Jersey Six(3)

Hopping down, she rolled the tension out of her shoulders and headed toward the back room to wash up.

“Excuse me?”

A cringe distorted Jersey’s face, making the rest of her body tense in response. No one said excuse me at Marley’s. He might as well have bent over and asked to have a dick shoved up his ass. “You’re clearly lost.” She turned. “Can I make a suggestion? If you want to leave with four working limbs and your asshole intact, I suggest you slither back out the front door without attracting any more attention.”

“I used to train here.”

Jersey’s unkempt eyebrows slid up her sweaty forehead while she released her tangled, black hair from its ponytail.

He cleared his throat. “Obviously, no one would still recognize me.”

“Obviously.” Jersey inspected him. “Fuck Face” wasn’t an exaggeration. The guy’s face looked like the lone survivor of an atomic explosion. Layers of thick, pearly scar tissue made his blue eyes appear sunken into his skull. It crawled down his face and along his neck like dry, cratered earth. His gray hoodie and matching sweatpants hid most of his body, but the burn-like scars covered his hands as well.

Maybe he had trained there. Members of Marley’s wouldn’t have the money for a cosmetic surgeon if their bodies were distorted like the one standing before her.

“I need a place to stay.” He held out his hand.

Her gaze held his desperation-filled eyes.

After a few seconds, he let his hand drop. “I wouldn’t want to shake my hand either.” He scratched his dirty-blond head—the one part of his body that looked somewhat normal. She thought he might be in his thirties, maybe forty or so. It was hard to tell with his skin severely scarred.

“I don’t shake hands with anyone.” Jersey shrugged.

“I need a place to stay.”

“You said that. I’m not the owner.” She turned.

He grabbed her arm. Jersey didn’t think. She just reacted.

Smack!

“Fuck Face” hit the floor with a thunk. A few chuckles drifted from the distance. There were no heroes at Marley’s Gym. No one stopped a fight, saved a life, or blinked at death.

“Chris …” He groaned, planting his hands next to his head, peeling himself from the grimy concrete. Blood oozed from his nose. He wiped it with the hood of his sweatshirt, unsteady on all fours. “My name is Chris.” He lumbered to his feet, bringing him nearly a foot taller than Jersey’s five-seven stature. “I wasn’t trying to frighten you.”

She grunted. “Frighten me? You didn’t frighten me. You grabbed me.”

Chris flinched. It was hard to notice with his distorted face, but she caught the slight reaction.

“Sorry.” He pressed the hood of his sweatshirt to his nose again. “I get it. You don’t like to be touched. I’m sure you have good reasons. It won’t happen again.”

Jersey responded with an easy nod as she focused on the blood smeared down his face. “Your blood’s in the water. I’d get out of here before the sharks circle.”

“It’s cold. I need one night.”

“It was cold last night.” She shrugged. “November in New Jersey.”

“Last night I slept in a car.”

“Sounds like a solid choice.” Low on sympathy and high on the memory of knocking Judd out, she strutted toward the back of the gym.

“The owner of the car kicked me out and called the cops.”

“Again,” she said on an exasperated sigh, “I don’t own the place.”

“The guy in the front office said I could stay one night if you agreed to it.”

“No.” Jersey’s feet screeched to a stop, keeping her back to Chris. As Marley’s only son, George took over the gym after his father died.

George didn’t box.

George didn’t take out the trash or hire anyone else to do it.

George didn’t do math.

George had no clue how to run a business.

Marley left his gym to a forty-eight-year-old with some sort of mental disability. Nobody knew what exactly was wrong with George; they just knew he wasn’t all there. He mumbled to himself and spent most of the day coloring superheroes in warped, water-damaged children’s coloring books with broken crayons piled in a grease-stained, fast-food bag.

“That’s bullshit because George doesn’t share that many words.” She continued into the back room.

“Fair enough. He didn’t say that. I asked who was in charge and he nodded toward you. I’m good at reading between the lines.” Chris shadowed Jersey like a pesky fly.

“Your lips are still flapping. You’re still in the building. I don’t think you have any clue how to read between the lines.” She peeled off her sports bra.

“Oh jeez …” Chris turned his back to her. “What are you doing?”

“Washing off the blood and sweat. What’s wrong? Never seen a naked woman before?” She flipped on the cold water to the rusty sink. All memories of hot water or an actual shower died when she skipped out of the system eight years earlier at fifteen.

“Uh … of course I’ve seen a naked woman. But anyone could walk back here.”

She ignored the pesky fly. After years of living on the streets and doing anything for a meal or mismatched gloves and a soiled blanket, she welcomed a five-by-five square of an old boxing ring mat in the back corner of a rundown gym, a shit-smeared toilet, and a dinky sink with partially running water. It was worth the lack of privacy.