by Meg Maguire
“Check this out.” Maya proceeded to show off a sampler of bruises and scrapes. Part of Lindsey was horrified, but she was far more proud to think maybe her sister wouldn’t grow up into one of those women who fell to pieces over a chipped nail.
At seven they headed downstairs. The door to the bottom unit was open, and Rich, his mother, Diana and a handsome young black guy were standing around the kitchen. It was sweltering with the heat of summer and cooking.
“Oh, my God,” Maya said, breathing in dramatically. “It smells even better down here.”
Rich spotted them and whistled to cut through the chatter. “Hey, quick intros! Lindsey and Maya, this is my mom, Lorena.” They all shook, then Lindsey shook Diana’s hand as well, having not properly met her the night she’d given Maya a lift. “And my sister’s no-good boyfriend, Andre.” More handshakes. Andre’s big, warm smile said he was used to this ribbing. “Now introduce yourselves to a drink. Dinner’s ready in what, Mamá?”
“Ten or fifteen,” she said, peeking under a pot lid.
Rich waved Lindsey and Maya toward the counter, set up with glasses and wine and soda.
Andre and Diana wrestled an extra leaf into the table and added a couple mismatched chairs from the next room.
Before long everyone was seated with heaping plates of tamales and beans and steamed corn on the cob. Lindsey and Maya took their cues from the others, peeling the leaves away before discovering they’d wasted their entire lives until this moment, never having tasted tamales.
Rich was different with his family. He nearly always seemed relaxed, but there was a deeper warmth to him tonight. He razzed Diana’s boyfriend at every opportunity, though Andre gave nearly as good as he got. Lorena was quick to disparage the odd cussword, but even quicker to laugh. The easy company and wine and way too much delicious food lulled Lindsey into believing everything was simple. That she hadn’t been invited to this house or this dinner by a man who both infatuated and confounded her. For an hour, life was blissfully uncomplicated.
Lorena grew tired early, and Lindsey was proud when her sister volunteered to help Diana with the dishes. Lindsey cleared their places, then settled down at the table with the guys to finish her wine. Rich looked happy, slouched way back in his chair, legs spread wide.
She no longer wondered why a man of nearly thirty would still be living at his mom’s house. Their family dynamic was just...different. Culturally. If any of Lindsey’s brothers moved home with their parents, they’d all wonder what had gone wrong. But the Estradas seemed tighter-knit. Plus, Rich was the man of the house, and in their family that seemed to truly count for something.
She and Maya thanked the Estradas profusely for dinner and said their good-nights. As they headed back upstairs, Maya patted her belly. “Oh, man. I hope they invite us down every Sunday.”
“Hear, hear.”
Their place felt empty and quiet after the energy of Lorena’s kitchen. Maya promptly stole Lindsey’s laptop and set herself up on the couch to watch whatever homework she’d been given—old boxing matches, documentaries, MMA specials, fight flicks spanning the gamut from classic to campy. Lindsey smiled every time her sister muttered a surprised, “Whoa!” or “Nice” in response to whatever she was watching.
Lindsey prepared for the coming week. She hand-washed the silk top she wanted to wear for her first meeting with the magazine people on Wednesday, and opened the door to the fire escape. She breathed in the heady August air. A clothesline ran between their building and the neighbors’ across the wide side driveway, and she pinned her top and reeled it out, liking how old-fashioned the chore felt.
“Hey.”
She screamed.
Not a loud scream, but more than a yelp. She glared, finding Rich sitting on the steps that led down to the second floor. He was facing the other way, twisted around to smile up at her. She fisted her skirt tight to her thighs.
“So modest,” he teased. Like he hadn’t gotten her down to her panties in the gym.
“You scared the crap out of me.”
He shrugged an apology.
“What are you doing here?”
“I live here?”
Her annoyance faded with her adrenaline, and she descended a few steps to take a seat halfway between the landings. “I mean, what are you doing on the fire escape?”
“I used to smoke out here. Now it’s just where I come to sit. Watch people come and go. Clear my head. You have a good time tonight?”
“Possibly too good a time. I can barely walk, I ate so much.”
“I’ll tell my mom you said that. It’ll make her week.”
“Your family’s really cool.” Lindsey loved her own family, and they were a fairly functional bunch overall. But an hour spent crammed around a table in Lorena’s overheated kitchen had felt warmer and more familial than the Tuttles’ traditional Thanksgivings, everything arranged just so in the rarely used dining room. “You’re all so easy to be around.”
“These days, yeah, I suppose so. It’s been a good year.”
“My little sister’s camped out on the couch, watching old fight videos. She seems to have lost interest in any and all Kardashians, so I owe you.”
He grinned. “She won’t be ready to actually spar with anybody for a while—she’s got, like, negative cardio capacity. But stuck in with all those other beginners at this weekend’s clinics... She’s got the instinct, if not all the skills.”
“Weird. She usually hates sweating.”
Rich covered his mouth, yawning widely.
“Aw, did we tire you out? When’s the last time you had a day off?”
