Hands down, p.1
Hands Down, page 1
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also Available
MARIANA ZAPATA
Hands Down © 2020 Mariana Zapata
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 Mariana Zapata
Book Cover Design by RBA Designs
Editing by Hot Tree Editing and My Brother’s Editor
To my greatest friend
and teacher.
The absolute love of my life.
Dorian,
this book and my whole life
is dedicated to your memory.
Chapter One
“The word is out! The Oklahoma Thunderbirds have signed quarterback Damarcus Williams to a two-year deal worth $25 million. This move comes weeks after the organization announced that Zac Travis would enter free agency following five seasons in Oklahoma City. Michael B, is it over for Travis as a starting quarterback in the NFO?”
The good-looking man in a dark gray suit on the television visibly bristled before leaning forward into the camera. “Have you seen him play these past two seasons? I don’t know why the Thunderbirds waited so long to take him off the roster! I mean, are you kidding me? This deep in his career, he’s only managed to lead a team into the playoffs twice! What—”
“Blanca, what are you doing?”
Shit balls.
Instantly tearing my gaze away from the closed captioning flashing across the bottom of the television screen I’d had my eye on from about fifteen feet away, I only just barely managed to think about what I’d been in the process of doing before the image of a familiar-looking man in a gray, white, and orange football uniform had caught my attention.
Like it—he—always had.
“Changing the channel,” I answered the man on the other side of the counter from where I was standing. I lifted the remote in my palm as proof.
Did he just call me Blanca again?
I knew without a doubt that my new boss was trying to bust me not working. He was always creeping around, popping up out of nowhere when you least expected him. Fortunately, I had probably only been watching the television for about a minute. Just long enough to recognize the man the commentators on The Sports Network were talking about and catch the beginning of their discussion.
My boss—one of my three new bosses, if I was going to be technical—stared at me blankly from where he stood across the counter, either thinking I was full of shit or trying to figure out how to turn what I’d been doing around on me so he could have an excuse to bitch.
Because that was what he did—really well, unfortunately.
So well that most of my coworkers had quit over the last month since the gym had been officially taken over by its newest owners. Asshole 1, Asshole 2, and The Decent Guy Who Was Unfortunately Never Around Who Might Also Be An Asshole If He Ever Spent More Than Five Minutes At Maio House. That was how we referred to them—at least those of us who were left.
Okay, maybe it was just me and Deepa who did, but I highly doubted it.
“One of the members asked me if I could change it,” I kept going, lying out of my freaking ass at that point, but it wasn’t like he knew that. I wasn’t going to feel bad about it either, especially not when he was still butchering my name this long into knowing each other. I’d corrected him at least ten times and spelled it out for him twice, maybe more. B-i-a-n-c-a M-a-r-i-a B-r-a-n-n-e-n. Bianca because my sister had named me, Maria for my mom’s abuela—her grandma—and Brannen because… it was my dad’s last name.
“And it’s Bianca. With an I. Not an L,” I corrected the man who was now in charge of signing my paychecks, tapping in vain at the name tag on the left side of my chest with a smile that was 200 percent forced. On that note, I needed to get him out of here and back into his office before he really did find something to complain about.
Then again, as I’d learned, he could find something wrong with… well, everything. “Did you need something?”
Besides a life and a personality change. Maybe multiple enemas too, to get whatever was lodged up his ass out of there.
My boss stared at me for a second longer as he leaned against the counter I had been hired almost three years ago to work behind. The front desk for a gym was a place I had enjoyed working at up until exactly a month ago.
I didn’t need to look at the front of the counter to know that the words MAIO HOUSE were painted across the front of it. The world-famous gym hadn’t changed names when it had been officially sold a few weeks ago. The three investors—one of whom was Gunner, the man who couldn’t remember my name to save his life—had bought the brand and the legacy behind a gym. Maio House had been in the DeMaio family for seventy-something years and had bred dozens of world-class athletes, starting with boxers when it opened, and now mixed martial arts athletes.
The atmosphere had been great before. The members were mostly all nice, and I had liked my coworkers. The DeMaios had been the best owners and managers, as well.
Then one day, out of the blue, Mr. DeMaio told us he was selling.
It had been the beginning of the end. By the time that first Friday had rolled around after the sale had been official, one of the other front desk employees, two people who manned the juice bar, and the assistant manager had quit. Within the following week, two more front desk employees, the custodian, and the gym’s manager of two years had quit too.
Mostly because of this lovely human being.
He sucked.
