Life always puts us down. We choose how we get back up, if we get back up at all. Ava chose to get up with a shrug and a smile. Life hit hard, but she’d been hit harder. And, though wobbly, she still stood.
Veronica Nash let out a sigh and slinked into her armchair. She sat alone in her entertaining area, complete with a fully stocked bar and roaring fireplace, surrounded by marble surfaces and gleaming finishes.
She stared into the fire, a million things going through her mind and unable to concentrate on any. She had finally found an opponent for her next match, and tonight was the last night before her intense training began. Felicia Wale had been chosen by both Veronica and Max because statistically she deserved the shot. That’s it. No gimmicks. No tricks and agendas. She was there because she deserved to be, by the numbers.
It felt wonderful to put things behind her and focus on the one thing she knew how to do. What she was best at.
She opened her phone and found over thirty voice messages. She began clicking them one by one.
“Hi, Ms Nash. This is Fighting World newspaper...”
“Hello,Veronica. This is Daily News...”
“Hello. Sue calling from MMA Today...”
On and on they went. Every single one a request for an interview but both she and Max felt it best to funnel all of the media attention through him. She wanted to forget about the Beckinsale fight and take the heat off both her and Ava. Admittedly, an ‘ignore it and it goes away’ approach was generally the worst form of action one could take, but Max had been instructed by Veronica to find a solution that didn’t involve a rematch. That was it. Veronica didn’t have an alternative.
And she was grateful for the arrangement, especially when the calls kept coming one right after another. Unless he specifically arranged an interview on her behalf, it was a good bet that all of her messages were calling about discussing the one thing she didn’t want to talk about. Bar the last message from her trainer.
“Hey kiddo, it’s Tony. Sorry, we won’t be able to make it tonight. The little one got sick, so we’ll have to reschedule.”
Veronica closed her phone and tossed it to the couch.
“Will that be all, Ms Nash?” her maid asked from the doorway.
Veronica glanced at the plate of fruits and cheeses on the centre table that Hannah had prepared for tonight. Veronica had invited her trainer and his family over to... well, to just hang. To forget about the Beckinsale fight and be like they used to be. She couldn’t blame him of course. Your kid gets sick, they get sick. She understood that.
Or she probably would. If she had any.
“Yes. Thank you, Hannah. Have a nice night.”
“Would you like me to put that in the fridge for you?” Hannah asked.
Veronica gave a small smile, peeling off the tape and gauze from her tender nose, fresh from reconstructive surgery. “No, it’s fine. I’ll put it away after I indulge a bit. No sense in it going to waste.”
Veronica picked up a few grapes and was about to offer a few to Hannah when the sound of her front door opening and closing rumbled through the mansion, and she found herself alone. There was a time, not so long ago, when the place was almost always buzzing. Her neighbours, their kids, their friends. Reporters. Sponsors. Her agent. Fellow fighters. All wanted to be around her.
Ever since the Beckinsale fight, it felt like she’d swam in a sewer. Either that or it was because she had refused to offer a rematch. That echoing sound of the door closing showed her how empty her life really was.
Her true fans, though, had stayed strong with her. Offering their support on the various social media channels. They had diminished over the years in number, but a big core group still remained. She opened her phone once more to traverse the web, looking for the messages of support she always got after a victory. She roamed down and for every positive message there were ten filled with vitriol.
“You disgusting pig...”
“Ten years of fighting nobodies and she freaks out over an ACTUAL challenge. Some champion.”
Even snippets of interviews she clicked, held no stoppage of the onslaught.
“Nash versus Beckinsale. What did you make of that one, Dave?”
Veronica crossed her arms as Dave laughed.
“Well, who would’ve thought it, aye? If you looked at it on paper, it looked like the most one-sided, asinine match the women’s division could’ve put out. And, let’s face it, they were already in trouble. When is the last time they had a decent match over there? Anyway so... I didn’t even watch the match live. I caught the replay due to EVERYONE talking about it. And, at first, I thought OK this isn’t bad.”
“And then? The end?”
“Well, I’m going to go against the grain here. Brilliant! I loved it. I thought this was a side of Nash we had never seen before. Because we never could. We finally got to see Nash in a FIGHT, and I thought it was great. The ending, honestly, saved the women’s division.”
“Hey come on, that’s a bit harsh. Beckinsale was laid up in hospital for a long time.”