I slowed to a walk as I entered the door, and tried to calm my breathing as I hurried over to the secretary. “Hello,” I said in my best business voice. “I need form 824A.”
The woman whose nameplate read Ellie glanced up at me, a look of annoyance crossing her face. “They’re over there,” she said, waving her hand dismissively toward the far wall.
It was all I could do not to smack my hand against my forehead. I’d picked up the forms just a few weeks ago. Now I was so flustered that I was making myself look like an idiot at the same time. I thanked her, and just as I was about to pick up the piece of paper, Ellie called, “If you need to get that in today, you’d better hurry. That office is closing early. In…fifteen minutes actually.”
I nearly choked on my own saliva. Fifteen minutes? Panic rose in my chest, and I tried to smash it down. Three pages, that’s all, I told myself. I began to scrawl the information onto the page as fast as I could. By the time Kirk found me, I felt like I was going crazy.
“I only have five minutes left,” I said to him.
“Hang on a sec,” he said, and went over to talk to Ellie. When he came back he said, “I just got you a whole day extension.”
“How?” I gasped.
“Just my natural charm,” he said.
“I could kiss you,” I said with a grin.
“Oh, I can think of another way to reward me,” he said with a leering grin.
I gaped at him as I realized what he was suggesting. “You’ve got to be kidding me. This is so not the time to be thinking about sex.”
I stared at her. “Just a quickie?”
“This is ridiculous. I don’t care if you got me an extension. The only reason I need one is because you are insisting that we do this. “ Emily rubbed her forehead. “I…I just think this isn’t working right now. I need a break.”
“A break? Are you serious? What? Are you breaking up with me?” I feel a surge of annoyance, and I want to tell her that she can’t break up with me, I’m going to break up with her.
“No, I’m not breaking up with you, but I’m definitely going to step away from you for a while. If I don’t, then we will break up,” she said.
“I think I saw a bathroom just around the corner,” I said as I took her hand. “We could go make up from this little tiff.”
“Seriously,” she said, yanking her hand away from me. “I’ll see you back at the gym.”
I watched her walk out the door of city hall, and let out a growl of frustration. My fist connected with the concrete wall before I could think about the action, and I winced in pain.
“That looked painful. Why are you trying to break our building?”
As I shook out my hand, I turned to see the receptionist that I had talked to earlier. She had unbuttoned her sweater so I had a good view of her cleavage. She was practically already purring, and it occurred to me that I could take her down the hall to that bathroom I had seen. I bet she would be willing to have a little quickie after hours. I could do it for her as a thank you for the extension she’d filed for us. No one would ever know but the two of us.
“Can I get you a band aid? Or something else?”
I swore she was leaning farther forward so that I had a clear view of her breasts. It would have been so easy, and I was hard just thinking about her, but then Emily’s face flashed before my eyes. Ugh, I couldn’t handle these feelings I had for her. Why did she have to be so unreasonable?
With a tight smile at the hottie in front of me, I said, “No, I’m fine. Thanks, though. I’ll just be getting out of your way so you can close up.”
“Do you want to meet for a drink after I’m done here?” she asked.
“No, thanks,” I said, although I wavered slightly.
The girl pouted her pretty little lips at me. “Well, I’ll be at Hank’s on Fifth if you change your mind.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets, and turned away from her without saying anything else. The fact that I had just turned down an easy piece of ass meant that I was slipping. My girlfriend was pissed off at me for trying to help her fix a problem that her damn father had gotten her into, and I wasn’t even going to get laid out of it.
Since Emily had taken the car, I had to walk back to the gym. Not that I minded. The time outside would help me clear my head. At least I hoped it would. If that failed I was planning to beat the shit out of a punching bag when I got back. We hadn’t actually had a fight yet, and that made me a little nervous, if I was honest with myself. Most of my relationships crumbled soon after the first fight, and I wasn’t ready to let go of Emily.
I hoped she was just pissy because her father was around. He was a jack ass, sure, but he was still her dad. That’s what it all came down to, I supposed. She didn’t want me telling her how to have a relationship with her father. I got that, but that didn’t mean I could keep my mouth shut. I didn’t want to see her hurting, why couldn’t she just understand that?
I passed the bar that the girl back at city hall had mentioned, and I lingered on the corner opposite while the light changed several times. There was no way Emily would ever know if I hooked up with the girl, and I could get all my…frustration out.
With a sigh, I crossed the street to head back to the gym. I wasn’t going to cheat on Emily. I cared too much about her to hurt her like that. Even if she wouldn’t ever know, I would, and I didn’t know if I wanted that on my conscience. I had never been in this place before mentally. I hoped she appreciated all that I was giving up for her. Otherwise this whole thing was ridiculous.
When I got back to the gym, I was ready to get in the ring and start training. I needed to get my head into a better space. Training would help me do that. Just as I was about to open the door, someone called my name. I turned to see Emily’s father striding across the parking lot toward me. At the sight of him fury flared in me, and I couldn’t even see straight. He was the reason Em and I were fighting right now. He was the reason her gym was in trouble. He was the problem period. As he got closer, I didn’t even think, I just balled my fist and let it fly. I connected with his jaw and knocked him flat. Shaking out my hand for a second time in an hour, I turned and went in to the gym without even looking back.
The bank’s lobby was expansive, and I knew that it was designed to intimidate. I wasn’t going to let that happen. When I met with the loan officer I had to convince him or her to give me a line of credit so that we could fund the expansion of the gym. I hadn’t wanted Kirk to come with me because I wanted to do it on my own, but now that I was there, I sort of wished he was with me. I was still mad at him, but I found that I wavered back and forth.
