Fierce

by L. G. Kelso

  Max flipped to his feet, followed Shane out, and said, "Oh, Shane!" Max tugged the knot out of the tie of his Gi pants.

  Shane screamed.

  I screamed.

  Max yanked his pants down.

  To reveal boxers.

  "You, sir, are an ass!" Shane lunged for Max. Max jumped back and to the side, disappearing behind me and out of my vision

  The next thing I knew, arms wrapped around me, my butt lifted off the ground and then I sat on...Max?

  Max plopped onto the mat, with me on his lap and his arms around my shoulders.

  "Don't let him hurt me," he said.

  "You do realize Shane could probably just pick me up with one arm, right?"

  Max looked around my arm at Shane, who stood, almost dumbfounded, in front of us.

  "You're hiding?"

  Shane better not say behind a girl.

  "I can't believe you're hiding."

  "I'm tired," Max replied.

  Shane shook his head. "Because you wasted all your energy going beast mode."

  A glove whizzed by my head and hit Shane in the jaw.

  "You just got hit in the face with a glove. I think you're tired too."

  "You two look cute, by the way." Shane laughed.

  "Shane," Max warned. His body stiffened, and I fell forward, face-planting on the mat as he pulled away from me. Disinfectant and sweat burned my nose. "Oops, sorry." Max reached out a hand and I took it.

  "At some point, you'll have to stop denying it."

  "Denying what?" I asked Shane.

  "Not my omission to tell. Anyway, I'm going to shower. See you guys in a bit." He turned, waving over his head.

  Shane disappeared and the silence fell. I wasn't sure what to do with the awkwardness that clung to the air. I decided to do what any normal person would do in this situation and resort to childlike behavior: I tackled Max.

  His reflexes were, as usual, fast, and I somehow ended up on the ground, with one of his knees on my stomach and the inside of his left leg pressed against my side, trapping one of my arms.

  My body raced ahead of my mind, already quivering before the situation sank in. Stuck. Couldn't move. Unable to shield my face.

  Oh my God, what if I had pushed too far?

  My breathing came out in rapid huffs, heat seared through my skin.

  I started to push against him. I had no idea what to do. All my training went out the window.

  I needed to get up. But maybe it was okay. It was just Max.

  "Tori?"

  His eyes narrowed, the skin between his brows pinched. Concern?

  The pressure on my diaphragm released as his knee pulled away, my back lifted off the ground. He pulled me on top of him, so I my legs straddled him as I sat in mount position. At some point in the scuffle with Shane, Max's belt had come lose, and his Gi top had begun to fan across his chest, revealing his abs in the V shape caused by the gaping material.

  Our eyes locked. After a long second of holding my breath, his knee touched my back and pushed me forward. My weight wasn't distributed right, and my balance was off. I fell onto his chest. I attempted to drop my weight, but I moved too slow. His hands settled against my hips. He bridged, his hips bumping mine up as he straightened his arms, throwing me to the side. I didn't end up as far away as I thought I would, and he didn't scramble to his feet. Instead, he kept his grip and pulled me back underneath him.

  For the first time ever, my hands didn't go where they should have. They didn't find the standard grips nor did they protect my neck, as they should have.

  No, instead my hands were the biggest traitors ever and clutched his back. A different and new instinct had taken over. My fingers dug into his shoulder blade, and the movement made both of us freeze. My back arched, toward him, and his weight was, well, much lower than it should have been. His hips pressed into mine. Under my palms, two rough lines—scars?—on his back tickled my skin. Whatever the jagged texture was felt almost identical under each palm.

  The belt had become untied, and his Gi flapped open. My workout top had rolled up, and my bare stomach hit his. Max's aftershave, mixed with sweat, shrouded us, and I became engulfed in that smell that had reminded me of the gym and had become Max. His hands pressed into the mat at the sides of my head, and between that and his weight distribution, I wasn't the only one messing up.

  I yanked my hands away from his back and he rolled off me.

