King of the Ring

2 | Old Beginnings

Chapter 2

I found the fact that I had been raised in a gym was extremely ironic to me.

Although my third grade teacher would argue that I was raised in a barn, however what did Miss Kamaro know? Definitely not how to do long division, as I still had no grasp of the concept and all my blame was falling onto her teaching abilities.

One would assume that since my family owned a gym that constantly had extremely fit, healthy people walking through it that I, too, would be a health junkie. I preferred to spend my time at the gym flipping through a magazine behind the front counter and snacking on potato chips.

The apple fell extremely far from the tree.

I was currently seated behind said front desk, my fathers voice droning on beside me as I pretended to listen to what he was telling me about the new computer system. However instead of listening I was watching some guy at one of the punching bags. The guy was lean and toned, with just the right amount of muscles that could get my eyes to glaze over and my imagination fired up.

I guessed that working in a gym would have a few perks.

"Dani!" something smacked against the back of my head and I was startled from my daydream about the hunk at the punching bag. I turned my head to see my father gazing down at me disapprovingly and realized that the smack had been his hand. "Are you even listening to me?" he asked.

"Of course Papa," I put on my most angelic smile as I sent a discreet wink to the boxer when my dad turned back to look at the computer.

"And this is where we keep the accounts," my father motioned to somewhere on the computer screen, "got it?" he asked with a bright smile on his face.

I stared at the screen and then back at my fathers smiling face.

I decided against reminding him that I had been using computers since I was 10 years old and was sort of a whiz with them.

"Why did you change the system?" I asked him instead.

My father gave an easy shrug, the smile still in place, then said in his thick Hispanic accent that hadn't seemed to lesson after living in the states for years, "The old one was a little too old-school."

That had my eyes almost popping out of my head in shock. My father was all about old school. It had taken years to convince him just to change the open and closed sign on the door. Changing the whole system? It must have taken a sacrifice to convince him.

Perhaps something's had changed.

"Where is the sanitizer?" my mothers voice yelled from somewhere in the building. My mothers voice was so loud she could have been in a whole other building for all we knew.

"In the cupboard!" my father yelled back. It was like clockwork. Anyone could tell that they had been together for decades. Their undying love was quite sickening in all honesty, I mean I most definitely couldn't imagine myself with someone for that long.

Perhaps that was just the cynic in me speaking.

In less than 24 hours I had moved my whole life to another state. I had been caught up on everything that had happened since I had been gone and I had started my new, yet old, job.

After tossing and turning for the majority of the night, then finally crashing somewhere around 3am, I had been jarringly woken up by my alarm clock screaming in my ear.

Except it hadn't been my alarm, it had been my mother because who needed an electronic alarm when you had a mother like mine?

My mother had dragged me out of bed at 5am, after only two hours of sleep, and we had gotten to the gym by 5:30am.