The Best Thing

by Zapata, Mariana

  POLANSKI REQUESTS REMATCH, IS READY TO REGAIN TITLE

  Noah.

  Ugh.

  I had already forgotten he’d lost his fight three days ago. I’d fallen asleep watching it, and the only reason I knew he’d lost was because my grandfather had mentioned it—with a gleeful little look in his evil eyes.

  I fucking loved that man.

  I snickered at the memory and clicked on another link, not in the mood to even read Noah’s name, and made myself read the next post down the list on the MMA site’s homepage. Then I made myself read it again because I couldn’t remember a word of it once I had finished. Something about an upcoming event between two well-known fighters that I didn’t have history or beef with.

  It was at the end of the second read through that a soft knock on my door had me looking up and smiling at the man already coming in, hands shoved into the pockets of his black track pants. I could tell instantly by the expression on Peter’s face that he had already heard about the two idiots in the locker room. No surprise there. He had a radar for stuff like that.

  I wrinkled my nose at the man who was basically my second dad. “At least nothing happened,” I told him, knowing exactly what he was thinking.

  His face, his coffee-and-cream skin still youthful looking even in his sixties, twisted up into a look of distaste. “What was it over?” asked the man who emphasized the importance of discipline and control on a regular basis. He stopped behind one of the chairs in front of the desk that Grandpa and I shared.

  I shrugged, feeling a familiar pinch at my shoulder again. Damn it. “Vince said something to Carlos. Carlos got butthurt.” I rolled my eyes.

  That got me an eye roll out of the deceptively serious man. There were a handful of lines at each of his eyes and down the sides of his mouth, but he was still almost as fit as he had been almost thirty years ago when he’d come into our lives, unaware that he was going to become the third leg in our family. “I don’t know what to do with these children sometimes.”

  “Let’s call their moms and tattle.”

  Peter snorted in that laidback way that was everything about him. You never would have figured that this almost slender, just slightly above average height man could take down just about any man’s ass if he wanted to. I had always thought of him as kind of being like Clark Kent. Quiet, kind, and laidback, he seemed like the last person who would have a seventh-degree coral belt—black and red actually—in Brazilian jiu-jitsu by day and help me with my math homework at night.

  “Did you see Gus this morning?” Peter asked.

  “Just for a second. He was on the phone with someone talking about joining a basketball tournament for the elderly.”

  My second dad grinned and shook his head before the expression dropped away and he asked, “Are you okay?”

  I shrugged both my shoulders.

  The way Peter narrowed his eyes told me he knew I wasn’t exactly lying or telling the truth, but he didn’t pry. He never pried too hard. It was one of my favorite things about him. If I wanted to tell him something, I would, and he knew that. And there were very, very few things I didn’t tell him.

  Just the big shit.

  I had just grabbed my stress ball from where it was sitting beside my keyboard so I could put it back into its drawer when Peter snapped his fingers suddenly. “I got this message from the front desk a minute ago, saying you referred him to me,” he said as he stood there. “But I’ve never heard of the guy.”

  “What’s the name?” I hitched my shoulder up again and rolled it back, feeling that pinch again. Since when did I get all these random aches and pains from just sleeping wrong? Was this what happened when you hit your thirties? I needed to start going to my physical therapist. Maybe the chiropractor too.

  Peter didn’t hesitate to stick a hand in his pocket and pull out a bright pink Post-it note. He drew the scrap of paper away from him before squinting at it. “A… Jonah Collins?”

  I dropped my shoulder back into place and stared at him.

  Fucking shit.

  Chapter 2

  “Hey, it’s Lenny again. Where the hell are you? I went by your apartment and banged on your door for half an hour. Let me know you’re alive, okay? I’m worried about you.”

  I hadn’t known when I’d woken up that morning that my life had been about to change with that name coming out of Peter’s mouth.

  But it happened.

  And he had to have known when I stared at him silently, feeling almost faint for probably the second time in my life.

  I had no idea what to say. What to think. How to even react.

  Growing a magical penis out of nowhere would have been less surprising than Peter saying the Fucker’s name.

  But what hit me the strongest—the hardest—was the knowledge that time had finally run out.

  It was a testament to how well Peter knew me that he reacted the way he did. Carefully, being watchful as he did it, he pulled out the chair in front of the desk and took a seat, neatly, an example of the effortless control he had over his body. I doubted it was my imagination that he seemed to almost brace himself.

  “You don’t like him?”

  Like it was that easy. Whether I liked him or not.

  I didn’t even realize I had raised my hands up to my face before they were scrubbing over my cheeks and forehead, sliding back through the ponytail that I had thrown my hair into that morning because I hadn’t been in the mood to do much else. I hadn’t appreciated all the years that I’d made it a priority to sleep eight to ten hours a night; that was for fucking sure.

  The “Elena” that came out of Peter’s mouth was the gauntlet he threw down between us.

  Not Lenny. Not Len.

  Peter had gone with Elena, pulling out the dad card he rarely used.

  I was fucked.

