by Cate Cameron
Mrs. Ryerson, who was somewhere in her mid-seventies by Zara’s guess, nodded enthusiastically. “I want to kick people!” she said. Then she looked at the other women sitting around her and smiled not-quite-apologetically. “None of you personally. But we’ll be wearing padding, won’t we? Nobody will get hurt?”
Zara scanned the crowd, waiting for them to shrink away in horror, but they just looked back at her expectantly. “Well, nobody should get hurt,” Zara said lamely. She’d certainly had lots of bruises in her time, along with the regular injuries that came from pushing her body to its limits, but that was when she was fighting against the best in the world. These women? “We’ll spar at partial strength,” she said. “But you can hit the bags full strength, once I’ve taught you how to do it safely.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” another older woman said. It wasn’t until Zara heard the voice, the tone that managed to be quiet and authoritative all at the same time, that she realized who was sitting on the mat in front of her. Mrs. Claire Montgomery, pillar of the local community, lady who lunched, mother of Calvin and Michael. Mrs. Claire Montgomery wanted to learn Mixed Martial Arts?
“There’s grappling,” Zara said desperately. “That’s like wrestling. This is all the different ways of unarmed fighting, mixed together. That’s what we’re talking about.”
“That seems very efficient,” Mrs. Montgomery said approvingly.
“It’s hard work,” Zara tried.
“So let’s get to it.” Another familiar voice, and Zara looked over to see Ashley grinning at her. “We’re excited! Mold us into warriors, Zara Hale!”
Ashley, at least, seemed physically fit, although Zara wasn’t sure a pampered Hollywood star was really going to enjoy getting punched in the face. “You’ve all gotten the medical clearance?” she tried, one last attempt to get out of this. The office had told her the paperwork was all in place, but what kind of quack would tell Mrs. Ryerson she should start MMA at her age?
“My doctor was a little surprised,” Mrs. Montgomery admitted in what must have surely been a huge understatement, “but he said I’m healthy enough to try it.”
“Mine said not to push further than what’s comfortable,” Mrs. Ryerson said. “Then he remembered that was what he told me when I wanted to start running a few years ago.” She beamed. “He was there to cheer me on when I finished my marathon last spring.”
A marathon. Okay. So the woman was tougher than she looked. Zara took a deep breath. She’d come in with a plan, and she might as well stick to it. “Okay, well . . . we want to start every workout with a warm-up. Some people do meditation at the start and the end, but I’ve never liked that because I’m no good at it so I can’t really teach you that part.” Way to inspire confidence, Zara. Nice work. But she pushed on. “We should just do some basic exercises and some stretching. So shoes off—no shoes on the mats, ever—and let’s start with some push-ups.”
Most of the women obediently rolled over into push-up position, but Zara saw two girls by the door exchange dubious looks with each other. One of them was so thin she was practically invisible, the kind of thin that suggested illness. And her friend was about the same age, round and soft, her body sort of melting into the mat rather than resting on it. Zara could tell they were mentally heading for the exit, and would go physically as soon as they got up the nerve.
She should let them go. A smaller class would be easier to teach, and those two clearly weren’t athletic, or interested in sports at all. The smart thing was to let them quit.
So Zara wasn’t quite sure why she found herself easing over toward them, stepping around the other women on the mats. “You’re warming up, not wearing yourself out,” she said as she moved. “Try for three sets, but don’t push yourself right to trembling on any of the sets. Count as you go, go until your arms are tired, and then give yourself a break. Keep track of how many you can do today, and work on doing more next time.”
She got to the two girls, both of whom had clearly seen her coming. The fat girl reached behind herself and grabbed her sweatshirt, either getting ready to leave or looking for some sort of armor, no matter how flimsy.
“You don’t want to try?” Zara asked softly as she crouched next to them.
The skinny girl shook her head. “This was stupid.” Her voice was quiet, but there was a jagged edge to it. “We thought it would be . . . I mean, we knew it would be . . .” She shook her head, clearly frustrated.
“I can’t do push-ups,” the fat girl said. “Not even one.” She said it like a challenge, like a dare for Zara to have a problem with it.
Instead, Zara grinned. “That’s fine. It’s not about doing a push-up.” She stopped talking as she realized the truth of her words. It felt important somehow, and she stood up.
What was she doing? She wasn’t sure, but she thought she needed to at least try.
“Guys?” she said, loudly enough to catch everyone’s attention. The push-ups stopped and faces in various shades of exertion red looked up at her. “Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to start the class a bit differently. Sorry. I have done some teaching before, I promise, but it was in a different sort of class.” She’d taught elite athletes, not retirees and couch potatoes.
She moved back to the front of the room, keeping a bit of attention on the two girls to make sure they didn’t try to leave.
“I just wanted to clarify a few things about MMA,” she said. She hoped this was a good idea. “I wanted to explain that it’s a new sport, and it’s made up of all different martial arts. I mean, you knew that. I already said that, right?” Yeah, she was making a fool of herself, but she’d started, so she kept going. “The thing is, that makes it really versatile. It means that each athlete—each participant—can play to their strengths. Does that make sense?”
