A Fighting Chance (13 page)

The man yanks me up to my feet
, and the sound around me is so loud it’s almost blinding, like the wiring in my senses is crossed. He lifts my arm as easily as I did to my passed-out opponent. I look around and no matter which face my eyes land on, there’s not a single ounce of concern for José. Everyone’s staring at me in awe, with smiles and wild waving. I turn back to José, and there are just specks of blood left in his place. The man announces that I’m the winner and people are applauding, while my lungs are compressing and my vision is blurring. I fall to my knees as soon as he lets me go and choke for air.

Fighting helped me deal with my demons
, but it created a whole Hell full of them in the process, too. I realized long ago that people—including Henry Chance—loved me when I was fighting, and I fought because people loved me. I wanted them to give a damn about me, and this was the only way they seemed to want to do it. So I would bask in their admiration, but it also brought me so much shame because of what I had to do to earn it. Now, in this moment, there’s just shame. And they’re out there being proud of me. They’re out there loving me the only way people always have. For the thing I know how to do best. Old feelings from Glory rock me. Kerr’s face flashes in front of my eyes.

T
his isn’t supposed to be my life anymore.

It isn’t supposed to be my life.

My pulse thunders inside my head, and my stomach is churning into a million painful knots. Panic is clawing out of me and is on the verge of ripping me to shreds.
Drew. Where the hell is Drew?
I frantically search the faces of the people gathered around the cage until I see her push through the throng.

“Jess, you’re okay.” She’s clinging to the
chain-links like she’s ready to climb over. “
You’re okay.
You have to breathe, babe. You have to breathe.”

Fright vises my chest
and the walls of the warehouse pull in closer.
I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.
I tear off my bloody gloves and throw them to the canvas.

“
José just came to. Miguel went to check. You’re okay. He’s okay. Just breathe. Look at me…look at me,” she demands in desperation. She bangs on the cage until I turn to her again. “Breathe. You’re okay.” I suck in gigantic gulps of air and I finally push up to my feet.

“He’s awake, Jesse!” Miguel confirms,
coming to stand at Drew’s side. “He’s fine.” He’s speaking calmly but he’s also looking at me like I’ve grown three additional heads.

“Hey! Hey! Let him out!” Drew
shouts. She pounds the side of the octagon much more aggressively than before. “Let him out now!” She keeps her fingers on the cage as she hurries to its door and drags it open before I stumble out, into her arms. “Go get his money, Miguel. Meet us back at the buses.”

After a ride that seem
s much longer on the way back, we’re in Tepa again, as Miguel calls it, and in our car. “Can we get him something? For the pain?” Drew asks as she drives to Miguel’s place. He’s up front with her and I’m lying in the backseat, staring out the window, as all the pain from the fight finally eats through my adrenaline. There’s a moonless sky outside. Only the Parroquia de San Francisco de Asis is lit, glowing with a promise to absolve the evils committed in the darkness. But the night is already so quiet, the city back to keeping its secrets.

“Sí. Turn in two stop signs. Now a left and two rights.” We
pull up in front of a house that’s nearly identical to Miguel’s, and he disappears inside after Drew pushes pesos into his hands. He comes out a few minutes later with a stuffed brown paper bag.

Once we get to
his house, Drew pays him his cut of my winnings. “There’s enough medicine in there to get him through for a while,” he says as he gets out.

Riffling through the bag,
Drew scrunches her face in amused confusion. “Mig, these labels are all in Spanish.”

“Better brush up on
Rosetta Stone
then,” he jokes, leaning into the window. “They actually don’t match the bottles, anyway. He just puts them in whatever he has available. I think he said the blue ones are Vicodin. No, wait. Or maybe the red.”

Oh great, I’m in the fucking Matrix.

“Jesus. Okay, what’s this other stuff?” Drew asks.

He shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine. Some for pain. Some for sleep. Some for…
male problems.
Ha, ha.” His gaze shifts to me. “Hey,
El Americano
, get some rest. I’ll see what’s coming up for you and be in touch.”

“Thanks. But if I’m gonna go through that, I need more money. No more five hundred dollar fights. I don’t care where we have to go.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m already here, aren’t I? The earlier I can finish this up the better. And it’s not like I plan to join up with a cartel. I just need to fight in their matches.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do.” He taps the inside of the car twice. “Call me if you need anything, Drew-Drew.”

“Okay. I will.”
She blows him a kiss. “Thank you.”

“Hey, wait…something weird happened in the
cage tonight with José,” I say before he can walk away. “I was telling him to stop moving but he just kept fighting. I was begging him to stop because I didn’t want him to black out. He was saying something to me.” It sounds like Play-Doh. That’s why I remember it. “He said, ‘No pu-way-doe.” Miguel’s eyes go wide, and his skin washes white, too.

“
No puedo
,” he says. “Is that it? Did he say, ‘No puedo’?”

“Yeah.
What does it mean?”

His
expression darkens. “‘I can’t.’”

“Jess?” Drew knocks on the bathroom door in our double bed motel room. Again. The pounding makes the lights go dim. At least the bad lighting hides all the brown stains I noticed on the carpet earlier, and whatever was skittering over those stains when we walked in. This place is craptastic.

“I’m about to shower,” I yell back.

“You said that the last four times I knocked.” She pushes the door open, and stares at me from the doorway. I’ve been standing over the sink for however long I’ve been in here, bracing my arms on the sides, and replaying José’s words over and over in my head. He couldn’t stop fighting because it was his only means of survival? Or was someone making him fight? My muscles twitch with the memory of his body going limp in my arms. And of course I was a natural in there, and the crowd sensed it.
Because it’s still a huge part of who I am
.
It’s so fucked up. It’s all so fucked up.

