Inevitably Yours

MICHAEL

Eros was restless as I looked across the courtyard to see Grant and some other guys pretending they weren’t watching me. This had become a daily occurrence over the last few weeks as Tagey tasked them with watching me with his daughter. They followed us around constantly, and they’d even tried to tail us off school grounds last week. That had the opposite effect Tagey intended, as we ended up alone in a secluded area when we lost them, and we didn’t end up making it back for the following two periods after lunch. She’d lost her phone for a week, but it wasn’t like he could undo what we’d done.

Kristen’s class was on the opposite side of the school, so it took her longer to get down to lunch than me. I was too focused on the football dipshits to hear her come up behind me, but she lightly touched my shoulder as she did; I looked up from where I was sitting, and she leaned down to k**s me. I was surprised because she was normally more careful with prying eyes around us. This k**s was different, though; it was deep and lingering. When she broke away and sat across from me, she looked like she was going to cry. I hadn’t seen her all day, so I wondered if something was going on.

“Are you okay?” I asked, a bit worried. She’d never been anything but happy around me, and I’d never seen her like this.

She was quiet, biting her l*p as she looked away. Her eyes darted towards our audience and then down toward her feet. She’d been a distraction from Quinn, but it didn’t mean I didn’t care about her. She was intelligent, easy to talk to, and she cared about people. I hadn’t told her everything, but she knew that I was hung up on someone and didn’t mind. We weren’t mates, and she just wanted to spend time together. I studied her face trying to figure out what it could be. That was when I caught the light green and brown that her makeup wasn’t entirely covering on her cheekbone. I reached over to brush her hair from her face to look at it better, but she recoiled from me like I’d hit her. I knew that look.

“Did your dad hit you?” The rage billowed in my chest immediately. I could feel the heat rising in my face.

“I don’t think we can see each other anymore,” she answered quietly, sidestepping the question.

“That’s not what I asked, Kristen,” I pressed. I tried to soften my voice because I didn’t want her to feel unsafe with me if I was right.

“We got in an argument about you, and this morning he… It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, though. He can’t do this to you and get away with it. I won’t let-”

“He’s a football coach in a small pack in the south. Look around you, Michael! He can get away with whatever he wants. If you tell the principal or the Alpha, they’ll just tell you that you’re a kid and take his word over yours. There’s nothing you can do that won’t hurt the rest of my family or me,” she hissed. “He’s not always like this… He just gets mad-”

“That’s not an excuse to hit you! Guys like him only get away with this s**t because no one does anything about it,” I railed. I felt sick knowing that she was probably right. If I went to someone about this, it would make things worse for her, and nothing would happen.

“Please, just let it go,” she almost whispered. “If we stop seeing each other, it will blow over. I don’t want to, but I wouldn’t have said anything if this was only affecting me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, not tracking how this extended elsewhere.

She took a deep breath before reaching out to touch my hand, “He told me this morning that he’s kicking you off the wrestling team. He knows all you want is to win state, so he will cut you now that you’re eligible for varsity.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. He couldn’t do that just because he wanted to, but obviously, he had something planned.

“That motherfucker,” Eros growled.

“He can’t just cut me, right? I know he’s the coach, but there are rules-”Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“He knows that, but District tournament is this weekend. The appeal process can take weeks to fight a rule violation from a coach like this. He waited to make sure you didn’t have time to file an appeal with the school, and now it’s too late.”

Flashes of murderous intent flew through my mind as I contemplated what he’d done to Kristen and was now doing to me. Eros wanted b***d, and I agreed. I couldn’t think of a scenario that didn’t blow back on Kristen at home, though. If I hit him, he’d hit her. If I crashed practice and demanded he step onto the mat with me to embarrass him, it would come back on her too. He had me, and he knew it.

“I’m sorry,” I told her, not knowing what to say now. I’d made my bed, and now I had to lie in it.

Tears filled her eyes, “Why are you the one apologizing? He’s ruining your life, not mine.”

“I know what it’s like to live with a coward like him,” I answered quietly. “If you ever need anything or to get away if it gets worse, call me.”

She nodded, “I really liked you.”

“Same,” I replied, standing up and walking over to her. I leaned down, kissing her cheek where he’d hit her. She didn’t recoil this time, squeezing my hand before I turned to leave.