She wasn’t sure it did, judging by the expressions on the faces in front of her. “So, like . . .” She took a chance and waved toward the thin girl. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
There was a long pause before the cautious “Melanie.”
Zara nodded. “Okay. Melanie. I don’t know her at all, I haven’t seen her move, I could be totally wrong. But I look at her, and I see that she’s very thin. And MMA is a weight-class sport. You fight other people who are the same weight as you. So Melanie, if she competed, would be in a class with other really light people, and a lot of them would probably be shorter than she is. So with Melanie, I expect I’d recommend she do a lot of striking, ways to use her reach to get to people before they can reach her. That’s playing to her strength. We should also work on her weakness, which seems like it might be . . . well, weakness. So we’ll want to get her stronger without putting on a lot of weight.”
So far, so good. No one was leaving. Zara pressed on. “And then Mrs. Ryerson runs marathons. So she’s really fit. That’s not essential for MMA, but it never hurts. She’s probably tough and she can outlast an opponent, so I’d want her to learn a good defense and find ways to tire the other fighter out. I’m not sure what her weaknesses will be, but once we find them, we’ll work on them.”
Zara knew what she wanted to say next, but realized she was doing it wrong. She should have asked permission maybe, or made up some imaginary person . . . she should have been better at this. She kept going anyway, even though she wasn’t sure she should.
She looked over at the fat girl. “I don’t know your name, either.”
The girl sat up straighter. Tough. Yeah, she’d have to be. “Anna,” she said, again as if she was daring Zara to object.
Zara nodded. “Okay. Anna. Hi.” She took a deep breath. She was doing it. “Anna’s carrying some extra weight around, and that means she’s probably really strong. I mean, I go to the gym and lift weights for an hour a day maybe, but if someone’s carrying extra weight all the time, they’re getting a hell of a workout. The problem is that you can’t just take the weig
ht off and leave it outside the ring, go inside and kick ass, and then come back out and strap it on again. So I think Anna’s strength is going to be that she’s really strong, but the weakness, probably, will be that she can’t use that strength against an opponent while she’s using it to carry herself around. So that’s what we’ll work on for Anna. Basic technique, but also a way to use her weight to her advantage—grappling probably. And if we had more time, we’d work on keeping her strong but probably getting rid of some of the weight that’s just sitting there, not being useful for anything.”
Anna was squinting at her, clearly trying to figure out if all this was an insult or not, and Zara really wasn’t sure which way the decision was going to go. She decided to leave it behind, at least for just then. She took a deep breath. “So the best part about MMA is that it’s flexible. We can pick and choose different techniques to fit different strengths and weaknesses. The next best part about it? You win MMA based on what your body can do. So what I think we need to do in this class, if you’re all cool with it, is to really focus on figuring out our different bodies, seeing how to use them, how to improve them . . . but improving them based on what they can do, not what they look like. Does that work for you all?”
There were some thoughtful looks, but no objections, so Zara continued. “Push-ups are good exercise. But the thing is, they’re just good exercise because they use your muscles to lift a weight. If you can’t do them, that’s okay . . . the point is to try. I don’t mean that in some little-kid, everyone’s-a-winner-if-they-do-their-best way.” No, she didn’t mean that at all. “I just mean it’s okay because it’s the trying that makes you strong. Your body doesn’t care if you bounce up and down off the ground a few times—it cares that you used a muscle, even if it’s just for pushing into the ground and not going anywhere.” Slight oversimplification maybe, but good enough for right then. “So we want to try to do push-ups. But that just means we want to use our biceps to push our hands into the floor while using our core muscles to keep our bodies straight. If doing all that means that your body rises away from the floor a bit, that’s fine. But it’s not the main point.”
There was a bit of nodding now, and when Zara glanced over at Mrs. Ryerson, the woman smiled at her as if she approved. Strange how good that made Zara feel.
“Let’s call them floor pushes,” Ashley said. “It’s not the ‘up’ that matters, it’s the ‘push.’”
God, if the guys at the gym could see Zara now, they’d laugh their asses off. But that was their problem, not hers. “Okay, good,” she said. “Let’s start with some floor pushes. Don’t slack off. Really try to push that floor away. But don’t worry about whether you make it or not.”
So they did their floor pushes, and then did some “stomach closers” instead of sit-ups, and then started working on their breathing. But Zara could sense the class’s growing impatience. “You guys just want to hit things, don’t you?”
Sheepish grins from some, wide smiles and nods from others. There was a right way to do things, a proper order to training that would efficiently lead to the best result. Except the best result for these women probably wasn’t going to be a career in the martial arts. They just wanted to try something new. “Okay. We’ll fast-track a little. There’s some safety stuff you need to know—I don’t want anyone breaking their hands or anything. But after that, we’ll do some striking.”
“Yeah!” someone cheered, and Zara found herself smiling, too. It was fun to hit things. When had she forgotten that?
* * *
CAL had spent most of the day at the furniture factory hearing about problems with the new suspension system they’d moved to for their upholstered pieces. “You pay this kind of money for a sofa, you don’t want a spring in your ass,” the foreman pointed out, and Cal couldn’t disagree with him.
