Filed to story: The Best Thing by Mariana Zapata
“Hey, it’s me, Lenny. Where the hell are you?”
I knew it was a shitty idea to click on the link on my home screen.
But I did it anyway.
Because as I’d learned over the course of my life, I liked pissing myself off.
Hadn’t I just told myself to clear the damn cookies and the history on my computer? Yeah, I had. I knew I had. It had just been a few weeks ago when the last article had popped up on my home page, and it had ended up forcing me to jump on a stationary bike so that I wouldn’t do something stupid.
Except that time, all I had done was give my screen the middle finger and then clicked on a different article to read… cussing under my breath the whole time.
Unfortunately for me, I was grumpy, petty, and a little bored, and that’s why I followed the link for the first time in a while, watching my computer screen blink for a second before it led me to a website that in the past I had been on more times than I would ever be willing to admit.
…Months ago. A year ago. Not lately. Not in a long time.
There was that at least.
It’s not a bad idea to have an idea of what this asshole is up to, I told myself as the same subject line that had reeled me in reappeared on the screen in big bold letters. I read the title of the article, and then read it again.
The words on the screen weren’t going to affect me in any way, even if my stomach soured and my fingers jerked around the mouse under my palm because I suddenly wanted to throw it at someone who was across an ocean from me. I wasn’t going to do that, because I didn’t care.
The last few months had made it easier to read the name featured on the headline without wanting to go break something. If anything, all I felt was the slightest hint of aggravation. Just the smallest little baby hint of aggravation.
JONAH COLLINS TO DITCH RACING CLUB DE PARIS
Honestly, I was really proud of my eyelid for not twitching. At least not like the first time I had seen that name after a one-year blackout. Luckily I had been home with just Mo, and she would never rat me out for how I’d said “motherfucking asshole” at the sight of it.
Or tell anyone about how I’d put a pillow up to my face and screamed “FUCK YOU” into it.
And if I swallowed just a little hard as I read a few more words on the New Zealand news site, it was only because I hadn’t drunk enough water yet and my throat was dry.
Jonah Hema Collins has confirmed that he is leaving Racing Club de Paris but has not confirmed any future plans.
Former All Black Collins has just completed a rocky two-year deal with the famed Paris club—
And, for the sake of the rest of my day and the life of my mouse, I hit the red icon at the top left of the window and exited out of the page, coming face to screen again with a list of news articles that did matter.
So he wasn’t staying in France. Who cared? It didn’t mean anything.
Fucking asshole.
I pushed that thought away instantly, feeling my back teeth grinding down, and focused on the list of news that I should have been focusing on. News that actually affected my life and the lives of my loved ones and friends. This news was work.
MACHIDO SET TO RETURN TO UFL 238
But it only took a second for me to decide that I didn’t give a single shit about Machido coming back to the United Fighting League—or any of the other news on the, arguably, most popular MMA—mixed martial arts—website I was on daily. I should care. MMA was my business, my family’s business, but right then, I didn’t give a single fuck. My mind just strayed right back to that damn article about The Asshole not signing a new deal in Paris.
And that did it.
My eye started fucking twitching.
I didn’t have to look at my desk to open the top drawer, grab the stress ball that my best friend had given me a year ago, and squeeze the hell out of it with all my strength.
All of it.
I could feel the tension at my elbow from how hard I was choking the innocent ball that had never done anything to me but had probably saved more than a couple of the people at the gym from murder when they screwed up or were just flat-out dumbasses. The soft yellow ball was honestly one of the most thoughtful gifts anyone had ever given me. It was a decent replacement for the nut sacks I wished I could squeeze the hell out of when someone pissed me off.
I had promised myself eight long months ago that I was done. That I was over this shit. That I had moved on with my life.
Six months ago, when I had seen that first, middle, and last name on my tablet screen and my blood pressure went up, I had confirmed to myself again that I was over giving a shit—after I’d screamed into the pillow and punched my mattress a few times.
I had done everything I possibly could.
I was done wasting time and energy being pissed.
