CARTER
If Coach Carter Hudson had been paying more attention, he might have declared the gym closed that Friday evening. But he wasn't a football guy, and it was only beginning to register to him that most of his clientele were, most definitely, football guys. And football gals: a third of the people at his gym were women, and half of them were moms of kids in school. He should have expected that nobody would show up today, the day of this annual game everybody looked forward to.
It was his second year here, in this smaller-than-average Texas town. The gym was doing well, and Carter—a natural-born networker and extrovert—had made friends. Some of those friends had even invited him to the game, which promised to be exciting, a heated rivalry made even juicier this year by the opposing team's new quarterback and excellence in other competitive sports. The two high schools locked horns in football, swimming, volleyball, and soccer, and they were better for it. But Carter just couldn't get into football, and he had a gym to run. True, the latest amateur fights had happened two weeks ago, and even his fighters would probably take the night off. But somebody might show up.
Carter was to be proven right twice over.
The electronic doorbell announced someone's arrival, at kind of an odd time: five-thirty. Hardly anybody showed up midway between class times. As he made his way to the front of the gym, Carter wondered if it might be a new student, or somebody looking to use the free weights rather than take the next kickboxing class, which started at six.
"Hey, man," said the newcomer. Carter returned the greeting enthusiastically. It was Ben, Ben... something. Carter was good with names, but he'd only seen Ben a few times, when they both trained with a mutual friend and mentor, Uli Jorgensen. Carter thought Ben and Uli were cut from the same cloth. He knew Uli well enough to have met Uli's German mother and Danish father, but he didn't know how Ben came by his tall, lanky build and blond hair.
"Thanks for stopping by, Ben." Carter held out his hand. Ben had a gym bag slung over one shoulder; he'd clearly come to check out Carter's gym and to train. Carter waved a hand at the open gym and laughed. "It's dead today—"
"Football, right?" Ben, who had grown up in this town and now coached at a larger gym one city over, was familiar with the priorities of the area.
They strode back to the mat area, and Ben disappeared into the locker room to change.
"Seen Uli lately?" asked Carter when Ben returned. He'd been at the gym since 11 that morning to coach and train, and he was already dressed in a gym t-shirt that fit snugly over his muscular chest and back. Sweat from earlier in the day had dried when he cooled down after his last afternoon class ended at four.
"Yeah. He came over to the gym as a guest teacher last week, with some drills I'd seen before but wasn't real familiar with."
They warmed up for a few minutes over talk about Uli, drills, the latest competition, the next UFC, and how business was going.
They were going through grappling drills and flows when the door chimed again. It was nearly six o'clock.
"I guess you do have students today," Ben observed. He had Carter in side control. Neither of them were putting much energy into it, instead using the opportunity to practice smooth transitions between moves.
Carter paused. He didn't have a good view of the front desk, so he thought he might need to go out front, in case it was someone new to the gym needing assistance. But the light footsteps told him this person was bypassing the desk and coming into the locker area. A few seconds later, he saw her face.
So did Ben, who sat back abruptly. "Nina," he murmured.
Unsure why this was suddenly an awkward moment, Carter sat up, too. He realized they were both staring at her, but he knew she wouldn't look up and see them. This particular young woman always looked down, just in front of her feet. It had taken months for him to get her to meet his eyes for longer than a second.
Only a few weeks ago, she had even smiled. Not the forced, small smile of an uncomfortable person who thinks they ought to smile, but a genuine, relaxed smile. It had only happened the once, but he was relieved to know she was finally starting to feel at ease. He wanted every student to feel welcome. He had also observed a different reaction in her to women than to men, and although he wasn't the biggest man in the gym, he had about thirty pounds and a few inches on her.
Some students—usually the women, but not always—came in with a little anxiety about trying this new and aggressive sport. Besides his expertise in martial arts and his skills in teaching, Carter had to work the psychological angle to maintain a well-behaved student body. Nobody was allowed to get mean, and he watched out for more experienced students who didn't treat the newcomers with decency.
But he also watched out for students like Nina, who seemed shy or nervous. Women were told all their lives not to go too far in standing up for themselves, he knew. Not to be too loud, or too bold, or too strong in their rejections of men. He'd seen it first-hand, and he'd heard many women describe the same phenomenon. He believed them.
Not only that, but Carter had seen, too, the way some men tended to handle rejection, as though they were entitled to the attention and deference of women. He disdained those men. Carter had no patience for men who were so fragile they were threatened by a woman who wasn't a doormat. He saved his patience for the women who wanted to come to his gym, some of whom might never have been encouraged—or even allowed—to be strong, loud, and aggressive before. And he counted among the strongest men those who respected their female teammates. He was proud of his students.
Once in a while, a woman came along who learned Carter was single and took an interest in him. But he had certain private desires that he wasn't sure how to share with the right person, not since he had moved away from where he used to live, where he'd had connections and the occasional satisfying date. After his move, he'd visited a special club, but only occasionally. He didn't want to admit it to himself, but he was coming up against a problem with Nina Ives.
Nina. Nervous, shy, but responsive. He was figuring her out. In fact, he was pretty sure he could tell that underneath her anxiety, exacerbating it, was a submissiveness to authority—especially male authority—that made training her in martial arts a little tricky.
Of course, that tendency in her spoke volumes to him. Volumes he was determined to tune out, for now.
