Page 30 of I Am Lioness

Until one night when I was awoken by a nightmare and noticed he was no longer in bed. I went padding through the apartment and what I saw stopped me dead in my tracks. Zeke had two friends over, friends whom were not there whenwewent to bed. Each of them cradled a beer in their hand. The strong stench of weed hung in the air, a thick cloud of smoke fogging the entire dining room area where they sat. Not only were they passing around a joint, there were also thin white lines of blow on the table.

Hidden in the safety of the hallway, I watched Zeke hold a straw of some sort to one end of the line and zip across to the other, snorting the entire thing like he’d done it many times before. A few moments later I came to find out he had.

Needless to say, I was crushed. Hurt. I felt betrayed in some way, though I had no right to when I’d jumped into this relationship without knowing a damn thing about him. I remember thinking I needed to get as far away from him as possible but where was I supposed to go? I had no one.

Zeke was legitimately all I had. How could I stay with him when he’d kept something like this from me though? When this was his lifestyle? After what happened to Tori, I promised myself I’d never go anywhere near drugs, yet here I was, in a relationship with a man who was obviously familiar with many.

Even with thoughts of Tori in mind, Zeke somehow convinced me that everything would be alright and just like that, I believed him. What I was expecting from him, I’m not sure, but I believed every word he said.

What's worse is that a little over a year later, I’d grown so accustomed to his use of narcotics that I too hopped aboard the train, regardless of the fact that I knew better. Perhaps it was because they numbed me.

Whatever Zeke gave me, whether it be blow, ecstasy, even acid once or twice, it all numbed the pain of my past. In those moments when I was high out of my damn mind, I was free, or so I thought.

Our lives consisted of going to work, coming home, getting high, and fucking until we passed out. At the time I thought I was living the life. Then Zeke suddenly lost his job when he failed a random drug test. You’d think that would have deterred us or warned us off, made us second-guess what we were doing behind closed doors, right? Wrong. We kept it at without a care in the world. I simply took on a second job to pick up the bills Zeke could no longer pay, and while I was an exhausted mess of sorts, I was happy.

Slowly but surely, things started going downhill from there. The months were flying by and Zeke had yet to find another job. The gym I worked at—which was my primary source of income—cut my hours out of the blue and my second job at this quaint little diner wouldn’t up my hours either. As a result, bills were going unpaid and the rent was late on more than one occasion.

I’d contemplated a third job, but there just weren’t enough hours in the day, unless I planned never to sleep again for the rest of my life.

Eventually everything caught up with us. Stressed from not making ends meet and following Zeke down the slippery slope of drug abuse, I started going in late to work. It wasn’t intentional but sometimes I couldn’t pull myself out of bed. I’d snooze my alarm or bypass it entirely.

Then came the day when my boss at the diner had enough. I would’ve missed my shift completely if Zeke hadn’t woken up to shower. When I saw the time on the clock, I jumped out of bed and rushed to get myself ready. With both of our cars having been repossessed, the city bus was my only form of transportation unless I found a ride, which was a seldom occurrence. I was too late though.

The bus was long gone by the time I made it to the stop, so I ran. I ran all the way to the diner and burst in through the door almost an hour after I was due. As I was clocking in my boss essentially told me to get the fuck out. I pleaded with him, all but begged on my knees for one more chance, but he’d already made up his mind. I’d barely made it out the door when I collapsed onto the sidewalk with tears streaming down my face.

I don’t know how long I sat outside the diner crying but that’s when Bernie walked into my life.

Very gently he approached me, saying he’d witnessed the disaster the was me being fired. He asked if I was okay in which I’d barked a vulgar version ofdoes it look like I’m okay?My gruffness didn’t faze him though. Instead he sank down onto the sidewalk beside me and asked if I wanted to talk about it.

What I wanted was to tell him to fuck off, wanted to think he was a creepy older man hoping to score a woman more than likely twenty-five years his junior, but something about him told me otherwise. Something told me I could trust him.

Leaving out the very dirty details of my life with Zeke, I explained to Bernie that my boyfriend and I weren’t doing well financially and how me losing this job was the nail in the coffin. He just sat there, listening intently, letting me vent until I had I nothing left to spew.

And then he offered me help.

He told me he’d seen me at the gym many times after my shift was over, pummeling the punching bag with every bit of force I had.

“You have potential.” He’d said, grappling my attention instantly.

Bernie elaborated that he used to be an Underground fighter, and after retiring, he went on to coach both men and women who aspired to be within the confines of the ring. What intrigued me most was when said he saw that fire within me, that with discipline and training, he truly believed I could rise to the top.

Staying at the gym after hours was just a way to blow off stress, nothing more. Was it exhilarating? Yes. Had I ever considered actually stepping into a ring? No. I didn’t have formal training. Hitting the bag just feltgood.

“How would fighting solve my problems anyway?” I’d asked him.

It was then I learned all about the Underground League. How it operated, how much money fighters madeper fight.My mouth popped open when Bernie began calculating numbers for me.

If I went through with it and actually climbed up the leaderboard to the very end, I could make more money in six months than my parents had ever seen in their lifetime. Becoming a fighter could solve all my financial issues and give me so much more. I wanted to scream yes but I knew Zeke would never go for it. The traveling alone would turn him off, let alone allow me to step foot into a ring to fight another woman who was likely more experienced. He probably wouldn't even think I could do it, would say it was waste of my time and energy.

That was the ah-ha moment for me, the moment when my subconscious finally broke through and I realized a life with Zeke would always be like this. Struggling in every aspect of life. He had no inclination to better himself, no drive to pull himself out of the depths of the hell where he’d dragged us both. At the rate he was going, he would end up dead, me along with him. I couldn't live like that anymore. I’d known it all along, I just hadn't cared.

Until then.

“So I agreed.” I collapsed back onto the bed, feeling like I could finally breathe.

“Wow,” Knox said quietly. “That was intense.”

“It was.” I agreed, sifting my fingers through my hair. “Not a part of my past I'm proud of but hey, everyone has crap they're ashamed of.”

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