Chapter Ten
Jacob
It was the last day of the tour, and I was getting ready to fight. Natalie was sitting in the corner of the room, Dictaphone acting as a discouragement from reaching over and ravishing her, and asking me a last set of questions as they related to the tour so far.
“So, what are your plans when you go back to the city?” she asked, and she looked up at me casually. I could tell, though, that there was something going on in her brain, the same thing that was dancing through mine as the question came out of her mouth.
I paused my pacing up and down the floor of the slightly grimy dressing room I’d been assigned when I arrived and looked at her.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “The season’s going to be over so I’m going to have plenty of time to myself. What about you?”
She hesitated before she answered, and reached over to flick off the Dictaphone. I cocked my head at her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, and she shook her head.
“I just think….” She trailed off, the words escaping her – a rare feat for someone like Natalie who always seemed to have the perfect way of putting things right on hand. “Maybe we should leave talking about that stuff, you know?”
“Well, you’re the one who brought it up,” I pointed out playfully, and she managed to offer me up a slightly sad smile. I knew how she felt. With only one night left before we flew back and returned to our real lives, the question of what was going to happen to us was hanging heavy and thick in the air around us.
“Yeah, sorry,” she bit her lip and managed a genuine smile as she looked me up and down.
“You must be excited, though. Last fight. You going to win?”
“Of course, I am,” I assured her with a cocky shrug. “Why, you doubting me?”
“I would never dare,” she held her hands up, laughing.
“Yeah, I’m going to win,” I looked in the mirror briefly, fixing my hair. “And then I’m going to head back up here and fuck the living shit out of you.”
“That sounds painful,” she shot back, but I saw the glint of excitement in her eyes as the words came out of my mouth.
“You objecting?” I asked.
“Not at all,” she raised her eyebrows. “We’ve got to make the most-”
She cut herself off before the words could fully form, but we both knew at once what she was talking about. Her face dropped and she looked down at the notebook that was perched on top of her crossed legs. She knew as well as I did that we might never see each other again after all this was over, and honestly the thought was seriously beginning to get under my skin.
“Yeah,” I replied, voice softer than before. It felt as though someone had punched me in the stomach - well, harder than usual.
“You should be thinking about getting out there,” she reminded me, nodding to the door.
“Don’t want to be late.”
“Will you be there to watch me?” I asked. I always found myself doing better when she was in the crowd. In fact, I was starting to wonder how I would fare when I returned to my usual circuit and had to face the fact that she wouldn’t be there every single time. She nodded.
“Of course, I will,” she agreed. “And I’ll meet you back here afterwards. To…celebrate your inevitable victory.”
I walked over to her, leaned down, and caught her face in my hands. She looked up at me, eyes wide, before our lips met. It was a surprisingly chaste kiss on the outside, but it was laced with tantalizing g promise that I couldn’t wait to take advantage of.
“I can’t wait,” I brushed my nose against her’s, and she closed her eyes apparently to savor the tiny moment between us. I knew how she felt. Soon, all of this was going to be ripped away from us, and we would have no excuse to hide out in each other’s hotel rooms or make out backstage. I was going to miss it, more than I was probably able to admit to myself.
I pulled back, straightened up, and grinned at the slightly dreamy look she had on her face. She stuck her tongue out at me.
“You’re just stupidly fucking cute, you know that?” I remarked, turning away so I could fight the urge to take her right there and then. She shrugged.
“You’d be surprised but I don’t hear it that often,” she shot back. I loved our banter, loved the way we bounced back and forth off one another. She could call me on my shit and give as good as she got; they were the kind of sentiments I saw in romcoms more than real life, but I didn’t realize how much I’d craved them until I met Natalie.
“You going?” She prompted me again, and I nodded. I was lingering around backstage because I knew that every second I spent with her would be amongst the last and just wanted to make the most of it, but I wasn’t sure she’d have enjoyed my sappy reasoning. I put my hand on the door, pulled it open, and gestured for her to step outside.
She did, and I found my eyes drifting down her body – I wasn’t checking her out, necessarily, but committing every inch of her to memory. If I could have photographed her, I would have kept it in my wallet for the rest of my days.
She was so gloriously perfect, the kind of woman who stumbled into your life and shook it up like a snow globe so everything you thought you knew is left fluttering around you while you try to get a handle on everything again.
As the two of us headed towards the stage and the sound of the roaring crowd, she reached out to squeeze my hand briefly, and I realized in that second that I was more afraid of losing her than losing the fight.
It went fast, and I won quickly, even though I couldn’t focus on much but Natalie’s face in the crowd. I felt like an old-timey knight, the kind who won their lady’s favor by declaring a victory over their opponent. I swung my punches and ducked his kicks and soon enough I had him on the ropes; he tapped out, the referee called it, and the crowd let out an enormous cheer that told me most of them had bet on me that evening.