  I was too ashamed to move. Maybe if I stayed perfectly still, he would forget I was here. Thank God we hadn't actually been training in any sort of way. Staying still wasn't working. I started to stand, so that I could go find a hole and die, but Max cleared his throat.

  "So, how are your classes?" he asked me a minute later. His dark eyes darted to the ceiling.

  "All right. I'll be done in a year." I lowered myself back to the mat.

  "That's right. You don't enjoy your major. You're doing it so you can have the family business."

  "Pretty much."

  Max didn't reply right away. The fan hummed. Air brushed my cheeks and caused my skin to dimple as a rush of chills charged through me. I looked to the side and found Max watching me.

  "So, you don't think you can afford not to make the most logical decision?"

  "My plan is fail-proof."

  As long as I kept my focus.

  Specifically, away from Max.

  "Is that why you quit boxing? You didn't want to fail again?"

  My mouth gaped open, at first because I wanted to jump down his throat about how wrong his guess was. But I couldn't, because he was right on target. He looked away from my glare and studied the fan as he slipped his arms out of his Gi.

  "You haven't heard anything?" I asked once I had recovered. This time, I was the curious one.

  "About?"

  "My last fight."

  He nodded. "Just that you got a torn ACL and some other knee damage."

  I wondered if he knew that I froze, but I wasn't ready for an answer. I watched him for the space of a few more heartbeats. His chest rose slowly, as though my staring at him messed his breathing up, and he swallowed a few million times.

  "Everything was on that fight. My future. If I went to school or not."

  "That's a lot for one fight." He paused, his lips still parted and I knew he wasn't finished talking. He was just thinking, really thinking, about what I said. "Do you miss it?" he asked after a few rotations of the fan.

  "Would you miss it if you quit?"

  "Yes and no. I would miss the lifestyle. I don't know if I would miss the fights as much. Everyone is your best friend when you kick ass, and then everyone shits on you when you mess up. And you can't answer a question with a question."

  "Oh, really? Who says?"

  He blinked and then turned his face toward me.

  "Social standards. Or something like that."

  I laughed. "How's your GRE plans going?"

  "Meh."

  "Shouldn't you be studying?" I plopped onto my back.

  "Probably. I should always be studying or training."

  "That means you always have a goal," I said, the statement something I had heard long ago from my father. Closing my eyes, I focused on the whoosh on my face from the fan, the tingle of the faint air movement on my cheeks. "You're always moving toward something." God, I missed that.

  "I guess. So, I take it your mother doesn't like you being here?" Max rolled backward, over his shoulder, and pressed his stomach against the mat. He kicked his leg out and scooted until he faced me.

  "Ha. That's an understatement."

  "But she used to be okay with it?" He rested his chin on his clasped hands.

  "Ish. She accepted it before."

  "Before you got hurt."

  "Something like that."

  I stretched my back so my legs went one way and my torso and face the other. "How about your mom?"

  He looked at me, and beneath his eyes' dark surface, something sparked in the depths. "She worries, I
guess, but she's the one who put me in training when I was younger."

  "Really? Wow. I've just decided that I really like your mother. Usually it's dads who put their kids in that stuff."

  "Yeah." His gaze darted to the mat, and his jaw twitched. "My dad was gone by the age I started."

  "Oh, I'm so sorry, Max."

  "Don't be. I'm not. He's not dead or anything. Or, at least, wasn't at that time. Maybe he is by now."

  I rolled onto my stomach, laced my fingers, and rested my chin on them, mirroring him. My nose had become accustomed to the mixture of cleaning solution and permanent sweat. "How old were you when you started?"

  This question seemed to relax him, and the wrinkles on his forehead smoothed. "Five when I started karate. Seven when I started boxing. Ten when I started jiu-jitsu."

  "Damn."

  "Yeah. The jiu-jitsu was my idea. My mom thought of the boxing."

  "Putting her son into that probably was a hard decision."

  "She wanted me to have an outlet if I needed it."

  "And karate? You still do any of that?"

  "Sometimes."

  "You're different," I said before I could stop myself.

