by Ranae Rose
She felt strangely broken, and more than a little hollow. Part of her was more glad than ever that the people she cared about didn’t share her secrets.
“So Alicia,” she said after forcing down a bite of her cucumber salad, “your wedding is this weekend. I can’t believe we hardly talked about it yesterday.”
Alicia grinned and dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “I figured you two were tired of hearing about it by now.”
“Not at all.” The crack in Kerry’s heart deepened. “I tried my bridesmaid dress on again last night. It matches perfectly with the shoes you had dyed. Anyway, you must be excited.”
* * * * *
“The sleeves are too short!” Grey turned away from the mirror, rounding on Liam. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
Liam didn’t say a damn thing.
Grey tugged on the tuxedo sleeves, gave himself another look in the mirror. He looked like a ten year old who’d just hit a growth spurt.
Henry snorted.
“Hey!” Grey pulled off the jacket and put it back on the hanger. “Don’t laugh. Not everyone can have your short little T-Rex arms.”
“Nobody’s arms are short,” Liam said, holding up his own tuxedo jacket against Grey’s. “And you’re not a circus freak – the jacket’s just too small. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the size Alicia ordered.”
“Can I help with anything?” A woman in high heels and glasses popped out from behind a wedding dress-wearing mannequin. She stared at Liam, Henry and Grey like they were circus freaks, no matter what Liam said.
It was hard to blame her. What kind of guys went to a bridal boutique without a woman to make them do it?
Maybe they were the first. The wedding was less than a week away and there’d been some sort of order delay with the tuxes. Liam had promised Alicia that he, Grey and Henry would all go and get it sorted out today, on their day off.
Alicia, Kerry and Sasha were all at work during the boutique’s business hours, so there was no female to translate for them.
“My jacket’s too small,” Grey said. “Sleeves are too short.”
The woman pushed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. “Let me take a look – go ahead and put it on.”
He shrugged back into the jacket and immediately got sweaty. Trying not to think about how hot he’d be wearing a tux outside that weekend, he turned to the shop lady.
“Wow.” Her eyes got big behind her glasses lenses. “You weren’t kidding.”
“I’m pretty sure it must be a mistake,” Liam said. “We all got measured here, and my fiancée placed the final order.”
“Well, that’ll be easy to verify.”
Grey took the jacket off and surrendered it to her.
She looked at it, went to the computer at the register and quickly returned. “This isn’t what you ordered – the sleeve size is off. I’m sorry about that.”
Grey was stricken with a sudden vision of being the only member of the wedding party standing in shirtsleeves, like an idiot. Not exactly how he wanted to look as a groomsman, especially since he’d be walking Kerry down the aisle.
He’d practically begged Liam to make sure he got Kerry instead of some cousin of Alicia’s from DC, who was also a bridesmaid.
“What are our options?” Liam asked. “He needs a jacket for Saturday.”
“I’ll place an order for the correct size right now. I’ll have it express shipped and it should be here within three days.”
“Great.” Liam seemed satisfied.
Grey had to admit, he’d never been so relieved about any clothing-related news. After yesterday and the way Kerry had shot him down at the beach, the last thing he needed was to look like a chimp stuffed into a tuxedo when it came time for their moment of wedding aisle glory.
Right now, the prospect of being paired with her during the wedding ceremony was all he had.
* * * * *
“Spot me,” Grey said, lying down on the bench in his garage as a bead of sweat dripped from the tip of his nose. Having a garage gym was great, except for one thing: there was no air conditioning.
He seriously needed to invest in a window unit or something.
“Can’t,” Liam said, reaching for a towel and wiping his face with it, “it’s about time for Alicia to get off work. Promised her I’d be home – Monday night is our pizza and movie night.”
“You’re abandoning me in my time of need for pizza?”
Liam shrugged. “Wedding’s this weekend. Not gonna break a promise now. Besides, I love pizza.”
“All right, Henry – you spot me then.”
“Sasha gets off early tonight. We’re going on a date.” He stared out the window like he wished he was already gone.
“What the hell – you’re both ditching me? What about my bench press?”
Neither of them had said anything about their evening plans. If they had, Grey would’ve pushed for them to leave Wilmington earlier instead of grabbing lunch after trying on their tuxes. Now he had no one to help him with chest day.
And he wasn’t about to bench press without a spotter – although he sometimes suspected he might die alone, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be because he’d dropped 280 pounds of iron on himself.
“Sorry, man.” Liam threw his towel over his shoulder. “I’ll come over and spot you next time we have a day off.”
“Bullshit – you’ll be on your honeymoon.”
“Later then.”
Grey tried not to be too pissed when Liam and Henry left him. Instead, he set up his bench at an incline to prepare for an inverted bench press and then went to set his adjustable free weights on their highest setting. Not heavy enough, but he wasn’t going to go inside and sit on his ass in front of the TV.
“Come on. Piece of shit.” He rocked the adjustable weight in its frame, pulling on the red plastic tab that controlled how much weight it’d bring with it when he picked it up. It got stuck all the time. Sometimes he wasted five or ten minutes getting it into the right position.