I could hear her crying, but I had to leave. Staying wasn’t going to make it better, and it would just give Tagey something else to be mad about. I strode over to the table of Tagey’s lackeys to deliver a message.

“You can send him a message for me,” I spat, looking only at Grant. “Tell him we’re done, and he can stop having his bitches follow me now.”

“What the f**k did you just call me?” Grant asked, starting to stand up.

“I swear to the f*****g Goddess, if you stand up, I will drop you through this f*****g table. Today is not the f*****g day, Grant.”

His friend grabbed his arm beside him, stopping him from getting up. He wasn’t happy, but he sat back down, averting his eyes. With that, I turned away from the school and walked off campus. They could call my parents; I didn’t care.

–

I realized after I’d been walking for a while that Quinn should be getting out of school. I pulled my phone out and stared at it. I wanted to hear her voice, but how could I tell her why I’d been kicked off the team? The phone rang, and I heard the familiar melody of her voice answering me.

“Hey,” she said. “How you been, stranger?”

s**t, I hadn’t called her in a while. I knew she was joking, but I felt bad. I’d just been trying to distract myself from her and that b***h Jaxx; I guess it worked too well. Although, it didn’t work when I was by myself; that’s why I tried to be doing something every minute of the day now.

“Been better,” I told her. This was a stupid idea. She was the only one I wanted to talk to about this, but we talked around relationship stuff now. Even though we weren’t together, it gave me an uneasy feeling in my chest even thinking about talking to Quinn about Kristen. It felt like I was cheating somehow.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, sounding concerned. I could almost see her little brow furrow in my mind.

“Are you still at school?” I asked. She was echoing, and I thought I heard a locker door.

“Uh, yea. I had practice, and then I just found out about Senior Night. I was trying to figure out how to save the day,” she answered, ever the problem solver. She had enough going on at home; I shouldn’t add this. She knew what wrestling meant to me, and she’d be pretty upset too. I heard her voice again, “Are you okay?”

“Yea,” I spit out quickly. I wondered if I was also interrupting her getting picked up by… him. I decided to kill the awkward conversation.“I should go, though. Sorry.”

“Oh, uh, okay. Do you want to talk later or something?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I told her. I wanted nothing more, but she had her own fire to put out.

“I’m here if you need to talk,” she said, her voice sad now.

“Thanks, Blue,” I told her. I did appreciate that she was there, even if it couldn’t be all the way.

–

I wasn’t sure where I was going. After trying to talk to Quinn, I didn’t even know how much time had passed or how far I’d gone. I still wasn’t as familiar as I should have been with my new surroundings. When I looked around, I realized where my feet had brought me. I looked up at the sign above the blue warehouse-looking building.

“Tri-Wolf MMA: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, No Gi Grappling, MMA, and Wrestling”

I pushed through the heavy glass double doors at the front of the gym to see a small class on the mat in uniforms. The person leading the class was a tall, lanky black guy wearing a tattered blue belt that looked ready to fall apart. He waived to me and motioned toward the seating area at the side of the mat before continuing with his lesson. He taught in a calm, measured manner, and I could tell he was experienced. The gym smelled like a wrestling room and had wall-to-wall mats with wall pads like a wrestling room would. After practicing on mats thrown haphazardly onto a cafeteria floor for the last few months, I felt like I was finally at home. The mats ended at my feet, where a small seating area was placed, putting me in a perfect spot to watch the class. There was a counter with a small pro shop behind it in the corner next to a door probably leading to a locker room. It was a decent little gym.

Once the instructor finished demonstrating the technique he was teaching, some kind of armbar, he set the students to drill in pairs and jogged over to me.

“Hey, thanks for coming in! My name is Ash; what brings you in today?” He was pretty laid back and not what I was used to in a wrestling room where everything was go, go, go. I reached out and shook his hand; it was callused and a bit larger than mine.

“Michael,” I introduced myself. “I moved from… up north, and I found out that no one cares about wrestling here. I’m looking for somewhere to wrestle and train where the coaches know what they’re doing, and I can improve.”

“Ah, nice. Wrestling gives you a great base for Jiu Jitsu. Unfortunately, we have some guys who wrestled for a year or two in school, but we lost our wrestling instructor.”