“Haven’t since I got back. But any money’s good money, and if I wasn’t working I’d be there most of the day anyhow, training or loitering. Still, not too excited that I gotta be up at the ass-crack of dawn to catch a bus.... Man, I miss driving.”
“In that death trap you call a car? Why haven’t you bought a new one?”
“It does the job. And it’s what I can afford.”
“Even with all that prize money?”
“Prize money’s gone. Spent or set aside for emergencies.”
She frowned. That was a lot of money to blow through, considering how big his payday had been for the Albuquerque fight barely two weeks ago. What on earth did he do for fun on the road? “Maybe after your big return.”
Rich’s tone went a touch flat. “’Fraid not. It’ll take a couple more high-end matches before I’ll have any cash to play with.”
“You have gambling debts or something?”
“Nah. My mom’s got this heart condition, and no insurance company will have her for less than a fortune. She’s been through a bunch of surgeries the past couple years.”
Her suspicions morphed to sadness. “I’m sorry to hear that.” Not wanting to make Rich continue to crane his body, she brushed past him, down to the second-floor landing. She sat as demurely as she could and stretched her legs in front of her. The slats felt funny, digging into her thighs through the light fabric of her skirt, but she liked it. It felt...urban. Like her new neighborhood. Like sitting on this fire escape with a foul-mouthed townie who bled for money.
“Plus you wouldn’t believe how much I pay for my own insurance, given my job description,” Rich went on. “And my sister’s in her nursing program, and I gotta subsidize her until she tricks some poor sucker into marrying her.”
“Some poor sucker like Andre?”
“We’ll see. She moves slow with guys. But whoever the sucker, it’ll be me footing the bill.”
“Damn. Why do you have to take care of everybody?”
“Because my father’s not here to do the job. It’s just how we do it. Cultural thing, I guess.”
The door beside Lindsey was open, and she leaned over to steal a peek at the barest kitch
en she’d ever seen. “I’m guessing you always eat downstairs. Don’t you even have a table?”
“It’s just me on the middle floor, and I’m a mama’s boy, so yeah.”
“If my mom cooked like yours does, I wouldn’t bother, either.”
“Not much going on in the second floor except sleeping and showering. My mom and sister won’t come up here, not since my dad passed away.”
“Oh.” She’d always assumed that Rich had been raised by a single mother.
“But I don’t care. Nobody goes in the room where he passed anymore, but I sleep in the other bedroom. My mom can’t even say ‘the second floor’ without crossing herself.”
“What...what happened to your dad? He died young, it sounds like.”
Rich stood, doing a very poor imitation of apathy as he stretched his injured leg. “He shot himself.”
She shivered. “Oh.”
He looked her in the eyes, deepening the chill. “And before that, he was a pitiful waste of space. If he thought his family was better off without him, he was right.”
She felt herself recoiling, wanting to curl up and protect herself from his callousness. It wasn’t directed at her, but it unnerved her all the same. She and Rich were friends, though their sexual attraction had been more potent than their platonic bond. They were close, but not on a level that let her know how to relate to him now. And she imagined that was the point. He’d put a wall up between them, and not by mistake.
“I’m sorry if your dad...sucked.”
He huffed a silent laugh and shook his head, as though he could think of no word harsh enough to adequately disparage the man. Then he spoke, contradicting his expression slightly. “He was a gentle guy, at least. I’ll give him that much.” He took a seat once more, one step closer to Lindsey.
“It must be hard, having to fill all those roles.”
“That was my mom’s job.” His tone lost a measure of its darkness. “Being both parents and the provider.”
“Until she got sick?”
He nodded.
“Is that when you started fighting?”
“Nah. I started boxing when I was in middle school.”
“Oh, damn.”
“But it hadn’t been about money before.” He linked his hands, staring down at his flexing fingers. “There’s no money in boxing, not at the bottom. I did it because it was the only thing that...I dunno. That made me feel anything, aside from angry. That made me forget for a few minutes that my mom prayed for my rotten soul every night, and cried herself to sleep, worrying about where I was headed.”
“Ah.”
“But after my dad was gone and she had her first real emergency, I was twenty-four. I was a high school dropout and I was good at exactly one thing. My old mentor, Jenna’s dad, had already sent me to Thailand. That trip changed me.”
“It humbled you, you said.”
He met her gaze. “It did. I was surrounded by all these guys who understood fighting the way I did—as their only option. And it drove home this feeling like, this is all you’ve got. The only thing I’m good at. If I don’t make something of it, I may as well take a page out of my dad’s book and put a gun in my mouth.”
She winced.
Rich hung his head. “Sorry. I got some dark shit in my skull.”
“It’s okay. We all do, from time to time.” And she could sense Rich didn’t vent his very often. Noxious thoughts needed airing, or they’d poison a person’s perception of the world. If Rich had to talk about this, she was strong enough to hear it.
“It just became clear, if I didn’t make it fighting, there was nothing else for me. No place I fit where I was respected, where I felt...I dunno.”
“Worthy?”
“Maybe. Or just, like, useful...” He trailed off, clearly struck by some thought or other.
“What?”
