by M. L. Young
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Liam
“So, when is your next big fight?” Bentley asked as he, Cash, and I all went out for an early morning breakfast to get some brother time.
“A few more months, in the fall sometime. I’m not sure if they’ve worked out the exact date with the venue,” I said.
“I know I’ve said it before, but I was very impressed with your last fight. I can’t believe how good you are,” Bentley said.
“If you keep up that kind of performance you’re going to hit the big leagues very soon. They’re keeping an eye on you, and these next two fights could mean a title match opportunity,” Cash said.
“No way, it’s way too soon, even with four wins under my belt,” I said, blowing it off.
“Dude, I’m serious. I see articles about you, they’ve talked about you on those sports shows, and people really dig you. Your social media has exploded, you’re up to like a hundred thousand followers, and that’s only going to rise as you do better and better,” Cash said.
“That’s only because of you and your posts the nights of my fights,” I said.
“No, that’s all you. I can’t force people to follow you or to interact with you and all that stuff. Stop being humble and accept that you’re championship material,” Cash said.
“I agree with him,” Bentley said.
It was a hard pill to swallow and an even harder idea to accept that I was some kind of championship material. I was good, and I’d put up a good front, but getting a title belt shot, let alone the actual belt, was the biggest step up in a career. Gaining the actual title and winning that shot meant that I was the biggest guy in my weight class, the top marquee fighter, and I’d have a huge target on my back that every guy would want to cock his fists and aim for. It was no different than something like the Super Bowl, with every team dying for the opportunity to get there and especially to win. It could cement your position, your career, and it made for a great entry on your Wikipedia page, that was for sure. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could be a champion one day, but I just didn’t want to set myself up so early in my career and life. Some guys waited their entire careers before getting that kind of opportunity, and I was a young guy who just came into the picture. They wouldn’t just hand it to me like that.
“I don’t know, I don’t want to talk about it right now. It’s too stressful and stress is bad for me and my training,” I said.
“Fair enough, we’ll drop the subject, but we’ll always be here for you if you want to talk about it,” Cash said.
“I appreciate it. I know you guys have my back,” I said.
“Til death,” Bentley said.
After breakfast, I decided to pick Jessica up and take her on a walking tour of my hometown. The downtown area, if you could call it that, was a little bare with summer being here and college being out for the semester, so it was the perfect time to just hold hands, walk around, and have a good time.
“I know I’ve said this already, and you’re probably sick of hearing it, but thank you for coming out and everything. It really does mean a lot to me, and I’m more than willing and happy to meet your family once you think it’s a good idea or the right time,” I said.
“I’m more than happy to come and I’m very glad I did. You can meet them whenever. Maybe I’ll have them come into town for a trip or something. They’ve been talking about visiting the city and making a vacation out of it,” she said.
“So school is starting back up soon, huh?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I still have like a month or a month and a half, so that’s plenty of time to spend together and lie out in Central Park under some giant tree. We could even have a picnic,” she said.
“Hey, if you’re cooking, I’m eating,” I said, smiling.
“You’re going to get fat if I keep cooking for you,” she said.
“Yeah, I can’t lose these muscles. They’re my paycheck,” I said, laughing.
We only had tomorrow left here, since we were leaving the next morning, and I still felt like I hadn’t had enough time to really soak it all in and be reminded of home. It was so peaceful here, walking down the main street and not hearing a bunch of honking horns or really many cars at all. I knew I wouldn’t be mugged or robbed, and that Jess wouldn’t be catcalled or hit on. I wouldn’t mind living in a slightly bigger area, like maybe Des Moines, but being here really made me miss home. It was going to be hard to go back to my little apartment, even if I did recently get a major upgrade in that department.
We stayed out, holding hands and giving the periodic kiss, while I pointed out landmarks and even took her by my old high school, which she said looked like it was built in the early 1900s. It was.
I held her close, kissing the tip of her nose, and told her I loved her before we started walking back home for dinner. This was the life.
Chapter Thirty
Jessica
The red, orange, and brown leaves fell towards the ground in Central Park as the crisp autumn sky shined a bit more sun down for us to enjoy. Liam was sitting across from me, a long-sleeved red flannel shirt gripping his biceps tightly as his dark wash jeans contrasted against his brown leather boots.
The time had passed by so quickly. It was now September, and my senior year was underway. I had all the classes I wanted, with Brianne nowhere in sight, and I’d actually heard that she’d transferred to a different department, so I likely wouldn’t even see her at all.
I was about to start an internship soon at a law firm downtown, one specializing in real estate law, and I couldn’t be happier. Sure, it was just an internship, not a real job of course, but it was paid and it paid very, very well. I had to beat out twenty-five other students for it from my school alone, but my experience, grades, and overall happy and hard-working demeanor cinched it for me. It was only three days a week, four hours each day, and I’d be like a secretary or assistant, answering phones, making copies, and doing some data entry and filing. I was fine with it, though, because I knew it would be great experience for when I actually finished law school and got a job. If I did well, maybe I’d even get a job there.