  "Oh, thanks for saying I'm a weirdo." He tilted his head to the side as he looked at me.

  "No. That's not what I meant. Really. I get it now."

  "What?" He cocked an eyebrow.

  "Your style. I've been trying to figure out where you get some of it. You have certain lines. That's it. The karate."

  "You should try it sometime."

  "What? Karate?"

  He nodded.

  "No, thanks. I'm sure it's fine, but I don't think I have the needed mentality for it. It's very formal. I'm not very formal."

  "Oh, whatever. Excuses, excuses. When did you start boxing?"

  "When I was eleven." I sat up, stuck my right leg out, and stretched. After a second of feeling the stretch in my hamstrings as I touched my toes, I stuck my left leg out. I stretched between the V caused by my two legs, walking my hands out until my forearms pressed against the mat.

  The slight burn of the stretch radiated from my groin through my hamstrings. I took a deep breath, and looked up, though I stayed in the stretch.

  "What got you into it?" Max asked. He looked at me with unfocused eyes. Pink leeched across his cheeks and he flipped over, back to his back.

  I watched him for a minute before replying. That was a new reaction to stretching. "We stopped by to visit Uncle Jeff, and I fell in love with what I saw people doing. Thankfully, my dad convinced my mom to let me have a go at it. And it stuck. It was everything. My entire life revolved around it."

  He stretched his arm over his head, exposing the tattoo on his left side. The words were stretched from the pull, but I could make them out. Almost. I stopped stretching and scooted a little closer.

  "It says, 'The best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them.' It's—"

  "Hemmingway."

  "Yup."

  "And the one on your arm?"

  Max pulled his arm from behind his head and studied the black words and numbers on his forearm. "Never let fear create your fate."

  Fear. Fate. That was why those words had clung to me that night.

  "So—" Max cleared his throat. "—who's Trevor? Your boyfriend?"

  "He used to be."

  "Oh. Your mom seems to like him."

  "I'm sure she does. He's..." My voice trailed off, my words clogging my throat. Nonthreatening? Safe? Does everything the way he should?

  "It's okay. It's none of my business."

  I shook my head to the side, a piece of hair falling across my face in the process. I wiped it away. "No, it's fine. I just don't actually know what to say. He dumped me a few months ago. Right before I started working here."

  "Oh, I'm sorry."

  "I think my mom is more heartbroken than I am. Honestly, I should probably be more heartbroken."

  "Why?"

  "Because he makes sense."

  "How does one 'make sense'?" Max's dark eyes caught mine.

  What had he asked me?

  Oh. Right.

  "He's a logical person to be involved with. He's got his act together." I ran my hand over the mat.

  "Is he a boxer? A fighter?"

  I laughed. "Most definitely not. Quite the opposite. He'll have a stable career. I just don't think I'm really his type."

  "Maybe if he's crazy. I don't see how you couldn't not be anyone's type."

  "You're just being nice because I got dumped."

  Max jumped to his feet using his ninja skill. "Get up," he said.

  "What?" I looked at him and pused my lips.

  "Get up. I need to warm up again. I still have training left for the day. I don't know why Shane is bailing. So you're going to help me. Please?"

  "Fine," I said, standing. "What are we doing?"

  "Get gloves." He walked away, to the equipment area and grabbed a set of mitts and then a t-shirt from his bag. I met him back in the middle of the mats once I had my gloves on. He pulled the shirt over his head.

  "K, sit down."

  "What?"

  "Sit."

  I sat and crossed my legs. He walked up behind me and settled his legs against my back. He held the mitts out, above me.

  "You're going to hit my mitts, alternating. We'll do a two-minute round. And go."

  "Wait," I said. "I thought you were supposed to be the one warming up."

  "The clock is running, Ms. Rhoads. We both will warm up. Come on."

  I groaned, but raised my arms. I bent them, ninety-degrees at the elbow, and started the movement: up and down, the top of my glove fist hitting the mitts, again and again.

  I hated this exercise.

