"Give it up, kid," a voice said behind her, accompanied by two other voices snickering. "You'll never be that good, and he would never waste his time even trying to make you halfway decent."
Drew resisted the instinctive urge to jerk her head over her shoulder in the direction of the voice. Instead, she glanced to the side slightly, mostly catching the side of her hood. Whoever had spoken must have seen her slight movement, because he continued on.
"I see you in here all the time at these bags, never talkin' to nobody, actin' like you're better than everyone, when really you're just a skinny little prick who's just wastin' his time."
There was a pause. Drew wasn't about to say anything; she listened, her body tensing as her heart rate accelerated and her stomach clenched with fear and anxiety.
Too close, she thought frantically, her fists balling involuntarily. He's too close.
She heard the sound of one rubber-soled shoe impacting against the ground, closer to her direction, and that was all it took. She darted forward around the punching bag and ran straight past the ring, remembering at least to keep her head down as her heart slammed into her throat. She heard a few murmurs of surprise from those gathered around the ring to watch Heath and his opponent but paid them no mind.
"Hey," a voice called behind her, and she knew it was his. Heath's. "Hey, Carnevale! Hey, kid!"
For the second time in as many weeks, she ignored him and flew out the front doors of the gym, running as fast as she could, not stopping until she was seated safely on the subway train back home, clutching herself to prevent the tremors of anxiety from taking her over the edge into a full blow seizure of fear.
Chapter Three
"Dude, I don't know," Rex insisted. He sat across from Heath in the office at the gym, and Heath was going over some bookkeeping. It was late at night, he was tired, he was at the end of his patience, and the numbers weren't adding up.
"Well, there's at least twelve people who didn't pay by the fifth, and today's the twenty-eighth," Heath said, bringing his fingers up to his temples. He recalled the good old days where he could just pummel the shit out of a bag or some poor fuck's face in the ring and not have to worry about shit like this. Then he remembered what his paychecks looked like these days and gritted his teeth. "We're getting ready to bill again for next month and they haven't paid. Didn't you mark off who paid and who didn't on the list?"
Rex slowly shook his head. "I just collected," he replied.
"We gotta find a better way to do this," Heath muttered, more to himself as he looked through the pile of documents on his desk. He sighed and chewed at his toothpick as he frowned absently toward the eagle, globe and anchor paperweight on his desk, his eyes lighting across the "Semper Fi" scrawled on the base of the weight. Currently, there were three hundred twenty-seven people at the gym; the flat rate for a monthly membership was $35. Private lessons and training were an extra fee on top of that, but payment for those services was expected to be rendered at the time the service was performed. Based on his calculations, he was $420 short for monthly membership fees. A drop in the bucket compared to what they had in the bank, but money was money and every little bit helped.
"So what do you want me to do?" Rex continued.
Heath was about to reply when sudden loud shouting pierced the air from the gym; his head snapped toward the door. Shit. He was used to fights breaking out in the gym despite the sign on the door and the wording in the contracts; with all that testosterone flying around, all the guys thinking they were bigger, badder and tougher than the next, it tended to happen. It reminded him of his days as a Marine. Between basic, random orders and deployments, it was the same thing—all that testosterone in the air caught up to the guys and exploded; Heath had been involved in a few brawls in those environments himself. Nowadays, Heath was almost always the one to break them up, and it was always a pain in the ass. But rules were rules, and he was the "boss" as it were, so it was up to him to keep order in the facility and maintain an aura of peace and calm. If they wanted to take it in the ring, that was fine by him. Anything else, and that shit had to stop.
"You figure it out," Heath replied, pushing away from the desk. "And I expect you to come up with a better tracking system. You can't just take cash, man, it doesn't work like that." Another shout echoed in the gym.
"Better go handle that," Rex said, stacking some papers together.
Heath stopped in his tracks and stared at him incredulously. "You better handle that!" he snapped, stabbing his toothpick in Rex's direction before shoving it back between his teeth, using his tongue to shuffle it around to the other side of his mouth as he headed out of the office into the gym.