Chapter 20
JAKE
I got that it was hard to keep a pro athlete down.
When you made a sport your life and your livelihood, you wanted to do it.
You needed to do it; it was in your blood.
I’d never had a potentially career-ending injury before, but I knew enough about training through pain to know that sometimes it had to happen.
But sometimes it didn’t. And when I, and Marek, and all the trainers, and the doctor all agreed that taking some time off wasn’t just a good idea, it was essential, maybe Ethan should listen to us and—
“But Carson agrees with me!”
“Carson is the shittiest example of self-care I’ve ever met,” I replied as I pulled on my sweatpants.
Ethan looked a little regretful, but we’d had our fun for the morning.
We were having more sex now than before his injury, but some of that was probably because Ethan was desperate to do something with his body.
I took it as a compliment, but I also wasn’t an idiot.
“Don’t be like Carson. Get up, get dressed, you’re coming to the gym. ”
“First you want me to relax, now you want me to go to the gym… ”
“Not to work out,” I clarified. “To hang out, so that you’re not here all day obsessing over timelines and messing with your cast.” The swelling had gone down far enough for Ethan to get a cast last Friday, and he’d been a messy combination of happy and annoyed ever since then.
Apparently, it itched, and he thought the solution was to stick hard, pointy things into the holes to try and scratch. Nope, not on my watch.
I would have preferred to stay here with him, but Beth had just left on her first vacation since opening the new school and was going to be gone all week, and she’d already accommodated me taking a week off.
I needed to step up and not let Carson handle everything, even though he’d already assured me he totally could, seriously, it wasn’t a big deal and he could handle four classes and day and all the private lessons.
So, so shitty at self-care.
Hence, Ethan coming with me. I rifled through his clean clothes—he’d brought over a suitcase full of stuff once I cleared a couple of drawers for him—and tossed over some boxer-briefs, shorts, and a T-shirt. “C’mon, you’ll feel better getting some fresh air.”
He sighed and picked at the clothes. I left him to it and went to make breakfast.
Injuries sucked. Ethan’s in particular sucked, because his team was doing well on their playoff run but he saw the things the rest of us didn’t in every game.
We’d watched three from my couch together so far, and the whole time he’d been mumbling to himself and worrying about someone else getting an injury. “If they lose another forward—”
“They won’t.”
“You don’t know that!”
I didn’t, but worrying about it wasn’t going to do anything except make Ethan sick. All the more reason to drag him out of the apartment so he could hang with Carson while I took on classes for the day. We could run open mat in the evening together, but Carson needed a break too.
Ethan joined me ten minutes later, just as I was plating the omelet I’d made—according to his trainer’s specifications, I might add.
Hockey players didn’t control their diets quite as ruthlessly as some athletes did, but he still needed a shit-ton of protein in addition to ensuring he got enough calcium, Vitamin D, potassium…
the list went on and on. It was just easier to use their recipes, and it was honestly pretty tasty.
“Smells good,” he said as he came up next to me.
“Thanks, I… ” My brain went offline as I realized Ethan was wearing one of my shirts.
Not a special shirt, not a particularly noteworthy shirt, just an old, worn T-shirt I’d gotten from a sponsor years ago that I liked to wear when I worked out.
It must have gotten mixed into his laundry.
It was big enough on him to sag a little at the neck, so I saw about an inch more chest than I was used to seeing when he was clothed, and for some reason it reminded me of the one girlfriend I’d had who liked lingerie.
“Earth to Jake?”
“Hm?” I glanced back up when Ethan waved a hand in front of my eyes. “What?”
He was trying to look innocent, but I could see a smirk lurking at the back of his eyes as he said, “You don’t mind that I’m wearing your clothes, do you?”
“Ah… no.” No, I decidedly didn’t mind. In fact, I felt about two seconds away from dragging him back to bed for a second round regardless of my good intentions. Eat. Go. Stop perving on his collarbones. “Here.” I handed him a plate. “Silverware’s on the table.”