  The option to lie to him didn’t even pop into my head. We didn’t do that. None of us did. There was just stuff we… didn’t say to one another. We didn’t ask each other certain questions because there was that underlying factor that we knew we didn’t lie. If you didn’t ask, you didn’t know. And if we wanted you to know, we would tell you. It was the way that Grandpa Gus, Peter, and I had always been. We didn’t ever have to say it, but the trust between us was reinforced with miles of rebar and concrete.

  Because in thirty years, there were only a handful of things I hadn’t told them about. And I was sure that there had to be a handful of things they hadn’t told me too.

  Slowly, I dropped my hands away from my face and straightened in my rolling chair, shoving my shoulders back and meeting Peter’s dark brown gaze. I took in the face that had cheered for me at nearly every judo competition I had been in—the exception being the time he’d had pneumonia and the other time when his sister had died and he hadn’t wanted me to miss out on the tournament. Peter’s face was the one that had tucked me into bed for countless years, right along with Grandpa Gus’s. The face that had reassured me more times than I could ever count that I was loved, that I could do anything, and that I was always capable of doing better.

  So I told him the two words that would need to be enough. Two words I didn’t want to let out but had to. Because time was up.

  It was one thing to try your hardest and pretend someone didn’t exist, and a totally different thing to lie in order to keep that charade going.

  “It’s him.”

  His eyebrows furrowed.

  He wasn’t getting it. Not yet at least. But he was going to need to because I didn’t exactly want to go into details. Not with the door open. Not here. So I raised my eyebrows and stared at him, trying to project the words back into his head.

  It’s him. It’s him, it’s him, it’s him.

  I saw the moment it clicked. The moment he realized what the hell I was trying to get across. It’s him. Him.

  Peter shifted in his seat, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back as he asked with a funny look on his face, like he didn’t want to believe it, “Him?�
�

  “Yeah.” Him.

  Peter’s dark brown eyes shifted over the bluish-green wall behind my head as he processed even more what I was saying, really thinking about it and what the hell it all meant.

  Because I already knew what it meant for me, at least to a certain extent.

  It meant I needed to start saving up bail money for Grandpa Gus for when he got arrested for either aggravated assault, harassment, conspiracy to commit murder, or whatever the charge for acting a fool in public was.

  That idea shouldn’t have amused me, but it did. It really fucking did. At least it did until the other half of what that would entail really hit me.

  I’d have to see that prick in court when he pressed charges against my grandpa.

  I would have to look at the fucking man who had disappeared for a year, only to suddenly reappear again in the same country I had last seen him. The asshole who had left me hanging. Who hadn’t even had the balls to call, text, or email me back. Not once after the three hundred times I had tried to contact him.

  Sure, right after he’d bounced, he’d sent four total postcards that had his signature on them—but only that. There hadn’t been a return address. There hadn’t been shit on them. Not even a message. Not even some kind of code I could have cracked. Just his scribbled signature, a postmark and stamp from New Zealand, my name and previous address in France.

  I grabbed my stress ball again, immediately squeezing the fuck out of it.

  And if I was imagining it was somebody’s balls… whatever.

  “What…?” He didn’t even know what to say. I wondered if he’d written off finding out about him. “Ah… I… he… does MMA?” he finally got out.

  I shook my head.

  Peter thought about that for a moment but had to come up with the same question I had: why was Jonah calling him? Peter didn’t understand as well as I did how random of a call it was. He didn’t know who Jonah was or what he did for a living. But what Peter did know was that we were family. And he proved that to me instantly.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Has he… called you?”

  I sat there still hung up on the fact that name had come out of Peter’s mouth. What were the chances? Seriously, why was he calling him? Why now?

  I squeezed my ball some more. “No. I blocked his number.” Those questions bounced around in my skull. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

  I couldn’t help but scratch at my throat and eyeball the framed picture sitting right beside the monitor of my computer.

  It didn’t matter why. All that mattered was that he had called.

  “I don’t know why he’s contacting you instead of me,” I told him, still eyeing the picture in the frame. “But I talked about you enough when we… knew each other. He knows who you are. He knows my last name. He knows Grandpa owns this place. It’s not a coincidence.”

  When we knew each other. God, I could almost laugh at that. And I could only laugh at the idea of him contacting Peter as an accident. There was no way that was possible.

  Rubbing my fingers over my face again, I held back a sigh.

  Peter leaned forward in his seat, his face even more serious than usual—at least while we were within these walls. When we were out of Maio House, that was a different story. That was the Peter that I knew, the one I had grown up loving from the moment he had knocked on Grandpa Gus’s office door, asking for a job. We had all fallen in love with him. According to Grandpa Gus, I had let the strange man sit by himself for all of two minutes before I’d climbed up onto his lap at the age of three and passed out against him, holding his hand.

  None of us had known back then that it would be the first of many, many times I’d do the same thing over the years.

  I loved this man as much as I loved my grandpa, and God knows—everyone knew—that I thought that old creature of ancient evil was the greatest thing ever, even when he was driving me nuts, and that was always.