“Is there a way to make it work?” Cal wasn’t an expert, but he was willing to learn.
So they discussed the options, came up with a solution, and then the foreman said, “And it’s okay for me to go ahead with this on just your say-so? I don’t have to run it past your dad or your brother?” He sounded skeptical.
Cal sighed. The furniture manufacturing wasn’t his main area of interest, but it wasn’t his brother’s or his father’s, either. “Go ahead with it,” he decided. “I’ll let them know.” Via e-mail, because he was still trying to avoid talking to both of them as much as possible.
“And it’s okay to come to you with future problems, if they come up?” The man looked cautiously hopeful.
Cal forced himself to nod. His father wanted him more involved in the company, and Michael wanted him occupied in a way that didn’t threaten his own status. So Cal taking responsibility for the furniture operations, no matter how boring he found them, would make everybody happy. “Yeah. You can come to me,” he said. It felt like one more link chaining him to a life he wasn’t sure he wanted, but he said it anyway.
He was on his way back to the office when his phone rang. He checked the call display, then pulled over and answered. It was the lawyer he’d found for Zane, and it didn’t take long to get the update on the case. Once he hung up, he pulled back out into traffic. But he wasn’t going back to the office anymore. He had something more important to do.
* * *
ZARA felt good. The women’s class had gone well, she was doing okay with the kids, getting to know her way around the office; everything was coming together. She was heading down the front steps of the center when she looked up and saw Calvin Montgomery coming toward her.
She couldn’t help herself; she smiled at him. She was in a good mood, and apparently wasn’t looking to hide it.
And he smiled back. “Having a good day?”
“I’m an awesome teacher, and maybe even a good human being.”
“Nice.” Then he raised his eyebrows a little, voice almost teasing as he said, “Can you handle a bit more good news, or will your head explode?”
“I don’t know.” She gave him a cautious look. “Try me.”
“They caught the guy,” he said triumphantly. “The mugger. He tried to rob someone else last night and there were people nearby and they caught him. He’s under arrest, the victim from Thursday picked him out of a lineup, and he’s already writing out a confession. Zane is totally in the clear.”
She stared at him and for a moment it seemed like he may have been right about the risk of head explosion. She had no words, and barely any thoughts, just relief and excitement and a feeling that anything in the universe was somehow possible.
And Calvin was smiling as if he completely understood. It seemed so natural to dart forward, to squeeze him tight in a celebratory hug and feel his chest move as he laughed. And then, somehow, it seemed completely natural to stay there, his arms wrapped around her as their energy changed, became something calmer, deeper. . . .
And Zara made herself push away. Damn it, what was she doing?
“Does Zane know?” she asked, fighting the urge to straighten clothes that really couldn’t be all that mussed.
“The lawyer called him before he called me,” Calvin said.
And Zane hadn’t bothered to let Zara know. Things had been better between them since they’d had their kitchen powwow, but their relationship was still far from perfect.
Calvin shook his head at her. “Worry about it later,” he said softly. “For now we should celebrate, right? Zane’s freedom and you being an awesome teacher.”
“I guess ‘awesome’ might be a little strong,” she started, but he raised his hands as if he wasn’t going to hear it.
“Nope. ‘Awesome.’ That’s what you said, and that’s what I believe.”
“I’ve only really run one class so far. There’s still lots of time for me to screw things up.”
“Then we should celebrate now, before things go bad.”
It was hard to argue with his logic
or with his clear, persistent cheerfulness. “Okay,” she agreed. “Yes.”
“I’ll drive so you can drink,” he said as they headed away from the building. “You want to hit Woody’s? Or we could go to The Pier, but they close every winter and they’re not really ordering much fresh stuff anymore. Probably better food at the bar.”
Zara’d been having trouble keeping to a sedate speed as they moved, letting her excitement out by throwing in little skips and jogs and bounces. She was even happy enough to accept the idea of letting Calvin Montgomery be in charge of a vehicle she was riding in. But the ultimate location slowed her down a little. “Woody’s. I don’t know. I heard it’s a bit . . . done up?”
Calvin snorted. “The place is like a shrine to you. It’d probably be kind of creepy, but it has to be an ego boost, right?”
“It actually usually works in reverse for me,” she admitted before she remembered it was a bad idea to open up too much. He stood with his fingers wrapped around the passenger door handle of his car and squinted at her thoughtfully, clearly waiting for an explanation. Well, she might as well get it over with.
“It makes me think of all the things about me that would ruin the illusion,” she said, trying to laugh it off. “Like, oh, they think I’m tough but they don’t hear me whining at my trainer when he wants me to do more core work. Or they think I’m pretty but they don’t know how much makeup I was wearing for that shoot and how many pictures the photographer had to take before she got one that was good enough to use.” She shrugged. “That sort of thing.” Then she looked pointedly at the door handle. He could either open it or get his hand out of the way so she could do it herself.
He opened the door. Then he jogged around to his side and slid in next to her. He’d reversed out of the parking spot and was heading for the main road when he quietly said, “For the record? I think you’re tough, and pretty. And it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a little whining or a lot of makeup to make me think differently.”
