Page 49 of Gym Bros (Bay Area Bros #2)
“This is fine,” I tell her. I don’t need to hear flesh splitting open. There’s not a fight happening at the moment, but there is very loud rock music playing and three people cleaning the floor of the octagon.
“Beer?” Rachel asks. “I feel like it’s mandatory.”
I shake my head, eyes scanning the crowd.
“You want me to try and figure out where he is?” Priya asks, her phone already out.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want him to know I’m here.”
“That’s stupid. We’re sending a selfie.”
“I don’t want to distract him,” I argue.
“If a supportive selfie distracts him enough to undo months of training, then I hate to tell you, he’s got bigger problems. Now here.”
She holds out her phone. Rachel, from my other side, forces me into a squish between them, and while they both smile, I pose, giving eyes .
We examine the result. Priya doesn’t like the way her chin looks, but I look phenomenal, so I refuse to sit for another.
A moment after she hits send, my phone buzzes in my hand.
Samuel
Where are you?
Me
Guess
Samuel
If you liked what I did to you last night, you are in no way prepared for what I have planned for you later.
Rachel snorts. “What happened last night?”
I turn my phone over on my leg. “Do you mind?”
A fight between two women is announced shortly. One is tall and wiry, the other is shorter and muscular. Both are white with their hair styled in cornrow braids. They’re wearing gloves, sports bra tops, and long athletic shorts. Their feet are bare.
If I had to bet on this fight based on physical appearances, I’d put my money on the shorter one. However, as it gets underway, my assumptions quickly take a backseat to the vicious aggression coming from the wiry one.
We’re nowhere close to the octagon, and over the crowd noise, I can’t hear any of the body contact, but I can certainly see the blood. By the end of the first five minute round, they’re both still standing, and their faces are covered in red.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
“I think that tall one is on Samuel’s team,” Rachel says.
“How do you know?”
“I googled around a little this morning while Pri was taking her sweet time getting ready.
“She’s brutal,” I note, regarding the fighter .
“Yeah.”
So brutal, that the second round lasts less than a minute, ending with the shorter woman slumped in a corner, passed out.
“Is she alive?” Priya asks, not sounding too concerned about it.
I slap her leg.
“What?” she gestures at the cage. “I mean—oh. She’s fine.”
One of the losing fighter’s trainers has waved something under her nose, and she jerks back to consciousness. She’s now being helped up while the referee declares Samuel’s apparent teammate the winner.
Her victorious grin is the stuff of horror movies. I check my watch. It’s three-thirty. “I think I will take a beer.”
Rachel pats my leg. “I got you.”
I lean my head on Priya’s shoulder. “What do I see in him exactly?”
“Samuel?”
“Mmhm.”
“He makes you smile. He brings out the best in you. He’s hot. He’s sweet. He does whatever you tell him to.”
“He also has a big dick,” I say to keep things real and not go off into woo-woo romance land.
She snickers. “Even better.”
“Knows what to do with it, too,” I add unnecessarily.
“Yeah? What was that someone once said about twenty-year old guys?”
“I might have been right about that. I wouldn’t know. Didn’t fuck him until he was twenty-one. We’re going to Hawaii for Christmas,” I say, speaking it definitively into the universe.
“Seriously?” She perks up and turns to me. “Do you have room for two more?”
I smile. “I don’t own Hawaii, but our room is full.”
“Are you glad you took a chance on him? ”
“Honestly, it didn’t feel like taking a chance,” I tell her. “It felt more like giving into a craving. And then once I realized the risk, it was too late. I was already too far gone.”
“Well, that’s no help,” she says.
I frown. “No help with what?”
Priya’s dark eyes are wide, and her mouth is tense. “Can you keep a secret? Like a super intense, super secret secret?”
“Yeah.”
“Rachel and I made out last night. Or like—I guess you could say we hooked up.”
My own eyes feel like they’re bulging from their sockets. “Excuse me?”
“We were really drunk—so—there’s that, and this morning we both just kind of laughed it off, and I pretended like—how’d I wind up here half naked in your bed, you know?”
I nod carefully.
“It was good, Calyx…like...” She inhales deeply. “ Hot. ”
“But you’re not talking about it?”
Her mouth twists, and she shakes her head. “Not yet.”
“Who started it?”
“Hard to say. Probably me?”
“Because you like her? Like that ?”
“I love her, I mean. She’s my best friend.”
“But do you love her?”
“I don’t know. I mean—I don’t mind when she hooks up with guys. We’ve shared before too, made out a few times for show, but last night—I don’t know. I wanted her. Is that so weird?”
“ I don’t think so,” I say honestly. Was there any under the cover action?” I ask.
“Just boobs. And maybe some grinding.”