Liam was a week away from a big fight at Madison Square Garden. It was the first big MMA fight ever in the city, and the media was going nuts. Liam’s opponent was another up-and-coming guy who had about the same kind of record as Liam, so I knew the fight would be good, but my man would definitely be winning it. There was no doubt in my mind about that.
The wind ripped through the sheep meadow area of the park as it blew my hair around while Liam looked at me. “Crazy hair monster,” he said, smiling.
“Better not get too close or it’ll attack you,” I said.
“I’m counting on it,” he said, leaning in to kiss me.
Liam had met my parents last month on their trip to New York. My mother even pulled me aside the first night, just after we all went out for dinner at a small Italian place, and told me he was the one. She’d only spent about two hours with him, but she just knew, and that was when it really cemented for me.
Sure, I’d been thinking about it. We’d been dating for about six months now, and even though I wasn’t thinking about getting engaged anytime soon or even in the super-near future, it was still nice to think about. Hearing her say how much she liked him and that she thought I’d end up marrying him just made me feel warm inside.
I decided to live another year with Emily and Taylor, our final year, though we all wanted to move in with our boyfriends once this lease was up, considering we were all still with them. I knew Liam and I would be moving in together, and we’d even talked about me moving into his place once I was done in May. That would be quite the step, but I knew it would be the best step.
We packed up our impromptu picnic as the sun turned pink and orange and began to fall in the sky. He held my hand, our fingers laced together, while we walked out of the park and towards my neighborhood so he could take me home. I hated these moments, with school starting back up again for the week t
omorrow, and my time with Liam diminishing further and further. We had such fun during the summer, and now it was back to how it was when we first met.
We did have plans to go to Salem, Massachusetts for Halloween, since I’d wanted to go ever since seeing Hocus Pocus as a little girl. The train ride was only a few hours, so I knew it wouldn’t be too bad.
“Here we are,” he said as we walked up to my building.
“I don’t want you to go,” I said in a pouty voice.
“I know, but I have to. I have to be at training at five tomorrow morning, and you’ve got school. Not tonight, my love,” he said, his hands on my hips.
“Not even for a little bit?” I asked with my best puppy-dog eyes.
“Not even a little bit,” he said.
“I know, but it was worth a shot. A girl has to try, right?” I asked with a smile.
“My mom wants to see you when they come in for the fight,” he said.
“Good, I’d love to spend more time with her. Will they be here long?” I asked.
“I think they come the day before the fight and leave the day after. They have work, so they had to use a little vacation time to make it happen,” he said.
“Anything to make them like me more,” I said.
“Trust me, you’ve done enough to make them love you. My mom would kick my ass if anything ever happened to us,” he said, laughing.
“I’d kick your ass if anything ever happened to us,” I said.
“Then I guess we’re just going to be together forever,” he said.
“I think I could live with that,” I said, smiling, as I looked straight up at him.
“Okay, baby, I should get going. I’ll text you when I get home,” he said.
He leaned over, kissing me softly, giving me the same butterflies he did the first time he’d kissed me. The feelings never faltered, never dampened, and every date and hangout with him gave me the same feelings I got the first time around.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too,” he replied, kissing my forehead and leaving.
With my girls gone and the apartment empty, I jumped onto my bed, looking up at the white ceiling, and wondered how I’d gotten so damn lucky in the lottery of life. I was getting good grades at a great school, I had a sought-after internship coming up, I was healthy, and the best man I could ever imagine was in love with me. My life had changed so much in the past seven months, and it all started that one day I worked a ridiculous, stressful shift at the café.
I didn’t know how I got this far and this lucky, but I was glad that my life had worked out this way. Maybe someday soon I’d even be Mrs. Liam Hawthorne, and we could live happily ever after together.
Life was good.
Taken by You
Chapter One
Penelope
“
Okay, I think I’m ready to go,” I said as I wiped my hands on my pants, which was also to try to calm down the wrinkles.
“In that?” my roommate, Nicolette, asked.
“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?” I asked in an unsure tone as I looked down at myself before looking back up at her.
“Nothing, if you’re a fifty-year-old cat lady who has some tissue shoved up her sleeve,” Nicolette said in her usual sarcastic voice.
I walked over to the full-body mirror we had on the back of our bathroom door and looked myself up and down as I tried to see the fault in my outfit. Sure, I was never one for “fashion” or “trends,” but why did that kind of stuff even matter? I was myself, and that’s who I was comfortable being, even if it meant never getting a second look from a man or impressing people like Nicolette.
“Don’t take it the wrong way, Penny.
It’s just not something I’d wear to an interview, that’s all,” Nicolette said.
“Well, of course not. You’re like some, I don’t know, a Kardashian or something,” I said, throwing my hands up in frustration.
“Bitch, please. Don’t compare me to them,” she said, looking at me with her left eyebrow raised.
