Sick Heart: A Dark MMA Fighter Romance

I smile at her, and she, being the insightful girl she is—i.e. one who not only survived a childhood of slavery, but somehow defied her lot in life as Lazar’s fight night sacrifice—understands immediately that this is not a good smile.

Not for her, anyway. But I’m enjoying myself.

I wrap my arms around her, pinning her arms tight against her body. She grabs at them, frantic, afraid, and on the verge of panic. But my feet are already moving towards the edge of the platform. There is no time for a tantrum. No time for anything but the soft low words I whisper into her ear as I jump off the platform, taking her with me. “Hold your breath, Anya. Or this is gonna go bad real fast.”

I don’t know if she does that. Because we are already falling. And then we plunge feet-first into the ocean and the world shifts from sharp, sunshine clarity to murky, slow-motion blur.

We shoot down like a bullet. At least twenty feet under the rig. The sun is nowhere near close to setting, but it’s lower on the horizon so the rays from above filter down from the surface at just the right angle to partially illuminate the dark water below the rig.

Anya is squirming in my arms. I have her restrained at the elbows, so her hands are free to try to pry at my grip. But I hold tight for a few more seconds, just enough for her to calm down and see what I need her to see.

It’s easy to know when she does that, because she goes completely still. We are already floating back up towards the light, but it’s a slow ascent. More than enough time for her to study the legs of the platform through the haze of bubbles and see the breathtakingly beautiful reef the ugly rig above is hiding.

Large bubbles float out of her mouth, like maybe she just gasped, and I allow myself a smile as we break the surface and I let her go.

She is coughing and sputtering. But she turns towards me, the shock of the drop replaced by the surprise of the secret reef. She’s not sinking, and her panic is gone, replaced by delight. She smiles at me, frantically wiping at her eyes and trying to catch her breath.

I cock my head at her and then dive back down. She follows me. I swim around to the other side of the platform leg and watch her study a dozen different kinds of coral and aquatic plants that completely cover the steel underneath. Small schools of fish flitter around us, darting this way and that as bigger fish slowly pass by.

Anya reaches out towards a coral, but I grab her hand and pull it back, shaking my head at her. Some of them sting. And I’m not really sure which ones those are, so the general rule is that we don’t touch them.

She looks back at the reef, then up at the surface. I know she can’t hold her breath much longer, but she is reluctant to go back up.

It makes sense though. This silent world is familiar. That’s why I like it. And when I first discovered that the rig’s platform had actually created an artificial reef back when I was a kid, I felt like I had been dropped into a book. One of those boys’ adventure books where they survive a plane crash or a sinking ship and end up on a tropical island with secrets.

I found my island’s secret.

Finally, there is no way she can hold her breath any longer and she shoots up to the surface. I follow, and emerge just a moment later.

And then we just float there. Two inconsequential people immersed in a whole planet of water. I try not to see myself like that when I’m out here. I try not to picture this platform from space, a speck surrounded by the massive weight of the ocean. And then me, just dust, really, in the grand scheme of things. Because when I see this world for what it really is, that thought evokes a sense of overwhelming… smallness.

Our problems are so small from the perspective of the universe. But to us, they are often overwhelming.

I try to keep it all in perspective, but it’s hard when you’re surrounded by evil people who want to torture you for fun. Make you fight and kill for money, and ships, and women.

Anya puts her face in the water and just floats like that. Belly down, arms out, body undulating with the rhythm of the ocean. Like she’s snorkeling without equipment. Every now and then she tilts her head to the side for a breath, and then she resumes her study of the reef.

I roll over and lie on my back, floating with her, my fingers twisted up in her t-shirt so she can’t float away, my eye on the beams above, keeping it in perspective. It would be a mistake to assume that we are anchored to this platform just because we’re underneath it. It would be very easy to float away. Too easy, actually, to float so far there is no chance of getting back. Even a very strong swimmer might not be able to fight the will of the ocean’s path around a rotating earth.