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“Not at all. I just don’t think you’re as happy as you pretend to be.”

  “That’s your opinion.” He shrugged. “I don’t worry much about what haters think of me.”

  “You have to be someone people give a shit about before you can have haters.”

  Uriah nodded. “True. But I guess you give a shit about me, JB. Because you’re always acting pissed off that I’m in the same gym as you. Insecurity is a sign of weakness, you know.”

  “Believe me, you’re the last thing on my list of things to worry about.” I chuckled.

  “You’re just another big talker, and in a year or two you’ll leave and go somewhere else where you can start over and try and fool a new crop of people into thinking you’re the next Anderson Silva.”

  That seemed to get under Uriah’s skin. He bit his lower lip and nodded, looking down. “You talk a big game about not getting fooled, for a dude who’s getting played like a violin,” he said, and then began chuckling. Soon he was laughing outright.

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like.”

  I knew he was playing games, but I couldn’t seem to resist falling for it. “It sounds like you’re too much of a punk to say what you mean.” I stepped closer to him.

  He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and I could see the hate radiating off of him. “I’m saying it, motherfucker. I don’t know how much more clear I can make it.

  Let’s see, how about I spell it out for you?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “I saw your girl last night.”

  “I don’t have a girl.”

  “Really? ‘Cause you seemed like you were together the other day, dressed up all fancy, looking like fucking Prince Charles and shit.”

  I felt my blood starting to really boil now. “So what if I was? What if I was with her? So what?”

  He shrugged again, smirking. “I’m just saying, you might think she’s all sweet and nice. But that girl was out hugging on another man, playing you for a chump.”

  “Fuck off,” I said, waving at him. But I was stunned, imagining Lindsay with some other guy. I didn’t want her with another guy. I didn’t want her with anyone but me.

  “I only say it because I don’t like seeing you clowned like that,” Uriah continued.

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  I decided to give him a little of his own medicine. “The only thing that’s embarrassing is your shitty kickboxing, Uriah. You’re never going to make it in the fight game. You’re a one trick pony. You’ve got no power, you got nothing. That’s why I’m getting the deal with the UFF and you’re nothing but a backup.”

  Suddenly, Uriah was in my face. “You want to see my kickboxing, bitch?”

  That was enough for me. I’d been wanting to knock him out since the moment I’d first seen his face. But now that he’d decided to bring Lindsay into it, there was nothing I wanted more than to plant my fist on his jaw and stop his mouth.

  I threw a right hook, but Uriah was faster than I expected, and he ducked under the punch. He went for my legs and I sprawled out on the concrete, stuffing his shot.

  The two of us were swearing at one another as we fought. It was almost funny, except it wasn’t, because one wrong move and I’d have been waking up in a hospital bed.

  I gave him a couple of solid punches to the ribs and heard him grunt. He scooted away and threw a hard kick at my face. I leaned back just in time to keep from getting my head taken off, but he still caught me on the side of my face, right where my cut was located.

  I stumbled back a few steps and Uriah came charging forward, throwing punches. I avoided all of them and threw a stiff jab that smashed him in the nose.

  We circled each other warily, hands up.

  A moment later, I ran towards him, throwing another powerful hook, looking to crush him into oblivion. He caught it on his forearm, and then I grabbed him in the clinch and rammed him up against the brick wall. I started throwing knees, trying to crush his ribs, but he smothered the blows. He punched me hard in the stomach and I nearly puked my guts out.

  All the drinking from the previous two days took its toll and I groaned.

  I felt all the energy drain out of me, but I stood my ground. I’m not sure what would have happened if we’d continued fighting, but I didn’t get a chance to find out.

  The next thing I knew, there were police sirens blaring and a loud voice shouting for us to move away from one another.

  “Shit, the cops,” Uriah whispered angrily, glaring at me as if this was all my fault.

  “Stop whining, pussy,” I whispered back at him.

  The two cops got out of the police car and approached us. “What seems to be going on here?” one said, hand on his gun.

  “Officer, this is a big misunderstanding,” I said, stalling for time. We were about to be arrested for sure.

  “You two boys were just beating the crap out of each other pretty good. I don’t think there’s much to be confused about.”

  I glanced at Uriah, and he nodded. “No, we—we’re training partners. We work out at this gym, it’s a mixed martial arts gym.”

  “And do you always fight in the parking lot?”

  “No, but it was closed so we decided to just warm up for a bit,” Uriah replied.

  I had to give the asshole credit, he was quick on his feet.

  The other officer was taking the handcuffs out. “This one’s bleeding,” he said, pointing at me.

  I touched the cut above my eye and my fingers came away red. “That’s an old cut,”

  I explained. “We really weren’t fighting, I swear.”

  Just as they were getting ready to take us away in the backseat of their cruiser, Coach Jansen showed up. He was wearing a baseball cap and carrying a duffel bag.

  “Hello, officers. Is there a problem?” he asked, as he saw them starting to slap the handcuffs on me.

  “You know these guys?” the first cop said.