“You okay? What are you
really
doing?” she asks as she walks in farther. A loving look passes through her eyes when she smiles, and the uneasy feeling in my chest dies a little. “You can’t see anything in this mirror…” Using a piece of tissue, she tries to rub the smudges, but it’s like they’re trapped behind the glass.

“Maybe it’s better that way.” I’m pretty sure I won’t like what
I see. With a sigh, I sit on top of the closed toilet. Drew starts pulling towels from the rack and placing them into water in the sink.

She
strokes my lip with her thumb. The touch is soft enough for me to imagine that it’s more—an old Drew and Jesse moment—but I know she’s just inspecting my injuries. “Tonight was rough for you, and that’s all right.” Worry is becoming a permanent fixture in her eyes when they’re on me. I hate that. “You should take one of those blue pills. I looked up tablet images; Google says it’s Vicodin.”

“Okay. Good.” She has changed
her clothes for the night. Drew is wearing loose pajama pants and a really tight tank top now. There’s a mist of sweat right below her collarbone. My eyes drift across her glistening skin, and I’m eager to know what it feels like under my fingers. I wonder if she still likes to be kissed behind the ear or in the crevice between her breasts. My gaze hits her chest.
Shit. Definitely shouldn’t be looking here.
I try hard not to stare at
any
of her, but I’ve only seen ugly tonight and she’s just too freaking beautiful for me not to.

Drew soaps up the drenched towels, and she wipes my arms from my shoulders to fingertips. “Remember the night we
officially
met? The first time we really talked? Even before you convinced me you were good enough at math to tutor me?”

That’s easy. “Yeah. You were coming h
ome from some party in Renshaw. You got a flat on the way back.”

“Mmhmm.
I left early ‘cause my cell battery was dead, and silly me didn’t have a car charger. It was pitch black out and I was walking. It was a shitty night. You were literally the only car that didn’t honk at me and ask if I wanted to fuck.”

I nod
, smiling a little. “I saw your car and recognized it, so I tried to find you. I pulled up on the shoulder and drove alongside you. You ignored me at first.” A flame of emotions burns just behind my ribs at the memory. I’d had a thing for her for a while, and
boom,
there she was, and she looked so pretty that night. Hair blowing. Short skirt. Tight shirt. Walking with determined purpose. The cute you-better-not-fuck-with-me-right-now look she gave me when she noticed my truck. I think in my head I named her Spark right then.

Drew caresses my face, pulling me away from the memory.
“Then you asked me if it was my car you saw and if I had a spare in the trunk. You said you’d change it for me if I wanted. You drove me back to my car and you said I could sit in your truck. You told me where your cell was and that I was free to call somebody to tell them where I was.” Drew drops the soppy, ruddy mess of towels to the floor. With one of the washcloths, she wipes my face clean.

“
But you wanted to learn how to change a tire, so you watched while I did it—asked me a hundred questions—and then I sent you on your way.”

“That’s not all. You introduced yourself, even though we’d gone to school together
for a few years. You apologized for not being able to shake my hand ‘cause there was grease and oil on yours.” Drew leans over and switches the tub’s faucets on. “You did that for me and you barely knew me. You’re doing this for HJ and you barely know him. This is the kind of guy you are. That’s the only thing in that mirror, Jesse Chance.”

I grip her arms before she can stand upright, and it’s just an excuse to touch her. I catch her off guard
, and she instinctively grabs onto my shoulders to get her balance. She tenses only for a moment when I trace my hands up her arms then down her sides. We’re caught in each other’s stare, in complete silence, as her hands move up to cup my neck. Every memory I have of her is awakened now, like they’re oozing out of her pores and soaking right into mine.
Fuck. I missed her.
My heart thuds so hard I can feel it in my ears. Drew sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, and her nails press into my skin when she lets out a soft breath. Only a few inches stand between us and a kiss—and I would kiss her, my slightly swollen lip and all—and the urge is resonating from deep within my core.
No, this is wrong. It’s been an emotional night. My head’s all fucked up.
“Thank you,” I say, jerking my hands off her, as if she’s suddenly covered in needles.

Drew pulls away
, too, just as fast. “You’re welcome,” she chokes out before she leaves hurriedly. I hear the drone of the television a few seconds later. Stepping into the grimy tub and then under even grimier shower water, I wonder if I was cleaner before I got in. Red water circles the drain as I scrub every inch of my body, finding blood caked under my nails, in my nostrils, and behind my ears. It always surprises me the places it ends up when it splashes. The places it stays.

No more of that tonight.
My mind roams somewhere pleasurable, somewhere indecent, and I rub one out in the shower. Once I’m done I grab the last clean towel, dry off, and throw on a pair of pajama pants. I don’t try to look in the mirror again. I can only hope Drew’s right.

****

I take a blue pill, and it helps, all right. I wake up in an empty room to the nightstand clock displaying four p.m. at me. With pain nestled in every part of my body, it hurts to get myself into a sitting position. I reach for my cell phone and call Lydia. This bed is a lot emptier without her; I’m used to waking up next to her.

“
Hi, baby!” she says when she answers.

I really miss
her, especially after a night like the one I had. She’s my beacon. She’s how I’ll get back home. “Lyds. Hi, baby. How are you?”

“Getting ready to go meet Andrea for an early dinner and then a movie. And just going a little crazy without you, not knowing where you are and if you’re safe. I keep flipping to Spanish channels, trying to see if there’s anything on the news in Mexico. Reading some newspapers, too.”

I laugh. Even that hurts. “Shit. I hope nothing I’m doing ends up on the news. And I’m staying as safe as I can.”

“You’re not helping me not freak out, Jess.
” She pauses for a moment. “So…are you in Guadalajara or Mexico City? Those are the places where fighting is big, right? I was Googling.”