“Nice.” Yolanda piped up before I could try to take back the words. She walked out from around the edge of the cage and came over to us. “Liam’s finally admitting size matters, huh?”
I glared at her.
“Not something I’ve ever worried about too much,” I replied coldly. My earlier annoyance with her returned, and I cocked my head to one side as I looked up at her with a “what the fuck do you want” expression.
Yolanda wasn’t fazed. She looked from me to Tria and back again.
“Is this her?” she asked. “The girl whose virtue you saved?”
Tria looked away for a minute, and I couldn’t see her face. I found myself taking a step forward—angling myself between Tria and Yolanda. I surveyed the whole room, taking my first really good look at the place since the first day I walked into it. The lights were dim, which only barely masked how shabby everything was inside. The barstools were frayed, and the felt on the single pool table was almost completely worn out. The people who frequented Feet First looked like people who came to drown their sorrows because that’s who they were. They were as shabby as the interior of the bar, and most of them were way beyond casually drunk.
“This is Tria,” I said. My voice was monotone, and I narrowed my eyes at Yolanda as I spoke. I didn’t like the way she was sizing up Tria as if she were a target.
Tria was a small-town girl trying to get herself an education and somehow make the world better. I didn’t think she had much more of a chance of achieving that shit than a lightweight did against me, but I couldn’t help but admire her spirit for trying. Yolanda was a whole other story.
“Hi, Tria,” Yolanda said. She didn’t take her eyes off me, though. Her expression matched mine, and she even went as far as to raise an eyebrow at me.
I mouthed “fuck you” at her, but she ignored me and turned to Tria.
“I’m Yolanda. Welcome to Feet First, but you are a little late to see my man in action here.”
“I was…um…working earlier,” Tria said, stumbling over her words a bit. “I just got off.”
/> Yolanda snickered and reached out to run her hand over my chest.
“Wouldn’t be the first time that happened to a woman around Takedown.” Yolanda smirked. She looked back at me and put a hand on her hip. “I put your winnings in your bag and locked it in your locker. I’m outta here. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I said with a curt nod.
Yolanda sauntered through the crowd and out the front door, and I looked back at Tria, wondering what she was thinking. The look on her face told me nothing, but her words made it clear.
“So that’s your girlfriend,” Tria said matter-of-factly. “She’s really pretty.”
“She’s not,” I said.
“Are you kidding? She’s beautiful.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” I clarified. “Yolanda’s a fighter, like me. Well, she was before she fucked up her knee. We still work out together on the weekends.”
“I see.” Tria didn’t sound convinced.
“She’s been in the cage a lot longer than me,” I said. I didn’t know why it was important to me that she understand there wasn’t anything between Yolanda and me. “She helps me train. That’s it.”
Tria just nodded and glanced around the bar again. She hadn’t touched the bottle of beer sitting next to her.
“So, why ‘Takedown’?” she asked as she looked back in my direction.
I laughed.
“Um, well,” I started, “it’s not much of a story, really.”
Tria looked at me expectantly.
“Okay, when I first started fighting here, Yolanda told me I needed a catchy nickname of some sort. We toyed around with a few and figured “takedown” fit well with my name and sounded pretty tough.” I stopped and looked around, wondering if this was something I really ought to be advertising to the world, but most of the world had already departed—either in mind or body. “There’s a lot of theatrics about it, ya know? People remember catchy names.”
It all sounded kind of dumb when I explained it.
Tria blinked a couple of times.