Going the Distance (12 page)

Still, this
would
be great for business. And she was undeniably intrigued by the prospect of having a big deal made of her, if only for a day. How often did a nonbride get to feel that special?

Jenna clutched the magazine.
“
Please
say you'll think about it,”

“I'll definitely
think
about it. It's, um... Oh gosh, thank you for even suggesting me. It's incredibly flattering. But give me a day or two to hunt down the last issue and see if they made the women look empowered or completely tragic.” She recalled a certain episode of
Sex and the City,
not eager to suffer Carrie Bradshaw's humiliating fate in a similarly spin-able situation.

“You'd be
perfect.
Like Spark's high-profile ambassador. And you do so freaking much around here, you deserve some spotlight.”

Lindsey pictured all the photo shoots she'd witnessed for engagement announcements, all those fancy lamps and lenses, makeup and hair people fussing over the bride. She could enjoy that, and without the fiancé, even. Tempting.

“So this is business-relevant, right?”

Jenna nodded.

“So if tomorrow my morning is as quiet as the calendar makes out, could I spend it looking into this...proposal?”

“You may. In fact, if any unexpected client issues pop up before lunch, I'll tackle them for you.”

“Okay. Sold.”

Jenna did an undignified little celebration dance, spinning around on her chair.

“Calm down. I didn't say yes.”

“Last year they did Boston's most eligible bachelors, so check two autumns back.”

“I will.”

Maya appeared in the doorway, and it took one glance at her posture and her beet-red complexion to know that something was amiss. Lindsey's mood went black.

“You okay? You're all flushed.”

“Tell your stupid boyfriend I quit.”

Jenna looked to Lindsey so fast her ponytail should've cracked like a whip. “Wait. Whose boyfriend?”

“Either,” Maya snapped. “Her boyfriend, yours—tell any of those guys I
so
quit. I'm never going down there again.”

Lindsey ignored whatever puzzled look Jenna was surely shooting her on the topic of an undisclosed boyfriend.

This was no simple tantrum. Protective older-sister mode kicked in, and Lindsey wheeled her chair over, dead serious. “Sit down. Did something happen? With one of the guys from the gym?”

Maya chewed on her answer, tears glistening in her lower lashes.

Lindsey touched her arm. “Tell me.”
Tell me, and may God have mercy on whatever man said or did something to make you cry.

She huffed out a breath, rolling her eyes. “He made me punch the stupid bag.”

“Who did?”

“Rich.”

Lindsey frowned, suddenly more confused than angry. “Okay... Why are you crying?”

“Because he was a
jerk
about it. And everyone was watching and he made me feel like an idiot.”

Rich was grating sometimes, but Lindsey never would have described him as
cruel.
“I'll talk to him.” She shot Jenna a questioning look and got a nod of approval. “I'll be back in a minute.”

She stomped down the steps, her protective side melding with a zillion unresolved, uncomfortable emotions regarding her and Rich's noncourtship. He was chatting with Mercer by the bags.

“Hey.” She marched over, resisting an urge to give him a sharp shove. “Why's my sister crying?”

His smile dissolved. “Crying?”

Mercer looked deeply uncomfortable and excused himself.

“You made her hit stuff while everybody watched?”

“I—”

“That girl doesn't have an athletic bone in her body, and you go and haze her about it in a gym full of guys who must seem like middle-aged men to a seventeen—”

“Whoa, whoa.” Rich put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off, taking a step back. He steadied himself on his crutch. “I didn't haze anybody. And everyone was watching because she's frigging
good.
”

Lindsey frowned. “What?”

“She's good. She can hit. Listen—I was just having a little fun with her. I wasn't making fun
of
her, I swear.”

“She's a teenage girl. You can't just make her do that while a bunch of older men watch. Do you have any clue how uncomfortable that would make her?”

His brows rose. “No. I guess I don't. The teenage girls where I grew up were as tough as the guys.”

“Well, Maya's not one of them. And you freaked her out.”

“Where is she?”

“In the office.”

“Lemme apologize to her.”

Lindsey crossed her arms. “I think you've done enough damage.”

“C'mon. I got a sister, too. Don't take her home before I can say I'm sorry.”

She considered it. “You can follow me up, but if she doesn't want to hear anything from you, you leave her alone.”

“Deal.”

They made their way up the steps, Lindsey not slowing for Rich's benefit.

“She really is good,” he huffed between hops. “I'd train her if she'd let me.”

Maya Tuttle, a kickboxer? Lindsey wanted to laugh at the very idea, but part of her was intrigued. Maya had never shown a protracted interest in any particular activity or subject, or been stand-out talented enough to be praised as special by any authority figures. Surely that was part of the reason she was ambivalent about going back to school.

“Stay here,” she said when they reached the foyer. She entered the office, finding Maya on her laptop, checking Facebook. Jenna was in the private meeting room on a call, judging by the muffled, halting conversation.