And it was totally fine that I hoped someone tripped and landed face-first into a pile of warm, fresh dog shit at some point in their near future, wasn’t it? If it happened, awesome. If it didn’t happen, there was always tomorrow. All I did was cross my fucking fingers that eventually the day would come, and I’d find out that it happened, and if there was visual proof of it, fabulous.
Everything was great. I didn’t need to look around the office I was working in to know that. The office that had been the equivalent of my grandpa’s throne. The same grandpa who owned the building it was located in and the building next door to it. The same building that had our last name plastered on a giant sign outside.
MAIO HOUSE
FITNESS AND MMA
Our family legacy.
That sign alone made me smile every day I saw it. It was home, and it was love. It might not be the same building I had grown up in before Grandpa had moved the business, but it was still a place that was directly linked to my heart and more than half the best memories in my life. I now ran this MMA gym, and I always would.
I took a breath in through my nose, one that I didn’t hold for longer than a second, and then let it right back out.
Fuck it.
What that dipshit did with his life was none of my business and hadn’t been… ever. He could go wherever he wanted and do whatever and whoever he wanted. In short: he could go fuck himself.
Dumbass.
That thought had barely entered my brain when the office phone beeped with an incoming call from another phone in the building. I didn’t even get a chance to say a word before a familiar voice said, “Lenny, I need your help.”
I instantly forgot the article, that fucker’s name, Paris, and everything associated with my computer screen. I sighed, knowing there were a few reasons why Bianca, the full-time front desk employee, would need me, and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with any of them. Every reason stemmed from one truth: someone had to be acting like an idiot.
As a kid, I had spent what felt like half my life at the original Maio House building. It had been small, dark, and a little rough around the edges. And I had loved the shit out of it—from the way it smelled after a long day of sweaty, musky bodies to the way it smelled after Grandpa had put me to work, not giving a shit about child labor laws, mopping down the floors and wiping equipment. Back then, I hadn’t been able to envision a job better than the one Grandpa Gus had, owning a gym, managing it, getting involved with fighters’ training. It had seemed so cool and laidback, especially after he’d gotten a computer that had been loaded with solitaire that I got to play for hours while waiting around to go home if there was nothing else to do. When I’d gotten older and discovered chat rooms, it had gotten just that much better. Hanging around the floor with people I loved or messing around the computer had been the best.
I had looked forward to managing Maio House when I’d been younger.
For some reason, my brain had chosen to block out most of the other shit that went along with the job—specifically, the moments when I would get yelled at to go break up an argument or a fight between two grown-ass men. Or act like I gave a shit when members complained or threatened to cancel over really basic-ass reasons like when the butt blaster machine was out of order.
“What’s up?” I asked, feeling almost exhausted even after sleeping a whole six hours.
“John just came by and told me he was in the locker room in your building and he saw two of the MMA guys getting ugly with each other,” Bianca said, not bothering to explain what that implied because we both knew damn well what it meant.
Someone had to go stop it, and none of the employees got paid enough to want to get involved with two grown-ass men arguing.
That was my job.
I just didn’t get why John, the custodian, didn’t just stop by my office and tell me. I hadn’t been an asshole to him or anything that morning… I didn’t think. I’d have to make time to go talk to him and make sure we were good later, when I didn’t have two idiots to go deal with.
“All right, Bianca, thanks. I’ve got it,” I told her with another sigh as I got to my feet.
“Sorry! Good luck!” she replied in her happy, likable voice that had won me over when I’d interviewed her four months ago.
Who the hell was dumb enough to be arguing right now and over what? I left the office and headed out to the main floor. I looked around for a clue, taking in the empty sea of blue mats. There were four guys hanging around the cage, but they were in their own little worlds. Just about everyone from the morning session was gone.
I made it to the doorway that opened into the hallway that led into the showers and lockers and didn’t slow down my pace as I yelled, “Hide your ding-dongs. I’m coming in!”
I wasn’t in the mood to see any dicks flapping around or anybody’s buttholes winking at me. I could go the rest of my life without walking in on someone bent over naked. If I was going to see any balding, brown-eyed demons, I wanted to choose whose.
No one called out in response. All right then.
