Desire Uncaged: An MMA Romance (2 page)

Sara finished her lunch. Giving Ethan a brief, “See
ya”, she went back to her cubicle. Shortly thereafter Ethan did the same.

* * *

The alarm buzzed chirped and chimed obnoxiously. Ethan groaned and reached out from his bed, groping for the unseen phone in the darkness. He felt its smooth face and pulled it to him. He looked at the time—5:30am. Desperately, he racked his tired brain for an excuse to stay in bed. What if he didn’t shower? Didn’t eat breakfast? But he ultimately realized he had already cut his morning routine down to the minimum. His muscles screaming in protest, he rolled out of bed and hobbled to the shower, hoping vainly that soaking himself in cold water for 5 minutes would wake him up.

It proved hardly effective, however. He entered the shower tired and sore.
The cold water cascaded over his body. Now he was tired sore and cold. Already, today was moving in the wrong direction. Lazily, he threw on a pair of shorts, T-shirt and a pullover. Ethan grabbed his gym bag and keys and walked out the door to his car. He drove to the local park, where he found three other fighters from the gym standing around, also looking exhausted. He parked his car and got out.

“You guys already warmed up?” He called out. A chorus of yes’ responded.

“Gimmie five minutes and we’ll get started.”

Ethan began to gingerly roll out his joints one by one. Taking them through their range of motion.
As he did, he stared up at the daunting hill that formed the center of the park. It was easily 100 meters of elevation change over about a quarter mile. Sprinting up it would be brutal. It was going to a long hour.

* * *

As he reached the bottom after his last sprint, Ethan struggled to catch his breath. His lungs burned, each breath exhaled turned to vapor in the cool morning air. Even the sweat from his forehead steamed from him, vanishing like a ghost into nothingness.

Between gasps, his friend teased, “That new job is making you lazy, E. You’re getting soft.”

“Bullshit.” Ethan replied, “I still smoked all your asses.”

“But we’re not the ones fighting LC Roberts.”

Lawrence Carter Roberts, Ethan’s upcoming opponent. Once considered the hottest prospect coming out of the state, now was slated to face Ethan. Roberts was open about his desire to use Ethan as a stepping stone back to the big show. It was hard to fight someone you came up in the sport watching. LC was the first pro fight Ethan had ever seen live. The speed, power, and explosiveness of LC had seemed incredible, almost surreal. Ethan now was many times the fighter he had been when he had first seen LC, but still, it was difficult to prepare to fight the idealized version of LC that Ethan had in his mind. Ethan didn’t like the fear of facing LC, but he appreciated it. Every workout he tried to imagine how LC was training, and Ethan always tried to match it, and exceed it. Ethan would work a little harder than his opponent; be a little more ready come fight day.

Ethan returned to his car. He saw his cellphone had a new text. It was from Emily, his girlfriend.

“Heyy. how was ur workout? : )” it read.

She was sometimes an airhead, but she supported his lifestyle, and didn’t seem to mind the weight cutting and dieting and constant training.

He responded and drove back home to dive in the shower, change clothes and go to work. Emily had been unsupportive of his decision to take full time work. She was 23, and more prone to a “chase your dreams”. At 27, Ethan could appreciate the difference between chasing dreams and never having a plan B.

* * *

Ethan and Sara surreptitiously glanced at the table on the other side of the break room. They were side by side, pretending to have some sort of work conversation. In reality they were observing the lunch of one of their particularly slovenly coworkers. He had two large burritos, likely purchased from a gas station convenience store. He was stuffing--forcing them--really, into his mouth. It was as if he were racing against some unknown deadline to finish his lunch as quickly as possible. But it seemed the harder he stuffed, the more material—an odd, orange colored mash of dried meat product, chemical cheese, and god knows what else—fell out the back of the burrito. In one final gorging bite, he tried to cram the last of the burrito into his mouth. He was unsuccessful, as a final spurt of mash dripped into his tie. Sara bit her lip, she wanted to laugh so badly, but she suppressed her desire. She glanced as Ethan, he too, had seen the spill and was alternating his gaze between Sara and his own food. Anywhere but at the tie. Sara too, was struggling not to laugh at the comical sight. The only person who didn’t notice the orange stain on the tie was their coworker himself. He, having
nearly
finished his burrito, rose and left; throwing his trash out as he did, still oblivious to his burrito-stained tie.

