and found Rich gathering equipment near the rings.

  “Hey.”

  Rich turned. “Oh, now you show up, once all the work’s done.”

  “You wanna train?”

  Rich grinned. “Always.”

  They finished up the nightly chores, then Mercer shrugged into a chest guard and pulled on headgear, strapped thick target pads on his hands as he met Rich in the octagonal ring. They circled each other, Rich tossing out a few lazy warm-up combinations and roundhouse kicks.

  “Five minutes,” Mercer said, checking the clock.

  “Easy.”

  Mercer raised the pads to shoulder height and flicked one forward. Rich caught it with a nasty hook.

  Jesus, he could hit. Mercer had been eighteen when Rich had showed up. Twelve years old, ninety sinewy pounds of seething anger straight out of Lynn, Massachusetts, with a gigantic chip on his shoulder and the cuss-riddled vocabulary of a middle-aged townie. Sixteen years of boxing and later MMA had draped his frame in pure muscle and turned his temper into drive, but Mercer caught old glimmers now and then—that pissed-off kid from the ro
ugh end of the North Shore. He’d be seeing more than glimmers in a minute when he told Rich the news. He’d feel it in every punch the guy threw.

  “Don’t burn it all up front,” Mercer said. “Four more rounds.”

  “Make it ten.”

  “I need to tell you something.”

  Whap. “Shoot.”

  “The gym’s gonna close. In January.” They’d had this talk a couple weeks ago, but that had been back when Mercer was still determined, and Jenna had the power to decide.

  Rich dropped his hands. “What?”

  Mercer kept the pads up. “It can’t be justified, not the way it’s bleeding money every month.”

  “Bullshit.” Whap, whap whap whap. “It’s not your call, anyhow. It’s Jenna’s now, and you said she was on our side.”

  “It’s not her call, not anymore—it’s some stipulation her bosses at the matchmaking company are laying down. She just found out.”

  “Oh. Oh.” Whap. A hard one, heavy enough to drive Mercer back a step.

  “Watch it.”

  A dirty hook nearly ripped the pad off Mercer’s hand. He kept his guard up. “It would’ve happened anyway, sooner or later.”

  Rich’s smile was a joyless, ugly thing. “I don’t even know who the hell I’m talking to right now. The gym’s got to close and you’re just, what? Rolling over and letting it happen?”

  “I don’t have any choice.”

  “The hell you don’t.” Rich kept his fists to himself, dancing on the balls on his bare feet. “Monty may have made you the GM, but I’m invested in this place, same as you. I’ll fight for this place, same as you should. But you’re not even going to try, just because you’re suddenly getting some—” Rich stopped himself, but Mercer knew which word would’ve come next. He was half a heartbeat from yanking the pad off his hand and giving Rich a fresh black eye to match the first.

  “She’s his daughter,” Mercer said. “You think it’s easy for me to even know how to feel about her?”

  “You’re his kid.” He threw a punch that knocked Mercer off balance. “She’s just some girl who ignored him for two decades. Now she shows up when she’s got something coming to her.”

  “Watch it,” Mercer warned again.

  Without fair warning, Rich knocked him back a pace with a kick to his padded ribs.

  “What do you even care?” Mercer asked. “You’ll be off in a couple months, with a manager. And Delante. The rest of us—” Another mean kick, and Mercer swore. “There’s other gyms,” he finished.

  “There’s other chicks.” Whap. “You’ve known her for, what, two weeks? You just let her disassemble the place that’s been your home for half your life?”

  “This place was done already. Maybe we’d have hung on for another year or two, but we were going under, either way. Maybe it’s—”

  “It’s not better this way.” Whap. “We had a chance. We got our name on a decent tournament, and for what?”

  “It’s her business, not ours.”

  “Not ours? Not ours, when we’re the ones who’ve been here sweating our guts out for how long?”

  “He left it to her. Not us.”

  “And if she was any other person in the world, you’d be fighting this, tooth and nail.”

  “Exactly what legal right do you think I have to stop her?”

  Rich shook his head and spoke through panting breaths. “Sit back and let this place close... In six months there’ll be some fancy health club down here. A goddamn yoga studio. On the off-chance you and her are still into each other then...you think you can walk in that door and see some other business here? And not hate her? Just a little bit?”

  On the off-chance. Mercer winced. On the off-chance she didn’t meet someone else, or break things off out of guilt. “I’m not going to try to mess with her plans. I’m standing down. I know you hate it, but that’s my call.”

  “Yeah,” Rich panted, finally tiring. “I didn’t drive him to dialysis every damned day for a year. So yeah, maybe it’s your call. But don’t make the wrong one, just ’cause some girl’s got you thinking with your dick.”

  Or my heart. “She’s his daughter,” he said again.

  Rich dropped his hands and Mercer lowered his guard. For a long moment they glared at each other, breathing heavily in the eerie quiet of the gym.

  “You got a dad out there someplace,” Rich said.