The entire weight stand rocked as he struggled with it, and just when he was about to let a string of obscenities fly, the tab snapped off right in his hand, then went skittering across the concrete.
The little piece of plastic stopped directly beneath his weight bench, like it was mocking him.
“Damn it!” He barely resisted the urge to kick the weight stand, which probably would’ve broken his toes.
The weights had been expensive. And now he had no way to do chest day.
He grabbed a clean towel, scrubbed his face like his life depended on it and let a few more obscenities fly. He was in the middle of cursing every single factory line worker who’d ever touched the weights when his phone went off.
If it was Liam or Henry, they could kiss his ass.
But it wasn’t. It was Kerry.
He dropped the towel and turned his back on the traitorous little bit of plastic lurking beneath his weight bench. “Kerry?”
“Hey Grey.” Her voice was soft.
Hearing her speak made him feel idiotic for spending the last several minutes swearing to himself, alone in the garage.
“Hey. What’s up?”
His anger over his weights forgotten, his thoughts flashed back to the day before: a perfect day with a weird ending that’d left him wondering where he’d gone wrong.
It wasn’t just that Kerry hadn’t wanted to watch the sunset on the pier with him that’d confused him. It was the way she’d turned him down: in a hurry, without looking him in the eye. She’d practically leapt into her car and had been the first one out of the lot.
He still had no idea why she’d run away like that. Had he done something to scare her off?
“I want to apologize for yesterday,” she said. “I was rude to you. When you asked me to walk out onto the pier with you, I was in a hurry to get home because I wasn’t feeling well.”
“I didn’t realize you were feeling bad,” he said. “You seemed
fine until then.”
“It came on suddenly. Look, I’m sorry – I should’ve explained. I feel like I gave you the cold shoulder.”
“It’s all right. How are you feeling now?”
“What?” She sounded surprised.
“How are you feeling?”
“Oh. I feel okay. I’m getting ready to go to my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. What are you up to?”
He glanced back at his broken weights. “Cussing up a storm. My adjustable weights broke and I don’t have anyone here to spot me. I can’t work out.”
“That sucks.”
Her words warmed some part of him. Most women – hell, most people – wouldn’t understand why it was so important to him. Over the years, his fitness routine had become a vital part of his life. Without a healthy workout, he felt off physically and mentally.
“Yeah. Guess I’ll either have to get new ones or join a gym.”
“You could try jiu-jitsu.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s a much harder workout than you’d think. And where I go, the first week of classes is free.”
“Really?” The wheels were turning so fast inside his head he was almost dizzy.
“Uh-huh.”
“And you said you’re getting ready to go?”
“Class starts in 40 minutes, then there’s open mat after that. If you want to try it, you should show up a few minutes early to sign waivers.”
He felt a surge of energy, the kind that no amount of exercise would expel. His evening had gone from shit to holy shit in .5 seconds. He could hardly believe it.
“I’ll be there. Just give me the address.”
CHAPTER 4
One of the main tenets of jiu-jitsu was supposed to be that a smaller, physically weaker person could overpower a larger opponent. In other words: size doesn’t matter. Kerry had always thought that was a very male thing to say.
Of course, she was biased: at 5’2” and 112 pounds, she was literally the smallest person on the mats. It was completely possible to overpower a larger person with skill and technique, but since she’d only started BJJ a year ago, her skills were sparse. Every roll demanded every bit of what little skill she had, even when she was working with the other women.
There were two of them there today: Cora and Shelly. At the moment, Cora was pinning Kerry’s arm into a kimura. Still, Kerry snuck a glance across the mats, to where Grey was rolling with a relatively new guy.
Grey had no real training, but the other guy didn’t have much either. And Grey had the advantage of size: he was tall, muscular, probably pushing 200, if Kerry had to guess.
And he looked really hot in the compression shirt he’d worn, one that clung to his muscles like a wet t-shirt. It was a gi day, but it was hard not to appreciate the fact that Grey didn’t own one.
Kerry tapped as Cora finished the kimura.
“Nice job,” she said, halfway in a daze as she sat up on the mat, smoothing her gi jacket. She still couldn’t believe she’d invited Grey to jiu-jitsu. The invitation had sort of just slipped out over the phone. Now, here they were.
She could feel him sneaking occasional glances at her, though she pretended not to notice.
“Thanks.” Cora popped her mouthguard out and grinned. “I’ve been practicing that for weeks. Shelly’s been helping me.”
They started again – there were still two minutes left on the timer that dictated how long their rounds went.
Two minutes – it shouldn’t be hard to keep her head in the match for that long.
But it was. She had to resist the urge to see what Grey was doing, whether he was looking her way.
It was stupid, especially considering that—
“Damn it!” A familiar voice followed a sickening thunk, and Kerry’s heart skipped a beat.
She and Cora rolled to a stop. So did several other people. An unusual stillness swept across the mats as people stared at Grey and the other new guy.
“Oh, no.” Kerry’s stomach tied itself in knots. Grey was covered in sweat and blood. The sight sent a bolt of guilt tearing through her like a barbed arrow.
