Cage (11 page)
Authors: Sarah Sparrows
Chapter 13 – Saffron
Pensacola, Present Day
The driver, a young, perpetually smiling Asian chick, took me around to
New Horizons
when I asked. It looked to
be a fitness gym, not too terribly far into town, and it actually looked pretty
sleek from the outside. As I pulled up, the lights were on, and I could see
what looked like Sawyer and a couple of other guys standing around near the
front. The entire front wall was glass, showing off rows of solid, newish
equipment…and way in the back, as we drove past and slowed down, I could make
out a large cage fighting ring.
Huh. What’s
he doing in a place like this, so late at night?
There wasn’t any benefit to creepily hanging
around, so I had the driver just take me straight home. I was just getting
ready for the shower when I heard motion downstairs – poking my head
around the top landing, I could see Sawyer moving about, oblivious to my
attention.
I considered calling out to him, but I was still
unwilling to cross that bridge until he looked remarkably less angry than
usual.
From that point on, Sawyer was
around a lot more often. As quickly as the next day,
he even seemed more relaxed around me, and unceremoniously broke the silence
one early afternoon a few days later, after a particularly late night out. I
caught him shirtless in the kitchen, fiddling around on the stove, and turned
to leave when he suddenly addressed me:
“Want some lunch? Nothing too fancy, but I’ve got some spaghetti at the
ready if you’re interested…” Sawyer remarked casually, draining a hot pot into
a colander.
“I…sure,” I decided, thrown off-guard by his less-than-brooding
demeanor. “After you were done in here, I was probably going to figure out
lunch anyway.”
“There’s plenty enough for the two of us. Would you give me a hand and
shut the stove off? If it’s not done soon, I’m probably going to forget about
it…” He indicated the stove with a nod of his head.
Pushing my confusion aside, I walked into the kitchen and checked the
dials. “Smells good,” I told him, peering into another pot on the stovetop. Inside
was a simmering red sauce, chunked full of cooked ground beef and spices. “I
didn’t know you cooked.”
“I dabble,” Sawyer replied warmly, setting the pot aside and wafting his
hand in the sink. The colander of spaghetti continued to vent steam as he
brushed the heat aside.
A few minutes later, I was sitting at the dining room table as he handed
me a bowl of pasta, topped with chunky ground beef tomato sauce, grated
parmesan cheese, and a sprinkle of oregano. He sat down across the small table
from me with a bowl of the same, and we began to chow down in an uncomfortable
silence.
“This is really good!” I told him happily. “Do you use a specific
recipe, or…?”
“It’s
spaghetti
,” he replied,
giving me a look. “I mean, you have to be a complete idiot to fuck up
spaghetti.”
“I know, I meant…like, the sauce,” I fumbled for words. He was still
watching me flounder with an amused expression on his face. “You obviously did
something with the sauce…”
“I’ll tell you my secret,” he smiled with that stupid, asshole smirk he
liked to use.
Oh boy, here we go.
“It’s
called
salt, pepper,
and
garlic.
Maybe a pinch of
onion
. I swear, Saffron, this is
Culinary 101.”
It was my turn to simmer, as I bit back my tongue.
“You want me to teach you a few things? I can, if you want. We can start
with the basics – toast. When you’re ready, we’ll start talking
making a pancake.
”
“Are you always an asshole?” The words spilled from my lips before I
could stop them.
“Excuse me?”
“Can you just learn to take a fucking compliment sometime? I don’t know
why I even
try
to be nice to you, you
ungrateful, miserable asshole
…” I
stood up from the table, throwing my cloth down. “You know what? Forget it.”
“Saffron–” His expression was confused, which only made me
angrier.
“No. I’ve had enough. You avoid me since the day we arrive, and the one
time I muster up the courage to try and reach out to you, you just have to be a
complete dick again. Forget it. Let’s just get through this stupid summer
together, and go back to hating each other.”
“Hating?”
“I mean, you’ve
obviously
always hated me.” I remained at the edge of the table, ready to just lock
myself away in my room with a book again. “You’ve hated me from the moment
we’ve met. You couldn’t have made that any clearer if you tried.”
“You…you can’t
seriously think
that.”
“What the fuck do
you
care?”
In a spontaneous act of defiance, I shoved the bowl of spaghetti across
the table. It slid towards him, but wobbled at the end of its run. Half the
food slid out of the bowl and against the tabletop as it capsized, making a
conspicuous rolling sound against the wood.
Sawyer looked uncharacteristically pained as he turned from the upended
bowl of pasta to me. “Saffron…”
“Just continue doing whatever the fuck you do when you spend all your
time out,” I told him furiously. “I get it, you know. I really do. You just
hate me so much that you can’t even bear to be around me. So, here I am,
relieving you of your duties as
glorified
reluctant babysitter
. I don’t even know why dad sent you here. I’m an
adult. I can handle myself! Just piss off. Spend the entire time out. I’ll tell
them that you were here all summer and we had a
great old time
and really bonded.”
