Chapter 13 LEXI
LEXI
“So then this asswipe tried to literally force his collar on me, right in the middle of the bar. I swear, I’ve never met anyone that douchey.” Remembering exactly how she’d felt at the bar, Lexi followed up on the heavy bag with an extra combination.
Next to her on a bench, Tasia stopped curling her free weights to stare at her, open-mouthed.
“Babe, I am so sorry. I had no idea that-”
Lexi cut her off by waving a hand through the air.
“Of course you didn’t. There was no way you could have known.”
Lexi sat behind Tasia and drank deep from her water bottle as Tasia resumed her curls.
“Elbow in,” she said casually, correcting Tasia’s form, and made her hiss.
“Bitch.”
Lexi smiled as she assessed the rest of the gym.
“You’re welcome.”
There were three regulars - the moms, she called them - on the treadmills, all chatting with magazines.
A small group of guys were in the fight ring, which of course, reminded her of Grayson.
It had been days since she had spent the night with Grayson on the couch of the club, and not a word from him since. She wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“So what else?” Tasia asked. “I mean, after you knocked his sorry ass out. Eddie mentioned something about a totally different guy, and you getting a new job? Are you leaving the gym babe? Please don’t tell me you’re leaving the gym. I swear I’ll quit.”
Lexi smiled.
“I’m not leaving the gym, and yes, there’s a new guy, and yes, I’m picking up something else.”
Tasia eyed her, and Lexi rolled her eyes.
“Besides the gym.”
Tasia put down her weights and swiveled to stare at Lexi.
“Wait, wait, wait. You have the new guy already? Ohmygod, tell me everything! How!? Was this at the club? Eddie didn’t tell me! Are you keeping it quiet?”
Although she had no idea how to answer half the questions tumbling out of Tasia’s mouth, Lexi had to laugh.
As the less dramatic of the two, Lexi loved the enthusiasm and excitement that Tasia brought to her days. She could brighten up any nasty mood, and had been doing so at her gym for years. Lexi loved her for it.
“He works at the club, and after my little KO situation, he came to talk to me.”
Tasia’s eyes were trained on her face, eyes wide. So Lexi kept going, where normally she wouldn’t have.
“I’m not sure what’s happening yet. He asked to hire me, and after he came here last week and we fought-”
“You fought him?!” Tasia nearly shrieked.
Lexi waited a moment until her ears stopped ringing to respond.
“See what happens when you skip an entire week at the gym?”
Tasia stuck her tongue out at Lexi, eliciting a grin from both of them.
“And actually, he fought Eddie.”
She paused for effect.
“And then me.”
“I am going to kill that tall-ass motherfucker. Eddie didn’t say a word!”
Tasia fumed about Eddie and stood up to replace her free weights with heavier ones.
“Keep going,” she said shortly and resumed her curls. “He works at this club, right? A bartender?”
“Manager.”
“Even better! I’m really gonna have to make it over to your club one of these days.”
Lexi ignored the little tug of discomfort.
LifeS was private to her; she and Tasia had only talked about the sub/Dom thing in an abstract way.
Those conversations had led Tasia to hooking Lexi up with Byron, because as she put it, “he was into that sort of thing”.
Lexi was having a hard enough time trying to figure out what her ‘sort of thing’ even was, added to Grayson, and the fighting.
.. she wasn’t at all sure how to feel about any of it.
“I…” Lexi’s voice died out.
A black Bentley was cruising past the gym, way too slow, even for their neighborhood.
“Oh god, you like him that much already.”
Tasia mistook her silence for speechlessness and her eyes gleamed. Lexi blinked, and the car was gone. Was it possible that that asshole was-?
“What’s his name?”
Lexi answered absently, “Grayson.”
“Ooohh, hot name, I love it. White dude?” Tasia asked, placing a weight behind her to work her triceps.
Lexi pushed the car out of her mind and refocused, grinning at Tasia.
“Yeah, he’s white.”
Tasia rolled her eyes.
“Girl, I’m telling you, I’m happy you finally found one you like, since you’re so damn picky, but you’re missing out. The right black man knows how to treat a woman.”
Lexi pursed her lips.
“I don’t even believe in a right man babe, you know that, whatever he looks like.”
Tasia laughed.
“You ain’t never lied, babe.”
Dad
Hey sweetie,
are you going
to make it for
dinner tonight?
Of course!
It’s a Friday
isn’t it?
