Michael holds up his hands. I can see the smile begging to spread across his face, but he’s smart enough not to let it happen. “You know what I mean, Zee. I love her like a sister. A white, super tall, ridiculously attractive sister.”
I go for him, charging across the ring, ready to pick his ass up and slam it down onto the boards. Michael barks out a single ha! of laughter before my body slams into his, driving him backward. We’re on the ropes then, and I’m raining down strikes to his torso while he shields his head with his arms. I can still hear him laughing. The bastard is as crazy as me.
“You wanna take that back?”
“Yes! Yeah—ah—fuck!” Michael gasps in between his laughter. “Jesus, man!”
I stop, stepping back, my chest hitching, my breathing fast as I playfully thump him on the arm. “No one gets to talk shit about my girl, Michael. Not even you.”
“I think I’ve got three broken ribs that will attest to that,” he says, pulling himself upright. He knows I’m mostly joking. Mostly. I wasn’t hitting him anywhere near as hard as I could have, but I know a few of those punches must have rung his bell a little. I smirk at him, assessing how fucked he looks. I’m too busy admiring my handiwork to see the intent in his eyes, before he launches at me with a barrage of his own punches. I can do nothing but duck and shield while he lands a succession of powerful hits to my arms, shoulders, ribcage and the side of my head.
It’s not long before I’m laughing, too. The sound must throw Michael—laughter is a relatively new development for me, after all—because he eases back a little. Big mistake. I take the opportunity to go for him again, this time for his legs. I land a solid front kick, right in his stomach. He goes down with a strangled ufff, and then I’m straddling him in mount, smashing my fists into him again.
“Fuck me, you guys are insane!”
My head snaps to the side, my right fist frozen in mid-air, Michael’s bloody wife beater bunched up in my other hand. Michael stills too, peering out from behind his guard.
There’s a kid standing at the side of the ring, chewing on gum, ball cap flipped backward on his head, staring at us like we’re fucking insane. I look down at Michael, lifting one eyebrow. “You see what I see?” I ask.
Michael nods. “I sure do.”
“And there was me thinking we were closed.” I slowly rise to my feet, stepping over Michael and pacing carefully, deliberately toward the intruder. I let every single ounce of malice I can muster radiate through me as I stop in front of the kid. “You wanna tell me how you got in here?” I ask slowly. “Because I fucking know I locked up for the night.”
The kid has the common sense to look worried. I take him in, assessing him as he shifts from one foot to the other. Clear, open-looking green eyes. He’s tall, maybe six-one, six-two. There’s a small scar running down the side of his head, from his temple to the curve of his cheekbone. Can’t tell what color hair he’s got underneath that ball cap but from his eyebrows I’m going with dark brown. Even though he’s clearly shitting himself, he holds himself upright and rigid. It’s a fighter’s stance, if a bad one. I catch sight of his Gracie Barra hoody and I know what that means: he’s either a wannabe Ju Jitsu fighter or he just loves watching UFC on TV. “You feel like answering me anytime soon?” I rumble.
“I just wanted to train. I didn’t—”
“Break in?”
“Well, yeah, I mean…I did.” He looks lost, like he’s about to bolt any second. Michael comes and stands behind me, giving off an unmistakeable prepare-to-be-fucked-up vibe. I push the ropes of the ring down and vault over them, landing right in front of the kid. I’m on the fence. I should be right there with Michael, ready to give this little shit the beating of his life for breaking into my gym, but my curiosity is getting the better of me. “Why didn’t you leave when you realized someone was here? Huh? Answer me.”
He shrinks back into himself, shrugging his shoulders. “I was watching you guys. You were going to town on each other. People don’t spar like they wanna kill each other normally. Guess I was a little fascinated. Wanted to see who would win.”
Michael crosses his arms over his chest, still covered in blood, looking formidable. “And what do you think? In your expert opinion, who was winning?”
The kid’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline. He doesn’t realize he’s being fucked with. “I don’t know. You both looked pretty even to me. You gonna call the cops or what?”
I know Michael’s looking at me, waiting to see how I will react. I know full well how he wants to fucking react. He wants to laugh his ass off; I can feel it bubbling off him. I beat him to it, rumbling out my own laughter, right from the bottom of my ribcage. “How old are you?”
The kid looks from me to Michael, like this is some sort of trick question. “Twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three?”
“Yeah.”
“You got a job?”