Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (3 page)

“Well,” Ash says, “that
should about do it. You have yourself a good night, Mason. Try not to get into
any fights on the way home.”

“If only I could promise
that,” I smile.

“I’m going to the car,”
Jana says as she turns and starts walking away. “If you’re not there by the
time I get it put in gear, I’m coming around the block to run over both of
you.”

“She doesn’t like you
very much, does she?” Ash asks.

“I think it’s because
you’ve spent all this time flirting with me,” I tell her.

“Oh, I’ve been flirting
with you?” she asks.

“Pretty brazenly,” I
answer. “I was going to say something, but I was just so shocked by how
incredibly attractive you find me.”

“You’re actually going to
walk away thinking that, aren’t you?” she asks.

“What if I am?” I ask.

She shakes her head,
putting her hands in her pockets. “Then you probably should go to the hospital,
because I think you must have gotten kicked in the head a few too many times,”
she says. She pulls her hands out of her pockets as I’m starting to turn to
walk away and she says, “Hey, just one more thing.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“I was rude to you
before,” she says. “You offered me your hand and I didn’t shake it.”

“Oh,” I say, furrowing my
brow a little. I extend my hand once more and this time she takes it, only
there’s something in her hand and she’s closing my fingers around it as she’s
pulling her hand away.

“Have a good night,” she
says. “Be safe out there.”

“Yeah,” I answer. “You,
too.”

She jogs away toward
wherever Jana has the car, and I’m headed back toward home, my hand still
closed around the folded paper in my hand.

I wait until I’m back
between the buildings on the other side of the road before I start unfolding
it. By the time I’ve got it open, it’s too dark for me to see what’s written on
it, but it doesn’t take long before I’m back within range of the streetlights.

It’s Ash’s phone number.

I’m not quite sure how I
managed that, but I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Tonight turned out to be
a pretty good night.

Chapter
Two

Surprises

Ash

“Just give me a minute,”
Jana says. “I promise, you’re going to be so excited when I tell you.”

“Then why not just tell
me now?” I ask as she continues to push me backward toward the couch.

“I have to make a quick
call first,” she oozes. “It’ll just take a minute.”

With that, my calves hit
the front of the couch and I fall back into a somewhat awkward sitting
position.

“Stay right there,” she
says.

“I was going to run to
the store for a few things,” I tell her. “Can it wait until I get back?”

“No,” she says. “Just
stay there. I promise it’ll be worth it.”

She leaves the room.

There’s a reason I’m
putting up such a fight. When it comes to surprises, Jana’s got a perfectly
awful record. The things that would actually make for great surprises, she just
blurts out. When she says I’m going to be “so excited” about anything, I start
getting a little nervous.

We’re really different,
Jana and I. Sometimes I wonder if we’d be friends if we didn’t go to elementary
school together.

She’s a good person and
everything; she’s just kind of erratic. When she told me she was looking at
moving into a two-bedroom apartment, asking me if I wanted to be her roommate,
I was a little hesitant.

It wasn’t until I’d made
her swear a blood oath over a schedule of chores that I felt comfortable moving
in with her.

Jana comes back into the
room, saying, “Well, I guess I probably could have just told you. My mom’s
coming to visit.”

“Oh,” I say, really
trying to project some kind of enthusiasm. “For how long?”

“That’s the thing,” Jana
says. “I wanted to talk to you about this first, but time was kind of a thing,
so…” she trails off.

“Jana, how long is your
mother staying?” I ask again sternly.

“It’s not like it’s
really that long when you think about it,” she says as if she’s already
answered my question. “I mean, she is my mom and everything. You said you’d be
cool with it if she came to visit every once in a while.”

“Jana,” I say, “how
long?”

“A few months,” she
answers, “and I know that sounds like a lot, but when you really think about
it, I mean, I was living with her for like eighteen years. Besides, my mom’s
awesome. Everybody loves her.”

The best policy is to not
respond to statements like that.

“You’re not mad, are
you?” she asks, wincing.

“When does she get here?”
I ask.

“That’s what I was
calling about,” Jana says. “She said she’ll be here in like half an hour.”

“Half an hour?!” I blurt.
“You couldn’t give me a little more notice than half an hour?”

“Whatevs,” Jana says.
“Just chill, okay? Will you?”

She’s doing her “don’t be
a turd in the punch bowl” routine, but I don’t want to hear it.