“Thanks.” We sat down together to eat, and silence reigned while Ethan inhaled his food. Before he even opened his mouth to ask for seconds, I said, “There’s more on a plate in the oven.”
Ethan smiled. “You take such good care of me,” he said as he got up, stopping to kiss me on the way over.
I didn’t do anything special, but if he wanted to kiss me about it I didn’t care. A knock at the door caught my attention, and I got up to check who it was while Ethan had his second breakfast.
A UPS driver stood outside my apartment, his head blocked by the huge package he was holding. “Hey, man,” he said, turning so he could catch my eye. “Can you give me a hand?”
“Sure, but… ” I shook my head as I took the box and put it on the floor. “I don’t have any orders coming in.”
“Huh. Hang on.” He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and swiped a few times. “Are you Jake Radovitz?”
“Yes.”
“Then this is for you. From… ” He peered at the screen. “Gene Dimon?”
I had no idea who that was, but apparently he was sending me shit. “Okay, thanks.”
“Just sign here… ” I signed, then the delivery guy walked off and left me with a box as tall as my thigh. I pulled it into the apartment and shut the door, then grabbed my pocket knife, sliced it open, and—
“What the hell?” I pushed the bubble wrap aside to reveal a weird grab bag of stuff, everything from zero-calorie energy drink mixes to protein bars in fruity flavors to, down at the very bottom, a whole pile of XXL T-shirts in everything from black to neon advertising a bunch of brands I’d never heard of before, except for a few jiu-jitsu-adjacent ones.
“What’s all that?” Ethan asked from behind me.
“I have no fucking clue,” I said. “All I know is I didn’t order any of it.”
“Then how’d you get it?”
“Some dude named Gene Dimon sent it to me.” I shook my head. “There’s got to be some sort of mistake.”
“Like how that Chinese seat cover company made the address for their returns some random house in California, and now the lady who lives there is getting a hundred packages a day?” I stared at Ethan blankly. “What? I listen to NPR.”
“Shit, I hope it’s not like that.” I closed the box back up. “I’ll look him up later and see if there’s a way to return it. Come on, we should head out.”
The ride was quiet; Ethan was on his phone and I was thinking about the lesson plan for the day.
We’d had an influx of new students lately, which meant taking things at a slower pace while they got up to speed on the basics.
The curriculum called for leg locks, but there was nothing scarier than a white belt holding your ankle while falling, so I’d have to be careful how I taught the set-ups.
Carson was waiting at the gym for us, standing between a pair of oddly familiar boxes with a look on his face like… I wasn’t sure how to explain it. It was somewhere between “haha, this is hilarious” and “fuck, please don’t.”
“So,” he said as we took off our shoes and walked over to him, “when were you going to tell me you were being courted by the EFC?”
I did a double-take. Like literally, I stared from him to the boxes and back again, because I was so confused I barely knew what to think, much less say. Luckily, Ethan stepped in before things got too weird.
“Oh wow, is that who the box was from?” he asked, then started searching for the return address. “Who’s Gene Dimon, then?”
“He’s the head of the Extreme Fighting Championship,” Carson said, still looking at me. Gradually, his expression settled into “hilarious” mode, thank God. “Wait, you don’t even know who heads the group that’s trying to bring you on?” he laughed. “Do you live under a rock?”
“They haven’t tried anything other than sending me a pile of shit I don’t want,” I said, staring at the other two boxes. “Are you sure that’s who they’re from?”
“Oh yeah. It’s how Gene likes to introduce himself,” Carson said, bending down next to one of the boxes and shaking it like he could figure out what was inside it by the sound. “He sends you a bunch of stuff donated by sponsors.”
“In other words, he sends you a bunch of crap he didn’t even have to pay for so he can pretend to be generous.
” Of course he did. What a goddamn corporate move.
I should have guessed; I’d gotten plenty of free merch over the years from grappling brands, but it had fallen off ever since Abu Dhabi and I was happy about it.
