by Callie Hart
“You already know my name. Mac told you.”
“But it’s nice to have a proper introduction, right?” She’s still looking at me. Still not looking away. Fuck.
“Mason.” My name comes out clipped, like I resent parting with it. I can see the girl—Kaya—nodding her head thoughtfully out of the corner of my eye.
“You’re not very comfortable right now, are you?”
“Not particularly.”
“And why is that?”
I draw in a deep breath through my nose, not sure how to respond. “I don’t know. I’m just not.”
“Just not? Bit of a lame answer, don’t you think?”
“I just—”
“You just think I’m pretty and you don’t know how to talk to me?”
“What?” This girl has absolutely no filter. And apparently no sense of modesty, either.
“You think I’m pretty. It’s okay, I think you’re pretty too.”
“I am not pretty.”
“Yes, you are. In a way.” She laughs, fog still on her breath inside the car. Weird, because I feel like I’m burning up. I lean over and hit the heating anyway.
“Guys aren’t pretty. They’re hot or handsome or whatever,” I say.
“You’d prefer me to tell you that I think you’re hot?”
“I don’t care what you call me.”
“Sure you do.” That laughter again. Kaya pivots in her seat, turning her whole body to face me now. “Aren’t you really tired of these veiled conversations you have with people, day in, day out? Wouldn’t it just be so much more interesting if you said what you were thinking?”
“Is that how you are? All the time?”
“Mmm-hmm.” I hear a snapping sound. She’s produced some red vines from somewhere and is ripping pieces off with her teeth. Grinning, she breaks some off with her fingers this time and offers it out to me. She is perhaps the strangest person I have ever met. I take the red vine and bite down on it, feeling completely out of my depth. This is not something I enjoy doing. Girls are an enigma to me at the best of times. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a virgin by any stretch of the imagination. But interacting with women has always seemed like some complex puzzle I haven’t had time to figure out. Not with Millie to look after.
“Life is just very short, Mason. I don’t like to waste time. By the end, when I die, I want to look back and know that I climbed mountains and jumped out of planes with the time other people wasted talking about the goddamn weather.”
“I suppose that’s something to aspire to.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Kaya leans across the console between us and my head is suddenly full of the sweet scent of flowers and something else, like jasmine. She’s so damn close. Her face is just inches away from mine.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Looking at you,” she whispers. “Looking at your eyes.”
“Why?” She’s so perplexing. I have absolutely no idea why she would need to be looking at my eyes. Especially this frickin’ close.
“I’m into Kinesiology. You can tell a lot about a person from their eyes.”
“Like they’re the windows to the soul?” My voice drips with derision. I feel like a dick even as I’m saying it, but I can’t stop myself. Mom used to be into that hippy dippy shit. All I saw when I looked in her eyes was broken blood vessels and the same haunted desperation all junkies wear.
Kaya shakes her head, smiling softly, like she was expecting better of me. “Not quite. It’s more to do with physical illness. Tension and stress in your body. That kind of thing.”
“So what about me? Am I physically ill?”
I can see her shaking her head slowly again. “Don’t think so. Hard to tell.” I expect her to tell me she needs to get a better look—I’m already trying to come up with an excuse as to why I’m not going to let her gaze deeply into my eyes—but she doesn’t. We sit in silence for a moment, the city passing us by out the window, Seattle University getting closer and closer. I’m so fucking desperate to get her there as quickly as possible that I barely pay attention to where I’m going. Our journey takes us past Mil’s school; the kids are out at recess and the sound of children screaming and laughing sets me on edge. My sister’s always so fucking quiet. Her teachers tell me she doesn’t really interact all that much. When I asked her about it, she sat there and stared at the floor for what felt like a fucking age, and then she whispered that they made fun of her. Made fun of her because she had a seizure one time and wet herself and now they all avoided her like the plague. Like the poor kid is some kind of leper or something. Such fucking bullshit.
“What are you thinking about right now?” Kaya speaks softly but her words snap me out of the black tunnel I was falling head first into.
“Huh?”
“What are you thinking about? You look like you’re trying to rip the steering wheel right out of the dashboard.”
Sure enough, my knuckles are white, locked around the steering wheel, my fingers digging into my own palms as I grip on tightly. It takes effort to relax my hands. “Nothing.” I clear my throat. “Just trying to concentrate.” Kaya makes an amused sound, shifting in her seat. As she swivels around to face forward, it feels like some sort of wall has gone up between us. “What? Is concentrating not allowed?”
“Sure it is.”
“Then what?”
“I just thought you weren’t going to be one of those people.”
“One of what kind of people?”
“The bullshit kind.” She pulls out more red vines from the pocket of her massive jacket. This time she doesn’t offer me any. “The small talk kind. The kind who tell small, pointless lies instead of just being honest.”
“I don’t even fucking know you. Why would I just start spilling my shit to you?” She doesn’t say anything. The silence is the pointed kind—the kind designed to make you uncomfortable. “Jesus. Why do you even care?”
“Because you looked sad, Mason. And I’ve dealt with sad my whole life. It’s a lonely place.”