I purposely made my smile go even bigger while I waited for the crappiest boss I’d ever had to tell me if he actually needed something.
Because we both damn well knew he didn’t. He was just being a micromanaging butt-munch who loved harassing his employees, and today was my lucky day. Yay.
“No,” Gunner the retired United Fighting League fighter replied with that annoyingly blank glare that had me wondering if he’d tried using it in the cage back in his prime. I’d looked him up the first day he had bitched me out for drinking a smoothie behind the front desk. “I don’t know how they ran things here before,” the nightmare had tried to tell me two days after he’d started working here, “but no food is allowed behind the counter, even if it’s a smoothie from the juice bar. And no discounts either. You pay the price that’s on the board just like everybody else.”
First off, I hadn’t even gotten a discount when my coworker had made my smoothie. I’d bought it for the full price. The only time I ever got discounts had been if one of the managers or owners had offered it up in the moment. Secondly, it hadn’t been like I’d been drinking it in front of customers. I’d sipped at it between people coming and going, while crouched behind the counter because I’d had to skip my lunch. And why did I have to skip my lunch? Because my coworker had quit the day before after Gunner had griped at her for asking to come in late so she could take her son to the doctor.
“I don’t pay you to stand around watching TV, remember that,” the man said in that tone that had me fighting not to roll my eyes.
Remember that.
Douchebag.
Feeling my fingers instantly curling into fists on their own, it took everything in me to keep my face neutral and my eyes normal width before I managed to say to my boss as sweetly as humanly possible, smiling sarcastically, “I know. Don’t worry.”
What he needed to worry about was getting a foot up his ass.
How the hell I’d gone from really enjoying working here, enjoying my coworkers and most of the members, to sitting in my car, waiting until the absolute last minute to clock in and having my keys in my hand a minute before my shift was set to end was beyond me. Mostly. I had even started checking the schedule to see what days Gunner was supposed to come in so that I could mentally brace myself.
Gunner’s annoying ass rapped his knuckles on the counter one last time before he pushed off. I watched him walk around the desk and to the door that led to the pathway connecting the gym part of the building that I worked in with the other building next door that held what we called the MMA section since the majority of the people who trained over there were fighters.
I needed to get out of here.
And one day—one day soon—I would.
First, I just needed Deepa to find another job so that I wouldn’t feel bad leaving her to fend for herself with this asshole. I’d been bringing it up at least once a day, but she still hadn’t committed to quitting no matter how much she hated putting up with Gunner too. Hopefully sooner than later, she really would go through with it because I wasn’t positive how much longer I was going to last here even now that I was only working part-time.
I needed to talk to her about it again ASAP. Maybe tomorrow morning when she was supposed to come over to my apartment to help me. We could look through job listings during our break. Yeah, that was a good plan.
Now, what was I thinking about before I’d gotten distracted?
A recipe. I’d been trying to work out a new recipe in my head. That was what I’d been thinking about when TSN—The Sports Network—had flashed that familiar man across the screen and I’d instantly gone for the remote to change the channel. It took me a second to get back to where I’d last been on the recipe train. Bananas and chocolate were about as far as I’d gotten before I’d been weak and got sucked into what the commentators were saying, even though I knew better. It wasn’t like they ever said anything nice.
But anyway.
All the time I spent standing around thinking had been my favorite thing about this job before. It was time I could use working out recipe ideas in my head, weighing their pros and cons while I got paid. I liked getting out of the house and had made friends here. It had been a win-win.
And then Gunner happened.
My phone vibrated against my butt cheek, and I looked around to make sure Asshole 1 hadn’t come back in and wasn’t hiding around the corner, waiting.
He wasn’t. At least I was pretty sure he wasn’t.
Pulling it out, I took a peek at the screen, half-expecting a message from my sister since I hadn’t heard from her all day.
I wasn’t disappointed.
CONNIE LOVES PECKER: Do I need to help you find a date to Lola’s quince?
Wasn’t that… months away? And did you even need a date to a fifteen-year-old’s birthday party? Sure, that part of the family was spending something like twenty thousand dollars on my second cousin’s party; my sister had called to tell me how dumb they were for throwing money around like that when we all knew they couldn’t really afford it. For Connie’s fifteenth birthday, our parents had bought her an ancient car that didn’t run; she still griped about it. For my fifteenth birthday, Mamá Lupe, my abuelita, my grandma, had given me money to go to a theme park in San Antonio, and my cousin Boogie had taken me for the day. I’d wanted to go to Disney, but there hadn’t been money back then. My parents had said they would take me someday, but I was twenty-seven now and still waiting on them to hold up that promise.