Most of it either didn’t fit or tasted disgusting.
“Don’t open it,” I added as Carson headed for the office. “I’m sending it back.”
“He won’t take it back,” Carson said. “These packages only go one way. I mean, you can send it back, but you’re just wasting money on postage because it’s not like Dimon doesn’t have people to handle his mail.”
Then we could burn it, because the absolute last thing I wanted was a bunch of merchandise courtesy of the asshole whose policies were responsible for burying Carson in medical debt.
No, burning would take too long and it was fire season, I could get arrested if the wind caught an ember. “Where’s the dumpster?”
Carson stared at me. “You really want to just throw it away without even looking inside?”
“I have no interest in anything that man wants to give me,” I said honestly.
“I’m not going to fight for the EFC.” It wasn’t a great time to be a classic BJJ player anyway, not with the stand-up specialists headlining every fight and making the big money.
All he wanted, if he really wanted me at all, was a big old bruiser he could send in to get KO’d by whoever his golden-boy super heavyweight was right now, and that was something I could very happily decline.
“Maybe we could donate some of it,” Ethan suggested. “The food, at least.”
“It’s not even real food,” I pointed out. “It’s super-processed whey protein isolate masquerading as a banana, it’s gross.” But… “Okay, fine,” I gave in. “But do you mind sorting it all out while I get ready for class?”
Ethan smiled. “Not at all. But… ” He gestured to his cast.
“Oh, dude, I’ve got it,” Carson said. He darted back to the office, then came out holding a pair of scissors for the box.
I left them alone while I warmed up, focusing on leg locks and not the pile of junk some jackass millionaire thought was going to butter me up for a bad time and a worse contract.
The people who fought for the EFC weren’t allowed to unionize, and until you got a certain number of wins under your belt you weren’t allowed to negotiate the terms of your contract either.
You basically made almost nothing for your time with no benefits unless you got lucky, and then only once you had a decent fandom and some viewership could you start making things suck less.
I knew because I’d advised Carson not to sign his contract with them back in the day, but…
He'd won. He’d been doing well until I fucked him up, and only then did the gaps in the system start to wear thin.
Only then did the rot show enough that he was practically destitute.
I’d never fully forgive myself for what I did, although goddamn was my therapist ever trying, but I’d also never forgive those assholes for not taking care of their people. They were predators, full stop.
“This one’s got… um, more protein bars… protein powder… Jesus, how much protein do they think you need? And, um… ” Ethan held up a shirt. “Cryptoguy dot com?” He stared at me. “Why would they send you a T-shirt for a cryptocurrency website?”
“The EFC has all kinds of weird sponsors, dude,” Carson said. “I bet you anything there’s a SportsKings hat in there.”
“But at least SportsKings is all about betting on sports,” Ethan argued. “What does a crypto website have to do with it?”
Ha, he’d be surprised. “Keep going.” They pulled out some energy drinks, a few bottles of CBD oil, an enormous box of condoms in the wrong size that made Ethan laugh so hard he almost fell over, and a lot more clothing.
“I think we can donate most of this,” Ethan said. “My roommates will probably take some of the protein powder, too, if you want to get rid of it.”
“They can have it,” I said.
“I’ll take it out to the car.” He managed to grab two of the cans with his good arm and waved off Carson’s offer to help. Carson started repacking the rest of it, and after a second I sighed and joined him.
“It’s okay for you to have a fight career, you know,” he said after a minute. “You shouldn’t say no just because of me.”
“I’m not,” I assured him. “I’m doing it for me too. I was pre-law, remember? Their contract is such shit, and I don’t want to be part of a system that’s so blatantly taking advantage of its fighters. I’d rather focus on my jiu-jitsu right now anyway.”
He looked relieved. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” I wasn’t going to be bought by Gene Dimon for any price, but especially not for a bunch of useless crap. It was fine—I’d ignore it and he’d stop sending things soon enough.
No problem.