Things with my father hadn’t improved either. We’d sat down for coffee at a diner down the street from the gym. When I was across from my father clutching my cup like it was a lifeline, I hadn’t felt calm at all.
“Sugar Cake,” he’d said, “all I want is to buy back in to the gym. That’s not too much to ask is it?”
I couldn’t help but think that this couldn’t be the same man who had raised me. He wasn’t my father, was he? All my memories of my father were of a gruff but kind guy who had worked his ass off to make other people’s dreams happen. Obviously that had been a mistake, though. I hadn’t known the real man, just the image he’d presented to the world. Kirk had assured me that he didn’t know his parents truly either. I’d pointed out that his parents had embezzled almost one million dollars either, and then saddled him with the failing business. Touche.
“It’s my gym now, Dad,” I’d said with as much ice in my voice as I could manage. Part of me was still his little girl, though, and being angry with my father just wasn’t a natural state for me. “I’m not letting anyone come in on my operation, not even you.”
“You’re still mad about the money, aren’t you?” he asked. The tone of his voice was chiding and it riled me into such a state that I thought I was going to explode. I tried to flash forward through my catalogue of memories to pinpoint the moment when our relationship had changed. The best I could come up with was when I graduated college, Dad had retired and had given me the gym, and then he’d moved away. In the years since then we’d only seen each other a few times a year. And even when we spoke on the phone our conversations were more cordial than deep.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked, my voice rising an octave as I spoke. “Of course I’m mad about that. I haven’t decided if I’ll press criminal charges or not.”
He laughed at me. I couldn’t believe it. My jaw actually came unhinged and I stared at him in disbelief. And that was when I’d had to get up and leave. I couldn’t let him get in my head. The bank meeting was too important to jeopardize.
Yet there I was at the bank, waiting in the lobby for someone to lead me to the appropriate office. I arrived in the office of one Ms. Erica Dixon with my stomach in the worst knots I had ever felt. The whole vibe of the office felt like a corporate office hell. Everything was different shades of brown: taupe, tan, mahogany, light, dark, it went on and on. Her degrees—all three of them—were displayed on the wall beside a large bank of windows. Not a paper was out of place on her desk. She would never be the type to get into my situation. I could tell before she even came in to the room.
When she did enter, I was struck right away by how uptight she looked. Her hair was pulled back into a severe bun so tight that it pulled her eyes backward. The pantsuit she wore was ill-fitting, and bunched in the wrong places. I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help ogling her as she stuck out her hand stiffly to shake my hand.
“Thank you so much for meeting with me Ms. Dixon,” I said as I perched on the edge of the seat across from her desk.
Ms. Dixon pursed her lips as she regarded me while she stood behind her chair. I didn’t know what to make of her. She was beyond hard to read. Finally she sat down, carefully arranging the things on her desk—which was barely minimal—before she looked up at me.
“I don’t like to beat around the bush,” she began.
Suddenly my chest felt tight, and I wondered if I was having a panic attack or a heart attack. What would Erica Dixon do if I clutched my chest and asked her to call 911? I didn’t want her to continue because I didn’t want to hear her give me bad news. Anything I could do to postpone the inevitable.
So I opened my mouth. “I appreciate that, but I was really hoping that you would be willing to hear out my proposal. I’ve brought our revised business plan, and I think if you look through it you’ll be pleased to see how far we’ve come and how far we can go. I know that taking a chance on a gym might seem like a long shot, but I really believe that we’re going to the top of this market. If you look at the specs I’ve brought along, you’ll see that we are competitive at the point we’re at, and that will only continue as we go. I hope—“
“We’ve approved your request,” Erica Dixon interrupted.
I stared at her, unsure I had heard her correctly. “You’ve approved our request?”
“That’s what I said,” she replied calmly.
I wanted to jump up and hug her, but instead, I just thanked her, shook her hand, and got the hell out of her office before she could change her mind.
“I can take him,” I said. “I can take any of them.”
I watched the other fighter, a guy named Red Malone, taking practice swings at a bag in the corner. I’d seen Red fight several times, though we had never fought. He lost most of his matches, but Emily wouldn’t have known that. All she saw was a big, beefy guy with muscles that bulged. The other thing she couldn’t have known was what a moron the guy was. I’d once heard him ask what KO stood for. Any fighter knew that before he even got into the sport.
“Don’t worry, Em,” I said.
She looked up at me with her big eyes, shiny with unshed tears and I felt my heart clench. This woman affected me in ways that I wasn’t ready for. I’d never felt anything this deep for any of the women I’d been with, and I needed to figure out what I wanted to do about it.
“I can’t help it,” she whispered. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. It’s always hard to watch you fight, but…I don’t know it’s harder tonight for some reason. You don’t have to do this, you know. We have other fighters who can go in for you.”
I stared at her, jaw clenched. “You’re joking, right? This is my fight.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” she said. “I need you healthy more than I need you to win and stroke your ego.”
We looked at each other. After our fight the other day, I had avoided her until she sought me out. We hadn’t exactly made up, but we had reached an impasse that had allowed us to be cordial to each other.
“I just want the chance to make a future where we can both be happy, you know?” she said.
I knew what she meant, but I also didn’t know how to put it into words. My eyes flitted back to Red. I was up against him first tonight. If I won than I would go up against Emmet Lawrence. I’d fought him multiple times, and he was tougher than Red, but I still thought I could take him. If I won both matches tonight, I’d advance to the semi-finals, and on through the championship match. I had to win all of them. Not just for myself, but for Emily as well. Even though I knew I’d helped her out by bringing business back to the gym, she’d done a lot for me as well.
“He just looks so…huge,” she was saying when I tuned back in to reality. “I just…”
She trailed off as I cupped her face in my hands. “How many matches have you seen me win?” I asked her.