I laughed, before looking back in the mirror and seeing what was something good to me, and that was all that really mattered. Who cares if she didn’t like it? Not me. I wasn’t going to this internship interview to impress anyone with my clothes, anyway. I was going to hopefully score a paid internship that would not only help me out now, but also in the future. All that should matter was my resume, my credentials, and most of all, what I could do for the company, even if I was just a lowly intern.
I was unfortunate enough to still have another semester at school before graduation. Nicolette was lucky to have the chance to intern at this company during her senior year and was offered a job straight out of school, which was about as lucky as you could get. I first attempted to intern somewhere else, a software development company, but it turned out the CEO and board of directors were embezzling money and now the Department of Justice was looking into them, which meant no internship or job for poor Penelope Wells.
The only reason I had this interview was because of Nicolette, who was both my roommate and best friend, though I couldn’t tell her that—it would go to her head. We met during my freshman year in an intro to psychology class and instantly clicked, even though she’s more of the prissy type and I’m, well, me. How we meshed so well together I’d never know.
“How long until we have to leave?” I shouted across the apartment.
“About fifteen minutes,” she yelled back.
I grabbed my bag, which was a basic and unassuming black leather wearing out on the bottom from years of use. I could feel slight hints of butterflies fluttering about my stomach as I thought about what I was going to say in the interview and how many other people might or might not be there. I wasn’t good in front of crowds or in intense situations. That was why I became a programmer. I’m able to be alone a lot of the time coding while the world seems to quickly pass me by. It’s an introvert’s dream job.
The offices were in San Francisco, which was odd because most of the tech companies, at least the major ones, were in Silicon Valley, which was a little drive outside of the city but nothing too crazy. Definitely wasn’t fun for a commute, especially when I still had some classes, but it was almost worth it to be able to work at one of those companies.
The company Nicolette worked for and where I’d hopefully get an internship, was RandomMeetX, which was a dating and hookup app that had been blowing up the charts for the past year. It allowed you to basically find good-looking people in your area to chat with and maybe meet for the night or something beyond. I had never used it before, which was something Nicolette got on me about, but it just wasn’t really for me.
I’d never been the pretty little flower that could stop a man dead in his tracks with just one glance. I was more the awkward girl at the party who was stuffing her face with shrimp puffs before putting some in her purse for later that night because her grocery money dwindled down a little too far. Hooking up with complete strangers wasn’t really my thing either. It wasn’t that I was against sex—I wasn’t, but I felt so, I don’t know, weird about it with somebody I hadn’t connected with. Chatting up some random guy you don’t even know and have never met and then making plans to let him fuck you seemed a little out there, even if it was the biggest thing at the moment.
“Ready to go?” Nicolette asked, as she grabbed her keys.
“Yes,” I said, grabbing my bag and walking out behind her.
I locked the door behind us and we walked down our five flights of stairs to the lobby, which was more of a small room and not anything magnificent. There were two sets of doors, ones that were locked and the others that went outside, with gold mailboxes inside that were constantly stuffed with fliers for a Chinese restaurant around the corner. There are only so many times you can hear about the egg drop soup special before you want to hang yourself with a giant noodle.
We walked two blocks down to where Nicolette was parked and before I could even get my
door fully closed, she was off like a horse with a carrot dangling in front of its face. I wasn’t lucky enough to have a car, so I relied solely on public transportation and my own two feet. This wasn’t a city you needed a car in, but I had to admit that having a roommate with one was especially helpful on mornings like this. I’d much rather sit in this seat than be stuck next to some smelly man on the bus.
I looked out the window as we passed a plethora of different people during our painfully slow journey to the office. I saw men in suits, women in fitted dresses with their bags cocked in place in their arms, and more homeless people than I’d like to admit.
The office was downtown in the Financial District, which seemed like a million miles away from where we lived, though I guessed I could somewhat attribute that to the slow commute and my undying nerves. The anticipation made time feel a lot slower.
When we finally arrived, Nicolette did a sloppy parking job that was reminiscent of sixteen-year-old me in my father’s old Subaru, and we began our short walk to the office, which was in a towering building that appeared to be a thousand stories high.
“That’s it. That’s the building,” Nicolette said, as we stood on a street corner waiting for the light to change.
“That entire building?” I asked.
“Oh God, no,” she said, laughing. “Just five floors.”
“Oh, but still, that’s a lot—especially in San Francisco,” I said.
“Yeah, who knew that there was so much money to be made in pre-marital sex?” she asked, smiling.
With the brisk January air beating against us, we walked inside the building through the revolving doors that had always fascinated me as a child. Now I might be working in a place that had them, meaning I could walk through them every day. My five-year-old self was dying right now. Dying.
The lobby was grand; probably two stories tall itself, with shiny, bold white floors. There were a few security officers standing at a checkpoint of sorts before you could get to the elevators. People walked up and scanned their badges, before being let through and off to their floors.
