Faking It(42)

“That’s a great question. You listen to fighters talk for a while and the promoters are always trying to bait us into trash talking our opponents to sell fights. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes there’s legitimate animosity. But the clue to the guys who are doing it just because they have to is in the clichés.”

“Interesting. Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this. Can you give me an example?”

“Yeah. You’ll hear a lot of guys say ‘I’ll let my fists do the talking.’ Well, okay, but what you’re actually hearing is that guy saying ‘I’m sick of saying the same old thing again in yet another interview. Can’t someone please ask me a new question?’ And that’s what you’re doing with me. You’re asking me questions no one else has asked. Maybe that’s because your mind is different than anyone else’s.” He folded his hands in his lap and nodded for me to continue.

Now this was more like it. Enough about my eyes, more about how my mind is different from anyone else’s. Wait. Unless he meant that I was weird, that I was a freak unlike anyone else. Focus. Compliments later, interview now. “Do you really think that you don’t know where the chip on your shoulder, as you put it, comes from? What do you think you might be trying to prove. Please speculate, if you’re willing.”

Braden sighed. “I’m willing. I think I want to believe, to show myself, that I’m worth as much as my brothers. I fight for money. Sean and Ryan…those are my brothers…they fight for something bigger. They’re soldiers. Marines, to be precise.”

“And why does that matter to you?”

“Because I wanted the same thing they did. Our dad was a lifetime military guy. I always wanted to be my dad. Lucky that way, but he died when I was really young. And I was going into the military when I got swept up in fighting. I wanted to devote myself to something that mattered. But I wound up devoting myself to myself. Whatever I am is whatever you see. There’s nothing more to me. But if you saw my brothers, you’d see versions of me with a little something extra. They’re the kind of men you’d be proud to be with. I’m just the guy you want at your party, if you’re that kind of person. Not that there’s anything wrong with a party, but you know.”

I almost turned off the microphone and put my arms around him. I couldn’t have been more shocked by this turn of events if he had pulled out a tutu and told me that his real dream was to be the prima ballerina in New York. I couldn’t shake the idea that this was all just some strategy of his, but if he was trying to turn me on, it was working. It didn’t feel that way, though. Again, it was like I was barely there. I almost felt like we were in a confessional booth and I was his priest. At any moment he’d snap back into reality and demand that I erase the recording.

It looked we had both been pushed into our careers and never thought we would be good enough. My father had steered me towards my job, but I’d never be good enough because I wasn’t the son he had wanted. A good enough girl still wasn’t a boy. And Braden would never measure up to his own expectations because he wasn’t pursuing his own dreams. All of the posturing—well, at least some of it—was a smokescreen. It was rare to find a guy who could admit he was compensating, but a fighter who admitted it? Now that was an odd bird indeed.

Take it easy, I told myself. It could still be a trick. But I couldn’t quite believe it. It was almost like he’d gone into some sort of trance. Maybe he’d snap out of it at any moment and realize what he’d been saying.

But that didn’t happen. And even if it had, it would have been worth it just to see the



walls come down for a few minutes.



Chapter 6



I woke up feeling hungover even though I hadn’t touched a drop of anything. Sensitivity to light, dry mouth, a general sense of bafflement over what had happened the night before.

Alyssa. Alyssa.

Her name was going through my head like someone had injected it into my skull. No, that makes it sound like it was something bad, which wasn’t exactly true. But I could not stop thinking about her. And me. As in, what the hell had gotten into me last night? My pulse was racing at a pace somewhere north of feeling anxious.

It had been so long since I had had something to anticipate outside of my next fight. My next one night stand. The next compliment someone would give me to or the next check they would write to me.

In the fight game, image isn’t everything—I mean, you could do whatever you wanted to outside the cage. As long as you won inside of it, no one could say anything about it. The result was obvious. But image wasn’t nothing, either. Perception mattered, and even though I had something of a bad-boy reputation, and even though I had had a year (just one!) that failed to live up to my potential, I had done a pretty good job managing my image as an iron hard warrior, ruffled by nothing. There had never been any reason for me to broadcast my insecurities to the world. It was nobody’s business but mine and even I couldn’t acknowledge them as often as I probably should have. I had always found a way to bury them under training, work, one extra mile, one more round.

But now it was apparently Alyssa’s business too. Like she was a skeleton key that had opened me up, letting everything I tried to keep private ooze out onto the desk between us. I hadn’t been able to shut up!