The Intuitives(15)

“Roger that,” she acknowledged. “You managing to stay off K.P.? Or did they send you over there to peel potatoes?”

“Mounds of potatoes,” he replied, winking. “Truckloads. How about you? You managing not to get your ass kicked in Muay Thai? Or are they mopping the floor with you?”

“Oh, ha ha. Let me guess. Mom already told you I won?”

“She’s proud of you, Mac,” her father confirmed. He was the only person who called her Mac. Everyone else, including her mother and sisters, called her by her full name. “But I want to hear about it.”

As it happened, Mackenzie had other news for her father, and she had already been sitting in the hallway for almost fifteen minutes waiting for her turn, refusing to let her impatience show. But she regarded it as an exercise in discipline, so she forced herself to tell him about the competition first.

“It wasn’t a big meet. Just eight girls. My first match was the toughest, so if we hadn’t pulled each other early, that girl might have made it to the final match. But I’m not sure it would have been as hard to fight her farther into it.”

“Really? Why?”

Mackenzie loved the fact that her father always asked questions about her matches. He didn’t just care who won or lost. He understood that she loved Muay Thai, and he wanted to know as much about it as he could—to share in what mattered to her. He was the only person who showed that much interest in the sport beyond her own coaches.

“Well, partly because she moved so much. She would have been tired after more rounds.”

“Five rounds per match?”

“Yeah, standard rules. So, by the fifteenth, she would have been crazy tired if she had made it that far. But the bad thing was how she moved. She kept dancing away from me. Stop laughing.”

“I’m not laughing. I’m grinning.” But just saying it transformed his handsome grin into a chuckle.

“You’re laughing now!”

“You’re right… you’re right… I am laughing now,” he admitted. “I can just imagine you chasing her around the ring. I know how much you hate that.”

“Well, I like to think it wasn’t quite as undignified as that makes it sound.”

At this, her father laughed even harder before finally managing to bring himself back under control. “OK, OK,” he said finally. “So what happened?”

But Mackenzie was grinning by this time, too. She could never listen to her father’s charismatic laughter without smiling, no matter what mood she had been in even moments before.

“Well, you’re kind of right. I wasn’t exactly chasing her, but it probably looked that way. Every time I tried a kick she would back away fast. And then I would do it again, and she would back up again. So I couldn’t land anything. But then sometimes she would close for a second, throw a kick or a punch, and then dance away so I couldn’t return it. A couple of those caught me off-guard because I was still trying to catch up to her. So she was getting ahead on points even though she was fighting dirty.”

“How was it dirty? Was it against the rules?”

“No. No, it’s legal. It’s just, you know, she wouldn’t stand and fight me. Who goes to a competition to run away?”

“But she almost won that way, eh?”

“Yeah,” Mackenzie replied sheepishly.

“Sometimes, Mac,” and his voice was suddenly serious, a tone she recognized as meaning he was about to impart a gentle life lesson, “running away is the best long-term strategy. Sometimes your opponent is stronger than you. When that happens, you can’t stand and fight. You have to be smart about it. Toughness isn’t always what wins a battle. Understand?”

“Coach says you’re gonna get hit no matter what, though,” she protested. “If the other girl is stronger, you’re just going to have to take some tough hits. The trick is to take each hit on your own terms.”

“I don’t think I’m saying anything that different, Mac. But sometimes your best terms are not to take the hit at all.”

“Well, that was what she thought, that’s for sure,” she admitted, but her disdain for the tactic was still obvious.

“OK,” her father said, relenting, “tell me how you beat her.”

“Well, the first two rounds were tied, but she took round three by a point because of all the running. In round four I managed to hold my own again. So in round five I was still down by one, and the match was almost over. I knew I had to score big, right? So I started chasing her for real, throwing lots of kicks, not even trying to connect, just making her run, and then I slowed down, pretending I was getting tired, baiting her to turn back toward me. When she did, she threw a kick at my side, but I caught it the second it landed—I mean I knew exactly where it was going to hit, you know? From the second she started the kick, I just read it. And I caught her leg and swept her. Bam! Down on the mat.”

“You knocked her out?” her father asked, his eyes wide.

“No,” she said, laughing, “but it was a solid take-down. It was enough to win.”

“Good,” he said proudly. “How were the other matches?”

“Easy, compared to her. I dominated the second girl. She was a total pushover. The last one was a little faster, but not as fast as me. Like Coach always says, ‘Take the hit where you want it. Understand why you’re taking it so you can hit back harder.’ She got a few hits in, but I took ’em where I wanted ’em. And I hit back harder.”