Inevitably Yours

MICHAEL

I stood in the locker room, looking across at the other team. Darian dapped me up when he saw me and told me not to worry about their team’s resident moron. It had been almost two weeks, so I was calmer now. I put the loss behind me and was determined to see that guy again on the mat.

“Oh look, it’s that b***h again!” the plump shit-talker called out with a smile when he saw me. “Ready to get pinned again?” I rolled my head around in circles, closing my eyes and trying to let it go. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t. “Nothing to say, p***y? Afraid you’ll get your a*s beat in this locker room?”

“No one would care if we pulled him into one of the showers and beat the s**t out of him,” Eros fumed.

I just ignored him and got dressed, pulling my singlet on. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a JV heavyweight, so we would have to forfeit his weight class.

“Galbraith!” our coach barked above the buzz in the locker room. The kid was putting on quite a show, and it had everyone talking. “You good with wrestling up a weight class?”

The locker room went silent, and I looked dead into the kid’s eyes as I answered, “Absolutely, coach. Anything you need.” The Goddess was feeling merciful today.

“Good,” he yelled for no reason. “They don’t have a 215, and we don’t have a heavyweight. You two can get a match in.”

As soon as he left, both teams erupted. Calls of “you’re f****d, bro” and “ohhhhhhhh” came from every corner as he was clapped on the back, his own team laughing at him.

“You brought this on yourself,” Darian sighed, shaking his head at his JV counterpart. He looked up at me with concern, “Please don’t hurt him?”

“Only his pride,” I laughed. The kid’s face went pale; he knew he’d f****d up.

“I can’t be mad at that,” Darian sighed, walking out to the gym as he called out to the JV guy. “You’re on your own out there.”

“He’ll eat every word,” Eros purred, now content with the way things played out.

–

I put my hand out to shake his, but he just shook his head. He had a look of determination that was almost admirable.

The whistle blew, and he shot for a double leg immediately. I didn’t even sprawl like I should have to counter his shot; I just sidestepped and pushed him at the shoulder. It sent him sprawling onto his a*s. Both teams laughed loud enough to hear on the mat, and his face reddened under his dark skin. I waited, standing tall and flat-footed out of my wrestling stance. This wasn’t a challenge, and I wouldn’t give him the respect of pretending it was one.

I watched as he pulled himself to his feet and walked over slowly. Dropping into a wrestling stance, I shot toward him. I hooked a hand behind his neck, taking control of his head, then dropped down to cup his ankle in the opposite hand. He fell to the ground easily with just a small pull on his ankle. I covered his h**s to get the points for a takedown and stood back up. The ref gave him his one point for “escaping” to his feet, and that began our pattern. I decided I would bleed this out to the point of a tech fall before pinning him. Rules stated that a match ended when one wrestler had a fifteen-point lead on the other, but I wanted to make sure I drove in my point with a unique pin.

The first period was just a takedown clinic. Double leg, single leg, fireman’s carry, another ankle pick, h*p throw, and more; I wanted to make sure he fully understood his own ignorance. He was panting and struggling to stand when the whistle came for the end of the first period. We were 20-10 now, so I only needed a few more takedowns in the second period. I didn’t realize the gym had gone from laughing to silent because I’d been so focused. My coach looked furious, but I chalked that up to his distaste for me and his friendship with the opposing coach.

The ref flipped the coin for position choice, and it came up my color this time.

“Neutral,” I called out. We’d start on our feet, no ref position.

I could see the defeat in my opponent’s face, but he would learn a valuable lesson today. The whistle blew, and I let him try to take the lead. He locked me up in a head and arm position and started working for takedowns. I stood tall, breaking his grip on my head while keeping mine on his. As he tried to pull my back toward him, I followed his pull and swept his leg from under him. It dropped us to the floor hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Two for the takedown to me, back up, one for the escape to him. He was wheezing, but he got back to his feet. A few more takedowns later, and the ref was on the ground with me.

“Either tech him or pin him. He’s had enough,” he said in a low voice.

“Fine,” I answered.

I was in position over his waist from my last takedown. I climbed his body, smothering him as I went. When I reached his head, I remembered what he’d said on the bus, so I decided to burn this into his mind forever. Putting one knee on his shoulder, I swung my other leg around to do the same and sat on his face. That would be the last time he told someone he’d teabag them on the mat after his whole team watched it happen to him. The ref slapped the mat, and his whistle blew. I stood up, leaving him there, and walked over to shake the coach’s hand. The opposing coach wouldn’t even look at me. He just walked past me to his wrestler.

“Fair enough,” I shrugged.

Walking back to our side of the mat, I heard Tagey hissing at me, “Do you feel like a big man now? You feel like you rubbed in your superiority enough? The hell is wrong with you?”