As soon as he was out the door, both Sara and Ethan lost it. They both
burst into laughter at the comical display, letting their mutually suppressed emotion roll out of them easily. Sara looked at Ethan. In the two weeks he had been here, she still didn’t know what it was about him that made him so different. But he was.

He was funny in a quiet, soft spoken way. He was insightful,
able to read the office politics with ease. Most of all, Sara and he both connected as outsiders. Young, and health conscious; they both had a sort of third party perspective. Like they were transients, watching the locals.

Ethan, for his part, had become endeared to Sara. She didn’t seem like the corporate
, desk-riding scrub he expected—and largely found--working in the office. The curvy redhead’s dry humor was refreshing to Ethan, who often spent too much time in the testosterone-fueled world of MMA. Being part of her little one-girl conspiracy against the insanity of the office culture helped Ethan mitigate the awkward transition into respectable corporate work. Still, he hadn’t told anyone about his fighting. He had no idea how they would react. They didn’t need to know, and he wasn’t about to tell them.

Ethan looked at Sara as she got her giggling under
control. She caught him staring at her deep brown eyes. For a fleeting moment, Ethan and Sara both felt something. Neither was sure what.

* * *

Three weeks later, in the thick of the fight camp and the weight cut, Ethan was at wit’s end. Emily, ever vain and self-centered, had apparently decided for the both of them that they were going to some idiotic party at her father’s work. She had to be there, so logically, her MMA fighter boyfriend had to be there as well. Ethan had slowly been arriving at the realization that Emily didn’t really love him, she loved have a big, athletic, fighter boyfriend. He was just a status symbol to her. When he cut weight, spent all his time in training, she had less use for him, and so he saw her less. Until fight night. Then it was all selfies and social media and hashtags. All her friends just had to know what her boyfriend was doing. If one day he walked away from the sport, then he knew in his heart, she would be gone too.

They were in the parking lot outside Emily’s apartment. They were just finished a dinner date. Emily got dinner, anyway. Ethan’s restrictive diet meant eating out was off the table. Emily had finally sprung her news about attending her father’s party.

“I’m tired of you committing me to all your shit, without asking, without even thinking about me!” Ethan yelled.

“Jesus, it’s a fucking party!” Emily retorted.

“I’m cutting weight. I have a fight. I don’t have the energy to socialize with your dad’s coworkers. I already work all day as it is, and I train at night. I’m on diet, so I will just have to stare at the food like an idiot and hope no one notices how weird I’m being.”

Ethan continued, “But you know what? You don’t care about that. You don’t give a shit about me at all. If I can’t be your fighter boyfriend, than I’m no use to you.”

“I didn’t tell you to go get a job working all day. You never do anything for me!” Emily yelled back.

If Ethan wasn’t constantly hungry,
bruised and sore, he might have reasoned with her, calmed her down, reassured her. But she had seen him cut weight before, and she knew how he felt, and it never seemed to matter. He was out a patience with her.

“You know what. Fuck this. Come by tonight, and get your shit out of my room. I don’t have it in me to deal with you anymore.”

Emily grew indignant. She could hardly comprehend her boyfriend had just broken up with her. She screamed obscenities and swore he would never find anyone as hot as her. As if that were the defining thing Ethan wanted in a girl. Oddly calm giving the circumstances, Ethan wondered what it said about her when her first argument against breaking up was how hot she was.
What a sad way to live life,
Ethan thought,
where all you think you can offer someone is your appearance
. Ethan felt a twinge of pity, but this had been a long time coming. Emily surely knew it too. Not waiting for her to finish, Ethan got in his car and drove off.