  Jansen almost looked like he might shrug and say he’d never seen us before in his life. “Yeah,” he sighed. “I know ‘em.”

  “They work for you, sir?”

  “I own this gym right here. They train with me.”

  The cops exchanged glances. “Well, that part of their story checks out. We got a call that there was a fight in this parking lot so we came over here and saw what looked like an altercation between these two gentlemen. But they claimed they were just sparring.”

  Jansen raised his eyebrows. “Well, I don’t train my fighters to spar on concrete, so if it’s true, they might be the two dumbest fucks I ever trained.”

  The cops laughed. “This guy got banged up a little,” one said, gesturing to me.

  Jansen frowned. “Yup. He’s an idiot all right.”

  A few minutes later, after Coach Jansen somehow convinced the police we were just fools, the cops left, giving us all a stern warning not to fight or spar outside of the gym again or we would be arrested and Coach Jansen might be fined.

  When they were gone, Coach unlocked the door to the gym and started to walk inside. Uriah and I followed him, but he turned around at the last moment. “Where do you two think you’re going?” he said, and his voice was cold.

  “We want to train,” Uriah replied.

  Jansen laughed. “I don’t train thugs,” he said. “You see, this gym here is for real MMA athletes. And I don’t see two athletes in front of me, I see two street punks. Now get the hell out of my gym.”

  At first, I thought he was just giving us a hard time, trying to scare us. But then I realized he was serious. And a moment later, he’d slammed the door to the gym in our faces.

  Uriah looked at me balefully. “First time I’ve ever been kicked out of a gym in my life. This is just another day for you.”

  “Whatever. Go fuck yourself,” I told him, and walked off.

  I went inside a Panera Bread and grabbed a bunch of napkins, putting pressure on my cut. The bleeding wasn’
t terrible, but clearly I’d taken a setback on healing. Beyond that, I wasn’t sure if Coach Jansen would ever let me back in the gym, and that could mean much bigger problems long term.

  As the bleeding slowed, I had time to think more about what Uriah had told me. I started picturing Lindsay and some guy at a swanky bar, kissing, touching each other. It made my stomach sick and I closed my eyes, trying to tell myself it was nothing. Uriah was lying, trying to piss me off. That was it.

  But then, after a few minutes, I started to wonder about Lindsay. Maybe I was putting all of this innocent stuff on her, imagining that she was pure and perfect when nothing could have been further from the truth. Maybe I needed to find out for sure who Lindsay really was and if there was anything between us at all.

  LINDSAY

  I woke up the next morning feeling fresh and wide-awake, which was surprising after the drama of the night before. Of course, it could have had something to do with the fact that I’d slept until eleven. I looked to the other side of the room -- Rachel’s bed was made, and she was nowhere to be found.

  She must have left this morning, and I was sleeping so soundly that I hadn’t noticed. There was a note on my door from Adam, letting me know that he’d stopped by.

  He left his number and asked me to call him and let him know I was okay.

  I sent him a quick text, telling him I was fine, and that I hadn’t been feeling well last night, but that I was better this morning. He wrote me back, saying he was glad I felt better and asking if I wanted to grab lunch, but I told him I had a lot of work to do and would have to take a rain check.

  It wasn’t a lie. I had two afternoon classes, and then I needed to barricade myself in my room and work on my essay for Dr. Klaxton.

  And that’s just what I did.

  I went to my classes, grabbed lunch from the dining hall and brought it back to my room.

  And then I got into a zone.

  I wrote and rewrote my essay, going over and over every word, every sentence, every argument. I wrote about how it wasn’t the exact knowledge of organic chemistry that was important, but that the mere activity of learning something challenging increased our confidence, making us want to learn more.

  When Rachel came in at around six, I could tell she wanted to ask me how I was doing. After I broke down to her last night, I’m sure she was curious.

  But instead, she just nodded her head at me and opened her own books.

  We were like two studying fiends.

  At around seven, after a quick trip to the dining hall for some carb-loading in the form of pasta and breadsticks, I was back in my room, a fresh mug of coffee in front of me.

  I reread my essay.

  It was good.

  I knew that.

  But I didn’t know if it was good enough. Was everyone else going to write about how the mere act of learning something was good for you? What I’d thought was so original now seemed trite. This was Cambridge. I needed to bring my A game.

  I frowned and thought about it.

  I still had time to write another essay.

  If I could come up with a different stance, I’d have this one, plus the new one. I could decide which one to use tomorrow, before my class started at ten.

  I pulled up a new blank document and took a sip of my coffee.

  There was a knock on my door, and I jumped.

  So did Rachel.

  “Jesus,” I said. “That scared me.”

  I went to the door, expecting it to be Adam.

  But it wasn’t.

  It was Justin. A flash of intense emotions went through me. I was excited that he’d actually come looking for me again. But then immediately I was annoyed that he’d never even bothered getting my phone number so he could call me. He’d just shown up again like it was nothing.

  “Oh, hello.” He gave me a knowing smile. “How’re you doing?” He looked over my shoulder into my room, like he was expecting to see something incriminating.