“When we decided to be
roommates,” I start, “we agreed that if your mother was going to stay with us,
you’d give me time to make other plans.”

“What’s your thing with
my mom, anyway?” Jana asks. “She’s never been anything but nice to you.”

“I never said she
wasn’t,” I answer. “You just,” I stammer, “I mean, we’re supposed to
communicate about this stuff, you know? Now I have half an hour before your mom
gets here? Not cool, Jana.”

“I promise, if you’ll
just spend a little time with her while she’s here, you two are going to
finally get past whatever problem you have with each other and everything’s
gonna be totally—” Jana stops.

My phone’s ringing.

“Hold on,” I tell her,
“I’ve got to take this.”

I make a quick retreat to
my room, and I don’t even bother checking to see who’s calling before I answer.

“I’ll give you fifty
bucks if you can get me out of here,” I tell whoever’s on the other end of the
line.

“Everything okay?” a
man’s voice comes back.

“Who is this?” I ask,
pulling my phone back a bit to find I don’t recognize the number.

“It’s Mason,” the man
says.

“Mason?” I ask. “Mason
who?”

“Is this Ash, short for
Ashely, the chick who bandaged me up the other night?” the man asks and it
finally clicks.

“Oh,
Mason
,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “You
gave me your number, so I thought I’d call and see if you want to get together
sometime.”

“Now’s good,” I tell him.

“Now?” he asks. “I’m not
ready just now. Can you give me a little bit?”

“How long do you need?” I
ask.

“I don’t know,” he says,
“maybe half an hour or so?”

Half an hour?

“No,” I tell him. “It’s
got to be sooner. I don’t have time to get into it right now, but I would
really love an excuse that would get out of here right now.”

“All right,” he says.
“Let’s meet up at Sherry’s on Eighth. You might have to wait a little bit for
me to get there, but at least you’ll be away from wherever you are.”

“Sounds great,” I tell
him. “See you soon.”

I hang up.

I’d given Mason my phone
number to mess with Jana, telling her I was thinking about hooking up with her
ex, but right now, I could just about kiss him.

Coming out of my room, I
don a disappointed look.

“What’s the matter?” Jana
asks.

“I forgot,” I tell her.
“Mason and I have plans right now.”

“You’re hooking up with
Mason?” Jana asks. “You’re joking.”

“I don’t know if I’d call
it hooking up, but we do have plans,” I tell her. “That was him on the phone.
It totally slipped my mind, but we’re supposed to have dinner together. I
should really get going.”

“Well, give him a call
back and tell him he’s gonna have to wait for a while,” Jana says. “You’ve got
to at least say ‘hi’ to my mom and help us get her stuff up here.”

“How much ‘stuff’ is she
bringing?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Jana
says, “probably enough to make her comfortable for four or five months.”

“Four or five months?” I
blurt. “No way!”

“Come on, Rumple Fugs,”
she says, and I’m balling my fists.

“You know that nickname
undermines my confidence,” I seethe.

Jana’s smirking as her
phone starts to ring.

“It’s probably Mason,”
she says. “He’s probably calling to rub in the fact that you’re going out with
him now.”

That sends a pang of
guilt through me. Jana’s exceptional at that when she wants to be.

Jana answers the phone
and walks off a little ways as I sink into the couch. On the one hand, this is
a perfect opportunity for me to make my escape, but if that actually
is
Mason calling to shove our dinner
plans in her face, I’d rather know about it so I can be sure to never see him
again.

“…all right, I’ll talk to
you soon,” Jana says. “Bye.” She hangs up the phone and comes back over to me,
asking, “What were we talking about?”

“Was that him?” I ask.

“No,” Jana says. “You’re
really going to take off, aren’t you?”

“Only if you’re okay with
it,” I tell her. “I should have asked if you’d be okay with me seeing him. How
long did the two of you date?”

She turns her head and
folds her arms. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “My mom’s on her way and you
want to ditch us for
my
ex before
she’s even got here.”

“Gotten,” I correct. It’s
a waste of time: She never learns. Still, habits are habits. “If you don’t want
me to go out with him, I won’t go out with him,” I tell her, “but
please
don’t make me live under a roof
with your mother for months on end.”

“Just go,” Jana says.
“I’m sure mom and I can lug all her stuff to the apartment all by ourselves.
She’s going to be so sad that you’re not here, though. She loves the crap out
of you.”

