As It Happens (Accidentally In Luck #2)

8. Kiss of Dreams - Jay

*Jay*

I went to the only place I could think of when I stormed away from my friends: our training room.

I could feel the energy building up inside of me again, something that hadn't been happening basically since Bug and me got together.

Before her, I always had what felt like too much energy, like I was unstable in some way that came out in a weird form of hyperactivity. I never even knew what it felt like to be at peace with myself until Elle came along. She was mg anchor to reality and with that reality came calmness. She was my peace.

Ever since I told her I wanted to get back into fighting though, I'd been more and more agitated as we bickered which was causing the old energy to come back again and again. I knew, as I had told Theo yesterday, that it had something to do with being too much like my parents on top of just the actual fighting with her.

Not that I knew what to do with that info though.

Anytime I felt the energy returning, I went to the one place I knew I could get rid of it and tone up my skills. It was a two-for-one deal.

Normally, I tried to get in a little cardio first but I wasn't feeling it tonight. Not after my whole family told me what I wanted was a bad idea.

It's not like I didn't understand where they were coming from and why they thought it was a bad idea. I even agreed with them (though that information would never grace their ears).

Once I had figured out that Elle calmed me and made me feel like I didn't have to stay moving or I'd be held down by some outside force, I thought I could be done with fighting for good. Theo had stopped cold after the finals, no longer angry at the world because it had brought him C, but I was never angry at the world like that and that was never why I fought.

It started for me because I was angry at my parents but after a while, I grew indifferent to them. They weren't my family anymore, Theo was, so the hate I had carried for them melted into a puddle of couldn't-care-less.

I had kept fighting though.

I hadn't wanted Theo to feel alone and that energy inside of me had started to form anyway. I had always been an excitable kid who, when excited or happy, spoke at the damn speed of light, but once that new energy popped up, it was like there was nothing I could ever do to be calm. I constantly felt like I'd chugged 5 energy drinks.

I still wasn't sure what had caused the energy for sure, but the calmer last 9 months or so gave me a lot of time to think about it. Best I could come up with was that it came from a combination of feeling guilty about not feeling guilty over my parents, being totally overwhelmed by the music industry, and the adrenaline that came from fighting.

After I felt it the first time, that energy would spike anytime I felt too much of anything. Good or bad.

I'd gotten used to it over the years, but now that it was usually gone, I finally realized that I had kept fighting because I genuinely enjoyed it. I could never see that before because I had never wanted to truly enjoy it, it was merely an outlet. For anger, energy, sadness. It didn't matter, that's why we fought, not because we actually liked it. It had taken me a lot to come to terms with that because I had kept telling myself Theo and now Bug and C would hate that I enjoyed being involved in such a brutal sport.

I heaved a breath and gave our bag a nasty left handed cross, staying light on my feet and constantly moving.

They were going to be angry, I already knew it.

I punched the bag again.

Or, if not angry, disappointed.

The bag got a low kick this time.