“I said I’d buy you ten of them.” He’s sitting up now, looking far too relaxed for a man who just did what he did.
“Great,” I say. “I’ll Venmo request you. What’s your username, @worldsworstperson?”
“Close. It’s @worldssecondworstperson.” He has the audacity to almost smile. “You’d be first.”
“Thisneverhappened,” I say, shoving the ruined bra into my bag. My voice comes out hoarse and wrecked, which is annoying, but at least I don’t sound as unhinged as I feel.
“Agreed,” he says,
The energy inside Madison Square Garden is electric. The crowd was already rowdy when I arrived at four in the afternoon, three hours before the main card even started.
I’ve covered fights before, title fights and grudge matches and events where careers hung in the balance, but there’s something different crackling through this arena tonight that I can feel in my chest like a second heartbeat.
Maybe it’s because Herrera is undefeated and dangerous and moves through opponents like a scythe through wheat, the kind of champion people pay money to watch get dethroned. Maybe it’s because Roman Kincaid has become the underdog story everyone wants to believe in, the small-town kid from nowhere Washington training out of a gym most people have never heard of, daring to challenge Herrera.
Or maybe it’s because I can’t stop scanning the crowd for Dominic.
I’d fallen asleep in an exhausted heap when I got home last night, passed out the second my head hit the pillow, my body wrung out and my brain mercifully blank. But when I woke up this morning, reality came crashing back in vivid, mortifying detail.
I’d thrown on clothes and sprinted to the pharmacy for Plan B like a college freshman after a frat party instead of a grown woman who should absolutely know better. The pharmacist didn’t even blink, which somehow made it worse. At least the STD front was covered. We’d had a brief, awkward exchange after the sex, both of us confirming we’d been tested recently. One less thing to spiral about.
And I’m not sure what I’m more ashamed about. The fact that I had sex with Dominic Midnight on a gym mat like a feral animal. Or the fact that this morning, lying in bed with nowhere to be for another hour, I’d grabbed my vibrator and gotten myself off to the memory of his cock stretching me open, and the way he’d pinned my wrists above my head and told me to beg for it.
Twice.
I’m a mess. An absolute disaster of a human being, but I force myself to focus. I’m sitting in press row with my laptop open and my credentials hanging around my neck and a notepad in my lap because I still take notes by hand sometimes, an old-school habit from my early days.
The other journalists around me are familiar faces. Mike from ESPN. Sarah from MMA Fighting. A few freelancers I recognize from other events. Everyone’s talking, speculating, running through their predictions.
Every time I try to concentrate on the action in the cage, I’m right back on that gym floor with canvas beneath my back and Dominic’s weight pressing me down and the sound of my own voice begging him for things I’ve never begged anyone for in my entire adult life. It’s deeply inconvenient timing for an existential crisis about my complete lack of professional boundaries, but here we are.
They finally clear the cage while ring girls in sequins walk the perimeter with their round cards, with phony smiles and spray tans, and someone mops up the blood from the last fight while the production crew resets the cameras for the moment everyone’s been waiting for. The announcer steps into the center of the octagon with his microphone, his tuxedo slightly rumpled and his voice somehow still strong after four hours of introductions and decisions and stoppages.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he booms, and the crowd roars back, “it is now time for your main event of the evening.”
The lights drop and twenty thousand people hold their breath in the blackness, and then the champion’s walkout music starts, something heavy and aggressive with a bass line that pounds through the speakers and makes my sternum vibrate.
Herrera emerges from the tunnel surrounded by his team, moving through the darkness like a unit that’s done this so many times they could do it blindfolded. The champion walks toward the cage with the kind of calm that comes from knowing exactly how good you are, from twelve straight wins without ever really being in danger.
The crowd boos because that’s what crowds do to champions, and he doesn’t react, doesn’t even acknowledge their existence, just keeps his eyes forward and his face blank and lets them hate him while he walks. He knows they’ll respect him by the end of the night. They always do.
They do the whole production, all the standard pre-fight rituals. Then Herrera’s music cuts out and the arena goes dark again, and for one suspended moment there’s nothing but silence and anticipation and people waiting to see what happens next.
Roman Kincaid’s walkout music starts.
The crowd erupts with a roar that surprises me with its intensity, and I realize that somewhere along the way, in the weeks of buildup and the underdog narrative and the small-town-kid-takes-on-the-monster storyline that the UFC marketing team has been pushing relentlessly, Roman Kincaid became the people’s fighter.
Not because he’s from here, but because everyone loves a long shot. Everyone wants to believe that the kid from nowhere can walk into the garden of a giant and walk out with the giant’s head. It’s the oldest story in sports, maybe the oldest story thereis, and tonight twenty thousand strangers have decided to make it their own.
The lights come up on the tunnel and there he is: Roman Kincaid, twenty-three years old and six-foot-three and walking toward the biggest moment of his life with his face set in a mask of total concentration.
He’s bouncing on his toes the way fighters do, shadow boxing and rolling his shoulders, burning off the nervous energy that must be flooding his system right now. Behind him, moving through the crowd of cornermen and handlers, I can see his team.
And there’s Dominic.
He’s wearing a black Midnight Boxing shirt that stretches across his shoulders and dark jeans, his expression calm and controlled. He’s leaning close to Roman, talking directly into his ear so the kid can hear him over the deafening noise, and I watch Roman nod as he takes in whatever final instructions his coach is giving him.
They reach the cage and Roman climbs the steps while Dominic stays outside, checking gloves, adjusting the mouthguard, saying something that makes Roman’s jaw set with renewed determination. Dominic’s whole posture radiates confidence in the fighter he’s spent months preparing for this exact moment. I can’t look away from him, and I hate myself for it.