  "Just breathe," he said. "It's all about keeping breathing."

  I was going to kill him. Up and down, up and down. My arms, especially my triceps, started to tire.

  "And now, I can talk and you're not going to argue with me," Max said. I couldn't see him, but I could hear the large smile on his face in his voice.

  "What are you talking about?" Shit. My talking threw my breathing off, my muscles seized and the burn increased.

  "That. Talking while doing this makes the exercise difficult. Back to the earlier conversation, I didn't say that, about you getting dumped, to be nice. Thirty more seconds of this round. Come on, you got it. I'm not going to be an asshole if I don't sincerely believe something, but I also am not going to feed you bullshit. Does he do any athletics? And time."

  "Nope." I started to move, but his hand, and mitt, curved around my shoulder.

  "We still have two more rounds. Did you meet him at school?"

  "Nope. I've known him for a long time. His mom is friends with my mom and all that jazz."

  "So, you guys dated awhile?"

  "Huh? Oh no. We only dated a few months."

  "Did he finally just man up and admit his feelings to his friend?"

  "What are you talking about?" The idea of Trevor manning up about anything was amusing and I choked back a laugh. "And how long is this break for? I'm sure it's been more than thirty seconds."

  "You know, like all those movies where the best friends grow up together and then end up together. And the break is until you start putting yourself down again."

  "Oh, no. He definitely didn't like me up until a few years ago."

  "What happened around that time? And don't you dare tell me puberty or some crap."

  "That would have been some late puberty, Max."

  "Good call. So what changed?"

  I shrugged.

  "Oh," he said, as if some realization had hit him. His legs pressed tighter against my back. "You stopped boxing. I can tell you now, don't let the breakup get to you. Just ignore whatever crap he fed you about it."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Because, and I could be totally off here, but I bet you intimidated him. That's why he didn't ask you out before."

  "Why? Do you th
ink I'm intimidating?"

  "Oh, look at that. Break's up. Go." He started the timer, dropped it to the floor, and shoved his hand back in the mitt again.

  "Well, he sounds like a non-physical person, and you're physically attractive. I mean physically active. Active." Max cleared his throat.

  My hand stalled. What did he just say?

  "Come on, keep going. You're a smart and strong girl, and—" His words came to a harsh halt.

  "What is that supposed to mean?" My cheeks burned almost worse than my arms.

  "I don't mean it in a bad way."

  "Then, what kind of way do you mean it?" Ugh. I had to stop hitting the mitts for a second to adjust my now jacked-up breathing pattern. I took a few breaths in and out and then started hitting again.

  "I mean...I think some guys...maybe find you intimating because you don't need them. You don't need someone to protect you."

  I groaned.

  "What?"

  I smiled, only briefly, and continued hitting. Now it was his turn to wait. My arms grew heavy, the burning increased, and my respirations tried to hasten too much. I focused on steadying my breaths. When the round finished, I looked up at Max.

  "You're trying to make the point that I make men feel like unmanly around me, and I am therefore doomed to live in singularity the rest of my life sound nice."

  "Break is over! Begin." He smiled at me, hit the timer with his toe, and stuck the mitts out.

  "I hate you right now," I said.

  "I know. And no, that is not at all what I meant. Strong women aren't emasculating. Maybe some guys want to feel like they are relied on all the time, but not all of us. Being needed is nice, but being wanted is nice too. In fact, I think it's even better. Sometimes, being needed can be suffocating."

  Did I make up that change in his voice when he said suffocating? I glanced up. He still looked down at me, but his gaze had hardened. I returned to staring ahead before closing my eyes and focusing on my breathing. Up, down. Up, down.

  "And they aren't the same thing. Look, I'm making a mess of this. What I am saying is you're strong, you don't need anyone, and you're beautiful. And that is, er, could be intimidating," he said.

  Wait, what? My arms dropped due to exhaustion and surprise.

  "Hands up. Forty-five more seconds."

  I tilted my head back toward him. He looked away, but I could see the tips of his ears flare red.