SWNOVELS The Fake Zone: Chapter 17
Mila is wincing and stiff the next day as she follows me to the field beside her apartment, but she doesn’t say anything.
“Want to stretch today?”
She stares daggers at me before she bends to try and touch her toes.
I grin, pulling my foot up to stretch my quad.
“How do you not have an accent?”
That steel in her gaze fractures as she sits, bending her knees and pressing the soles of her shoes together. “You don’t have much of one, either.”
“I do when I drink,” I admit.
“Alex is from New York, and Jon is from Colorado.”
“But you lived in Oklahoma for seven years.”
She stares at me for a minute before moving to the next stretch, extending a leg in front of her and looking at the gap between her fingers and toe, making me believe she’s not going to respond.
“I had a lot of tutors after I was adopted. One was a stickler for speech.”
“They made you lose your accent?”
Mila scoffs. “Don’t try and twist it into something ugly. I couldn’t read or do basic math when I moved here. I didn’t know anything about science, space, or geography. Believe me when I say I wasn’t sad to leave any part of my past behind, accent included.” She stands, reaching an arm across her body.
Once again, the image of Mila as a child transforms slightly as I try to piece together these hints of her past. A dozen new questions percolate in my thoughts, wondering what happened with her parents and what a seven-year-old Mila with a Southern accent and no formal education was like? Was she just as stubborn? Just as willful? Did she stare down grown men even then?
“Are you done?” Mila asks, swinging her arms to her sides.
I should insist she stretches more, knowing how sore she is, but before I can respond, she turns and starts running, taking the same path we did yesterday.
“There he is!” Mr. Potter beams.
Days ago, I thought my only chance of getting a sponsorship was at the mercy of Linus Kemp—or potentially his daughter Emma. Never, did I expect so many emails and calls from boosters vying for my time and offering contracts and paid sponsorships.
I’ve never been to one of the jewelry stores Mr. Potter and his wife own. They have three locations, and I’m at the original today. It’s pure class. Bright, warm lights shine all around the store, making it feel like the sun is in here. Glass cases line the walls, and several more form an island in the middle of the floor. A glint catches my eye, and I stare at a pool of diamonds. I think of Cole, adding this to our list of experiences right up there with Vegas suites and private jets. I want to be able to walk in here, have my mom pick out a birthday present, and buy it with cash.
“How are you, Greyson?” Mr. Potter asks. “Can I get you something to drink?”
I shake my head. “No thanks, Mr. Potter. This is quite the place you have here.”
He raises his chin with pride. I like Mr. Potter. Of all our boosters, he’s one of the friendliest and easiest to get along with, constantly bragging about his wife, Therese. They’ve been married for thirty years, and he thinks the world begins and ends with her.
“My wife did most of the designing. Lovely, isn’t it? She hoped to make it, but she’s at one of our other locations today.” He glances around the store with a similar note of adoration that he gives Mrs. Potter, as though enough memories have been made here that he senses her even when she’s not here.
“Are we ready?” A woman with magenta-colored hair and deep purple eyeshadow steps forward with a camera in her hands.
“We should probably sign the contract really quickly and be sure to get this in your hands.” Mr. Potter slips a folded check from his breast pocket and places it in my hand.
It’s my first paycheck associated with football, and damn, does it feel good.
“You’re late,” Cole yells as I step into the small gym located between Highgrove and Oleander Springs. This is where Cole met Mackey and where we trained for three months. We worked to convince Mackey to take him on because he wasn’t looking for any trainees, knowing how few make it beyond the first year.
“I had that sponsorship thing. I texted you.” I let my bag hit the floor before grabbing a jump rope to get warmed up, despite my morning workout with Mila. It’s our fifth day working out, and like during the summer months when the team begins our strenuous workouts to prepare for the season, the results are slow.
“What sponsorship thing?” Dustin asks, applying a fresh layer of tape to his knuckles.
“A photoshoot,” Cole tells him.
Mackey scoffs and shakes his head. “Don’t get soft on us.”
“Our boy is going to be famous.” Cole punches his gloves together.
“Work out his bad mood.” Mackey shucks a thumb at Cole. “He came in with a hangover and has been bitching about everything this morning.” He runs a hand over his bald head before slipping his hat back on and running a hand over his goatee. He moved here twenty years ago from New Jersey, though his thick accent makes most assume it was more recent. My thoughts briefly veer to what Mila had told me when I brought up her lack of an accent.
I wasn’t sad to leave any part of my past behind.
The words have followed me all week.
I turn raised brows to Cole. It’s not judgment but a question. Normally, he only drinks after a fight.
He shrugs, but the agitation on his face says there was a reason. Cole flips Mackey off. “Come on, old man, I’ll remind you how slow you are.” He taps his gloves again.
I have no idea how old Mackey is, but if I were pressed to guess, I’d say mid to upper fifties. Regardless, he’s yoked—a lifelong gym rat I’d never cross or dare to sneak up on despite him being a foot shorter than me.
Mackey waves a hand at Cole as proof of said bad mood. “Straighten him out for me. Will you, Meyers?”
Cole’s eyes blaze with a hunger for fighting, but before I can respond, Abe steps forward from where he’s been working with a heavy bag and climbs into the ring. “Let’s dance.”
Mackey closes his eyes briefly, likely sending a silent prayer.
Dustin steps up beside me as I lower the jump rope, and we watch the brothers pull on gloves, my own palms itching to feel the material slide into place.
As always, Abe lunges, always the first one off the mark. He relies entirely on speed and strength, two things that have managed to get him farther than I would have imagined considering how his temper blinds him. He lands a hit and then a second before Cole goes on the offensive, knocking him off balance and striking fast and hard. Cole stuns Abe before he follows the impact with several more hits, quickly pushing Abe straight into a corner where his fight-or-flight instincts take over. His eyes glaze over with the same murderous rage he perfected before elementary school that used to make students and teachers alike fear him.
Cole isn’t rattled by the stare or the crazed battle cry Abe makes around his mouthpiece before charging for Cole.
“Like a fucking bull,” Mackey says, throwing up a hand.
Cole anticipates the move as quickly as we do, dancing out of his way and working on wearing him out as we’ve strategized will be the goal with his fight in March against Scooter.
Cole tires of the game first, clearly looking for someone to hit before he lands another series of hits to Abe that has him falling before Mackey calls it quits.
Abe spits out his mouthguard, blood and saliva following it. “You bastard. That was a cheap shot.”
Mackey sets his hands on my shoulders. “Get Cole out while I go hang Abe up by his fucking toenails until some sense runs back into that brick he calls a brain.”
Dustin and I don’t try to stop Cole from prowling after his brother, knowing that will only make things worse. Instead, we don our sweatshirts and wait until Mackey yells at them both and forces Cole to take a walk.
Cole rips off his gloves, throwing them at Abe before spitting out his mouthguard and pulling a tee over his head. He pulls the door open, making the bells tied to it clang as Mackey swears again.
It’s warm today, nearly seventy, making me regret my sweatshirt as we follow Cole down the sidewalk of the old strip mall. We round the corner where a couple of women step out of a shop, startled by Cole’s proximity and then smile upon a closer inspection.
During the season, it’s hard to make it out here as often as I’d like, but during breaks, I make the trip daily, to help Cole pursue his dreams just as he did mine when giving me the opportunity to step onto the field and impress our athletic director. That day, he gave me the keys to my future, and I’ll be damned if I don’t try and reciprocate.