Chapter 41
Mari
“Hey, Dav, following in your footsteps, I quit too ... no, fuck.” I clear my throat and try practicing my lines again. “Hey, Davina, I too, am done.”
I’ve been pacing outside of Davina’s room for the last ten minutes, trying to figure out how to formally tell her that I’m not working a job that no longer exists if Kas has pulled out of the fight.
I lean back against the wall beside her door near the elevator and press my curls against the surface until they flatten. It was a little bit abrupt handing Kas my work phone, but I panicked. I was running on a high after our moment at the fountain, completely thrown off by Kas’s “too busy loving you.”
Yes, I’m counting it as a confession. Even if the context of which it was said was vague, and he placed himself in a list of people that also love me completely platonically.
I said it back in equal vagueness: I have love for you too, Kas. So much love.
I press my fists into my eyes and release a noise mixed between a sob and a groan. Kas voiced his love so casually in the middle of one of the most reassuring speeches someone has ever made, and I said mine like he’s some middle school crush.
“Stupid, Mari,” I whisper to myself.
“You gonna knock or what?” Davina’s muffled voice calls through the door and I shriek when it swings open. “I can hear you talking to yourself.”
The first thing I notice is how sleek Davina’s bob is. It’s six a.m. and I’ve come to her room with no prior warning, yet she looks as polished as ever. I imagine she sleeps like a vampire and just arises as if her day never ended.
“Hey!” I clap my hands together and force a cheerful grin. Davina doesn’t return it and instead, drags me inside. My nerves fizz inside of me like a shaken-up bottle, and I explode with a bunch of meaningless words. “What time did you wake up? Do you wear a bonnet or something, your hair looks amazin—”
“You can’t quit.”
I freeze. Davina shuts the door behind me and moves to perch on the corner of her bed.
I cough out a laugh. “That is not how it works.”
“I don’t want you, or anyone else, dropping out of the fight.” Davina glances at my hands, searching for something. “Where’s the business phone?”
“With Kas because there’s no job for me if he’s not doing the fight.” I lean against the desk that sits under the TV in her room. “Listen, what is it with you guys? First I’m involuntarily employed and now I’m told I can’t leave.”
“I was actually about to call you.”
“Well, I don’t have working hours anymore.”
“Personally,” she says.
Davina drags her hands over her stomach, and I feel my eyes flare in my head.
“Oh god.”
I’m already doing a scan across the room in search of her emergency hospital bag.
“Now, don’t make a scene. There is a tiny bit of bleeding, and I want to get it checked out.”
I expect to feel some sort of relief knowing The Kid hasn’t decided to make an appearance today. Unfortunately, being notified of vaginal bleeding is just as urgent.
“Are you okay? Are you in pain?” I ask.
“No, and no. Like I said, I just want to get the bleeding checked out.”
She’s eerily calm. It’s not her usual level-headedness either.
“Okay,” I say, trying to conceal my panic. “You got your hospital bag?”
“In the closet.”
I yank open the closet and retrieve her duffel bag.
“Don’t forget my yoga mat,” she adds.
Yoga mat? This woman doesn’t rest. I hoist her bag and mat onto my shoulders and make a start to the door.
“Bill’s keys?” I ask. She swipes them off the desk and follows me out of the room. “Ready?”
With a slow exhalation of air and one last look around the room, Davina nods. “Ready.”
The Vegas air hums with ghostly remnants of the city’s nightlife. Rogue flyers are being collected by street cleaners and a few tourist groups have decided to start their day early ... or they’re only just heading back to their hotels after a night on the Strip.
I keep pretending to look at my side mirror to check on Davina instead. Aside from the occasional stroke of her stomach, she’s completely silent. She doesn’t even reach for her phone. No loud calls, no manic texting. Just rigid silence.
After around ten minutes of driving, the stillness is broken by a gentle sniffle. I do a quick double take when the morning sun flickers over Davina’s tear-stained cheeks.
“Hey,” I say softly, awkwardly placing my hand lightly on her shoulder and then removing it to retain a steady grip on the wheel.
“I’m so fucking scared, Mari. Shit.”
She digs into her pocket for a tissue and removes her giant sunglasses to wipe her eyes. I don’t look at her for too long, focusing on the road ahead so I can drive us to the hospital as safely as possible.
“What are you scared of?” I ask.
“Having this baby, being a mom. All of it. I don’t know if I can do this, I feel so unprepared. I never feel unprepared.”
Davina hasn’t cried once since coming to Vegas. Not that I was expecting her to, but the amount of work and people she has to deal with daily would send me into tears every night. She’s constantly working around the clock, and it’s clear she’s on a twenty-four-hour schedule for her job and guarding her emotions.
“Oh, Davina,” I whisper, my own eyes brimming with unshed tears.
Seeing her this vulnerable and upset has me feeling the weight of her anxieties.
“I thought staying busy with work would distract me from the thought of being a mother. Now I’ve stepped away, the thought is always there and it’s terrifying,” she says, her voice strained, laden with tears.
