Boom.
I tried telling myself her actual words didn’t trouble me – that I was just bothered by having no response. But with the new changes in my life, I wasn’t completely convincing myself. I was drowning in the stress of being understaffed and the suddenly sole owner of my bar, but on top of that, there was Liam’s announcement.
I should have expected it when I read last week that Damon Walsh had come out of retirement. It would have been bigger news had I not been so swamped by the dramas of my personal life, especially because I heard that he’d spent the last year rehabilitating to nearly full health. I was by no means a fan of Walsh. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been the one to hunt down Liam and start the fateful fight that forced him to leave the sport. But I knew that Walsh’s truncated career had always plagued Liam, and that he’d be in some way relieved by this news. I had been waiting to talk to him about it, but before I did, he revealed to me his decision.
He’d accepted an invitation to return to the ring for a rematch with Walsh. It would be his first fight in over two years, and according to Liam, it was something he felt he needed – an outlet for the aggression that had accumulated as of late.
“Because of me?” My voice was so small when I asked that Liam immediately cupped my cheeks and kissed me. He laughed at the look on my face, kissed me again and then murmured an inch from my lips.
“If I said ‘yes,’ I would hope you’d understand that it doesn’t change anything, particularly the fact that I’ll never love anything in the world more than I love you, Sasha, and that I will do anything to make you happy.”
“You mean keep me happy, because I already am,” I smiled. To that, he smiled back but said nothing. It was a silence I tried not to overanalyze, and I didn’t for long because a day later, Riley handed me her keys to the bar. So the timeline went from Liam’s fight, Riley’s return with my mother, and this morning, Liam’s official press release. I had read it before it went public. It was short and sweet at four sentences long, so the public response that flooded as a result took us all by surprise.
Polishing a glass, Aria came over to me. “A.J’s phone. Another text from Max,” she said, flashing me the screen.
“Good God,” I exhaled. It was an updated picture of the massive crowd on the sidewalk outside Liam’s gym. While some of the people were the usual girls waiting for selfies, most of them on this Saturday morning were members of the press looking for an interview with Liam. As far as I knew, he’d yet to give one, but it didn’t stop the media from churning out dozens, perhaps a hundred articles with headlines ranging from “Cage to Rematch Walsh” to “Cage Gets Cocky About Facing Walsh” – because apparently, silence was equal to nonchalance and disregard.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Aria had told me all day when giddy regulars came in to show me headlines about Liam, good or bad. I tried to laugh it all off, but my stomach twisted when I recalled the memories of when Liam was an active fighter. His professional career was on and off between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-six. Injuries had served as the top reason for a steady rather than meteoric rise, but it didn’t stop the press from hounding him at the gym, especially before and after fights. They wrote articles speculating about everything from his breakfast to his next match to his dating life.
And for that reason, we were still laying low. It wasn’t the same as before – there were loads of people who knew about us at this point – but all I wanted was to keep my name away from the press and out of the papers.
“No worries, Sash. We got your back,” Aria said when we sat for staff drinks that night after closing. Her shift finished at four, but I had worked a double and she’d come back to the bar to give my staff the talk that I didn’t have the energy to. “Closing arguments,” she said, raising her beer to the four staffers – my two bartenders and waitresses – who had been present when Riley and my mother came in. “Sash has been your favorite manager for two years running, and she is under a lot of stress lately, and let’s be real, none of you hos even give a rat’s behind about MMA, so please no talking to the press about anything you may have seen or heard recently. Maybe Sasha’s dating a certain someone, maybe she’s not. Regardless, she would appreciate the ever-loving shit out of you a million times more
than she already does if you use discretion and keep her personal life exactly that. And I will… I don’t know what I can do for you guys, ‘cause I’m a really shit bartender, but I’ll… pick up shifts whenever you want a day off? I don’t know, man. Cheers.”
“Cheers!”
“Cheers!”
I laughed as Aria and I raised our beers with my staff. While they pounded their drinks, she and I took little baby sips for good luck, but then escaped down to my office to do more work.
“You know you’re not getting paid overtime for this, right?” I teased as she sat on my floor marking up resumes while I emailed vendors.
“Actually, in a way, I am. The sooner we get you one new manager and one new bartender, the sooner we can do that weekend in Vail. ‘Cause I sure as shit am not going alone with A.J. I mean I’d love to, but I need Liam there to physically contain his crazy ass when he decides to like, back-flip cannonball into the pool from the deck.”
“Fair enough. But… don’t kill me, but I can’t even imagine going on a vacation right now. I feel like I have a million things to tackle, and after I’m done with those things, I have the next million.”
“Oh, hush. That’s dramatic. And if it’s true, it just means you need a vacation before things get crazy. I mean when’s Liam’s fight with Walsh? March?”
“Yes. The Fifth.”
“Yeah, he’s gonna want to get training seriously soon since it’s been two years since he’s been in the ring. And you’re gonna have zero chance for a vacation between now and probably April, which is like five months, which is almost half a year. And considering all the shit you’ve been through, that feels like a long-ass time. So…”
I turned from my computer to look at her grinning at me from the floor of my office. I snorted. “You are adorably manipulative.”
“But you love me.”
“I never said I didn’t.”
By 4AM, we both decided it was time to finally close up shop for the night. To my relief, Liam was not only awake at home but hanging out with A.J, which meant Aria could share a cab with me back to Liam’s.
When we stepped into the apartment, she and I burst out laughing at the sight of Liam and A.J lounging on the couch in their sweats, watching HBO and drinking the bottle of Prosecco Aria brought me a couple days ago.
“We ran out of beer,” A.J explained, wide-eyed. Liam only grinned lazily at me from his corner of the sectional, and with a pat on his chest, beckoned me over to collapse onto him. I didn’t even bother kicking off my boots before going to him and letting myself fall into his arms. A second behind me, Aria did the same with A.J.
“We’re so beat,” I groaned into his hard chest as he stroked his hand through my hair. “Good training today?” I rested my chin on him and felt my heart swell at the way he gazed down at me.
“Yeah, baby.” His eyes were sleepy as he studied me for a moment, brushing his thumb over my cheekbone. Our eyes locked in silence, it felt like two seconds of our own private getaway. My stress lately had been more than real, but every night, the second I got home and crawled onto Liam’s chest, the feeling never failed to take me away from it all. “Are you okay?” Liam asked.