“You’re digging into my shit because you think I’m lonely?”
“Yeah, maybe. Right now, I’m reassessing, though. There’s a strong possibility that you’re just an asshole.”
“Yeah. Now you’re getting the picture.” My hands inadvertently tighten around the steering wheel again.
“What are you doing tonight?”
“What?”
“What are you doing tonight? I think you should take me out on a date.”
I can’t really believe what I’m hearing right now. This chick makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. “You’re here in this car with me right now, right? You’ve been present for this conversation? What about the last twenty minutes has convinced you that a date in on the cards for us?”
“Don’t you like me, Mason? If you drop me off at school right now and you never see me again, aren’t you going to wonder about me? Next week, won’t you be thinking, man, I should have asked that kinda crazy girl out on a date?”
“So you realize you’re kinda crazy, then? It’s not just me.”
“You haven’t answered the question.”
I let out a deep sigh. She’s exhausting. Maybe that’s why I give in and do what she wants me to do. I tell the truth. “Fuck, fine. Yeah. I guess, maybe, for some stupid, insane reason, I might be wondering what would have happened if I asked you out on a date. But then I would experience a moment of clarity and realize that I probably dodged a bullet.”
“Just do it, Mason.”
“What?”
“Ask me out.” Kaya snaps more of the red vine off with her front teeth.
“I can’t take you out tonight,” I tell her. “I have a thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
I almost feel like laughing. She strikes me as the touchy feely type. No way is she going to like this. “I have a fight. I’m going to be beating the crap out of someone.”
“Cool. At French’s?”
/> I do my best not to look absolutely stunned. She knows about French’s? There’s a very select few people in this city that know about the underground fighting ring that sets up underneath La Maison Markets every Saturday night. She doesn’t even sound fazed by what I’ve told her. “Yeah, that’s right. You go?” It sounds like a ridiculous question, even as I’m asking it.
“My brother fights there every weekend.” She sounds perfectly bored.
“Huh. What’s his name?” Like I would know his damn name. Tonight is my first night fighting. I won’t know a single person there, apart from my buddy, Ben, and he’s in the higher ups. He won’t be able to babysit my ass for me. I’m going to be flying solo.
“Jameson. His name is Jameson Rayne.”
I feel my own damn breath catching in my throat. For a second there I feel like I’m choking. “Jameson Rayne is your brother?” Jameson was the youngest guy to take the pot at French’s. He bet on himself and won upward of forty thousand dollars in one night, and all at the age of twenty-one. As far as I know, he’s twenty-six now and he’s still making bank betting on himself. No one ever wants to fight him. And why the hell would they? The guy’s a savage bastard.
“Urgh, not you, too,” Kaya says. She leans her forehead against the window, looking away from me. “Jameson Rayne, the world’s most notorious fighter.” She makes an agitated sound at the back of her throat. “Gets really fucking old.”
“It’s no fun having a badass for a brother?”
“Not when he’s intensely protective and borderline crazy, no.” Kaya absently holds out a whole red vine, still refusing to look at me. I accept it, kicking my own ass. I want her to look at me. I complained about those intense eyes studying me, picking me apart at the seams, trying to figure out what’s inside, but now that they’re focused elsewhere and it feels weird.
“Older brothers are meant to be protective over their younger sisters,” I whisper.
“You say that like you have some sort of experience in the field.”
“Maybe I do.” I’m pulling into Seattle University, though, so I don’t have to tell her about that. Thank fuck.
Kaya jumps out of the car and grabs her bag from the back seat. When the door slams, I think that’s it—she’s just going to leave without saying another word to me—but then she’s there by the driver’s side window, tapping against the glass. I buzz the window down.
“You never told me if I was right,” she says.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said you thought I was pretty. Is that not the case?”
I just stare at her. She barely has to bend down to talk to me through the window, she’s so small. Her eyes are bright, her cheeks still blushed red against the cold. She doesn’t look like she belongs here. She looks like she’s made out of something breakable. China, maybe. I have an overwhelming urge to protect her, to prevent her from ever breaking, but I can’t. My hands are already too, too full.
“Of course I think you’re pretty. I think you’re fucking beautiful,” I whisper. “But we’re in different places. If things were different…”
“Oh, I know,” she says, smiling. She doesn’t seem pissed at the fact that I’m trying really fucking carefully to tell her I’m not interested. Even though I kind of am, which is the hardest part. “Don’t worry. Whatever’s meant to be always is, right?” She beams, pats her hand against the windshield, and then she’s pulling the hood up on that gigantic Parka and walking away. I sit there and watch her as she runs up the steps into the building in front of me, feeling honorbound to make sure she gets inside safely. Once she vanishes, I do the sanest thing I can thing of: I speed out of the parking lot like the very devil himself is on my heels.
Chapter Eleven
Mason
“Why do I have to sleep at Wanda’s house?” Millie hugs her soft toy, Roo, to her little pigeon chest, the Winnie the Pooh character looking faded and more than a little worse for wear. My baby sister looks like she might cry. I suddenly feel really fucking sick.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Mil. You want me to stay home here with you?”
