Black and Blue

19 - I Ruin Things a Lot

By some unspoken agreement, we turned our attention back to each other at the same time. Jack looked me dead in the eyes and mouthed, "Three, two, one."

Without wasting a second, I ripped the pole from his hands and shifted my grip to both ends, preparing to charge at him. He winced from the friction burn and glared at me.

"Hey, I was going to go easy on—ow!"

I elbowed him in the chest, almost knocking him to the ground, and held the pole to his neck. I hooked a foot around one of his calves and pulled up, causing him to fall back with a yelp.

"'Severe ass-kicking,' huh?" I managed to say through shallow breaths. His head hit the floor, hard, and I winced in sympathy. I didn't think anything of it for more than a second, though, because now I had the upper hand. Literally. I was on top of him, knees stinging and arms aching as I tried to force the ends down over his neck. His eyelids widened once he fully processed what had happened, and he started pushing the pole up with all his might.

"Not—fair," he said through clenched teeth, the corners of his mouth twitching and his arms about to give in.

Come on, just a little more...!

All of a sudden, he seemed to realize something. What it was, I couldn't tell, but his face relaxed for a split second before he tightened his grip on the pole and smiled.

Smiled.

"What are you—?!"

I'd barely started talking before he twisted it and broke my hold, kneeing me in the stomach and pinning me as he touched the pole's ends to the floor.

"That's one," he murmured, still wearing a shit-eating grin and looking down at me with his eyelids narrowed. Even after a good five seconds, he didn't bother standing back up. I took several deep, shaky breaths before asking again, "What?"

He raised an eyebrow. "One point. For me. Jesus, you really hate me that much, don't you?"

"I—what are you talking about?"

"You went batshit crazy there, almost ripping my skin off, knocking me over, all that. No mercy for poor little Jack, huh?"

I blinked a couple times before snapping back to reality. For a second there, I really thought he was going to...

What did I think he was going to do?

I scoffed. "Well, excuse me for wanting to win. You shouldn't have tried to go easy on me."

"I guess I shouldn't have," he said, petty irritation lining his voice. He leaned close so our foreheads were about an inch apart. "Good to know."

"One tick for the halfling..." I heard Edith mutter from her little booth, checking something off on her now-floating scroll. She snapped her fingers and the scroll vanished, sucked in a spiral into nothing like a cheesy magic trick. Both Jack and I frowned at the "halfling" bit, but I was more relieved that she couldn't hear our conversations from there—at least, if she'd been telling the truth about that.

"You want improvement, boss?" Jack said under his breath, bitter as he stared at the booth with narrowed eyelids.

"Alright. I'll show you improvement."

I soon realized that putting that much effort into the first round was a mistake; now he really showed no mercy, beating me at least seven times in a row, making me lose my composure with some stupid psychological trick, or a weird question, or that damn cheeky smile. My frustration was building up little by little with each loss, and a small part of me wished he would at least say something smug, or push me over the edge another way. I needed an extra kick. I needed to snap somehow. It didn't help that every round, I was getting thrown and pinned to the floor, and his face kept inching towards mine the exact same way as it did when we first met. The only difference was I could see the ferocity in his features this time, and that only made things worse.