Maybe it was my lucky day and they had left, but I still had to check to make sure nobody was knocked out unconscious on the floor. That had fortunately never happened, but it was only because the rules at Maio House were so strict about fighting. The smart ones knew better than to do something that stupid, and even the cocky idiots could usually be reasoned with before they did something they’d regret.
Usually.
I barely had to clear the short hallway into the locker rooms when I immediately spotted the two guys standing in front of each other, silently, face-to-face. Forehead to forehead more like it. Really?
There were a lot of things I had always loved about having Maio House be a part of my life. About it being in my heart. In my blood. About knowing it was mine as much as it was Grandpa Gus’s. Like princes and princesses who knew the kingdoms they would inherit, I had always known what would one day become mine too. So I had known, even back when I had been about Grandpa’s hips’ height, what happened when you got into a fight when it wasn’t for training purposes.
Time and time again, he had made me sit at the tiny foldout couch he’d had in the corner of his office back in the old building where Maio House had been born while he suspended one person after another for violating the rules. The rules that were posted right in front of the main doors everyone walked through to get into the building. The very same rules that had been around since before I was born.
NO BRAWLING
NO DRUGS
NO CHEAP SHOTS (LEAVE GENITALS AND NECKS/SPINES ALONE)
***Violating the rules is cause for suspension or termination.
It had always seemed easy enough for me and for most of the people who had come and gone throughout the years to follow them. They were common sense. Don’t fight without a reason—which, hello, you had to be an idiot to cross that line. Don’t take drugs on the premises that weren’t prescription or over-the-counter painkillers. Leave each other’s ding-a-lings, egg sacks, and spinal cords alone. We wanted people to be able to walk out of the gym and reproduce if they wanted to. Basic shit.
It was rare that anyone broke the rules, but it happened. Just two weeks ago, I’d had to suspend one of the guys for purposely hitting the guy he’d been sparring with in the balls. Needless to say, he’d been fucking pissed and had tried to play dumb.
I really didn’t want to have to suspend someone else again, not so soon.
I recognized the smaller of the two as a nineteen-ish kid with cornrows named Carlos. He was bucking his chest out. The other man was Vince, who topped the younger guy by about fifty pounds and four inches and was five or six years older. He hadn’t been a member of Maio House for long. And they were both lovingly gazing into each other’s eyes.
Not.
“Are you two for real right now?” I asked, honest to God disappointed in both of them. What the hell could they possibly get so mad over that they were in the locker room millimeters away from being able to kiss each other? “Would at least one of you fucking stop?”
It was Vince who blinked first, maybe being the first one to have some fucking sense in him.
“Now, please.”
Vince blinked again, but he still didn’t take a step back, and Carlos, if anything, puffed out his chest even more.
I rolled my eyes. These two idiots might make their livings fighting people, or at least make part of their living doing that, but I had been in more fights than either of them… even if mine were always with a referee and for points, not because someone made me mad, and I wanted to prove something. Thank you, judo.
“Look,” I told them, reaching up to tug on the corner of my eye from how annoying these two were being, “I don’t give a shit if you get into a fight with each other, I really don’t, but I’m not going to feel bad suspending either of you if you do. And it’ll be for a month, and, Carlos, you have a fight coming up, and Vince, you’ve got one in two months. So… what do you want to do?”
It was Vince who reacted first. Him being a light heavyweight, I was relieved he snapped out of it, taking a step back and opening his mouth, loosening his jaw. Meanwhile, Carlos stood exactly where he was, tipping his chin up higher than it had been and basically fucking asking to get popped. His choice in friends suddenly made a hell of a lot of sense.
God needed to grant me some strength. Soon.
“Do I need to ask what happened or are you both good?” I asked, not giving a shit which of them replied.
“We’re good as long as he shuts the fuck up and minds his own business,” Carlos answered, and I didn’t miss the way Vince shook his head just a little bit in what seemed like disbelief. “I don’t need your advice, Vince.”
That’s what this was over? I tugged on the corner of my eye again. “Vince?”
The bigger guy smiled smugly, and after a moment, he shook his head and glanced back at me, his face intense. His eyes slid toward Carlos once more before yet again coming back to me. “I’m fine,” he responded after a second. “I’ll keep my advice to myself next time, Carlos.”