Davina stares blankly through the windshield as she dabs around her eyes. I clear my throat and tap my fingers on the ripped leather casing of the steering wheel. I glance fervently between the road and Davina, trying to muster up some words of comfort.
“My birth mom was not somebody who could take on the responsibility of being a parent. My resentment for her was replaced by feeling admiration for my auntie who raised me instead.” Davina remains unreactive. “What I’m trying to say is that in the same way my auntie unexpectedly embraced parenthood to raise me, I know you’re capable of that too, even if you do feel scared right now. I think it’s possible to be a great mom regardless of how unprepared you feel. I’m an example of the outcome and you think I’m okay, so ...”
I smile awkwardly at her, hoping that my rambling provides her with some level of comfort. Davina looks once toward me and then buries her face into her hands to weep. They’re chest heaving sobs that rack her entire body.
I run through everything I’ve just said. Have I indirectly told her she’s going to be a bad mom or something? I’m so distracted by my doubts that I jump when she places a heavy hand on my shoulder and squeezes it. A wordless gesture that I’ve come to know is her way of saying thanks.
“That might be the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me.” I smile gently, quickly blinking away a lone tear from my waterline. “I don’t know how I would’ve done this trip without you,” she whispers. “You’re such a gem, Mari.”
I smile at her appraisal and silently disagree with her sentiment because of course she’d be able to do this without me. She’s Davina-fucking-Greenwood. Bodybuilder, ex MMA promoter, Kas’s manager, ex gym teacher, business owner, and she’s about to start her biggest and most permanent job yet: Being a mother.
The strongest people I know also doubt themselves, and after the conversation I had with Kas yesterday, I think doubting ourselves is part of what it means to be human. When we doubt, we try, when we try, we learn, and when we learn, we grow. Mix it all up with the ability to care and love, and you’ve got yourself a human being. It’s what we are in our simplest form, so I honestly don’t think doubt is such a bad thing, not anymore.
Davina and I are having a pity party because she can’t leave the hospital. She was diagnosed with placenta previa earlier on in her pregnancy, and the bleeding this morning means that she has to be monitored for as long as required.
“I knew this would happen,” she says, picking at the pilling fabric of her sweats with newly manicured French tips; they’re just as long as the ones she had when I met her. “As if being on pelvic rest wasn’t bad enough.”
“Is it so bad?” I ask with an upbeat tone.
She strikes me with a mirthless look from her laid-out form on the hospital bed. I awkwardly smile back. Of course it’s bad. The most active woman in the world bound to a hospital room isn’t ideal.
I tap my foot on the ugly, linoleum flooring and half-watch a midday talk show on the TV Davina switched on for background noise.
“So, you were actually willing to leave the social media gig?” Davina says.
The guilt that has been festering inside of me since giving her my verbal notice at the hotel grows potent. Quitting Mel’s never felt like this; I was at peace moving on to bigger and better things. With this job, I feel like I’m severing a familial tie and cutting myself away from the one man I’ve stayed glued to for the entire time.
“Yeah,” I say, sitting on the edge of the outdated, easy-to-wipe, hospital chair beside her bed. “It feels like I’m about to serve you divorce papers.”
“What about the baby, Mari?” Davina exclaims and pats her stomach with a theatrical sigh.
“Dash will be fine,” I say with mock seriousness.
Davina’s gravelly laugh fills the room, and I chuckle with her until she spears me with a firm look. “Seriously, kid, we need you.”
“Dav, if there’s no fight, I have no job regardless of whether I quit or not.”
The amount of times I’ve had to explain this is exhausting.
There’s a little light that sparks in Davina’s eyes at the mention of the fight. “What if I offer you a sweet deal?”
Davina holds her tablet and smiles at the screen, her charming little front-toothed gap peeking through her lips.
“Ooh, shady.”
“It gets shadier. What if I offered you a permanent position at the gym as its social media manager?”
My leg stops jiggling at her words and the hand I rest on my leg squeezes my thigh.
Permanent position?
“As in, I don’t leave after this?” I ask.
Relief lingers at the edge of my mind and prepares to swathe me.
“Leave? I need you, the gym needs you. You’re also the only person keeping me sane.”
I tap my feet against the ground to channel my relief and rock back into the chair before launching myself forward to wrap Davina in a gentle hug.
“You’re offering me a permanent job at the gym?” I breathe into her shoulder.
The gym quickly became a sanctuary for me. I was able to do things there that Isaac would berate me for at home. Even the awful shower provided me with more comfort than it should—I don’t care that Dash says it’s haunted. The broken door Kas barged open lingers in my mind and I freeze in Davina’s awkward side hug.
“Wait. A permanent position at a gym that is going under? That sounds like a sure way to get laid off.” I pull away from her and settle back into the chair.
“We’re not going under. We’ve had to pause sign-ups because we don’t have the capacity for more members.” I had no idea the gym was doing so well. I knew it was doing better, but no more capacity for sign-ups? That’s like, more than good. “We’re setting up a waitlist so we don’t spread ourselves too thin. We have very little equipment.”