  “Why now?”

  My fingers made circles against my brow bones. “I don’t know. He hasn’t called or emailed since the last time I saw him.” Fucker. “I stopped trying to contact him eight months ago.” I had to clear my throat because all of a sudden it felt too damn tight and dry. “The last email I sent, I told him that was the last time, and I meant it. I didn’t reach out again.” I would rather cut both my hands off. Sew my vagina shut. Give up caffeine for the rest of my life. But I didn’t tell him that. Not when even his silence was thoughtful as he processed this shit I was laying on him.

  “Do you want me to call him back? We can find out what he wants,” he said after a beat.

  Fuck.

  “Unless you would rather wait and see what he does.” Peter lowered his voice, knowing damn well that I didn’t want anyone else to hear or put the pieces together. “Or if you would rather call him.”

  I didn’t want to do shit.

  All I wanted to do was tell Jonah Collins to fuck off into another galaxy. But I wouldn’t. Even if it killed me. Even if it went against every instinct in my body. I was done with wanting to scream at him. Beat the shit out of him. Tell him he was a piece of shit. Rip off his balls and soak in his blood. Curse the day we had met on that tour.

  But I wouldn’t.

  I eyed the picture frame again.

  I wasn’t going to do shit.

  We don’t always get what we want, Grandpa had told me once when I’d been acting like a brat after losing a match. And he was totally right.

  Knowing all of that though didn’t ease even a little of the frustration and annoyance that set up camp in my chest. “I reached out to him, Peter. Not once or twice, but over and over again. It was his choice; not mine,” I explained.

  Peter looked at me for so long, I had no idea what the hell he could possibly be thinking.

  “Then we don’t do anything,” he finally said. “See if he calls back. See what he wants.”

  See what he wants.

  I knew what he didn’t want. Peter and I both did. Just about everyone in my life knew, for that matter.

  “If he calls again… if he comes here, we’ll handle it. Are you fine with that?”

  I squeezed the hell out of my stress ball again but nodded. We were going to have to handle this, one way or the other. I didn’t exactly have a choice.

  That had me getting a small smile from Peter, who still seemed different than usual. I couldn’t blame him. But luckily, this was Peter and not my grandfather.

  God, I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.

  “Can we wait before we tell Grandpa?” I asked him, shaking my leg underneath the desk. Why now? Why period? I knew I was a selfish asshole for thinking that, but I couldn’t help it. Why today?

  God, and since when was I so whiny? I disgusted myself, damn it. Why, why, why? Boo-hoo. Ugh.

  I could see the argument in Peter’s eyes at my request, but fortunately, that quick mind came to the same conclusion mine did too.

  We were going to need bail money if Jonah Hema Collins came here—not that I expected him to. All he’d done was call. For some reason I couldn’t even begin to fucking understand.

  And if the thought of him coming here raised my blood pressure—and my middle finger—I was going to need to be an adult and suck it up. This wasn’t about me. So I focused on the topic of my grandfather.

  “I don’t want him to know unless he has to,” I told Peter. “He doesn’t need to be getting riled up for no reason. He’s finally just now getting over it,” I explained, knowing this was one of those things that fell into the gray area of not lying to each other.

  Peter’s nod was tighter than it should have been, but I understood that too. Of course, I understood. I hated putting any of them into this position in the first place. I hated being in this position to start with, but here we were. It was no one else’s fault but mine. “Okay,” he agreed, clearly slightly torn. But we both knew what the greater of the two evils was.

  Neither one of us said anything for s
o long it almost got awkward.

  After what might have been three minutes or ten, Peter stood again and shot me an intense look that immediately had me pressing my lips together and forming something close to a smile.

  “Everything is fine,” he stated, calmly, projecting the thought into me.

  “I know.”

  His eyes flicked up toward the wall behind me, where I figured he was probably looking at a framed picture of the three of us on my eighteenth birthday, crowded around a birthday cake with candles that could have been fireworks. His slim chest expanded and then went back down as he came to terms with whatever it was he was worried about. Everything, probably.

  Those eyes took their time moving from the wall to me, but when they did, he managed to give me a smile that was definitely a little strained. “Come work out with the team for an hour. You need to get that look off your face.”

  “What look?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “That one.”

  I pressed my lips together, temporarily shoving the why, why, why aside. “I’ll think about it. My shoulder is extra achy today.”

  Peter shot me a knowing half smile as he left the room, not needing to insist. We both knew he was right. I was too wound up, shoulder pain or no shoulder pain. No shit.

  Jonah had called Peter. Why would he do that? And did it really have to make me feel almost fucking sick?

  With a deep breath in through my nose and out of my mouth, I tipped my head toward the ceiling and tried to ease the tension out of my body.

  I hated not knowing what was going to happen.

  I hated surprises.

  There was a reason that jackass had called him. I’d grown up around men with insane amounts of testosterone. When they wanted something, they usually got it.

  And when they didn’t want something… well, they didn’t, and sometimes they left without a trace.

  I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t dumb or a chicken.