good luck with that.
She toed off her sneakers and tucked them in one of the cubbies by the door. Giving the construction chaos a wide berth, she headed for the workout area, scanning for a familiar face. She found one, its owner busy leading a group in kickboxing drills.
Rich Estrada. She’d met him at a big event in Vancouver the previous spring, and she ought to sue him for emotional distress, for hoisting her hopes up to such dangerous heights.
The first time she’d laid eyes on him, he’d been dressed for a press thing, sauntering around in a suit. He didn’t have a fighter’s face—not yet—and she’d been intrigued. The kind of sophisticated guy she never crossed paths with. The event had been held at a huge casino, and she’d assumed he was some jet-set high roller visiting from the Riviera or someplace. She’d been in for a shock the next day when she glanced to her side and found him whacking a heavy bag in the gym. And when they’d spoken—that accent. He sounded like every guy she’d known growing up, dropping all his R’s and sticking extra ones where they didn’t belong. The most elegant man she’d ever seen, and he winds up being Boston disguised as Barcelona.
He called a water break now and she caught his eye, waving.
“Penny! Hey.”
She winced. She’d been fighting as Penny for ages, a nickname from when her baby brother hadn’t been able to pronounce “Stephanie.” It had stuck because her hair was red as copper, and she’d competed as Penny beginning with her preteen karate days. Since then it had followed her through her first true love, judo, then jujitsu, then on to mixed martial arts. It was time she put her foot down. Here and now she’d quit being the person everyone imagined she was, and start being who she wanted to be.
“I prefer Steph,” she reminded Rich.
“Sorry, I knew that. Steph. Welcome home.”
She looked around, nodding. “This’ll do.”
“Don’t say that. You’re here to help us haul this dungeon out of the dark ages. Make Wilinski’s into Bahstan’s premieh gym for mixed mahtial ahts,” he said, making fun of his own accent.
“I’d have thought that was your job, Mr. Celebrity.” She sighed, frowning her commiseration. “Sorry about Rio.” He’d lost his title to Vicente Farreira a couple months earlier in Brazil, under suspect circumstances. “If the organization doesn’t run a doping investigation on Farreira, they’re in for a shit-storm. Nobody’s build changes that much—not dropping down a weight class.”
Rich shrugged. “The controversy’s been good for me. Got a match in August with a payday that’ll keep me from bitching about pretty much anything. And months to prepare.”
“Nice.” Steph could appreciate how luxurious that must feel. The female side of MMA wasn’t nearly as popular, and with fewer major events, she’d often taken offers with less prep time than was ideal, not wanting to miss an opportunity. But now she was retired—from the stress of the road, if not the sport. At the moment she felt relieved, though she knew in time she’d probably miss the focus that came with a match on the horizon. Though not as much as she’d come to miss feeling grounded the past couple years.
She’d be thirty in less than three weeks, and was ready to start working toward goals that hadn’t mattered until recently—a place of her own, a taste of real dating, a relationship, a family down the road. Her aggressively autonomous twenty-three-year-old self would’ve laughed, but Steph apparently had a biological clock. And it had begun to tick, if softly. A rough loss and a stress fracture had officially cooled her commitment to the pro life. She’d managed to never break anything worse than her nose and a few toes all these years, and for the first time ever, she realized she might like to keep it that way.
Rich whistled to call the members back from their break. “Get in on this, if you want,” he told her.
“Just let me change. Am I still in the lounge?”
He nodded.
“’Fraid so. But until our female membership takes off, you’ll practically have that new locker room all to yourself once it’s finished. Though I’ll warn you, it’s tiny. You wouldn’t believe the loopholes we had to squeeze through to even get planning permission to retrofit it.”
“I’m sure it’ll do.”
She crossed to the room beside the gym’s office and closed the door. There was no lock, so she pushed her bag against it, rooting through her workout clothes, swapping her winter coat and jeans for warm-ups and a jog bra. She tugged on the latter, untwisting the straps as she dug for a top. Then—bonk.
The door was shoved in, whacking her in the nose.
“Ow, Jesus!”
No matter how many times she took a punch there, the startling, white pain of it never got easier. She cupped her hands to the spot as she straightened, suddenly face-to-face with one of the construction guys. His recognition dawned slowly.
“Oh, sorry. Did I just thump you in the head?”
“Yes.” She drew her fingers away. When his blue eyes widened, she glanced at her palm, covered in blood.
“Holy shit. I’m sorry. Uh, here...” He muscled his way through the half-open door, toppling the contents of her gym bag, tools from his canvas belt clattering and clanging against the metal frame. He unbuttoned his flannel work shirt, offering it to Steph.
Not wanting to drip blood on her own clothes, she wadded it against her nose.
“Sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t know anybody’d be in here. I’m supposed to wire your new TV.” He nodded to a big box leaning against the wall, splashed with a picture of a flat-screen. “I’m the electrician.”
Preoccupied with pressing her bridge, scouting for a break, Steph didn’t reply.
“Should I get on with it, or...?”
She abandoned her nose, spreading her arms to showcase the rather obvious fact that she was dressed in her bra. “I’m kind of changing, here.”
“Oh jeez. Sorry.”
“Never mind.” Steph wasn’t modest. She’d changed in far less private venues than this, and once a warm-up banished the January chill from her muscles, she’d be back down to her bra for training. “Just shut the door and get on with it.”
He did, sidestepping the mess he’d made of her clothes. “I won’t look,” he assured her, busying himself with the box. “Just pretend I’m not here.”
She checked to make sure the bleeding had stopped, then tugged on a long-sleeved compression top. She cast her hapless assailant a glare as he crouched to organize TV components on the carpet.
He looked like every guy she’d taken shop class with in high school, the very epitome of Massachusetts working-class guyhood. Sandy brown hair that managed to look messy despite its short cut, caramel-colored Carhartt pants, work boots, a forest-green tee whose front Steph was positive would bear the logo of a contracting company. The cotton was pulled taut between his broad shoulders, but she was through being seduced by such sights.
She knew this guy too well already. He’d have a truck parked
