Queen of the South - My Season 6: Full Circle

Chapter 21, Teresa and James

Teresa's desire to learn self defense after so many years post narco life when her main fitness activity had been jogging and yoga, surprised James, but as he was not one to question harmless ideas, especially that had popped up the heads of any of the women in the house, he told her to get ready for a lot more than jogging.

Teresa had given him a disbelieving look, but later had found out that he had not been joking. He wouldn't train her before her general fitness state had improved dramatically, so Teresa had been following his strict daily workout schedule for the last month and a half. It included a lot of cardio exercises on top of countless pushups and crunches, and on some days as she was sweating her ass off in his fight practice studio, she was wondering if this challenge had been worth it. However, she had dropped two sizes for clothes and as both Kelly Anne and Lena had noted the fact, Teresa kept wiping off the sweat, drinking the water, and wondering when her general fitness level would be good enough!

Shortly after their return from Mexico five years ago, James had decided that his fighting skills had not been up to his satisfaction as he had spared with a younger man in Dallas and despite having prevailed, it had shown him that their new life had made him 'soft', as he said. Surfing and the occasional fight practice had not been enough for the challenge he had faced in a hand fight with Isabela Vargas's lover. So, James had ended up opening a fight studio and had started splitting his time between the shooting range and the studio.

The studio boasted a huge hangar type of a building on the land of the shooting range, which took half a year to build and cost an arm and a leg. It had separate sections for martial arts, boxing, self-defense for women, old style fight practice and a fully equipped gym. He had hired instructors in all disciplines and after a year and a half the studio had become so popular that there was a wait list for memberships and classes. They hosted boxing and karate tournaments that made audiences flow and the increase in business in the adjacent shooting range was also noticeable.

Teresa typed the code on the side door key pad and after the buzz entered the boxing area. It was empty at this early Sunday morning hour and looked even more impressive than when full of customers. It had eight elevated boxing rings and the area to the left of them boasted at least twenty punching bags hanging from the ceiling on top of the long row of wall mounted pullup bars and ab straps.

James had been adding new equipment and she spotted three multifunctional boxing gym spinning bars with dual punching balls that were used for working on kicking reaction, speed, and coordination. The addition of a weight lifting station didn't escape her notice either.

He had had her join the women's self-defense class on several occasions and as the class was taught by one of his trainers, she had been able to put her mind at ease and had paid close attention to everything that had been taught. She couldn't explain why but she felt this internal apprehension at the thought of him teaching her to fight, a thing she had never asked him to teach her. She caught herself feeling apprehension every time she watched him, in his simple workout attire, and his students do crunches and pushups in the numbers she couldn't possibly hope to get to.

The instructor had talked about how one needed to wake up the 'natural human animal' in them and to treat the attacker as a 'meat puzzle' and Teresa had had flashbacks of her fighting Cortez's sicario in the back of the Nashville bar where Eddie Brucks and his jazz band had been playing to the oblivion of a large audience. And then somehow, she had clicked with the 'human animal' in her; the premise and occurrence of violence became clearer, and she didn't cringe at the thought of having to deal with 'predator behavior'.

She had been working out every Sunday morning on her kicks and punches trying to get as good as some younger women in the class. One such early Sunday morning, James had shown up at around 10 a.m. right after his surfing with guys from the surf club, an activity that he still cherished once a week and only dropped if and when the temperatures got wintery in June and July. He had walked in the studio and had told her that it was her lucky day. She had had no choice but to swallow the sudden tightness in her chest as there were a few other studio members around working on their programs.