The wound seemed to be located at his temple. Blood trickled down his cheek, and he cupped a hand at his jaw to catch it. It’d already dripped onto the blue tatami mats.
Kerry hurried back to the bathroom and grabbed a roll of paper towels off a shelf. This was her fault: she’d invited Grey and now he’d gotten injured. He’d probably shown up because of his interest in her, not jiu-jitsu. As she hurried to clean up the worst of the blood, she felt like some kind of con artist.
Why hadn’t she just apologized and then gotten off the phone?
“What happened?” she asked, kneeling on the mats beside Grey. She handed him a few paper towels, which he pressed to his head.
He frowned. “Some other guys rolled into us by mistake. Got a nice face full of foot and hit my head on that.” He pointed toward the edge of the mat, where a narrow wooden border no higher than the mat itself held everything in place.
“Sorry, man.” A tall guy who’d been a regular long before Kerry had started BJJ stood and offered Grey a hand. “Didn’t see you.”
Grey accepted the assistance and stood, knuckles flecked red against the bloody wad of paper towels he held against his temple. “It’s all right.”
Except it wasn’t. It was normal for head wounds to bleed a lot, but still – Kerry got the creeping feeling Grey would need stitches.
“Come on,” she said, laying a hand on Grey’s arm, “I’ll drive you to the emergency room.”
“No need,” Grey said. “It’s just a little cut.”
“Let me see.”
“Let me get off the mats.”
Everyone had stopped moving and was staring at the mini train wreck that was Grey’s injury.
“I’ll get this.” An instructor appeared, and he didn’t look happy. He sprayed disinfectant liberally where Grey had bled on the mat. “He’s your boyfriend, right? Go get him checked out. Might need stitches, or have a concussion.”
Heat flared in Kerry’s cheeks, and it didn’t have anything to do with her recent roll with Cora. She mumbled something about driving him to the hospital and half-dragged Grey off the mats. She took a minute to change as quickly as she could back into shorts and a t-shirt, stuffing her sweaty gi into her gym bag.
Afterward, Grey didn’t want to go to the emergency room. Kerry managed to get him as far as the parking lot.
“Don’t make me use my jiu-jitsu to get you into the car.” It was an empty threat, but she didn’t have any good serious ones – not for someone his size.
“Ha.” He dropped the hand he held the wadded-up paper towels in, and blood trickled down his cheek again. “Go ahead. You can use your jiu-jitsu on me anytime.”
She pointed at her car’s side mirror. “Look at yourself. You’re bleeding everywhere.”
He bent down and squinted at his reflection in the passenger-side window. “It probably looks worse than it is.”
“Then why do you look sick?”
“Because I feel like puking.”
“Afraid of blood?”
“No. But you have no idea how many tacos I ate today in Wilmington after I went to that fancy dress store.”
“What?”
“A lot. I ate a lot of tacos.” His suntanned face had taken on an unnatural whitish-green tint that made Kerry’s stomach churn.
She unlocked her car and opened the passenger-side door for him. “Get in. I think the instructor was right – you might have a concussion.”
He groaned. “God, I ate so many tacos.”
Finally, he sank into the seat.
Kerry closed and locked the door before he could think twice and hurried around to the driver’s side. As she turned the key in the ignition, the instructor that’d sprayed down the mats appeared by her window.
She rolled it down to talk to him.
“He all right?”
“He’s feeling sick. I’m going to ta
ke him to the hospital.”
“Call me and let me know how he makes out.”
“Okay.”
She left the academy – housed in a former warehouse on the outskirts of Cypress – behind and drove for the hospital. It didn’t take long to get there, but neither did getting anywhere in such a small town.
Once they were parked close to the emergency room entrance, she walked inside with Grey. He was uncharacteristically silent, and still looked a little green.
Probably not from the tacos.
Kerry filled out his paperwork for him while he sat looking grim in one of the waiting room chairs. He was still wearing the rash guard and board shorts he’d worn to jiu-jitsu.
While they waited, Kerry had plenty of time to feel increasingly guilty. Sure, accidents and injuries happened with contact sports. But most people who participated knew that and chanced it because they loved the sport. Grey, on the other hand, probably couldn’t have cared less about jiu-jitsu.
“Sorry about dragging you into this,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Jiu-jitsu. If I hadn’t asked you to come, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
“I’m not mad. Don’t get all guilt-ridden on me. I wanted to go.”
She bit her tongue before she could say something ridiculously egotistical-sounding, like: ‘Yeah, but only because I’d be there’.
“Do you want me to wait here or come back with you?” she asked when a nurse announced that it was his turn.
“Up to you.”
She went with him. With all the talk about dresses and tacos, he seemed a little confused, and the doctor would need to hear exactly what had happened.
They made it about five steps down the hall before Grey threw up all over the tile.
From the looks of things, he hadn’t been lying about the tacos.
* * * * *
“Things you’ll want to watch carefully for include seizures, mood swings, confusion, slurred speech, a worsening headache…” The ER doctor ran down a long list of symptoms, and Kerry tried hard to commit them all to memory. “Keep a sharp eye on him for the next 24 hours. Do you have work tomorrow?”