“Did I go too far?” I asked Eros, starting to question myself. I could see my parents in the stands, and my mom didn’t look happy either.

“You went too far in the first period. The second was just icing on the cake,” Eros responded. “We should have just pinned him and been done with it.” f**k. This started with him talking s**t after my panic attack. Did I overreact?

–

I watched as the locker room slowly emptied until just a few of our wrestlers were left and the kid I always saw talking to the blonde girl. He couldn’t have been more than ten. I was surprised to see him walking over to me as I stewed over whether I was the a*****e here or not.

“Hey, are you Michael?” he asked in the cute melodic voice little kids had when they wanted something.Còntens bel0ngs to Nô(v)elDr/a/ma.Org

“Yea? What can I do for you?” I asked, pulling a hoody on. It wasn’t cold, but it was cool enough that I could wear one finally.

“My sister really likes you. She says you’re hot and won’t stop being weird when you walk by. Will you talk to her?”

Not what I expected. “Who’s your sister?” I asked, assuming I knew already.

“Her name is Kristen, and she’s the tall, pretty blonde girl I’m always with,” he said excitedly. The kid was a pretty good wingman for his sister.

“Bro, that’s the coach’s daughter. He will f*****g murder you,” Bobby linked me.

“f**k Coach Tagey. That’s a great reason to talk to her,” I responded, standing up to follow the kid. Bobby just shook his head.

Right outside the locker room, we found her. She was probably about 5’11” with short blonde hair, a thicker athletic body that looked like she lifted and played sports, and she was relatively gifted where it counted. As soon as she saw us together, she broke into a smile, and her cheeks turned crimson. She was having trouble keeping eye contact.

“Kristen?” I asked as we neared her.

“Uhm. Yea?” she said, biting her l*p a little.

I reached out and gently used my hand under her chin to bring her eyes to mine, “I hear you might have a crush?”

QUINN

Chaos. Tiny kids in baby-sized wrestling uniforms ran around everywhere, dropping their gear or clothes, tackling each other, or otherwise being senselessly crazy.

“Is this really what the youth program is like?” I almost shouted at Ricky over the buzz in the gym. Each year, the high school team hosted a youth tournament for all the kids between first and fifth grade and invited neighboring packs. Ricky and I were partnered to run one of the four mats set up to wrestle on.

“Pretty much. The youth coaches leave everything to us, and our coaches don’t bother to do anything in advance, so it’s like this the entire time,” he said, looking around.

“The pups need a warm-up space where they can play with each other in between their matches,” I frowned. Ricky just shrugged.

“Sometimes, a couple of the varsity guys drop into the little youth practices, but it’s always a mess. The adults just don’t put much effort in for the little ones,” he said.

“We should fix that,” I frowned. “Look how excited they all are.”

Drew came jogging over and handed us another packet of papers. “That should keep your mat busy for a minute,” he said.

Someone pulled on my arm, and I turned to see one of our pack’s pups. “What’s going on, little guy?” I asked.

“Miss wrestle lady, when can I go?” he asked. He had to be only seven or eight.

“What’s your name, handsome?” I asked.

“Colin,” he said.

“Colin, I want to introduce you to someone really cool,” I smiled. I turned back around to Drew, batting my eyelashes. “This is one of our star wrestlers, Mr. Drew. He is helping figure out all the matches. I bet if we asked super nice with our biggest please, he would help you find that out.” I smiled.

“You b***h,” Drew linked. I suppressed my giggle.

Colin came around the back of my chair. “Mr. Drew, can you pppllllleeeeaaasssseeee tell me when I can go on the mat?”

“Yea, Mr. Drew, pppllllleeeeaaasssseeee,” Ricky laughed in a little kid voice. I tried to keep an innocent expression on my face while holding back my own laughter.

“Come on, little guy,” Drew sighed, holding out his hand for the pup. He shot me a dirty look over his shoulder as he walked away with the miniature wrestler. “I thought you were the nice stat girl,” he grumbled silently.

“Oh, he’s cute. Just find his name and put him in a warm-up zone,” I shot back. “He’s the future of the team.”

“Okay, let’s get these kids going!” I said happily to Ricky.

“You know that’s why Maddison hates you, right?” Ricky laughed, grabbing the call sheet from the stack Drew brought us.

“What do you mean?” I asked. He pointed to the far mat. The wrestler teamed with Maddison was literally pushing the kids to the table to check in, and they were fighting him to get away. She wore a scowl the entire time. I was scared of her sometimes, too, so I didn’t blame them.

“She wants to be queen bee, but she’s a b***h to everyone who isn’t ‘good.’ You, on the other hand, are nice to a fault, and the team likes you,” he laughed.

“Just call up the next kids. We’ll be here all night if we don’t let them wrestle,” I rolled my eyes.