“You kept that quiet.”
“If I was screaming it from the rooftops after the first couple of weeks, Kas would hear and probably have another reason not to do the fight.”
“Kas said he wanted to do the fight when I spoke with him last night,” I say. I don’t mention the part where he blurted it so desperately, it was obvious he said it so I wouldn’t hand him the business phone. “If, hypothetically, I were to continue my job. What would be expected of me considering you are no longer managing this specific fight?” I ask.
“I’m not going to give you an answer you already know,” Davina says, her lip twitching and gaze knowing.
It’s the job I’ve had to help her do over the past month or so. A job she’s mentored me in, a job I’ve been shadowing since I accepted being a social media manager.
“Oh no.” I shake my head violently.
“Oh yes.”
“I’m not built for that.”
“You are, it’s only for a week until the fight is over, then you can get back to social media stuff.”
“So I would be managing Kas for a week?”
Saying that out loud clears every bit of knowledge I’ve learned from Davina over the past few weeks from my mind.
“Honestly, most things like contract negotiations for sponsorships are done. Fight week is really fucking busy, though. Bill and Dash should be handling Kas’s weight cut, there’s the pre- and post-fight press conferences ... The actual fight day is where Bill takes charge. The guys are practically unreachable for the few hours before the fight, it’s where we let them do their thing.”
I grimace at the listing of responsibilities and the thought of Kas being unreachable.
“First of all, no, I’m barely grasping being a social media manager because you hired me on the basis of ‘can use a camera and has a social media account.’ Also, Bill quit, so remove him from the plan.”
“When I say manage, I just mean keep an eye on things. Everything is sorted, and ... I don’t know? Give Bill a watermelon vape and he’ll be back in. Now, could you get my diary out of the front pocket of my hospital bag?”
“Straight to business. I didn’t even say I’d agree to being Kas’s manager,” I say, already reaching for the holy bible of Kas’s fight. “I need HR.”
“I am HR, now skip to where that sticky note is sticking out.”
The diary is completely separate from our shared calendar and on the front in large text is the phrase Plan B.
“Plan B? Funny,” I say.
“I’ve been anticipating the birth of this child since Kas told me about the fight.” She smiles down at her stomach, her attitude becoming much more positive since the drive here.
“I always knew you had a Plan B, I just didn’t think it was me.”
“You came into my gym in business casual, with a USB consisting of everything I’d need to hire you in the face of Kas’s shitty communication, and you didn’t flinch at Dash’s obnoxious attempt at flirting by buying you a sandwich.” That was flirting? “I already knew I’d like working with you and now, you’re the only person I feel could do my job.” She leans toward me. “To be honest with you, I don’t think there’s anyone else I’d want to do my job. You’re more than capable.”
More than capable. Those words cinch me into a warm embrace because I kind of believe them. If she had seen me before that interview, Davina would’ve thought I was a mess. With no prospects, heaps of self-doubt, and such little motivation, I barely wanted to enter her gym in the first place. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t work hard to learn how to be a half-decent social media manager, because I did. I worked really goddamn hard.
“You seriously think I can do your job?” I ask.
I cringe at the thought of me losing contracts, our home gym crumbling down, and Kas losing his fight.
“I know you can do my job.”
I want to say no. But if I say no, I’d be going against everything Kas told me at the Bellagio fountains. I can’t shy away from opportunities because I’m scared of consequences that aren’t guaranteed. It won’t cost me anything to do Davina’s job because the people I care for will love me regardless.
“Now, go and tell the team that they have a fight to train for. And tell them to fuck off and let me rest because I know Dash will want to visit. Clive is on his way, I’ll be fine with that tonight.”
I nod at her words, halting when I acknowledge the end of her sentence. Clive?
“Huh? Fletcher Ward’s Clive?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later, for now, get back to the hotel and let the team know.”
“You can’t kick me out after saying that! Give me something, anything,” I beg, gathering my tote bag and hoisting it over my shoulder.
Davina’s eyes crinkle as she laughs. “Just handle the managerial shit, kid. You’ve got this,” she says.
I will handle it because staying loyal to the team means that I am loyal to myself. What turned out to be a small favor has turned into my chance at success.
“Oh, Mari?” Davina calls when I’m halfway out of the door. “Remember, the three most important days: press conference, weigh-in, fight day. Those days will be hectic, and they’ll go by so fast you’ll wonder if they even happened.”
I nod hesitantly as my stomach churns. “Thanks for scaring the shit out of me.”
“Light work,” she reassures.
I chant the phrase all the way to Bill’s van. Light work, light work, light work.
Weeks ago, I valued comfort over everything in my work and relationships. Now? I’m working a job I was underqualified for and staying away from home for an entire month with people who were practically strangers to me—chaotic strangers at that. Thanks to Violet’s unwillingness to do this job and Kas’s undisguised desperation for a social media manager, I didn’t just “get the fuck out.”
I took it a step further and got the fuck involved.