God help me.
“You’re sure you’re both done then?” I asked again.
Carlos didn’t look at me, but the hand holding his phone twitched as he mumbled, “Yeah.”
Vince nodded.
Good enough for me. With that, I turned around and headed back toward my office, hearing them trade muffled words with each other and not giving a single fuck. Maybe I should have eavesdropped, but… it didn’t really matter, did it?
I was going to need to tell Peter about that little scene so he’d keep an eye on them.
By the time I made it back to my office and sat down in my chair, I convinced myself to try and focus again. Shoving the rest of my thoughts and feelings about everything other than work aside, I refreshed the page of the MMA news site I was on and instantly regretted it.
POLANSKI REQUESTS REMATCH, IS READY TO REGAIN TITLE
Noah.
Ugh.
I had already forgotten he’d lost his fight three days ago. I’d fallen asleep watching it, and the only reason I knew he’d lost was because my grandfather had mentioned it—with a gleeful little look in his evil eyes.
I fucking loved that man.
I snickered at the memory and clicked on another link, not in the mood to even read Noah’s name, and made myself read the next post down the list on the MMA site’s homepage. Then I made myself read it again because I couldn’t remember a word of it once I had finished. Something about an upcoming event between two well-known fighters that I didn’t have history or beef with.
It was at the end of the second read through that a soft knock on my door had me looking up and smiling at the man already coming in, hands shoved into the pockets of his black track pants. I could tell instantly by the expression on Peter’s face that he had already heard about the two idiots in the locker room. No surprise there. He had a radar for stuff like that.
I wrinkled my nose at the man who was basically my second dad. “At least nothing happened,” I told him, knowing exactly what he was thinking.
His face, his coffee-and-cream skin still youthful looking even in his sixties, twisted up into a look of distaste. “What was it over?” asked the man who emphasized the importance of discipline and control on a regular basis. He stopped behind one of the chairs in front of the desk that Grandpa and I shared.
I shrugged, feeling a familiar pinch at my shoulder again. Damn it. “Vince said something to Carlos. Carlos got butthurt.” I rolled my eyes.
That got me an eye roll out of the deceptively serious man. There were a handful of lines at each of his eyes and down the sides of his mouth, but he was still almost as fit as he had been almost thirty years ago when he’d come into our lives, unaware that he was going to become the third leg in our family. “I don’t know what to do with these children sometimes.”
“Let’s call their moms and tattle.”
Peter snorted in that laidback way that was everything about him. You never would have figured that this almost slender, just slightly above average height man could take down just about any man’s ass if he wanted to. I had always thought of him as kind of being like Clark Kent. Quiet, kind, and laidback, he seemed like the last person who would have a seventh-degree coral belt—black and red actually—in Brazilian jiu-jitsu by day and help me with my math homework at night.
“Did you see Gus this morning?” Peter asked.
“Just for a second. He was on the phone with someone talking about joining a basketball tournament for the elderly.”
My second dad grinned and shook his head before the expression dropped away and he asked, “Are you okay?”
I shrugged both my shoulders.
The way Peter narrowed his eyes told me he knew I wasn’t exactly lying or telling the truth, but he didn’t pry. He never pried too hard. It was one of my favorite things about him. If I wanted to tell him something, I would, and he knew that. And there were very, very few things I didn’t tell him.
Just the big shit.
I had just grabbed my stress ball from where it was sitting beside my keyboard so I could put it back into its drawer when Peter snapped his fingers suddenly. “I got this message from the front desk a minute ago, saying you referred him to me,” he said as he stood there. “But I’ve never heard of the guy.”
“What’s the name?” I hitched my shoulder up again and rolled it back, feeling that pinch again. Since when did I get all these random aches and pains from just sleeping wrong? Was this what happened when you hit your thirties? I needed to start going to my physical therapist. Maybe the chiropractor too.
Peter didn’t hesitate to stick a hand in his pocket and pull out a bright pink Post-it note. He drew the scrap of paper away from him before squinting at it. “A… Jonah Collins?”
I dropped my shoulder back into place and stared at him.
Fucking shit.