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“I’ll get x-rayed tomorrow.”
“At the hospital?”
“Lex has a guy.”
Jolie just stared at me for a weirdly long moment. Then she turned to the driver and gave him her address; my dad’s address. I followed her into the limo and he shut the door for us.
“You’re heading straight home?” I asked her.
She didn’t cuddle into me like she did on the way here. She left space between us, her hands pressed between her knees.
“It’s late. I have a lot of work to do this week, a lot of prep for the wedding.”
“Right.” I sprawled back and as we got rolling, I watched her. She wasn’t really looking at me. “You don’t have to worry about me,” I told her. “I’m fine. I’ll heal. The other guy got the worst of it, believe me.”
“So… that makes it better or something? You both got hurt in there, Shane. Willingly.”
“Hey, I don’t actually want to take damage in a fight or anything. I don’t want to damage the other guy, either.” I eyed her, wondering what she was so upset about. “Fighting is an ancient sport and it’s not going anywhere.”
“I’m not knocking fighting. I understand that it’s a sport. But, Shane…” Finally, she looked me right in the eye. “It didn’t feel very sporting in there.”
“Have you ever seen a live fight before?”
“No,” she admitted.
“I remember the first time I ever saw a fight in person. It’s pretty fucking intense, right? All the adrenaline and testosterone flying all over the place.” I considered that; tried to consider it from her point of view. “I guess for a woman, as a spectator, it might feel even more crazy.”
“Yeah. It did.”
“Well, like I said. I’m okay. The other guy’s okay too. He’ll heal. And if he’s smart, maybe he’ll take something from this fight, learn from it, and do better next time.”
She just stared at me and I wondered if she was thinking about the next time. About my next fight.
And the fact that she wouldn’t be there.
It felt impossible, somehow, that she wouldn’t be, so I just didn’t even let myself picture it.
“So…” she said, “Lex has some kind of illicit doctor guy, like, through his biker club, that you’re going to see tomorrow?”
“Pretty much.”
“You can’t see a real doctor because the fight was illegal, right?”
“He’s a real doctor.”
“I hope so. Because your hands don’t look too good right now.”
I held up my bandaged right hand and gently flexed my swollen fingers. “Yeah, they are pretty wrecked,” I said casually.
“Are they always this wrecked after a fight?”
“No. Not always. Really depends how many times I have to hit him. And how hard. If I just hit a guy in the skull as hard as I can, I’m gonna break my hand. When you’re fighting without gloves, you have to learn how to control your punches. And go for the soft spots.”
She looked pretty disgusted, so I figured maybe I should lay off on the details.
“I’m pretty sure nothing’s broken.” I said it with confidence, though I’d definitely had breaks before and didn’t know it. All the adrenaline, the chaos of chemicals flooding through my system, and the come down after a fight… I couldn’t really feel everything that was going on in my body until hours, even days after. “On the bright side, the rest of me is pretty okay, though.”
She just stared at me.