I held my hands up to acknowledge their support, and ducked into the VIP area where I was meant to sign a bunch of autographs for my fans. The VIP area had started out less official at the beginning of the tour, but soon enough as people became more and more acquainted with my name and my skills, it became one of the biggest sellers and I found myself posing for photos with a couple of dozen people every night. Every time, I apologized for the sweat and the blood, but all of them seemed to like it that way and dismissed my worries with a hand-wave and a shrug.
A woman approached me, a VIP lanyard hanging around her neck and a smile a mile wide on her face. She was dressed in jean-shorts and a tight top that showed off a body I wouldn’t have hesitated to look twice at if I hadn’t been so distracted. She held up her camera and raised her eyebrows at me, and I plastered on a grin and gestured for her to come stand next to me. The faster I got all of these done, the faster I could go off and spend the rest of the night with Natalie.
The woman snuggled up close to me and held her camera out – she was chattering away but I was having trouble paying attention to what was coming out of her mouth as I was focused on the fact that Natalie had just come through the door. She glanced over at me and saw the woman pressed tightly against my side. I kept my face neutral but tried to express the fact that I was sorry, so sorry, as the woman took the photograph. She pulled away, and cocked her hip to the side as she looked at me.
“So?” She asked, and I returned my attention to her at once.
“So, what?” I asked as politely as I could. She was paying good money to be here and the least I could do was make sure that she didn’t feel as though she’d wasted every penny of it.
“So, do you want to come back to mine?” She flashed me a nervous grin. “I never normally do this, but-”
“No,” I cut across her. “Thanks. I have…plans tonight.”
“Oh,” She looked pretty disappointed, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that. She followed my gaze to Natalie, and then looked back to me.
“Is that your girlfriend?” She asked, and without thinking, I nodded.
“Yeah, it is,” I agreed, and her eyes widened.
“I didn’t realize you had…” She trailed off, distracted, as she lifted her camera to snap a picture of Natalie. Natalie raised her eyebrows at me, waited for the girl to back off, and then approached.
“What was that?” She asked as the girl made her way out of the back room, looking down at her phone intently.
“She was trying to get me back to her place,” I explained. “But I told her that I couldn’t go.”
“For me? You’re too sweet,” she grinned teasingly. But before we could get another word out, I spotted Angelo storming towards me with a face like thunder. He pushed himself between Natalie and me, and raised his eyebrows in my direction.
“So?” He demanded.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I held my hands up and stepped around him so I could look at Natalie once again.
“I just heard a woman walking out of here talking about the fact that you just told her that Natalie is your girlfriend,” he replied through gritted teeth. Natalie’s eyes bugged out in shock.
“Is that true?” She turned to me, and I couldn’t read the expression on her face.
“Yeah,” I nodded, something in my head lifting and removing all the panic that had come with Natalie and I since the start. I was clear-minded at last, and nothing seemed to matter anymore but making sure I made the most of my time with this woman. “She was trying to get me back to hers and that was all I could think off to get her off my back.”
“Why didn’t you just go?” Angelo rolled his eyes, exasperated. “Did you see her? She was hot as shit!”
“I don’t want her,” I dismissed him with a wave of my hand. “You’re welcome to her if she’s still around.”
“So, you guys are dating?” He glanced between us with gritted teeth, and Natalie and I exchanged a look. A smile was playing at the corner of her mouth, but there was still a nervousness in her eyes. I reached out to take her hand, doing my best to ignore the curious glances of the people around us.
“You want to be?” I asked, and Natalie nodded tentatively.
“I just put in the last draft of the article last night,” she grinned. “It’s…it’s all done now.”
“What about your sponsors?” Angelo pointed out, and there was an edge of desperation to his voice that I had never heard the likes of before. “You have a reputation to uphold, Jacob, you know that-”
“I can live without them,” I replied firmly. “And you really think they’re all going to drop out if they find out that I have a girlfriend, anyway?”
Angelo glared at me, and I could see that he was trying to come up with something, anything that would encourage me to drop this relationship. But there was nothing he could say, nothing he could do. I wanted to be with Natalie, and that was the only thing that mattered. The only thing I had to lose were some asshole sponsors, and I knew I was good enough to get some who wouldn’t bolt at the first sign of a relationship.
“So, this is just you now?” He threw his hands in the air. “You’re just going to…do this?”
“Sure am,” I met his gaze steadily, and Natalie squeezed my hand. She was with me on this and that was all I needed.
“I can’t believe you,” Angelo snapped, and I could see it coming before the words so much as came out of his mouth.
“I quit,” He shook his head. “I can’t work with you if you’re just going to ignore everything I say. Good luck explaining all of this to your sponsors.”
“Thanks for the well-wishes,” I called after him sarcastically, and turned to Natalie. Her eyes were shining with something that looked close to love, and I pulled her close against me and planted a kiss on her lips in front of everyone. She stroked my face lightly as our lips met, and I smiled into our embrace.
“I think we have an afterparty to go to,” I murmured, and she nodded.
“I think so.”
“Will you be my date?” I asked teasingly, feeling like a middle-schooler. She tossed her head back, laughed, and then returned her gaze to me.
“Of course.”