Dad
Just checking ;)
Any requests?
Lexi thought about it before sending most of the food emojis in her phone.
Dad
LOL. I’m still
not sure how
you make the
little pictures
kiddo, but I
guess you
don’t have any
preference?
Lol no requests.
Actually, do you want
me to make dinner?
Dad
No, it’s fine kiddo,
I have something
together. See
you then.
Lexi put her phone back on its charger next to her bed and walked all six steps into her shower.
The duplex, while conveniently near the gym, was not what anyone over the age of a na?ve twenty would call ‘spacious’.
Technically, it had all the necessities.
The bedroom only made her feel a slight bit claustrophobic.
Her bathroom was so small that she’d removed the door and instead set up a light blue fringe of crocheted curtain-type-things.
She still wasn’t sure what they had originally been made for, but at a yard sale for two bucks, it worked for her.
The kitchen was almost a proper kitchen, except all the appliances were sized to fit into an RV.
The refrigerator was a half-fridge with an anorexic freezer compartment, and her stove was less than two feet wide with four burners about the size of her hand.
Fortunately, the space she cared the most about -her living room- was the biggest part of the unit, and there she’d gone for comfort. Two deep-seated reading chairs vied for space against her front wall, while a couch that could double as a bed took up half the floor.
A blue and white patterned rug covered the beat up fake wood she couldn’t stand, and a wide bookshelf served as her entertainment stand.
With a root beer in hand, she set her laptop on her knees and decided she had a few hours before she had to make her way over to her father’s for dinner. It was time to get back into fighting for real.
Grayson could be ‘in charge’ all he wanted, but in the ring, she was on her own. The realization that she might be more comfortable in the ring than being with Grayson was a sharp twinge in her gut. She pushed the thoughts away to focus on what was in front of her.
A folder titled only ‘Fighting’ opened into dozens of videos. She clicked on the most recent and started a new notepad tab to take notes. Who she’d fought, how she’d won and how she’d lost were made into columns, with overall notes to improve at the bottom.
Absorbed, Lexi didn’t notice her phone light up over and over where it was plugged in across the room, or see that the shadows had deepened until the only light in the room came from her computer. She set the laptop aside and stretched, turning this way and that.
This time she heard her phone as it buzzed and danced in its stand. A glance at the time over the stove told her she’d been at this for much longer than she’d expected, and she was going to be late to her father’s.
A quick expletive accompanied her to the bedroom, where she pulled on pants and a shirt at random, not bothering with the lights.
She inhaled the warm leftover inch of root beer before tossing the bottle in the vicinity of her recycling bin, snagged her keys, her phone, snapped her laptop lid shut and ran out the door.
I’m coming! I got
caught up. Do we
need anything
on my way?
Dad
No worries kiddo,
it’ll stay hot. Maybe a
pie for dessert?
Lexi thought of her dwindling bank account and winced. She could manage a little pie, but there would be no buying coffee for the next week. Maybe working at LifeStyle would come in more handy than she’d thought.
You got it!
Her father’s neighborhood was much better kept than hers. And it better be, she thought, considering what he’d paid to have a single-level condo just outside Philly in the fifty-five-and-over community.
Although he had barely been fifty when they’d moved him in, his handicapped status had cleared the way.
She’d hated all the rules that came with living there when she’d helped him go over the lease agreement, but she reminded herself that she wasn’t the one living there, and it was a great place for her father.
Finding a single-level apartment with wheelchair access hadn’t been easy.
Lexi stopped at the mailboxes at the end of the drive to pick up his mail. Her duplicate key slid in easily under the tab J. Porter.
Since he only left the house once or twice a week and only thought about the mail half that amount, she was surprised there was none waiting for him.
She’d been expecting another bill from the hospital this week, and knew he wouldn’t notice if she took it and paid it. He’d never noticed all the others.
A front light came on as she started up the walkway, which she liked for its evenness and subtle edging of solar lights, but it was barely wide enough for her father’s wheelchair.
She wondered if maybe she could finally afford a newer model for him with her new job.
Then the door opened and there he was. Smiling in a gray sweatshirt, with rumpled brown hair and reading glasses, he was everything she had.
“There she is!” he said.
Lexi leaned over to hug him, conscious of not putting too much of her weight on him. She was never sure how much was too much, so her hugs, though tight, were always brief.
“Sorry, Dad. I got caught up with some work stuff.”