But I was finally going to Disney World this year, and I was excited. It was my gift to myself for surviving Kenny and his bullshit. I was going to celebrate my future with mouse ears on.
I glanced up to make sure Gunner’s creepy ass still hadn’t magically appeared and sent my sister a response real quick.
Me: I need a date?
I had just barely slipped my phone back into my pocket when it vibrated with another incoming text. A second one came through before I even managed to pull it back out. But they weren’t from my sister.
They were both from Boogie.
BOOGIE IS MY FAVORITE: Call me as soon as you get a chance
BOOGIE IS MY FAVORITE: Please B
I could count on zero fingers the number of times my cousin—my favorite cousin who was basically my brother and definitely one of my best friends, tied with my sister—had ever asked me to call him. He was allergic to phone calls. And he rarely ever texted me on the weekend either, especially now that he had a girlfriend again.
Gunner could suck it if he caught me; my cousin needed me.
I hit the phone icon on the message and put it to my ear. Boogie answered on the second ring, freaking me out even more. I could also count on one hand the number of times he’d answered any call from anyone on the first ring. I would know. I’d been with him a thousand times when he’d looked to see who was calling and then spent twenty seconds debating whether or not to answer.
“Bianca,” Boogie whispered before I even got a chance to say hi or ask what was wrong. “Paw-Paw Travis is in the hospital.”
“Oh” was what came out of my mouth first, mostly because my brain was still hung up on needing a date, the recipe I had been trying to figure out, how I needed to get out of here, and how much of a shithead Gunner was. But I caught on fast. I went straight for the name he’d said. Paw-Paw Travis? What were the chances…? “Oh shit. Is he okay?”
I looked around again. The coast was still clear, thankfully. Beside me, the new girl working the juice bar glanced at me before looking away again just as quickly. Nobody wanted to get busted. I couldn’t blame her.
“I don’t know,” my older cousin rattled off quickly, bringing me back to the call as he sounded freaking distracted and like he was muffling his voice. “The ambulance took him a couple hours ago, and they’re telling us he’s in the back having tests done.”
“I’m so sorry, Boogie. What can I do?” I asked, thinking that, if Paw-Paw had been kind of like a grandfather figure for me, he had been almost like a dad to my cousin—a second dad, but a dad nonetheless. As far as I knew, Boogie still went over to his house once a week to check on him, and that had been the case since he’d moved back to the Austin area a while back.
“I need you to do me a solid,” he replied.
I watched the front door as a couple of regular members came in and headed straight for the front desk. I smiled at both of them, holding the phone up to my ear with my shoulder, and scanned their passes. “Whatever you need.” There wasn’t a single thing I wouldn’t do for him, or for any of my loved ones, and I had a lot of them.
Paw-Paw included.
I’d never forget the kindnesses he’d paid me when I was younger. I hadn’t seen him in a while, but the last time I had, he’d given me a big hug and asked me a thousand questions about how I’d been doing since the last time we’d seen each other—a year before that. When I was little, he’d pull quarters out from behind my ears. For one of my birthdays, he’d given me a pendant of a flamingo that had belonged to his late wife. I still had it in my jewelry box.
Guilt nibbled at my stomach as I sent a silent prayer up that he was fine. If he was, I’d do better. I could visit a little more, maybe each time I went to see Boogie. I could call to at least check up on him. I could send him some gifts. Boogie had complained to me not that long ago about how Paw-Paw was still trying to do too much for his age.
“—tell him.”
“Have a good workout,” I whispered to the members as I pulled the phone away from my mouth. “I’m sorry, Boog. What did you say? I’m still at work for another twenty.”
My cousin repeated himself. “Zac’s not answering his phone. I’ve tried calling him and so has his mom, but he isn’t picking up. Can you go by his place and tell him?”
The hell did he just say?
He wanted me to go tell Zac his grandfather was in the hospital?
Zac Travis, who had been the starting quarterback of the National Football Organization’s Oklahoma Thunderbirds? The one the TV anchors had literally just been talking about? The man whose life I’d saved when we were kids?
Seriously, what the hell were the chances?
“Please, B. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”
Of course I knew that. Boogie rarely asked for anything. So, of course, of freaking course, when he did it would be something like this.
“But he’s not picking up, and I’ve been blowing him up for the last hour. His mom’s been trying to call him too and nada,” my cousin rattled on, stress and worry hanging on his every syllable.
He’d used the same voice back when Mamá Lupe had been sick. But this was different.
