I shake my head. “I’m not fighting you.”
He tears off his jacket and walks toward me, a sneer crawling across his face. “Come on, Chopper. What are you so afraid of?”
“You’re my friend,” I argue. “I’m not fighting you.”
“We are not friends,” he says before spitting on the ground. “Friends look out for each other, like I’ve looked out for you all this time. Then you go get someone to fuck, and all of a sudden, you leave me in the dust.”
“I’m sorry, Rex,” I say with sincerity. “I’m here now.”
Closing the distance between us, he shoves me hard against the chest. “Then fight me!”
“Twenty-five on Rex!” a man yells.
The voices blend together as they all put in their bets, one after the other. The bookie steps up and starts taking everyone’s cash while Rex continues to snarl in my face.
“All you cared about was winning money in my fights,” I say, “and the minute I stopped fighting, you got pissed at me.”
“Well, I’m not here for the money now,” he growls. “So let’s fight.”
“Fine,” I grit back. “I have some aggression to get out anyway.”
His eyes narrow, almost as if it’s on the tip of his tongue to ask what exactly I have so much aggression about. But he doesn’t.
We circle away from each other. I tear off my shirt and start jumping in place to get warmed up. It’s been months since my last fight, and while I’ve been training in the gym, it’s not the same as getting in a real fight.
With my best friend.
What the fuck am I doing?
They’ve only just dragged the last loser away when the bookie closes the bets and calls us into the circle. I hold my fists up and stare at Rex on the other side.
A moment later, the bookie shouts out to start the fight, and the cheers begin. Rex and I dance around each other for a moment. He knows I’m shit at blocking uppercuts, and I know he’s got a bad right knee. Knowing his weakness doesn’t exactly make me feel good about exploiting it.
We throw a few feeble punches, easily dodging them when the crowd gets agitated.
“Frappe-le!” someone shouts, and Rex throws a mean right I don’t dodge in time. The impact of his fist against my cheek sends me reeling. I stumble backward, the pain radiating in a familiar but distant way. I nearly forgot how much it hurts to take a good punch, which he’s pulling. I can tell.
When I blink my eyes open, I notice the wide-eyed surprise on Rex’s face. Even he was shocked by the hit.
“Get him, Chopper!”
Moving in, I swing at Rex, nicking him in the jaw. He shakes it off and glares at me as if I’ve just insulted him.
“What the fuck was that?” he barks. “You call that a punch?”
I want to tell him that I can’t hit him, but if I admitted to this crowd that I was throwing the fight, they’d toss my ass on thetracks. So I tighten my fist, and I bounce toward him, throwing a harsh left. It makes a brutal impact with his cheek, and he careens backward.
As he quickly composes himself, I see the smile spread across his face. With a shake of his head, he wipes it away and stands upright again. We dance around each other some more, and I start to realize with dread that these guys are going to need a winner one way or another.
It won’t be me. I know that now.
And as I take another punch across the jaw, I suddenly remember something Julian said the night he cleaned my wounds.
Winning these fights isn’t winning.
What a stupid, cliché, sentimental bullshit thing to say…that suddenly makes so much fucking sense now. Beating my best friend, someone I’ve hurt recently, certainly isn’t fucking winning, and it’s not going to make me feel better.
I take another punch, this time a high one, making my eye sting as it cracks across my cheekbone.
