“What, ‘cause she brought him a basket of onion rings once?” Wade grinned. “Dude, I never saw any higher than her tits when you brought her over here.”
I took a step forward, about ready to beat the shit out of him. Two minutes after he walked in the cage, I’d already pounded the fucker who came all the way across town to challenge me. I had plenty of energy left and balled my hands into fists as I moved toward the bouncer.
“Easy, Teague,” Wade said. He held his hands out in front of him, surrendering. “I’m just messing with ya. I’ll point you out to her as soon as she shows up.”
“You do that.” I snarled.
I was in a shitty mood; there was no doubt about that, but I couldn’t pinpoint a cause. I won the fight without a lot of trouble and barely a bruise, so that wasn’t it. Yolanda was getting on my nerves, but I also knew she wasn’t doing anything she didn’t normally do. Her usual banter was just pissing me off.
If I were going to admit it, I would have had to say I had been feeling tense since I dropped Tria off two nights ago. It started the very next day after a shitty night of sleep. I went for my usual morning run and found myself walking a little slower past her apartment both before and after my run, kind of hoping she would suddenly walk out, but she didn’t. I also started taking smoke breaks just outside the building instead of on the fire escape with Krazy Katie just in case Tria came out the door or maybe back home from a class or something.
That didn’t happen either.
I had no fucking idea why I was even doing these things. Normally, if I wanted a girl’s attention, I just did a little flexing, let her feel my abs, and then asked her to come back to my place to fuck, but that just didn’t work in this situation. For one, my place was just too damn close to hers and asking her to come upstairs with me seemed weird. Besides, Tria was a small-town girl, and she didn’t seem like the “just fucking” type. I didn’t do relationships—never, ever again—so there was only one thing I was interested in, and I was always honest about that.
I definitely needed to get laid.
This brought me to the next conundrum—if I did do the casual sex thing with Tria and it didn’t work out, she’d still be right there in the building, and she would still need someone to walk her home. The idea of her walking by herself brought out a seriously pissy side of me that wouldn’t have anything to do with the very thought of it. If I did something to piss her off, who was going to get her home safely? Not that fucker who employed her, that was for sure. He hadn’t even managed to post the position for a new server during her shift yet.
I dropped my ass onto a bar stool and accepted a beer from some random fighting fan. He was going on about the details of the fight while the chick he was with eye fucked me under the pretense of checking out my tats. I alternated between watching the door and watching the time, knowing Tria was due soon. She finally appeared at the door. According to my internal clock, it was hours. The actual clock on the wall said it had been only ten minutes. I jumped up without excusing myself and moved through the crowd to meet her.
“It’s about time!” I growled.
“I just got off work,” she explained. She shoved her hand into the Titan’s Knapsack and pulled out a bottle of hand sanitizer and rubbed a bit around on her palms.
“I’m going to have to come and meet you there,” I grumbled. “You probably shouldn’t be walking to this place on your own, either.”
“It’s a block away, and there are people all over the street out front,” Tria pointed out. “The streetlights all work out there, too. I was fine.”
“This time.”
“You said you were obligated to hang out here until two,” she reminded me.
“I am. I could still sneak out for a few minutes—take a smoke break and a walk. No big deal.”
“No,” Tria said. She shook her head as she crammed the bottle back into her bag. “I never seem to get out of there on time, and you already do enough. I don’t want you getting in trouble for me.”
“Whatever,” I grumbled. “There’s a half hour left before I get paid and can get out of here. You want a drink?”
“I’m not twenty-one,” she reminded me.
“You must be,” I said with a smile. “Otherwise you couldn’t get in here.”
Tria rolled her eyes and followed me as I moved back through the crowd, which was starting to thin out a bit. We made our way to the edge of the bar where I liked to hang out after fights. It was a good combination of a place where people could see me and come up to talk but also a little bit sheltered so people didn’t get too crazy on me. It didn’t happen often, but every once in a while, I’d get a nutty fan or a fighter who wasn’t happy about losing, and they’d make a scene.
I stopped and turned back around to face her and saw her eyes on the cage. I stood up a little straighter as she looked it over, and an odd sense of pride came over me along with a touch of apprehension. I didn’t have a clear sense of what she thought about cage fighting, and she wouldn’t be the first chick I had known who hated the whole idea of it.
“Pretty cool, huh?” I gave her a half smile and raised my eyebrows at her. My heart was pounding, and I felt a slight chill against the naked skin of my chest.
“That’s where you fight?” Tria asked and she stared wide-eyed into the enclosed space.
“Yeah, it is,” I replied. Something about her tone seemed off, and I took a slight step away from her. I leaned on a nearby barstool and watched her, feeling a little wary all of a sudden. “What do you think?”
“I thought it would be…bigger,” she said. “There isn’t even any room for you to move in there.”
“There’s plenty of room,” I told her. “I can move around pretty easily in tight places.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.