by L. G. Kelso
"I can't believe you even worked with him."
"I'm done."
Her hand paused, resting on the top of my head as she considered my words. "Are you sure you want to be done?" Her hand started moving again, petting me.
Any other time I would have smacked her hand away.
"Yeah."
"Maybe you just need to come to terms with this. And then, you'll be able to move on."
"I've come to terms with it." I grabbed the towel and wiped my face. I bet I had some major puffy, red ugly-crying eyes.
"No, you haven't. You haven't thought about it." She yanked out my ponytail. "Your hair is a total mess, now, by the way."
"I was boxing again. I was fine."
"Until he showed up, and brought all that back to you."
I sighed.
"You know I'm right."
I pulled the towel tighter around me and sat on the edge of the tub.
I sniffled. "I'm sorry."
"Oh, honey, don't apologize. You need to cry. It's part of the whole healing thing."
"I'm not grieving or going through the seven steps or whatever you're about to say." I blew my nose into my towel. Gross, I know, but it had to be done.
"I disagree. You lost something. You lost yourself. And you failed. And you are terrified now of failure. That has made you pick the most boring college career path for yourself, not to mention the most boring boyfriend."
I guess Leah got a little more than I thought she did.
A knock on the door sent me flying to the bathroom door.
Did he get my address?
"Tori? Tori, are you in there?"
Max.
I slouched against the door.
Wait, Max.
My back tightened again. I couldn't talk to him right now. I couldn't look him in the eye and tell him I couldn't fight. He'd think I was giving up.
And would that really be wrong?
Maybe I was giving up, but it was the best option. I would only let myself down, let my gym down, let Jeff down, let my parents down. I wouldn't be able to put the pieces back together if I froze again.
Leah brushed past me. I reached out, and grabbed her arm. "Please tell him I'm not here. Please, Leah."
"Okay. But then we talk."
I stepped away so Max wouldn't see me as Leah answered the door.
"Can I help you?" Her voice caught on you. She totally checked him out. I looked around the bathroom for something I could throw at her.
"Hi. Is Tori home?"
"And who's asking?"
Crap, Leah, back off. I grabbed a puffy hair tie.
"Oh, duh, I'm sorry. I'm Max. A friend from the gym."
"One of the fighters, right? She's talked about you. And, well, look at you. Obviously, you're a fighter."
I leaned around the corner, looped the hair tie around my fingers, and released, sending it sailing across the room and into the back of her calf.
She jumped and shot a glare in my general direction.
"Everything okay in here?" Max asked.
"Yes. Yes. It's just the cat. She gets pissy when I intrude on her territory apparently. I'm sorry, but Tori isn't home right now. I'll let her know you stopped by."
"Ok, thank you. Please tell her I asked her to call me when she can."
"Is something wrong?"
Leah played the stupid-in-the-dark bit too well.
"I'm not sure, but I'm worried. I'm really worried, and I want to know she's okay."
"She'll be okay. With you as a friend, who wouldn't be okay?"
I needed another hair tie. Scrap that, I needed a rubber band.
"And I mean that in the sense that obviously you care about her and she cares about you, so I will pass on that message, and I need to go have a word with my cat about her acting out. Have a nice evening, Max."
The door closed.
"Okay, girl. Get dressed. Then spill it. Him. Then we'll discuss the other. But tell me about Max."
Leah left me alone long enough to pull on a pair of sweatpants and a shirt before she dragged me into our living room. We settled onto the couch. She pulled out wine, her favorite, and we (and by we, I mean I had one glass) finished off the bottle. I told her about Max, but the conversation had turned back to Will.
"Are you scared to pursue Max because of Will?"
"What do you mean?" I sipped the bitter liquid. Nope. Still gross.
"Are you afraid he'll flip on you?"
"No."
"He could hurt you if he did."
"Yeah. And I could hurt him."
"If you didn't freeze."
I glared.
"Hey, I have a point here. You could have kicked Trevor's ass to kingdom come if he tried anything. That's why you picked him."
"I also dated him because his job—"
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. You had your eye on the scrawny boys who couldn't hurt a fly. And that's definitely not that hottie. And don't you even think about dumping that wine into that plant's pot. Anyway, my point is Max is outside of your previously decided boundaries." She repositioned a fluffy blue pillow behind her back and shrugged her knees to her chest.
"Yes."
"So, what are you going to do about it?"
Before this afternoon, when I thought I had a chance at this life, I had an answer to that. Now, I really didn't. I sighed and tucked a foot under my butt.
"And that answer you're about to give me better be: You're going to do him about it. Get it?"
"I wish I could blame the wine for your bad jokes, but I really can't."
"Oh, har har."
She took the bottle off the table and turned it upside down, tilting the spout into her cup. A drop came out.
"Jeez, girl, you drank all my wine."
"I'm still on glass one."
"Oh." She got up, disappeared into the kitchen, and brought out another bottle. She popped the cork and grabbed my glass. "Here then, you need this more than me tonight."
She sat back on the couch and brought her feet under her. "So, what are you going to do about this mess?"
"Try to stay out of it."