“Oh,” I said, my hopes dashed. “I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

“Well, hold on,” he said, stopping me as I started to stand. “Have you ever thought about trying other kinds of grappling? Wrestling is a great sport, and it can be used in fighting. But, BJJ keeps going after the pin. We have sport applications, but here you learn to choke your opponent, break their limbs, and control them in ways that wrestling doesn’t teach.”

That didn’t sound half bad. I could think of someone I would happily choke right now. He was smugly sitting in his office at the field house, knowing he got to be an abusive piece of s**t and nothing would happen to him.

“I’ve done other forms of wrestling, but I’ve never tried anything like this,” I admitted. “I have some experience in Karate and Taekwondo, but I have a weird family life and had to sneak that as a kid. I used to clean the mats at the schools and do other odd jobs to pay for tuition so my parents wouldn’t find out.”

“Is it an issue now? We’d love to have you, but I definitely need a parent to sign a waiver,” he said, his head c****d slightly.

“No, they’ll sign whatever now. It’s why I’m not in the north anymore,” I replied, not sure it was a good idea to explain my life fully to someone I’d never met before.

“Alright, wait until this class is over, and I’ll show you why I think you should train here. Give me thirty minutes on the mat?”

I looked down at my phone, nothing from Quinn after our awkward conversation earlier or from my parents for skipping school.

“f**k it, why not?” I answered. What could it hurt to give him a few minutes on the mat? At least I’d get to be on it again.

“I will need that waiver next time,” he told me as he stood up, pointing at me and raising his eyebrow. I laughed and nodded. I didn’t realize the first time he walked over, but he was quite a bit taller than me now that I was watching him walk away.

I watched him finish the class, and everyone filed off the mat. Most of them looked like older guys that were probably training on a late lunch break or something. I didn’t have my wrestling shoes, so I took my socks and shoes off like everyone else did. Luckily I was in athletic shorts and a t-shirt, so I was in acceptable practice attire apart from my shoes. I stepped onto the mat and walked to its center, waiting for Ash to come back. It only took him a few minutes, but he was back with a gi top that looked like it might fit me. He threw it to the side of the mat and set the timer on the wall for fifteen minutes.

“What are we doing?” I asked, not understanding where he was going.

“I want to make a point,” he said with a smile. “For the first fifteen minutes, I want you to take me down. I’ll try to do the same. When we hit the ground, we’ll have twenty seconds to submit each other by tapping out or verbally submitting. If no one submits, we’ll stand back up and start again.”

“And the second fifteen minutes? You asked for thirty?”

“You’ll see.”

He hit the timer, and it beeped, letting us know we could begin. I outstretched a hand, and he gave me a fist bump instead of shaking hands. Weird, but okay.

I thought he would be able to stop me, but soon, Ash was flying through the air and landed on his back. Once there, I could feel him trying to get control of my arms, but I held him for twenty seconds and stood us up. The scene repeated itself over and over, with Ash being taken to the ground numerous times. I was getting frustrated because this guy was supposed to be showing me why I wanted to train here. This wasn’t doing that for me. The timer buzzed, and we broke apart. He asked if I wanted a water break, and I snapped at him that I didn’t. He threw the gi top at me and told me to put it on, bringing over a white belt and helping me tie it on the way they did it.

“You ready?” he asked, dropping again into a wrestling stance.

“For what?” I asked. “To throw you around for fifteen minutes, again?”

The timer beeped, and I sighed as I dropped my level to match his; I shot in for a double leg, but I didn’t get to finish it this time. I felt all of my air get cut off, and I started to see black. He’d done some magic with the collar of my top, and I almost passed out before I thought to tap. I shook my head to clear it, thinking it was a fluke, but it was repeated over and over. Even when I got him to the ground, he used the gi to slow me down and gain control of my neck, an arm, or anything near him that he could almost break to get me to tap. I was in awe.

The end of the fifteen minutes came, and we stood up. This time, he bowed to me. I returned it, and he asked, “Do you see my point now?”

A whole new world of possibilities opened up in front of me, and I couldn’t wait to unlock them for myself. I nodded enthusiastically and took the waiver he offered, “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“See you then!” he told me as I walked out the door, excited about wrestling for the first time in a long time. Maybe this would be the jump start to the training my dad still hadn’t started.