“Nothing. Anyhow, it’s not a matter of loving the sport for what it is. I don’t love it, not the way some guys do. I need it. I’ll never be like Mercer or our mentor, happy just teaching people.”
Lindsey remembered how he’d spoken to Maya in the office, and realized she didn’t entirely believe what Rich was saying. Even if he did.
“Then my mom got hospitalized and we found out how many procedures were on the horizon, and I just had to go for it. MMA was taking off and I talked my way into any paid fight I could get. Real shady ones. Ones that only paid fifty bucks, or only paid if you won. I fought three times in one week, I remember.”
“Oh, God.”
“It was insane. But I paid for my mom’s first heart stent in cash. No installments.”
“Wow.”
He smiled, watching his fingers once more. “And it felt frigging good. I don’t think she was ever proud of me before that. And I don’t think she was all that proud that I paid her bills by beating people up, but it was more than my father had provided the last ten years of his life. And I wanted her to believe she could rely on somebody. So I just kept going.”
“Now here you are on the main card. Light heavyweight champ.”
He shook his head. “Now here I am, crippled and useless till my foot’s healed.”
She wanted to move, wedge her butt next to his on the stairs and touch him. To comfort him, though she sensed Rich wasn’t a man who welcomed empathy. Instead, she said, “You’re not useless. Not as long as you keep training, getting ready for the next opportunity.”
“That’s about all that’s keeping me sane.” He laughed, the noise making relief bloom warm in Lindsey’s chest. “Damn, I’ve been talking your ear off.”
“I don’t mind. You’re easily the most interesting person I know.”
“Then you oughta get out more. But how about you? Anything exciting going on with your clients?”
She felt her cheeks heat. “Not with my clients...though I guess I do have something kind of interesting going on.”
His brow rose.
“I got invited to do a magazine article. The cover story, about Boston’s most eligible bachelorettes.”
“Wow.” Rich blinked, eyes glazing for a moment. “That’s exciting.”
“I don’t think it’s because I’m glamorous or anything. They just like the paradox of a matchmaker and former wedding planner being all comfortable with her singleton status or whatever. But it’s great for Spark. And...”
“And?”
“And I dunno...I’ll get to dress up and be photographed. After all those years I spent fussing over brides.”
“Congratulations.” He smiled, though the warmth didn’t meet his eyes. Lindsey’s pride drooped as she wondered what he really thought of her big opportunity. Maybe it didn’t seem that big to him at all. What was some local magazine feature compared to millions of people watching you on live TV?
“It’s getting late.” She stood, finding her back sore where the rails had pressed. “And you have to be up before dawn.”
He got to his feet and Lindsey handed him the crutch leaning against the rail. “Come in for a minute.” He nodded to the open door.
“Um...”
“You want a glass of wine? For the first time in a year I can drink without my training team treating me like a criminal.”
She hesitated, then Rich shot her a cheesy, swarthy look, cocking his eyebrow outrageously. “I’ll show you my belt.”
She laughed. “Okay, fine.” Why not? She needed to get it in her head that she and Rich were good as friends. And she wanted them to be friends, if that was all they were destined for.
Then she glanced his way and saw something in those dark eyes. A warmth that was far from friendly.
Something far, far better than friendly.
Lindsey flipped on the light by the door. Taking in the kitchen, she had to laugh. There w
as nothing in the way of food aside from a giant tub of whey protein and a line of supplement bottles on the counter, and no furniture save for a weight bench and a rack of dumbbells.
“Fighting really is your entire life, isn’t it?”
“Just about.” He locked the door. “You stick my mom and sister in Wilinski’s, and you pretty much got everything I ever cared about, all in one place.”
“What will you do, someday when you retire?”
“Hell if I know. Shame to waste this body.” With a smirk, some of his swagger returned, his darkness left outside to blend with the approaching dusk. “Maybe I should look into exotic dancing.”
She laughed.
“I’m not kidding,” he said, though he clearly was. “I got rhythm.” To demonstrate, he rolled his hips for her and advanced with a couple steps that, even on crutches, proved the man did indeed have some moves. “Don’t be casting aspersions on my fine Colombian ass. We can salsa before we’re out of diapers.” He crowded her with a few more outrageous steps.
“You win, you win. I’ll start carrying singles.”
He went to a cabinet and flashed a bottle of wine. “Red okay?”
She eyed it, wondering if this was a terrible idea, what with the return of shameless Rich now official.
“Just a small glass.”
He found a corkscrew. “I got sent gift baskets by everybody under the sun after I broke my foot. May as well share the wealth.”
She joined him at the counter and accepted the glass he poured her. “To your mom’s cooking. And the fact that I won’t need to eat again for two weeks.”
“Amen.” They clinked and sipped. “Before, when I’d get a fight around Boston, I’d have to burn off at least ten pounds to make weight. Never had to do that once on the road. Now I know who to blame.” Rich took another sip, looking puzzled. “Is this any good?”
“I like it. But I like any dry red.”
“I’ll make a note of that.”
All this week, they’d been doing so well—an exemplary imitation of a plain old friendship. A little flirty, maybe, but nothing like after the tournament or down in the gym that night. But now...
