“If anything, that doubles the murderousness. It makes you look like the bit in the movie when the bad guy isn’t really dead and swings for the heroine in slow motion.”
“I want to argue here, but that actually makes a lot of sense.”
“I know, right? Thank you,” she said, but he wasn’t ready to give up.
After a second of absurdly visible thinking, he snapped his fingers.
“What about if I make a warning sound?”
“Like a truck backing up?”
“Exactly.”
“I fear it will just give me the chance to murder you first.”
“You have absolutely no chance of murdering me first. I mean, you’re half my size and nowhere near as fast,” he said, half laughing as he did.
But once he glanced back at her, the half laughing stopped dead.
He saw her facemost probably tight with sudden alarmand it was like a switch had been flipped.
“Not that any of that is a bad thing. Or a thing that I’m about to take advantage of. Is that how it just seemed? Like I was explaining exactly how I’m going to kill you?”
“It kind of had a whiff of that, yeah.”
“Okay, so what about this: I show you ways to nail me.”
“You…want to show me ways to…nail you.”
“I’m just going to breeze right by the double meaning of nailed and say yes. Absolutely yes.”
“You can’t be serious. Are you serious?”
“I am. First up, this knee right here?” He pointed to the offending body part, while lifting it a little so she could really see. “You could probably blow on it and put me down.”
“If that were true I reckon you would lose a lot more wrestling matches.”
“I don’t lose matches because no one knows my right leg is basically made of glass and sawdust. Half of wrestling is hiding your weaknesses so your opponent can never exploit them.”
“This must be pretty weird for you then. Describing exactly how I can do just that.”
“Actually it feels more like bursting a blister. Sort of painful but mostly a huge relief.”
“Because you always wanted to tell me how to bust your chops?”
She intended sarcasm, she really did. She intended it hard.
Only he didn’t take it that way at all. He answered it straight, and sort of softly.
“Because you’re the only person outside the team I’ve told.”
Then carried right on as though it didn’t mean anything at all.
“Now…when I lunge I tend to throw everything I got into it. So what you have to do is use it against me. You have to come back at me immediately, while I’m still committed to it.”
“Tate, if you lunge at me chances are I’m going to pass out.”
“You stood your ground when Jason threatened you with a fucking truck, Letty. If that doesn’t make you lose your goddamn mind, nothing on earth will.”
He paused then, but not to give her time to process this bombshell. He just needed it to clear the table to one side, so he could get into what she assumed was a lunge positionleft leg crooked, right leg back, shoulders forward. While she stood there, heart suddenly thumping slow and thick, mouth too open, eyes too wide. If he glanced at her for even a second he would see how much he’d just affected her. How awesome it was to hear him talk as though she was brave.
But he didn’t. Like with the confession about his weaknesseshe just hit it and carried on.
“Okay, so you see how the plane of my thigh is completely open here? You need to use that. You need to use it like a stepjust put your foot right up on it.”
“I really don’t think I can put my foot up on your leg.”
“Sure you can. Just give it a shot.”
“You say that like you’re not seven hundred feet tall. I think I might have to do the splits just to get anywhere close to your thigh,” she said, though that wasn’t really what bothered her.
It was the thought of what she might reveal when she did it. She was wearing jeans, but the jeans would probably pull taut in places she didn’t want them to. Parts of her would crease and form rollsand then there was her lack of balance. He knew she would wobble.
She did wobble when she tentatively attempted it.
She gingerly lifted her right leg, and almost went sprawling.
And there was no relief when she finally planted her foot.
“Now just climb. Get ahold of my shoulder and climb until you’re behind me.”
“Are you sure this is a method of defeating you? It sounds more like you want to help me audition for Cirque du Soleil. In which case I should probably remind you: I have all the coordination of a drunk puppy.”
“Seriously, just try it. It’s way easier than it looks.”