“Rich would like to apologize to you,” she told Maya.

“I'm not going back down there. Ever.”

“He's come up. Would you like to hear him grovel, or shall I send him away?”

Curiosity passed over Maya's face, something that told Lindsey she liked the revenge inherent in this offer. She'd always been keen to guilt an apology out of her parents and siblings. “Yeah, I guess.”

Lindsey went back to the hall, feeling like a principal. “Okay,” she told Rich, “you get five minutes.”

He followed her back inside. Lindsey loitered by the door as he took a seat on the edge of her desk.

“Hey,” he said, laying his crutches on his thighs.

“Hey,”
Maya muttered.

“I'm sorry if I upset you. I thought you were just mad at me for bossing you around. Since I'm kinda your boss.”

Her lips quivered, undermining her tough-girl act. “You guys were making fun of me. Because I suck.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “You don't suck.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I've been boxing forever. I've seen plenty of guys come through those doors who've been punching stuff since they were toddlers, expecting to be told they're the next Frazier or Silva or Victor Ortiz.”

“I don't know who any of those people are.”

He smiled. “No, I bet you don't. But hardly any of those kids who show up, thinking they're something special, turn out to be much good.”

“How can you tell
I'm
any good, just from that little bit of punching?”

He shrugged. “Trust me, your technique's busted. But for somebody who's never hit anything before, you've got some power. Plus that death glare you were giving me...”

Lindsey smiled. She knew that glare. Her sister could hold a grudge like no one else.

“I've seen a thousand guys come and go down there, but you got something nine hundred and ninety of them never will. My old mentor used to call that ‘the magic.'”

Maya looked embarrassed, but from flattery now, not humiliation. “I probably just got lucky.”

Rich eyed her shrewdly. “Gimme five one-hour sessions with you, after your next set of shifts, and I promise I'll get Mercer to give you a raise.”

She straightened. “How much of a raise? Double?”

“I'm not a magician, kid.”

“I want twelve bucks an hour. At
least.
And I want to get paid for the time I spend getting taught.”

Rich blew out a long breath. “You're killing me here.”

“And I'm not buying any equipment.”

“Fine. I'll train you on the clock. Twelve bucks an hour. Retroactive
after
I get my five sessions. And I'll pony up for your gear.” He put out a hand.

“Twelve
at least,”
she reminded him, but shook nonetheless.

“Come downstairs a sec. I'll give you some DVDs to watch for homework.”

Maya made a big dramatic show of reluctance, but followed him out the door.

Once they'd disappeared, Lindsey laughed aloud.

9

T
HE
WEEK
PASSED
quickly. Lindsey agreed to do the bachelorette article, and was secretly getting more and more excited about it. She'd found the previous issue on the same theme, the profiles all flattering.

Maya had completed three of her so-called private lessons with Rich, and though she staggered up the gym's steps complaining of blisters and sore muscles, the second they got home she was cuing up the latest DVD she'd been lent. Lindsey only hoped her sister wouldn't fall so madly in love with fighting that it would steel her refusal to go back to school. She might need to research MMA gyms around Springfield and break it to her parents that their erstwhile couch-potato daughter might possibly be bribed into academic compliance with a membership. She could guess their reaction.

“We let your little sister stay with you, and within a week she's into
cage fighting?
”

Lindsey had her argument ready. “Beats boys or booze.”

Saturday and Sunday were gobbled up by unpacking and decorating, and Diana lent Lindsey her car so she could shop for the essentials lost in her quasi-divorce from Brett. Maya was kept busy as well, only at Wilinski's. There was a two-day seminar for newbie fighters, and Rich and Mercer had invited her to participate, provided she help with the setup.

Rich might be showing an exceptional interest in her sister, but it was clear any interest he'd had in Lindsey was gone. Snuffed dead in the wake of their messing around. Lucky him, to have burned his infatuation clean away that night in the gym. It still simmered hot inside Lindsey. She wished she could go cool and casual as easily as he had.

Late on Sunday afternoon she changed out of her housecleaning clothes and into a skirt and tank. She could smell the feast awaiting her—the savory scent of Rich's mom's cooking had wended its way up two floors to make her mouth water. Maya got home as Lindsey was curling her hair.

“Hey. How was it?”

Maya leaned in the bathroom doorway and shrugged. “It was pretty cool.” Never one to openly enthuse, this translated roughly to
It was freaking awesome!

“Were you the only girl?”

“Yup,” she said, the word all haughty with pride.

“What'd you learn?”

“Lots of stuff. Tons of kicking. I hit this one kid so hard, he fell over backward.”

Lindsey shot her a look, alarmed.

“Don't spaz—he was holding a big pad thing. But Rich clapped for me and everything. Or maybe he was fake-clapping for the kid, for falling over. Either way.”