She looks up at my with those big eyes of hers, shiny from the potential tears that might fall—she hasn’t decided yet whether staying at Wanda’s is a big enough deal to warrant tears—and blinks. “Where are you going?” she whispers.
“I’m going to do another job.”
“But you went to work this morning.” She rubs the pad of her index finger against my knee, staring at it, clad in my jeans, apparently absorbed in the feel of the material.
“I know, kiddo, but this is for extra. Extra money. So we can move and get a better place, right?” We’ve talked about this enough that Millie knows how important moving is for us. She gives me a very solemn nod, still not looking at me.
“Away from next door to Wanda and Brandy?” she asks.
“Well, yeah, Mil. Somewhere safe. Somewhere good, right?”
“Can Wanda and Brandy come?”
I have to bite my lip as I stare down at the wispy golden curls on the top of her tiny head. “I don’t know, Mil. Maybe. I think Wanda likes living here, though. We can always come visit her and Brandy, can’t we?” Of course Wanda doesn’t like living in this shitty building with it’s shitty pipes and drafty windows, but you end up telling lies like this to keep the peace. And to comfort, too. Besides, Millie is still going to come here after school while I’m still stuck at Mac’s, so that part is true at least.
“So do you think I should stay?” I ask. I shouldn’t really be giving her the choice, but she panics less if she thinks she’s in control of what’s happening and when. I mean, how fucked up is it that a little girl her age needs to feel like she’s in control, because the world is too scary, and dangerous and frightening. It fucking stinks.
“No. No, you can go,” she says quietly. She’s silent for a moment and then her head snaps up, a broad smile spreading across her face. She holds her hands to her mouth, like she’s afraid of even speaking the idea that has just occurred to her. “Um, if you get more money,” she says carefully. “That means I can have a new princess bed.”
This is stated like it’s a foregone conclusion. Brandy, Wanda’s daughter, got a fancy bed for Christmas—a mini four poster thing with pink frilly see-through material that you can pull across to make a sort of den. Millie’s never mentioned wanting one before, not once. She never asks for anything. But now, I can see from the look in her eyes that this is something she wants very badly. I feel like a piece of shit. A bed like that wouldn’t cost a huge amount of money, but it’s more than we have. More than I’m likely to bring home tonight from my very first fight.
“How about we see what happens, huh, kiddo?”
Millie nods, her head rising and falling in exaggerated movements. “Okay.” She’s all too happy to run next door with Roo underneath her arm, then, at the prospect of ‘seeing what happens’ with her getting a new princess bed. I’m all but forgotten. Wanda squeezes me tightly to her massive chest when she opens the door to us. I’ve nearly suffocated in that woman’s cleavage more times than I can count.
“You be careful tonight, you hear me?” she scolds.
“As careful as I can be.” I hold out the tiny backpack with the pink ponies firing rainbows out of their asses on the front of it—at least that’s what it looks like—and Wanda takes it from me without a word. She knows what’s inside: a clean pair of PJs, Millie’s favorite blanket, and her expensive as fuck medication. Wanda knows the drill. She knows what she needs to give Mil if she has a seizure. The woman has never once complained about having to clean up after my sister if she has a fit. Not once.
She gives me another warm hug and then shoos me on my way, knowing exactly where I’m going, hating it, and yet still not telling me not to go. She knows this is the only way I’m going to change things for us.
It takes twenty minutes to drive across the city to La Maison French Markets. Of course, there are no markets
taking place right now. The vendors have cleared out their tables and equipment, knowing that Saturday nights are fight nights. I park my shitty truck three streets away as I was instructed by Ben, and then I make my way over to the west entrance of the underground markets. There are already plenty of people slipping down the concrete staircase, doing their best to look inconspicuous and not pulling it off. There’s hardly any point in trying to hide what goes on down here, really. The cops are already fully aware of what goes on, paid off to keep quiet and not cause a fuss or disrupt the evening’s entertainment.
The stairwell smells like piss and stale sweat. Down one level, the large space is filled with bodies, all pushing and shoving against one another. The rush of voices bounces off the low ceiling, making the roaring rumble of shouted conversation and raucous laughter even louder. For a very brief moment, I consider turning around and getting the fuck out of here. It’s all too much, and I have absolutely no business being here.
But then I remember Millie and that hopeful look in her eye when I kissed her goodnight, and my resolve solidifies. I’m not leaving. I’m staying, and I’m going to win my fucking match.
I find Ben at the side of the ring—an easy thing to do considering his red hair—handing over hundred dollar bills to a morbidly obese guy in a sweat stained Cuban hat. My friend grins, slapping me on the shoulder when I arrive at his side. “There he is! Thought you’d pussied out, motherfucker. You’re almost late. Hey, this is Carlos. You need to pay your cover to him, okay?”
The fat guy in the hat arches an eyebrow at me, his facial expression unchanging as he holds out his hand. I go to shake it, but he speaks before I can make contact. “That’ll be five hundred, friend.” He doesn’t want to meet me. He wants my cash. And too fucking much of it.