  “Fine,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked taken aback by the question. “Just checking on you. I heard you had an exciting night last night.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “You don’t get to come here and ask me about my night.” I must have sounded harsher than I thought, because he looked slightly taken aback.

  He gazed at me for a long moment, and then his face softened. “Fair enough.”

  “So what do you want? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

  “You’re wearing your hair in braids,” he said, ignoring my question.

  “Yeah.” While I’d been brainstorming my essay, I’d pulled my hair back and absentmindedly braided it. “I was studying.”

  “I like it.” He reached out and tweaked one of the braids. “You look like Pippi Longstocking.”

  “You know who Pippi Longstocking is?”

  “Of course.” He took a step forward and peered into the room until he saw Rachel.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Justin, but you can call me JB.”

  Rachel just glared.

  “Wow,” Justin said. “Tough crowd.”

  I stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind me. “Listen, you can’t just keep showing up here like this.”

  “Why not? Because of that dick R.A.? Fuck him.”

  For the first time, I noticed that the stitches over his eye had come loose. The wound was red and raw. “Jesus,” I said. “What happened to your cut?”

  “Nothing.” He waved his hand like it was nothing. “Just a little sparring practice.”

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to spar with that cut.”

  He shrugged, then leaned back against the wall behind him. “So what are we doing tonight?”

  “I’m studying.”

  “Cool. I’ll read a book or something, keep you company.” He went to move by me and into my room, but I stepped in front of him.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I need to work.”

  “I’ll be quiet and good.”

  “You’re not even supposed to be here!”

  “I know.” He rolled his eyes. “Hence the reason I asked you to go somewhere with me.”

  I hesitated, my body thrumming with excitement. His mere presence was making me dizzy. The thing was, I wanted to go with him. I wanted to be around him. He was a temptation, like a piece of chocolate cake you weren’t supposed to eat or an extra hour of sleep when you were supposed to be up early. You knew it wasn’t good for you, but you had a hard time saying no.

  “You can’t just keep showing up here like this,” I said. “If you want to see me, you need to call me on the phone like a normal person.”

  He nodded, like he could accept this. He pulled his phone out of his pocket.

  “What’s your number?”

  I told him.

  A second later, he put the phone to his ear.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Calling you.”

  From inside the room, I could hear the sound of my cell ringing. I had the ringtone programmed to Toxic by Britney Spears, and I blushed.

  “Kind of humiliating, don’t you think, Pippi?” he asked.

  “Kind of fitting,” I said.

  “Touche.” He cocked his head. “Doesn’t seem like anyone’s answering.”

  “I meant that you should call me before you show up. Not that you should –”

  “Shh!” He put his fingers to his lips. “Please, Pippi, I’m in the middle of a very important phone call.”

  I sighed and then turned around and walked into my room. I picked up the call right before it was about to go to voicemail. “Hello?”

  “Oh, hi, is Lindsay there please?”

  “This is her.”

  “Hi, Lindsay, this is Justin. I was wondering if you’d like to hang out tonight?”

  “I can’t,” I said firmly. “I have to study.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said. “Maybe next time.”


  “Yeah, maybe another time.”

  “Talk to you later.”

  “Bye.”

  He hung up.

  I stood there for a moment, looking down at my phone in disbelief. Had he really just hung up? I wanted to go and open the door, to see if he was still out in the hallway, but I could practically feel the disapproval radiating off of Rachel.

  But finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.

  I opened the door.

  “Hi,” he said. The side of his mouth pulled up into a sexy grin. “You ready to go?”

  ***

  This time, we didn’t go to any fancy restaurant, and there was no pretense.

  “I’m hungry,” he said once we were off campus and on the streets of Boston. “You want to eat?”

  I shook my head. “No way. I’m not falling for that again.”

  “Falling for what again?”

  “You taking me to some place to get food and then us not talking about anything.”

  “We talked!”

  “Yeah, about nothing.”

  “Okay,” he said, a mischievous look coming over his face. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll answer any questions you want, and then you have to do something that I want.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Unh-uh.” He shook his head. “You don’t get to know that until after.”

  “How is that fair?”

  “It’s fair because I don’t know what you’re going to ask me.”

  I thought about it. I hadn’t expected him to be so willing to answer questions. On the other hand, he’d avoided anything personal the last time we’d hung out, so something told me that whatever he was going to have me do would probably be something pretty crazy.

  “Can I at least have a hint about what thing you’re going to ask me to do?” I asked.

  “It’s only fair. I mean, I hardly know you.”

  He thought about it.

  Finally, he nodded.

  “Okay,” he said, pulling me toward the T station. “Come on.”

  We got on the train, and a thrill rushed through my body. The car was crowded, and so we had to stand. He was so close to me that I could feel the heat from his body through his thin t-shirt. It was exciting, the way I didn’t know where he was taking me. In some part of my mind, I knew that going somewhere with him wasn’t the best idea. He could be taking me anywhere.