Lindsey smiled, secretly wishing Rich would quit doing things to make her like him so damn much. If he could just go back to being an arrogant caricature, she could go back to believing her attraction was purely physical. Maybe once his foot healed, the strutting rooster would return and remind her why this crush was not a thing to be taken seriously.

“Check this out.” Maya proceeded to show off a sampler of bruises and scrapes. Part of Lindsey was horrified, but she was far more proud to think maybe her sister wouldn't grow up into one of those women who fell to pieces over a chipped nail.

At seven they headed downstairs. The door to the bottom unit was open, and Rich, his mother, Diana and a handsome young black guy were standing around the kitchen. It was sweltering with the heat of summer and cooking.

“Oh, my God,” Maya said, breathing in dramatically. “It smells even better down here.”

Rich spotted them and whistled to cut through the chatter. “Hey, quick intros! Lindsey and Maya, this is my mom, Lorena.” They all shook, then Lindsey shook Diana's hand as well, having not properly met her the night she'd given Maya a lift. “And my sister's no-good boyfriend, Andre.” More handshakes. Andre's big, warm smile said he was used to this ribbing. “Now introduce yourselves to a drink. Dinner's ready in what,
Mamá?
”

“Ten or fifteen,” she said, peeking under a pot lid.

Rich waved Lindsey and Maya toward the counter, set up with glasses and wine and soda.

Andre and Diana wrestled an extra leaf into the table and added a couple mismatched chairs from the next room.

Before long everyone was seated with heaping plates of tamales and beans and steamed corn on the cob. Lindsey and Maya took their cues from the others, peeling the leaves away before discovering they'd wasted their entire lives until this moment, never having tasted tamales.

Rich was different with his family. He nearly always seemed relaxed, but there was a deeper warmth to him tonight. He razzed Diana's boyfriend at every opportunity, though Andre gave nearly as good as he got. Lorena was quick to disparage the odd cussword, but even quicker to laugh. The easy company and wine and
way
too much delicious food lulled Lindsey into believing everything was simple. That she hadn't been invited to this house or this dinner by a man who both infatuated and confounded her. For an hour, life was blissfully uncomplicated.

Lorena grew tired early, and Lindsey was proud when her sister volunteered to help Diana with the dishes. Lindsey cleared their places, then settled down at the table with the guys to finish her wine. Rich looked happy, slouched way back in his chair, legs spread wide.

She no longer wondered why a man of nearly thirty would still be living at his mom's house. Their family dynamic was just...different. Culturally. If any of Lindsey's brothers moved home with their parents, they'd all wonder what had gone wrong. But the Estradas seemed tighter-knit. Plus, Rich was the man of the house, and in their family that seemed to truly count for something.

She and Maya thanked the Estradas profusely for dinner and said their good-nights. As they headed back upstairs, Maya patted her belly. “Oh, man. I hope they invite us down every Sunday.”

“Hear, hear.”

Their place felt empty and quiet after the energy of Lorena's kitchen. Maya promptly stole Lindsey's laptop and set herself up on the couch to watch whatever homework she'd been given—old boxing matches, documentaries, MMA specials, fight flicks spanning the gamut from classic to campy. Lindsey smiled every time her sister muttered a surprised, “Whoa!” or “Nice” in response to whatever she was watching.

Lindsey prepared for the coming week. She hand-washed the silk top she wanted to wear for her first meeting with the magazine people on Wednesday, and opened the door to the fire escape. She breathed in the heady August air. A clothesline ran between their building and the neighbors' across the wide side driveway, and she pinned her top and reeled it out, liking how old-fashioned the chore felt.

“Hey.”

She screamed.

Not a loud scream, but more than a yelp. She glared, finding Rich sitting on the steps that led down to the second floor. He was facing the other way, twisted around to smile up at her. She fisted her skirt tight to her thighs.

“So modest,” he teased. Like he hadn't gotten her down to her panties in the gym.

“You scared the crap out of me.”

He shrugged an apology.

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here?”

Her annoyance faded with her adrenaline, and she descended a few steps to take a seat halfway between the landings. “I mean, what are you doing on the fire escape?”

“I used to smoke out here. Now it's just where I come to sit. Watch people come and go. Clear my head. You have a good time tonight?”

“Possibly
too
good a time. I can barely walk, I ate so much.”

“I'll tell my mom you said that. It'll make her week.”

“Your family's really cool.” Lindsey loved her own family, and they were a fairly functional bunch overall. But an hour spent crammed around a table in Lorena's overheated kitchen had felt warmer and more familial than the Tuttles' traditional Thanksgivings, everything arranged just so in the rarely used dining room. “You're all so easy to be around.”

“These days, yeah, I suppose so. It's been a good year.”

“My little sister's camped out on the couch, watching old fight videos. She seems to have lost interest in any and all Kardashians, so I owe you.”