I stormed from the room, fighting my tears.
How stupid could I have been?
For just a moment, I thought that
maybe we could get along…but I was kept so tired of his bullshit. If Sawyer
just gave me a few conversations where he didn’t pull his macho condescending
attitude out, then maybe we could actually have a normal relationship.
Blowing up at him might have been stupid, but I was sick feeling like I
had to be on edge around him, and I was done with his crap. Sure, I had enjoyed
it…when I was growing up. But it was the same stupid story as before, but now
it just got to me. I’d been stupid to think myself, before we’d even come down
here, that I could continue to enjoy this.
Maybe I would have been able to handle things if I wasn’t so angry with
him for abandoning us. He expected everything to go back to the way it was
before, like he hadn’t betrayed my trust. I’d made every reasonable attempt to
reach out to him when we were growing up, and I’d started to want to let go of
it all when we were stuck together…but it was clear that he just didn’t care.
No
, I thought
to myself, locking the door to my room behind me.
Fuck you. I tried to push it aside and engage you in an actual relationship,
and you’re just the same asshole that you always were.
I lost myself in my book for a few hours. I’d started up on a somewhat
forgettable Victorian romance fantasy. It was more escapist that I generally
tended to like, but the author was an avid lover of the time period, and gave
some incredible descriptions of the relevant caste system and Victorian society
as a whole.
I was reading a particularly juicy section with the servant girl lead
giving the handsome young nobleman a reluctant, sexually charged bathtub scrub
when there was a knock at the door.
“Saffron? Are you in there?”
A heavy sigh lifted from my chest.
“What do you
want?
”
“Can you come out for a moment?”
I bitterly moved my cherished bookmark into the paperback and set it on
the end table. Climbing up from the bed, I unlocked the door and stood in the
doorway, leaning against the frame.
“I’m reading. Can you make it quick?”
There was something about Sawyer that immediately drew my attention.
This was the first time I’d ever seen him…
glum
.
He looked absolutely
miserable
, and I
relished the sight of it…even if it pulled at my heartstrings a little.
No
, I had to
remind myself.
He did this.
“Saffron, I know that I’ve been…difficult.”
“Hah,” I snorted. “
Difficult
.
That’s
one
word for it.”
“You don’t understand,” he confessed, averting his gaze.”
“
What
don’t I understand,
Sawyer?” I demanded to know. “That you’ve treated me like a second-rate citizen
since we met? That you’re an unapologetic
prick?
Fill me in by all means, because I think I pretty much get the gist of it.”
“Saffron.” He said my name with some backbone this time, his eyes
glaring down at me.
“Oh, look. He’s
mad
now.” I
was enjoying this. I had never gotten to experience him at anything less than
100% unadulterated jackass, and it was a treat to see him…wait, was he
nervous?
“I don’t expect you to get it,” he told me, clearly restraining himself
from…something. What, I didn’t know. “But I want you to know that I don’t
hate
you. Not at all.”
“You’ve done a pretty shit job of communicating that for the last, oh, I
don’t know,
ever.
”
“I know,” he continued. “But I promise I’ll be…better at it, from now
on. I might have gone too far.”
“Yeah, you
think?
”
“Look…why don’t you come downstairs? We can sit down and chat for a
while. I can explain some of the things that I’ve been up to, and you can tell
me the same about yourself.”
“Oh my god. Sawyer Samuels wants a heart-to-heart.”
His expression darkened.
Crap. I
pushed him too far.
“Look, we’re going to be here for awhile, I’m extending a fucking olive
branch, Saffron. If you don’t want it, then don’t get pissed when–”
“No, you’re right,” I suddenly cut him off. Something in me had changed,
and I couldn’t let the opportunity get away. “That sounds nice. I’ll be right
down.”
He nodded before walking down the hallway. I could hear the stairs
squeak slightly as he descended, and I turned my back to the door.
Since when does he give a shit
about me?
Mustering up every once of patience I had, I wandered downstairs. I
wasn’t willing to lose this chance, so I played along…at least, until I figured
out if he was just playing the
long con
now.
Cautiously, I sat down at the dining room table again, realizing that every
trace of the spilled spaghetti had been erased. I don’t know why it surprised
me – maybe I just thought he wasn’t the type to clean much up himself.
“So, you wanted to…talk?” I asked, uncertainly.
“Saffron, would you like to know what I’ve been doing for a living?”
“Do I
want
to know?”
“Come on,” Sawyer pleaded. He looked uncharacteristically strained, and
I couldn’t tell if I should be afraid or not. “Just be straight with me.”
“Alright. Tell me.”
He took a deep breath, forcing the first genuine smile I’ve seen him
give me. “I’m an underground cage fighter.”
“You’re a
what?
”
“A cage fighter.”
So THAT’s why he was at that
place last night.
“…Well, that explains the incredible body…”
I immediately realized that my face was beginning to redden, and I
turned away from his bare musculature. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice.
“Yeah, I’ve had to put myself through the ringer to get into this
shape.”