“Did you?—”
“Oh yeah. Big time. ”
I smile and sit back in my seat. “I love this. I love knowing this. If she tries to give me any shit about anything?—”
“Secret, Calyx. You promised.”
“Ugh. I knew better than to promise that.”
“I’m in no way saying I’m done with dick,” Priya says suddenly and emphatically.
I laugh. “Okay.”
“But do you think there’s a guy out there who would take on two?”
“I think that’s pretty much a given,” I tell her. If only Isaac were straight. Two lovers is probably exactly what it would take to keep him happy.
“It’s just a thought,” she says quickly.
“Of course.”
“Don’t tell her I told you. But if she tells you, you have to tell me.”
“Jesus, you two. You really do kind of belong together, you know?”
“Yes. I know. You say it all the time. We’re a handful.”
Rachel is back with three beers, and she passes them out. “What?” she asks, examining both our perfectly blank expressions. Then she makes a face at Priya. “You told him?”
“What? No .”
“You totally did. She told you didn’t she?” Rachel asks me.
“Do you two mind?” I say, gesturing to the octagon. “My boyfriend is about to come out.”
“I hope she also told you I made her come twice,” Rachel says, to which, Priya is quick to add:
“So did you, bitch.”
“Oh my god.” I sink into my seat, trying not to let my laughter take over my body. Good luck to whatever men decide to try taming them.
The blaring music quiets, and the announcer comes on the mic. “In the men’s middleweight division, please welcome to the octagon, San Francisco’s own Samuel “Saber” Ray fighting for NorCal KO Elite.”
Oh, holy shit. I don’t move. I stay slouched low, barely able to see the octagon, much less wherever Samuel’s coming in from. There are cheers and hoots and applause.
“What’s happening?” I yell.
“I can’t tell, they’re like frisking him or something,” Rachel says.
“And,” the announcer says, “Beck “The Beheader” Cole.”
“The Beheader ?” I ask. “Is that what he said?”
“And you thought Saber sounded stupid,” Priya replies.
“What does he look like? Is he huge?”
“No. He’s heavy, but he’s not tall.”
“Can you tell why he’s called The Beheader?”
“Nothing’s really standing out. He’s got red hair, but I don’t think that’s it.”
I force myself to sit up, and I’m just in time to see the two fighters enter the cage. Samuel’s tanned skin is already glowing with sweat. The other man is pale, bearded, and has hamhocks for forearms.
I think I enter a fugue state. The man who was on his knees for me last night isn’t in the room. The guy in the octagon is menacing. He doesn’t walk, he stalks. He doesn’t hit, he strikes. He doesn’t hesitate—he attacks.
The Beheader is on the ground beneath Samuel’s strong legs within moments.
When he tries to buck Sam off, my one-time hopelessly inflexible yoga student twists his spine and spins off his opponent in a move so fast and confusing, I don’t even see how he winds up perpendicular to the other man, legs trapping his neck, and wrenching his arm into an almost impossible position.
A whistle blows .
“The winner by an arm bar submission is Saber Ray!”
“Well,” Priya says. “That was anticlimactic.”
“It’s over?” I breathe.
“They just said he won.”
“The round or…”
Priya puts an arm around me. “He won, babe. It’s over. He lives to fight another day. I don’t even see any blood.”
“Was he like really good or was the other guy just really bad?” I ask.
“Fuck if I know,” Priya says.
“Now can we go find him?” Rachel asks.
I nod, already standing while I drain my beer in a few gulps.
The venue isn’t exactly high security, but it is kind of a maze once we figure out where “backstage” is. None of us is surprised Samuel isn’t returning texts, but it would be a fuck ton easier if he would.
Rachel, who’s never met a VIP area she couldn’t get into, leads the way, asking random people as we go where the fighters from Samuel’s gym are.
Eventually, we’re in a bleak but noisy hallway where people in tracksuits are pacing, and men in actual suits are on phone calls. I’ve deduced that the fighters from Samuel’s gym are all wearing red shorts, and that’s how Rachel’s tracking her way here.
As we approach an open door, a short man in a cheap suit stops us.
“Are you lost?” he asks.
“I’m Saber’s girlfriend,” Rachel says. “Just wanted to give him a big congrats.”
I frown at her, but she’s busy stroking her collarbone to draw attention to her chest.
The dude at the door nods us inside.
“Babe, holy shit!” Rachel says loudly .
Samuel’s head pops out of the t-shirt he’s pulling on, and his gaze lands squarely on me.
His smile is broad and beautiful. I start to take a step toward him and then freeze when a man rises from a couch behind him, an equally and eerily similar grin for Rachel on his face until he notices me, and it turns into a curious frown.
Oh no. No. No. No. Shit.
Marcus.