Chapter Twenty-One
Braxton
A couple hours before the press conference on Saturday, I met up with Nick at Arby’s. I ordered a roast beef sandwich and sat down at a two-person table by the window in a chair that was hardly big enough to fit me, watching the cars pass in the drive-thru while I waited for him to finish his order.
“You sure you don’t want a drink?” he asked me as he walked over to the soda fountain with a cup in hand.
I shook my head. “I’ve never much cared for fountain drinks.”
“Suit yourself.” He set a pink plastic tray down on the table between us. I reached for my sandwich, and for a few minutes we ate in silence.
“How’s your patty melt?” I asked finally.
Nick smiled a warm smile of satisfaction. “Disgusting.”
“As it should be.”
He swallowed a large mouthful. “You sure you didn’t invite me here just to poison my food? Because you were pretty furious the other day. You’d have felt awfully bad later if you killed your best friend in a rage.”
“I feel awfully bad about it now,” I replied.
“Well, I think this is generally the part where you say you’re sorry.”
I had never been one for following etiquette or doing what was expected of me, but I figured I had better start learning now if I wanted a future in polite society. “I’m…” I hesitated, not liking the feel of the words in my mouth.
“Yeah?” Nick smirked. He knew how hard this was for me, and he was enjoying every second of it.
“I’m sorry I came after you the other day.” The moment I said it, it was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders. “Even though we were training, and even though you had insulted my mom.”
“You could have left off the last bit, but it’s okay. You’ll learn. By now you’ve probably figured out I was insulting you on purpose to try and get a rise out of you. Don’t look so surprised: you already know everything you need to know to win this upcoming fight. The only way you can lose is if the other player gets under your skin, tricks you into overreacting.”
I stared at him incredulously. “That was oddly cunning of you.”
He shrugged, looking flattered. “Well, I didn’t come up with it on my own, not entirely. Coach and I cooked it up together in his office. We realized that at this point the only thing that really stands in your way is yourself.”
“I suppose I should be grateful.”
“You should be because we’re teaching you the virtues of restraint and self-discipline. You know better than anyone how easy it is to goad you into a fight. We want to avoid that if possible, but that takes practice. Virtue is like a muscle that has to be trained over and over again. It won’t be easy at first, but over time it becomes effortless.”
“Did Coach tell you that?”
“No, President Carruthers did.”
I nearly choked on my sandwich. “Just how many people are in on this plan of yours?”
“Only three. We’re not taking any chances. We want you to become the sort of person who can let certain things wash over you, without feeling a need to retaliate. And that starts with today’s press conference.”
I stared at him puzzled, not seeing the connection. “What does that have to do with anything?”
A big, beefy man with no hair, wearing a muscle shirt and a pair of faded athletic shorts, came through the door and sat down in a booth at the other end of the restaurant. He didn’t bother ordering; he just sat at the window staring out at the lawn mower repair shop across the street.
While I was trying to place where I had seen him before, Nick opened a second package of honey mustard. “In a couple hours, the media’s going to be throwing all sorts of unwelcome questions at you. Questions about your family, about your past arrests, about any possible history of drug use. It would be really easy for a brash, hot-headed young man to lose his cool and charge after them, but that’s exactly the one thing you should not do. You could lose your career in a heartbeat.”
I didn’t doubt that; over the last couple years, I had always felt my career stood on a knife’s edge. “Okay, so what’s the solution?”
“The solution is to maintain your calm. They’re going to show up with their cameras hoping for some kind of spectacle. You mustn’t allow them to have it. I never thought I’d say this, but you ought to try being boring. I think your temptation, particularly when the spotlight is on you, is to be flamboyant and theatrical. It’s a tendency that serves you well in the octagon but is more likely to lead you into trouble on a day like today.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
Nick nodded and took a sip of his drink. “I just don’t want you to mess this up. There’s so much riding on this, as they used to say about your whore mom.”
My blood rose, and I was about to fly out of my seat until I saw his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Um, yes,” I said, drawing a deep breath. “It’s a lot of pressure.”
“It is, but I believe in you. You were so much brasher and hot-headed when I first met you. Remember when you almost got into a fight with a trash bin because you thought it had tripped you?”
“It was very dark, and I couldn’t see!” I shot back. “I thought it had done it on purpose!”
Nick smirked at the memory. “You’ve definitely calmed down. We used to have fisticuffs every week, but your outburst yesterday was the first one in ages. How’s the girl, by the way?”
I was so startled by the sudden segue that at first, I didn’t know who he was talking about. “What girl?”
“The one you hooked up with,” he said slowly, as though this was obvious.
“Oh, her!”
“Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten about her.”
“No, of course not.” I still couldn’t fall asleep without the memory of her body next to me. “You just never asked, so I thought maybe you had forgotten about her.”
“Well, I liked her a bit better than some of your other girlfriends. But then again, I’ve always been slightly partial to redheads. Where’s she been lately?”
“I haven’t seen her since Vegas. I made the mistake of not getting her number before I left. Why, do you think she’ll be there?”
“Maybe.” Nick shrugged. “I know Carruthers is coming. If I were you, I don’t think I would want her there.”
“Why not?”
“Because the media’s about to be airing all your dirty laundry and there’s potential for some major embarrassment. I don’t mind if a hundred strangers know my shit, but if a cute girl is sitting in the front row watching it all go down, I think I would panic a little.”
“Shit, I hadn’t thought of that.” I felt an explosion of nerves at the base of my stomach. What if she showed up and they grilled me? What if she didn’t want to talk to me again after that?
It was strange: when we had first hooked up, I had been utterly fascinated with her body. But in the week since we had split, my thoughts kept drifting back to our talk by the pool. The way she had laughed, absently wrapping her hair around one finger. The way her eyes gleamed in the neon haze. I was dangerously close to falling for her as a person, and it scared me.
“Shit, we had better get going,” said Nick, checking his phone. “It’s gonna take us about twenty minutes to get there.”
“Mind if we take your car?” I asked as I dumped our tray.
“I walked here from my apartment.”
“Same.” My insides bubbled uneasily. “We’re not going to get there in time.”
But Nick didn’t look remotely troubled. “Maybe this guy can take us.”
As I watched incredulously, he walked over to the other end of the room where the beefy guy sat staring out the window. “You about ready?”
To my surprise, the burly fellow turned and winked at me. “Don’t mind if I do.”
“Do you two know each other?” I couldn’t help asking.
Nick laughed as a parent might laugh at a child’s questions. “Of course we do. Griff is an old buddy of mine. He offered to come by today and look after me just in case anything happened.”
Now it began to make sense. “You mean in case I tried to beat you up.”
Nick shrugged. “Always good to be cautious.”
Griff smiled good-naturedly. He seemed like a pleasant enough fellow, but I had no doubt that if he wanted to, he could have easily crushed my head between his palms like a grape.
“Shall we get going then?” asked Nick, motioning to the door, and we followed him outside into the warm spring light.