* * *

That same day, Sara was having revelations of her own. Typing idly away at her computer, she noticed an eerie silence in the office. Curious, she rose and investigated the neighboring cubicles. They were both deserted as well. She roamed the corridors near her office, searching for anyone else. She hear audio muffled, coming from a cubicle in the corner. She approached it to find 7 people crammed around a computer screen. Sara strained to see the grainy video. It looked like some kind of sporting event. A boxing match, maybe.

As the video rolled on she saw it wasn’t boxing, but MMA, the brutal free-fighting sport
she sometimes saw advertised at local bars. One of the combatants was a lean, muscular, Caucasian man. Suddenly, she gasped—that fighter was Ethan! His face was slick with Vaseline, his jaw jutted out because of the mouthpiece, but it was him, she was certain. He looked oddly tranquil, focused. Everyone was silent, watching the crudely shot video. The bell rung and Ethan ran to the center of ring. His opponent, came forward throwing punches. Ethan deftly ducked beneath them, wrapping his arms around his opponent’s legs and drove him to the ground. Now atop his opponent, the two a mash of legs and arms, Ethan began to strike at the other man’s head. Sara was transfixed as Ethan appeared to push his opponent’s legs aside and straddle him, Ethan’s knees atop the man’s shoulders. As Ethan rained down blows, the man wormed and writhed to try and escape, but to no avail. Ethan’s gloved fists rained down on the man, unanswered. Before long a third man in a black shirt—likely the referee--intervened. Ethan raised his hands in victory. The video cut out.

The whole cubicle,
hitherto silent, arouse in a cacophony of shocked gossip. Sara, however, slowly began to back away, returning to her desk, dazed. She had known there was something different about the mild mannered, wry Ethan. But a fighter? To know he had this hidden capacity for violence was strange and a little frightening. Yet, with her, here at work, he seemed so mild mannered, calm, and jovial. Who was the real Ethan? She wondered. She Sara decided to eat lunch at her desk alone today.

* * *

Ethan knew almost right away when he walked into work that the office had found out. It wasn’t a secret per se. And he certainly wasn’t ashamed. But a lot of people didn’t know the sport, or understand the athletes in it. All day he fielded the typical questions.

“Is it real? I mean, it’s like pro wrestling, right?”

“No, it’s one-hundred-percent real”

“So can you beat me up?”

“Why on earth would I want to beat you up?”

“You ever worry about, like, getting killed?”

“The sport is actually much safer than boxing or football.”

More than the innocent questions—certainly
his coworkers’ ignorance of the sport was no fault of their own—Ethan was bothered by the looks. Many people looked at him as if he were some kind of monster, as if he drowned puppies or collected shrunken heads in his spare time. Most of all, he was disappointed that Sara stopped hanging around him. He enjoyed the young redhead. And if anyone seemed to understand him in the office, it was her.

He was tired, hungry, single, and now friendless. Two days after everyone had found out, after the novelty had worn off, but their apprehension hadn’t, he took his lunch and walked to shipping.

Sara typed away at her desk, her lunch sat cold off to the side. She brushed her hair back.

“Hey.” She looked up. There was Ethan. She wasn’t sure how she felt. He was her friend, but he was also dangerous, in a way no man
in her life had ever been.

“Hey.” She responded.

“I guess you know about my fighting, huh?” He asked pensively, his gaze never leaving hers.

“Yea. They showed me a video of your fight.”

“Some people support it, some people don’t. I’ve been doing it long enough that I get it. I’m not a bad guy though. I was hoping you could see that.”

Sara felt like an ass. Not hanging out with a guy because he played some sport.
She wouldn’t have thought anything of it if he had played basketball at the park, or football with in friends on weekends. Yet, she didn’t want to hang out with him because he fought MMA? Maybe she wasn’t any better than those catty office snobs after all.

“Listen. Do you want to get dinner after work? I’m not some maniac, despite what everyone else may think.”