She frowned. "Tori, you should know by now that avoiding it won't do any good. You're Tori. You used to take the bull by the horns."
"Yeah, and then the horns got me."
"He's not what stopped you before. Why are you letting him now?" she asked before downing half her glass of wine.
"What do you mean?"
"You didn't stop because of him. You left because you froze and you lost your contract and you gave up. Jeez, pull back the bitch glare, would you? It's true, and you know it. You didn't leave after his freak-out, and if you hadn't froze and lost your contract, you probably never would have left."
I kind of hated when tipsy Leah made fair points.
"Here's the deal, dear. You can't have both. You can't have the safe life of avoidance and the fight that you want. You can't have Max and not deal with your past. You can't walk away from the fight if you ever want to be you."
"What if it kills me this time?"
She poured herself more wine as she shrugged. She took a long sip and then smiled. "New rule: Don't let it kill you."
#
I took the biggest bite of huevos rancheros I could fit onto my fork. Beans, cheese, and egg all pressed tightly against the corn tortilla, and I sighed in delicious contentment as I chewed the food.
Hands down the best place in town for breakfast. My mother agreed completely, and she ate her chili rellanos with as much enthusiasm and lack for the polite food-to-mouth ratio as I did. It wasn't until we were both through half of our meals before we even got more than a "how's it going?" out.
I had expected another verbal blasting when my mother called and asked me to breakfast, but so far, it hadn't come.
I leaned back in my seat, my stomach fighting with my eyes over how much more I could eat.
"So, when is the fight?"
I met my mother's eyes over the rim of my water glass.
I hadn't even told her about the fight, but I guess I wasn't that hard to figure out.
"It's not." I took a slow sip, and waited for her bounce of happiness or even some clapping. While she drank coffee cup number two at the restaurant, there was no guarantee she hadn't already had one or four at home prior to coming. Therefore, my ability to gauge her reaction was stifled without knowledge of appropriate caffeine intake.
Instead, she frowned.
"What?" I asked. "Are you not awake yet?"
"Oh no." She waved my statement off with her fork. "I'm actually already one cup past my limit. But, we're going to pretend I'm not."
"Then, what's with the face?"
She took a bite, chewed, and stared at me. More chewing. The skin folds in the corners of her eyes creased, and her lids overpowered her eyes as they narrowed while she thought. And chewed.
"Any day now, Mom."
"Why aren't you?"
I could play stupid.
"And don't beat around the bush," she said as she pointed her fork at me. "You know what I'm talking about."
I shrugged.
The waiter had perfect timing. Well, for my mother. He bent down to refill my water, but her hand shot out and covered the glass. "Not until you tell me we're going to talk about this."
"Mom."
The poor waiter, silver water carafe in hand, looked at me with wide eyes.
"You're freaking the waiter out."
"No more water, senorita?" he asked.
"No. I mean, yes, please. Thank you."
My mother shook her hand, still over my glass. "Only if you tell me what's going on?"
"Fine, fine." The woman knew how to get me. Hold my water for ransom, and I'd break every flipping time.
She pulled her hand away and the waiter filled my glass before bolting. I doubted he'd be back ever again.
"So?" my mother prompted.
"So, it was a stupid idea." I stabbed a bean with my fork.
"Why was it stupid?"
"Did you replace your coffee with vodka or something this morning, Mom? You of all people should be bouncing off the walls."
"I am. Inside. I don't like seeing my baby get hurt. But, I'm also sad about it depending on your reasons." She ripped a sugar packet and poured it into her coffee. She stirred it, took a sip, and wrinkled her nose. "Needs more creamer."
"I don't want to get hurt," I said, and slid the jar of creamer to her. "There. Happy now?"
"About the creamer?"
"No. About what I said. I don't want to get hurt."
My mother snorted. Water pooled at the corners of her eyes and her skin flushed. Aspirating chili was never fun. She dabbed her eyes with her napkin and coughed.
"That's a load of crap, dear. You've never been concerned about pain before," she said after a few more coughs. She poured some of the creamer into her coffee.
"So, I shouldn't be worried about getting my knee torn apart again? Getting knocked out again?"
"Of course that's a legitimate concern. But, I know it's not what's bothering you. Because you have never, ever thought about physical damage before a fight."
"I've grown up. Matured and all that jazz."
Her smile disappeared under her napkin as she wiped her mouth. "Sure, dear." She put her napkin down, and leaned in. "I think the problem is you've already decided you're going to fail and that's why you're giving me the reason of physical injury. I think you're scared. And you're not scared often. You don't know how to handle it. That's why everyone stopped jumping out and trying to scare you when you were a kid because you'd knee them in the junk or sock them in the face."
"Instinct, Mom, instinct." So far, I had six beans stabbed on my fork. I added a seventh.
"And you don't know how to handle failure either. That's really what you're scared of. Beyond the knee or knock-out, you just don't want to fail."
"Again. I don't want to fail again. What's your point, Mom? You should still be happy." I tossed the fork down, onto the plate, and sighed. A bean went flying and popped her in the chin.
