FIGHT Part 1 by M Dauphin Page A

away from Eddie’s apartment. I could go back, we could talk about what happened today, but I really don’t want to. I don’t want to talk. I want to fuck. Eddie brought out a side of me I never knew existed. One that likes it rough, one that enjoys being pinned to the bed. It makes me insane with lust just thinking about it. No boy I’d ever been with had been that...serious. That demanding. I loved what he brought out in me.
    With nowhere else to go but home, I head upstairs and pause at the top of the steps. To go right and knock on his door for an encore of earlier, or to go left and head to bed? It’s a hard decision, but sleep has been non-existent these last few days so I reluctantly go left and walk inside my apartment.
    I strip everything off and get in the shower to wash the fight off me. Grazing the soap over my stomach I realize a huge bruise is starting. That’s the thing with fighting, bikinis and skimpy clothes make it look like I‘ve been abused to onlookers that don’t know what I do for a living.
    I shake my head at the memory of Eddie’s reaction when he saw me after the fight that I lost last week. God, he probably thought I was abused, or beaten. That wasn’t even a bad one! It makes me feel guilty for not including him in that day with why I looked so terrible, but I want to be done with all of that. Done with fighting, done with the life of a fighter. Done looking like shit after a fight.
    Scary part of everything, though, is that I don’t know what I would do without it. Sure, tattoos help me when I start to get sucked into the darkness, but there’s only so many areas I want to tattoo before it starts to get too much. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t fight so it look like I’m stuck in a life that I don’t want. All thanks to me being selfish on graduation night and not going out with my parents like they wanted. Everything would be different right now had I not been a selfish brat.
    There’s no changing the past, though. I can’t fix what happened back then so there’s no use dwelling on it. I have a shift at the bar that starts in about seven hours that I need to be well rested for. My days and nights are so mixed up, I don’t even bother shutting the blinds before falling into bed. I can sleep at any time of day.
    My sheets still smell like him, masculine and thick. I breathe in heavy, drifting off to sleep with the memories of what was done in that bed just a few short hours earlier on my mind.

Chapter 16
    Eddie
                  I don’t go back to my apartment. I can’t. She is going to come home from that fight eventually, and if I’m there I won’t be able to leave her alone. There’s so much I want to tell her, so much I want to scream at her, but I can’t do that. It’s not her fault I feel the way I do about fighting. Hell, she probably thinks I’m crazy for the way I stormed out, but maybe that’s for the best.
    I still can’t believe it. She’s a fucking MMA fighter. Of course it’s mostly underground stuff, but she apparently makes good enough money doing it. Our apartment rent isn’t cheap, and I would bet my life she doesn’t make shit working at the bar. Damnit, she’s so small, though. How could she have it in her to fight? How does one just say ‘I think I’m going to fight for a living... I like getting the shit beat out of me’? That just doesn’t make sense to me. She could be doing anything else, anything, and I would have been just as happy to follow her to work. Hell, I would have even been okay with her stripping! How fucked up does it make me, that I can’t even enjoy the fact that the chick I fucked, and happen to be into, is one bad ass mother fucker? Pretty messed up, Eddie.
    I grab a stool and wait on Dave to finish up with his client. He’s working on my back tonight, last minute notice. I need something to help get my mind off of Red. Gwynn. Maybe if I start using her real name it won’t be so magical to