Chapter Fifteen
Dragging
Mason
“Come on, man,” Logan says, standing over me. “You’re twenty-two percent off your max and you’re acting like I’m telling you to lift a semi-truck, now put something into it!”
Logan’s never been good at any kind of math that can’t be applied in a gym. When it comes to lifting, though, the guy’s a savant.
It’s also possible he’s just making up numbers that sound plausible.
I heave through the final three reps of my set and Logan helps me get the barbell into its cradle.
“What’s with you?” he asks. “Usually, you’re cruising right through, at least until the last few reps. You haven’t done a solid set all day.”
“I’ve done everything,” I tell him. “It just wasn’t pretty.”
“You’re right about that,” Logan says. “So, are you still thinking about going forward with the tournament?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I ask.
“Good,” he says. “You gotta get that last match out of your head. You still in, or did that last set make you piss your panties?”
He’s not much for nuance.
“I’m still here,” I tell him.
“You up for some light sparring?” he asks.
I smile, saying, “You know I’m always ready to kick your ass.”
He bellows laughter. He knows at least as well as I do that it’s a good thing we’re a couple weight classes apart.
Logan is just one of those guys you know is going to end up in the octagon someday. To him, there is literally nothing but fighting. Eating is fueling up for the next training session. Casually talking to people is exercising the mind, making sure he can not only relate to, but spot facial cues. It helps more than you’d think.
I love fighting, but it’s not the only thing in my life. It’s the only thing I want to do, but I don’t have that single-mindedness Logan has.
He’s one of those people who was put here for a single purpose. Ask him anything not fight or training-related, and chances are he’s not going to have a clue what you’re talking about. Bring up a topic in his wheelhouse, though, and he’s the smartest guy in any room.
For now, there are a couple of guys in the ring, so we wait.
“What’s the word on the next fight?” I ask.
Logan smiles with half his mouth. “You’re going to have your work cut out for you,” he says.
“Anyone I know?” I ask.
“Have you ever heard the name Mitch Furyk?” he asks.
Yeah, I’ve heard the name. “He’s next?” I ask.
“That’s good,” Logan says. “You’re confident. Still, I’d start hoping you catch a second wind or something, because if what you brought in here today is what you bring to the fight, we’re going to have to scrape you off the ground with a pancake turner.”
“Spatula,” I correct.
“No,” Logan says. “I mean a pancake turner.”
I’m not nearly interested enough to argue. Even if I wasn’t in a particularly bad mood today, I still don’t think I’d care.
“Mitch the Fury, huh?” I ask. “Wasn’t he doing flyweight for a while?”
“Yeah,” Logan answers, glancing up as one of the guys in the ring gets staggered by a hard right. “He was flyweight for about a year. Before that, he was all the way up at welterweight for a couple of years until he decided to go vegan and lost a ton of weight. Word on the street is that he packed on the extra twenty pounds because he heard you were in on this thing and he wanted the pleasure of putting your head through the floor.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’m all he thinks about,” I mock.
The guys in the ring finally call it quits and Logan and I get our gloves and headgear on and cinched.
“He should be all that you’re thinking about,” Logan says.
“Given that I just found out who I’m up against, I’d say it’d be pretty hard for me to retroactively obsess about him,” I answer, ducking my head as I step into the ring.
“Yeah, I don’t know what any of that means,” Logan starts, “but you’ve got to get your head back, man. One of the things that always made you a good fighter was that you knew when to strike and when to save your energy. You waste an ounce trying to be the big freak in the ring and me and your girlfriend are going to be taking turns feeding you through a straw.”
“Her name’s Ash,” I tell Logan, though I’m not sure why I bother. It’s not just math he can only do with a fighting corollary; it’s pretty much everything.
“Whatever,” Logan says. “You ready? Are we doing this Rocky Two style or do you actually want to have someone start us off?”
I’d feel better about the punch I just threw as an answer if he didn’t easily duck it and start laughing loudly enough to draw the attention of most of the gym.
“You’re a prick,” I tell him.
“And you’ve got a fight to train for,” he says. “Now quit throwing half-assed crap and hit me.”
The last word’s not fully out of his mouth before a punch I swear I didn’t even see rocks me back a little.
Okay, different weight class or no, this isn’t going well.
“What are you doing?” Logan taunts. “You acted like you didn’t even know it was coming.”
He throws a left hand, followed up quickly with a right knee. I manage to dodge the strikes, but when I go to counter, Logan’s prepared.
This is Logan’s play time, though he likes to call it “giving back to the community.” That’s condescending enough, but he likes to have people witness his generosity.
What that means for me is that I’ve got until people start crowding around to watch us spar to put Logan into the mat. Once he has an audience, he tends to become a bit of a showman and it’s absolutely infuriating.
I give him a shin kick just above his right knee, but I may as well be kicking a lamppost. He actually smiles at me as he glances down toward where the blow had landed.
If this was a real fight, I’d be pretty freaked out right now. As it is, his amusement at my attempts to beat the crap out of him distracts me long enough to drop my guard just a little, giving Logan the perfect opening. I know what’s going to happen before it does, but there’s no stopping it.
Logan glances over my shoulder to see if we’ve got a sizeable enough crowd for him to stop tooling around and get it over with. As I’m picking myself up off the mat, I’d say we’re pretty well there.
“Still in?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I answer, getting the rest of the way to my feet.
“You sure?” he asks. “I don’t want to push you too much before a fight.”
I’m pretty sure he’s baiting me.
“How are things with your brother?” he asks.
Yeah, he’s baiting me.
“Left,” he says, calling his own punch to prove his martial superiority. “Right,” he says. I manage to deflect the blow, but it catches the edge of my headgear, forcing me to lose sight of Logan for the smallest moment.