I pulled back my hand and walked over to the corner, shaking my head in disgust. Pauli Generoli, the owner of the gym, climbed into the ring and glared at me. I wasn’t supposed to damage the merchandise. These rich guys were the way he paid for his gym and when they weren’t given enough opportunity to feel like conquerors, they didn’t want to come back. I ignored his summons to come over and jumped down off the platform. Noah was on the mats to the side, practicing some Brazilian jiu-jitsu moves.
Noah used to partner with me. Or actually, I sparred with him to ready him for a world of professional fighting. I wasn’t allowed to do this anymore, as Noah had been invited to be part of the UFC, the officially sanctioned group of mixed martial arts fighters.
Paulie, who trained Noah, said I was too dangerous and undisciplined to fight Noah. I thought it was better for Noah to face down dangerous and unpredictable in the safety of a gym setting before facing it inside the Octagon, where the UFC fighters battled for fame and money, but I never voiced any opposition.
If it were anyone other than Noah, I wouldn’t have kept quiet, but I wasn’t going screw up Noah’s opportunities here. Even if I wanted to because Noah could put a beatdown on me like none other, and we both felt better after. None of the other amateur fighters could get in enough blows to make a difference and my fight instinct was too strong to just stand there and take it.
I pushed open the door to the locker room, and the stifling smell of ball sweat and ass swept over me. Stripping out of my shorts and jock strap, I leaned into one of the two tiled shower stalls at the back to turn the water on. Paulie was not a generous owner. Complain about the cold water and he’d tell you it was called Spartan Gym for a fucking reason and that if we wanted some goddamned hot water we could go to the meatbars out west. Didn’t seem like much of a difference these days, with the infiltration of yuppies thinking they could grow a bigger dick by putting on a pair of boxing gloves.
The cold water washed away what little sweat I’d generated, but the excess energy inside me still pulsed just under the surface. The tension I’d woken up with hadn’t been pounded out of me, and I felt as agitated now as I had at the start of my workout. With all the good fighters off limits because I wasn’t supposed to hurt anyone while they were training, I was left with few options.
I dried off quickly and pulled on my underwear.
Throwing my towel on the metal bench, I sat down and scrolled through my phone’s contacts until I hit the right one.
Fight tonight? The response was immediate but disappointing. Too early in the week for an actual match.
Thursday. Casino. Real fight. Want in?
The reservations held the human version of cockfights because they weren’t bound by state laws. This could be awesome or I could go home on a backboard. Either one looked good to me right now.
In.
The locker-room door creaked on its hinges as Noah pushed his way in.
“Already done for the morning?” I asked in surprise.
“Just wanted to put my two cents in,” Noah said.
“How so?”
“Figure you’re trying to set up some fight this week because this morning’s rounds were so disappointing.”
I just shrugged in return. I wasn’t exaggerating about Noah’s familiarity with my behavior. More than a decade of friendship and four years of military service deployed together to Afghanistan made us tighter than an ass in spandex.
“Look, I don’t want to be the heavy, but one of these days you’re going to come out of these fights a vegetable.”
I scratched the back of my neck and took a deep breath to gather some patience. I didn’t want to say something that would end up pissing us both off. “Okay, Grandma. You’re one to talk.”
“It’s sort of a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ type of lecture,” he admitted sheepishly.
“You have other suggestions?”
“Not really. Just be careful. I think the crew back in San Diego would spit on your hospital bed if you ended up in a coma after you’d come back hale and hearty from deployment.”
He wasn’t wrong. No one liked to hear the news about a brother who survived the war only to come home and get fucked up in some random accident. It seemed pointless, a total waste of a good man, but I wouldn’t ever put myself in the “good man” category. “Yeah, got it.”
I stood and pulled the rest of my clothes from the locker. Jeans, ratty T-shirt, boots, and a heavy winter coat that weighed about ten pounds. I hated the cold. As I threw my clothes on the bench, the clink of metal sounded loud against the concrete floor.
Noah walked over and picked up the heavy coin that had fallen. “What do you think this guy would say about your fighting?”