The Dip and the Resurface

Part 1

Tyler

"What the hell happened last night" I muttered to myself as I took in my shitty mirror image. My eyes were red-rimmed and the slightly dilated left pupil made me look as if I was on something. Which I absolutely wasn't!

I studied the purple-ish bruise that had started to form on under my left temple; you could see the outline of ring the guy had been wearing when he had decked me in the face. Twice.
I had a rather large cut on the bridge of my nose too.

To be honest, last night I had gotten my ass properly kicked - but for some reason I didn't even look half as bad as Josh. Sweet, protective Josh who had stepped in when he had noticed how I was getting my ass kicked for the first time in my life. I had no idea how he had managed to pull the huge guy with the ring away from me, but somehow he had - and he had been in a proper fist fight with the guy, before one or the other had finally backed off. Everything had happened so fast and I hadn't been able to focus after Josh had pushed me away from the guy.

In the cab on our way back to the hotel we were currently staying at, Josh hadn't even been mad at me. Instead, he had been a proper friend and kept asking me if I was alright, looking at me with concerned eyes. Curtly, I had assured him that everything was fine, even though my mind was racing off to somewhere else all the time.

For weeks, I had been carrying this feeling around that wasn't too unfamiliar to me. Right now, I just hoped it wasn't what I suspected it to be..

Looking from my bruised face over my naked torso and down to my hands, I noticed the cuts and scabs on my right knuckles. I had no idea that being in a fight hurt that much. Did it always or did I just have particularly sensitive hands?

"Dude, come on," I could hear Josh hammer on the door to the hotel room's only bathroom, "I need to take a piss and you've been in there forever!"

"Sorry," I muttered as I opened the door to the bathroom and let him inside, "I got lost in thought."

Josh looked even worse than last night. We had matching black eyes and apart from that, I could tell that he had been bleeding from his swollen nose. He went over to the mirror to study the bruises covering half his face, "shit, I look terrible," he laughed at himself, "this is even worse than last time."

"Last time?" I asked him, "You've been fighting before? When?"

"Of course I've been in fights before! I used to wrestle with my brothers too. I was a pretty aggressive teen - why else do you think my parents would've bought me a drum set? They'd rather see me beat on some drums than some guy."

I nodded. It made sense. 

Josh continued, "I honestly thought I was getting too old for bar fights - but you just couldn't help yourself, could you?" he laughed.

"I didn't need you to come in and save me. I could've handled it just fine on my own," I argued.

Josh looked at me with arched eyebrows. I knew he didn't believe me.

I sighed "I know, I know.. Sorry you had to step in - I've never been in a real fight before," I muttered.

"Never? As in this was your first?"

I nodded

"Huh.. Should've guessed - I always thought you hit like a girl," Josh laughed.

"Shut up.."

"I'm kidding! I just think it's too bad that your first fight ended with you getting your ass kicked."

"Hey; He was huge and I'm a small guy."