“She does not,” I
respond. “The only times your mom and I have even had a full conversation, she
was stoned out of her mind.”

“Well, that’s not really
telling me much,” Jana says. “Mom’s always stoned.”

“You can see why that
might be a problem,” I tell her.

“Well, at least you got
to know her a bit,” Jana says.

“Yeah,” I scoff. “She
told me about how she followed Jefferson Airplane on tour when they did that
reunion in the eighties. Apparently, they never let her backstage, but she did
end up making it with a roadie at some point.”

Jana giggles and shakes
her head. “Moms,” she says, smiling.

“Listen,” I tell her, “if
you don’t want me to see Mason, I won’t, but I’m not going to stick around to
wait for your mother to ‘cleanse my aura’ with burning sage. That stuff gives
me a headache.”

Jana sighs. “It’s not
like Mason and I were a big deal or anything,” she says. “It’s just a little
weird. I mean, if you want to see him, go ahead. We’re cool, but come on.
You’ve got to at least wait and say hi to my mom. She’s going to be here
whenever you get back anyway, so it’s not like you’re really getting away with
anything. Just stay until she gets here, okay?”

“Well…” I start, but
Jana’s phone starts ringing again.

“Just a sec,” Jana says
and answers the call. “Hey, did you find it? Great. Just stay on Fairfax until
you get to Twelfth Street and then take a left. We’re in the Green Village
Apartments. We’ll be outside. Okay, bye.” Jana hangs up the phone and turns
back to me. “That was mom. She’s about ten minutes out.”

Suddenly, I don’t feel so
guilty anymore.

“Yeah, I’m out,” I tell
Jana and start for the door, “See ya later.”

It’s delaying the
inevitable. I know that. Still, given what the inevitable is, I’m pretty happy
putting it off for a while.

“You know he sleeps
around, right?” Jana asks and I stop.

“What?” I ask. “Did he
cheat on you?”

“No,” Jana says. “Well,
we weren’t really a couple. We were kind of sex acquaintances.”

“Sex acquaintances?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “When
we first met, we had sex. I gave him my number, he gave me his. Things were
just so busy for me back then. We really only got together when one of us
needed a booty call. Then I met someone else, and then he met someone else. If
you want to go see him, I’m not going to be
that
friend, but I thought you should know.”

“So what you’re saying is
that the two of you started something, but you were busy a lot so you never
made it out of the bedroom?” I ask. “That’s not really sex acquaintances as
much as it is being unavailable for anything more.”

“He did that with other
people, too,” Jana says. “I mellowed out a ton, but from what Carli told me,
he’s still quite a little man-whore.”

I don’t ask if that means
Mason and Carli are a thing. Carli’s the biggest gossip I’ve ever met and, more
likely than not, she’s never actually met Mason. I’m not much for gossip or the
people who do it, but Carli does have an outstanding track record for spreading
rumors that end up being true. I’ll give her that much.

Maybe I
should
call Mason back and cancel. I’m
really not looking to go out with someone who’s just going to look at me like a
piece of meat, even if it
is
just to
get out of seeing Jana’s mom a couple extra hours.

“Look,” Jana says, “mom’s
going to be here in like three minutes. Why don’t you—where are you going?”

I don’t answer.

I know that
Rhododendron—or whatever flower Jana’s mom has repurposed as her new moniker
for the moment—is going to be here when I get home, but if I stay out a while,
there’s always a chance that she’ll be taking a weed nap by the time I’m back.

Maybe Mason’s a dirt bag,
maybe he’s not. Either way, I’m getting out of here before Jana’s mom tries to
pin me down and slather me with hemp oil. Again.

*
                
   
*
              
     
*

“Well, that’s a shame,”
Mason says, sipping his soda in a weak attempt to hide his smile.

“It’s not that I have a
problem with hippies or anything,” I tell him. “I just subscribe to the idea of
personal space.”

“Yeah, that seems totally
reasonable,” he says.

“So, my roommate says
you’re some kind of man-whore or something,” I say and take a bite of my salad.

“I wouldn’t say that,”
Mason answers calmly.

“What would you say?” I
ask.

“I’d say that I’ve had my
fair share of relationships that didn’t work out, but you know. I’m still
optimistic. These things take time,” he says.