"Throwing food at me now, huh? How can I be happy when this isn't a decision you are making for yourself?"
"I am making the decision. You're confusing me."
"No, you're not. The past is making the decision for you."
"Okay, I'm seriously concerned that something is wrong with you, Mom."
"I was upset that day in the gym. I knew one day you would go back and I freaked out when it happened. I thought that maybe you were the way you've been the past few years because of the situation, because you never dealt with it. I couldn't figure out what had happened to make you happy again until Jeff told me you were back at the gym. I realized then that you giving that up had hurt just as much as what he did. If not more." She stirred her coffee absentmindedly as she looked at me.
I kept my mouth shut, too afraid to speak in case it slipped out that Will was back in town. My mother would go down there and try to whoop his ass, without a doubt. Then, I would go to jail for murder if he touched my mom.
"Look, dear, I don't know what your father will do. I don't know if he'll change the deal. You remember when you graduated? Before that fight? We wanted you to go to school, and you didn't want to. The deal was, if you won the fight, we'd support your decisions. If you lost, you'd go to school. And you lost. Maybe it wasn't best for us to hold you to that deal, but we couldn't watch you get hurt again."
"What's your point?" I grabbed the napkin off my lap and folded it next to my plate.
"You haven't been truly happy since. We put so much into that one fight. What would you have done if you had lost the fight, but didn't get injured? Didn't need the surgery and PT?"
I shrugged.
"Really, Tori. Would you have done what we wanted and walked away from a fighting career and gone to school? Or would you have fought, even if it meant no financial support from us?"
I hadn't thought about that before.
"We wouldn't have cut ties. We would have thought you were making a bad decision, but we would have still been your family. But the deal had been we wouldn't support you financially. What would you have done?"
The answer was on my lips before my brain processed it.
"I would have fought. Kept fighting."
She smiled.
God, what was wrong with my mother?
"Exactly. This decision you're making right now isn't about money or debt and loans. It's not about getting hurt. If you don't want to fight, don't. But I want it to be because you don't want to, because you don't have any interest in pursuing that anymore. I would love for you to never fight again. You have grown up and matured, and I'm proud of you. But, we aren't supposed to lose everything about ourselves as we age. Sometimes, finding yourself means accepting what's already in you. And I know that the fearless fighter is still somewhere in there, and you can't turn that off."
"You used to hate me fighting, Mom. You used to hate all of it."
"Yeah. But I never hated you. I still don't get the sport or art or whatever it is you call it, but you do and that's what matters. Tori?"
"What?" I sighed.
"Do what makes you happy." She picked up her coffee mug, brought it her lips, and paused. "Well, unless it's a guy who doesn't believe in deodorant. Don't do that even if you think it'll make you happy. Because it won't. It will just make you gross."
"Oh, God, not the dad stories again."
#
I decided the best way to make Leah's new rule a success was avoidance. For the next four days, I lived in the apartment or class. No gym, no grocery store. Just home and breakfast with Mom.
By the third morning, my body felt yucky. Call me crazy, but I could practically feel my muscle wasting away. I didn't feel sore, and that was a tragedy. The skin on my toes started to gain another layer, to heal away from the torn up and ripped off calluses. My shoulders didn't ache, and my legs didn't burn.
It was absolutely awful.
And there was something
else I didn't expect—irritation.
An irritation that had no place to go. No bag to send it into, no gloves to take the brunt.
I went through the motions of the day, feeling like, once again, something was missing. It shouldn't have been so weird. The past three years had been the same, and yet, the thought of spending another three like this, well, it made me nauseated and depressed.
Finals did not help.
On the evening of the last day of finals, Leah dragged me out to one of the local bars where she had a gig.
I ordered a drink and stayed with her in the small bathroom, practically getting high off hairspray fumes while she finished off a can. Her hair wasn't going to be moving at all. Once the show started, I made my way to the bar, and had a seat.
Her little group of fans huddled near the make-shift stage and they all hollered when she started singing. She started with an upbeat song, though I think the words were something about shooting out an ex's beer bottles. People paid her attention but their conversations continued.
Until her third song in. I knew everyone would shut up; they always did with this one.
The song was slow, and I had no idea what the words were. But that didn't matter. All I needed was to hear her voice and watch her face as she sang. This was when Leah the singer became amazing, when you could hear her passion in every note.
I watched her for part of it. Her eyes closed, her hand moved at her side, and when she opened her eyes again, they were so bright. I closed my eyes, and listened.
If Leah ever made it big, it would be because of this song, and the others that she poured her soul into. As I listened to her voice, I could feel her love for the music in my heart. Even if she never made it big, she would always be happy when singing this song. She would always have the passion.
This was what she was, what she lived and breathed, and it made it beautiful.
It hurt. I had that. I had that spark that engulfed me, that fire that not everyone finds. A fire that would always be there, no matter what happened.
I had walked away from it. Again.
I had fought years for what I gave up in a matter of seconds. My mom had been right. True, I didn't want another jacked knee; I didn't want to spend months in therapy. However, those were just excuses—something easy for the logical side of my brain to latch onto. I hadn't walked away solely because of those things.