He grinned. “She won't be ready to actually spar with anybody for a while—she's got, like, negative cardio capacity. But stuck in with all those other beginners at this weekend's clinics... She's got the instinct, if not all the skills.”

“Weird. She usually hates sweating.”

Rich covered his mouth, yawning widely.

“Aw, did we tire you out? When's the last time you had a day off?”

“Haven't since I got back. But any money's good money, and if I wasn't working I'd be there most of the day anyhow, training or loitering. Still, not too excited that I gotta be up at the ass-crack of dawn to catch a bus.... Man, I miss driving.”

“In that death trap you call a car? Why haven't you bought a new one?”

“It does the job. And it's what I can afford.”

“Even with all that prize money?”

“Prize money's gone. Spent or set aside for emergencies.”

She frowned. That was a lot of money to blow through, considering how big his payday had been for the Albuquerque fight barely two weeks ago. What on earth did he do for fun on the road? “Maybe after your big return.”

Rich's tone went a touch flat. “'Fraid not. It'll take a couple more high-end matches before I'll have any cash to play with.”

“You have gambling debts or something?”

“Nah. My mom's got this heart condition, and no insurance company will have her for less than a fortune. She's been through a bunch of surgeries the past couple years.”

Her suspicions morphed to sadness. “I'm sorry to hear that.” Not wanting to make Rich continue to crane his body, she brushed past him, down to the second-floor landing. She sat as demurely as she could and stretched her legs in front of her. The slats felt funny, digging into her thighs through the light fabric of her skirt, but she liked it. It felt...urban. Like her new neighborhood. Like sitting on this fire escape with a foul-mouthed townie who bled for money.

“Plus you wouldn't believe how much I pay for my own insurance, given my job description,” Rich went on. “And my sister's in her nursing program, and I gotta subsidize her until she tricks some poor sucker into marrying her.”

“Some poor sucker like Andre?”

“We'll see. She moves slow with guys. But whoever the sucker, it'll be me footing the bill.”

“Damn. Why do you have to take care of everybody?”

“Because my father's not here to do the job. It's just how we do it. Cultural thing, I guess.”

The door beside Lindsey was open, and she leaned over to steal a peek at the barest kitchen she'd ever seen. “I'm guessing you always eat downstairs. Don't you even have a table?”

“It's just me on the middle floor, and I'm a mama's boy, so yeah.”

“If my mom cooked like yours does, I wouldn't bother, either.”

“Not much going on in the second floor except sleeping and showering. My mom and sister won't come up here, not since my dad passed away.”

“Oh.” She'd always assumed that Rich had been raised by a single mother.

“But I don't care. Nobody goes in the room where he passed anymore, but I sleep in the other bedroom. My mom can't even say ‘the second floor' without crossing herself.”

“What...what happened to your dad? He died young, it sounds like.”

Rich stood, doing a very poor imitation of apathy as he stretched his injured leg. “He shot himself.”

She shivered. “Oh.”

He looked her in the eyes, deepening the chill. “And before that, he was a pitiful waste of space. If he thought his family was better off without him, he was right.”

She felt herself recoiling, wanting to curl up and protect herself from his callousness. It wasn't directed at her, but it unnerved her all the same. She and Rich were friends, though their sexual attraction had been more potent than their platonic bond. They were close, but not on a level that let her know how to relate to him now. And she imagined that was the point. He'd put a wall up between them, and not by mistake.

“I'm sorry if your dad...sucked.”

He huffed a silent laugh and shook his head, as though he could think of no word harsh enough to adequately disparage the man. Then he spoke, contradicting his expression slightly. “He was a gentle guy, at least. I'll give him that much.” He took a seat once more, one step closer to Lindsey.

“It must be hard, having to fill all those roles.”

“That was my mom's job.” His tone lost a measure of its darkness. “Being both parents and the provider.”

“Until she got sick?”

He nodded.

“Is that when you started fighting?”

“Nah. I started boxing when I was in middle school.”

“Oh, damn.”

“But it hadn't been about money before.” He linked his hands, staring down at his flexing fingers. “There's no money in boxing, not at the bottom. I did it because it was the only thing that...I dunno. That made me feel anything, aside from angry. That made me forget for a few minutes that my mom prayed for my rotten soul every night, and cried herself to sleep, worrying about where I was headed.”

“Ah.”

“But after my dad was gone and she had her first real emergency, I was twenty-four. I was a high school dropout and I was good at exactly one thing. My old mentor, Jenna's dad, had already sent me to Thailand. That trip changed me.”

“It humbled you, you said.”

He met her gaze. “It did. I was surrounded by all these guys who understood fighting the way I did—as their only option. And it drove home this feeling like,
this is all you've got.
The only thing I'm good at. If I don't make something of it, I may as well take a page out of my dad's book and put a gun in my mouth.”