  Mercer frowned. “Someplace.”

  “I had one till the coward shot himself. Now, tell me either one of us would put our biological shithead fathers’ wishes before Monty’s.”

  “That’s different. He loved her.”

  “She never returned the favor.”

  Mercer was tempted to defend her, tell Rich she’d been cheated out of a chance to reciprocate. But it wasn’t his secret to share.

  “This is what Monty would’ve wanted.” Mercer yanked the pads off and tossed them against the ring’s chain-link wall.

  “Four more rounds,” Rich said.

  “Hit a bag. I’m done.”

  The world had dealt him too low a blow already today. He wasn’t taking any more from Rich, not in this mood. “We keep this to ourselves until the tournament’s done. Last thing I need is Delante losing his focus.”

  “Tell me this,” Rich said. “She upset about this development?”

  Mercer looked him dead in the eyes. “She’s upstairs crying. So yeah, she’s upset. If that makes you feel better.”

  Almost imperceptibly, Rich’s posture softened.

  Mercer shed the rest of his gear, leaving Rich to clean up. On his way out he gave a heavy bag a whack, its chain jangling like sleigh bells.

  “He’d never roll over and just let this place close. Not like this,” Rich called after him, though the hardness had left his tone.

  Maybe it would seem that way to a guy who’d only known Monty the trainer and mentor. Mercer knew another man from that final year, up in that apartment and in those peroxide-stinking hospital rooms. He’d seen him weak and crying, and he’d heard his regrets, listened to them like a chaplain taking final confessions. He’d listened to all the do-overs Monty had never gotten the chance to make, the penances he’d wished he’d paid.

  And he knew what he’d want. And where his true loyalties lay.

  * * *

  JENNA STARTED AT THE CLICK of the dead bolt. She’d carried the bin full of letters to the couch, hoping the words her father had written all those years ago would give her some solace. Let her know it was okay for things to happen this way. But all they’d done was make her feel more confused. She slid the latest letter back inside its envelope, checking the postmark date and finding its correct place in the stack she’d already gone through. Funny how this careful organizing did nothing to lessen how messy everything felt.

  She mustered a smile as Mercer entered. He didn’t look to be in any shape to return it.

  “Did you spar?”

  “Kind of. I let Rich wail on me. You find any peace of mind?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. It’s made me less sure about...about what to do.”

  “What to do?”

  “Like, do I just let the franchise people make this decision to shut down the place he put decades into? Is my business really more deserving than his—than yours—when it comes down to it?”

  “Oh, Jenna.” He took a seat and pulled her close. “He’d never have wanted you to sink all your savings into something you cared about, move your whole life here, then just throw it all away so the gym can stagger on toward bankruptcy. I know he wouldn’t.”

  “The more of those letters I read, the less I feel like I have the first clue what he’d want. I just wish it mattered, all those things he wrote. But the overseer isn’t going to change her mind just because my dad was some secret softie.”

  Mercer rubbed her back. “If your dad was here, he’d put your plans first. He never got a fair chance to show you he cared, but if he had this one, he’d take it.”


  “Maybe.” She turned to Mercer, tracing his ear and cupping his neck, her chest aching to know all this intimacy would be over as quickly as it had begun. The grief hit her hard, hot tears slipping down her cheeks.

  He smoothed her hair, making a shushing noise. “At least the uncertainty’s over. Why are you crying?”

  Because... Scary words came to mind, making her panic. She stroked his hair and neck. “I care about you. And I know you care about that place.”

  “I care about the guys I train. But I can do that anywhere. Work for some other gym, where I won’t have to split my energy between being a trainer and a general manager and accountant and every other thing. And your dad would want this, for you.”

  She blinked, sinuses stinging anew.

  “I want this for you,” Mercer added. He laughed again, a soft, nervous sound. “You’ve gotten way under my skin since we met.”

  A fat tear slipped down her cheek, and Mercer brushed it away with his thumb, then kissed the spot. He kept his face there, exhalations warming her jaw. She stroked his head. Will you move away? she wanted to ask, but how could he possibly know that yet? How could he possibly be thinking so rationally, when he’d just invited her to turn his entire life inside out?

  They sat quietly for a few minutes, playing with one another’s fingers, lost in their own heads. Jenna’s heart ached from a dozen things. Gratitude and guilt and...love? She felt something like it for Mercer, its soft edges sharpened by his newness and their sexual connection, all that deep affection made electric by attraction. Only a fool would call that love, though, after a couple weeks’ acquaintance. She’d never advise a friend to take that first glow of infatuation too seriously, and she ought to listen to that advice herself. Give it a few months, she’d say. But as she toyed with his strong, rough fingers, she knew a few months was likely all the time they’d get. And whatever this was, she’d never felt it before.

  Mercer excused himself to take a shower, and Jenna began tidying up her father’s letters. As she stacked a cardboard box inside the tub, her gaze caught on that paper bag full of letters that chronicled a very different, if equally complex, relationship.