“I think so,” he says. “Am I bleeding?”
That’s a question everyone wants to hear when they’re trying to enjoy a little foreplay.
Still, I refuse to believe that this sexual endeavor is hopeless. If Mason and I have one thing, it’s chemistry.
“No, you’re good,” I tell him. “Still wanna…?”
“Hell yeah,” he answers, and this time, I take the ring off the eponymous finger of my right hand and toss it over the shower rod.
It makes a surprisingly loud kerblubb when it lands in the water of the toilet bowl.
Mason asks, “Did you just…?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him and we’re kissing again.
I’m not in denial.
Neither’s Mason.
This is great.
This feels so—
“Okay,” I say, clutching my face. “I’m done.”
What does it is when Mason reaches his hand up toward my face, seemingly to persuade some strand of my hair away from my face, but ends up with his index finger in my eye instead.
He’s trying to stammer through an apology, and I’m trying to forget how recently I’ve hurt him so I can continue to be mad at him for poking me in the eye and at this point, I’ll just be happy if we’re still talking by the time we get out of this bathroom.
Chapter Thirteen
Eggshells
Mason
He’s right there, standing in front of me. The crowd’s mouths are open, but they’re silent; or at least I can’t hear them.
This is my second match: the quarter-finals.
It’s insane how they threw this thing together so quick, but someone’s got to be make money off of it somehow. Right now it doesn’t bother me that nobody knows how.
Right now, nothing bothers me because there’s simply not enough in the world.
There’s Ash standing behind me, supportive in my corner.
In front of me is the man I’m about to fight.
To either side of me are walls of flesh and bone.
Beneath me is the floor, above me is the ceiling, and here I am in the center, ready to do what’s necessary.
The fight must have started because he’s walking toward me now. My hands are up, I’m ready.
He throws a left and tries to catch me with a quick follow-up right, but he’s sloppy and I’m better and he’s down and I don’t know why all these people are trying to pull me away. All I know is that the fight just started and now it’s over.
It’s not until one of the guys holding me reaches up and slaps me hard across the face that I come back to a wider view of the world.
I don’t hear the crowd, but that’s because nobody’s cheering. My opponent’s on the ground and Tom’s with him, checking him.
“Is he gonna be okay?” I ask the open air.
I’m only greeted by harsh glares.
I turn around and look back at where Ash is standing and her mouth is open under her hands.
“You need to come with me right now,” a sharp, but familiar voice says.
Logan’s got me by the hair on the back of my head and he’s leading me through the crowd toward one corner of the room.
He lets go of my head with a shove, saying, “What the hell was that? What do you think you were doing? Were you trying to kill him? What’s the matter with you?”
“Is there a particular question you’d like me to answer?” I ask.
He slaps me in the face and pushes me up against the wall, seething, “You’re lucky we’ve got the people we do in the crowd, man,” he says. “If these people weren’t all fighters, they might have missed the fact that you’d snapped and would have killed the guy if we didn’t jump in.”
“I wouldn’t have killed him,” I scoff.
“Six punches,” he says. “In the time between when the match was called and they pulled you off, you’d thrown six punches and that guy looks like he got hit by a truck. You can’t tell me you were in control of anything.”
“Six?” I ask. “People always end up throwing a few after it’s called. It happens on reflex: The command hasn’t processed yet because you’re in fight mode. You know this stuff as much as I do.”
Logan just shakes his head and, getting within two inches of my face, he says, “That’s not what this was. Pray that he’s okay,” Logan says. “We’re not the damn UFC, Mason. We don’t have full-blown doctors or ambulances waiting around in case someone really gets damaged. We’ve got Tom. It’s a miracle something bad hasn’t happened by now without people trying to make it happen. Get the hell out of here and you pray that he’s all right, man. You do that and you get your head checked because you’re losing it, man.”
I look toward the ring where it’s still almost silent. “Let me know if he’s okay,” I tell Logan and I push him out of my way.
Most of the people there, they don’t look at me. The people who do are counting the seconds it takes for me to get the rest of the way out of there, and I don’t know when someone’s going to hit their digit and this all goes very, very bad.
Even with that in mind, I’m not going to leave Ash here in the middle of this. I take a couple steps toward the ring, though, and everyone in the room turns to face me. It would actually be a pretty amazing sight if it weren’t directed at me.
“Ash!” I call.
Nobody in the crowd is saying anything. I can’t see the guy I beat through the crowd, but a few people start turning back toward the center, then a few more.
Finally, everyone’s turned back toward the center of the ring and everyone’s cheering.
I’m moving around, trying to find an angle from which I can look without having to get any closer, but I can’t see through. I suck up my fear and start walking toward the group again, but Ash saves me the trouble as she comes through and starts walking toward me.
Once she’s close, I grab her hand. Once we’re far enough away from the abandoned shop I’m not worried someone’s going to come up and try to enact some vigilante justice for what just happened, I let go of her hand.
I keep walking.
“What happened in there?” she asks, catching up with me. “Do you know what you did?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I tell her.
Has that phrase ever worked on anyone?
“It was… frightening,” she says.
“Is he going to be okay?” I ask.
“He’s going to be fine,” Ash says. “You’re lucky those guys pulled you off when you did. They called the fight and tried to push you off, but you just kept going. Why?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I didn’t really know what was going on. I didn’t know the fight was over until they were dragging me out of there.”
She asks, “Did you black out or something?”
“I didn’t black out,” I answer. “It was different. I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.”
I know I’m being short with her, but I don’t know how to stop.
For whatever it’s worth, I’m starting to think she was right about that whole “don’t bottle things up or you’ll explode” thing. I can’t answer the question as to why I let my anger take over and control me. In a match, anger can be a useful tool, but it has to have its limits.