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I tip my bottle toward his full glass of what looks like whiskey. “You haven’t touched your drink.”
“Wow. That was a whole five words.”
One corner of my mouth turns up, but I stop it before it goes any further. This guy doesn’t need any encouragement.
“I’m TJ by the way.”
I shake his extended hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“You’re seriously not going to tell me your name?”
“You’re seriously going to make me watch this fight?”
“You seem convinced of this notion that fighting doesn’t take skill. As a fighter, I feel compelled to convince you otherwise.”
“Ah, you’re a fighter. That explains the muscles.”
“You’re checking out my muscles?”
“I’m not checking them out. I’m just … making an observation.”
TJ chuckles and I steal another glance at him out of the corner of my eye. Those dimples should be illegal. His entire body should be illegal, really. He even has long, dark lashes that frame those striking eyes. It almost hurts to look directly at him. A muscular eclipse.
He points to the screen. “Watch this guy’s next move.”
I tear my eyes off TJ and watch as the man on TV with the bloody nose twists his legs around his opponent’s arm. I cringe as the poor man’s elbow is bent to its limit.
“Why doesn’t he tap out already?”
“Because he’s thinking of a way out.” TJ’s head whips to the left. “Wait. You know about tapping out?”
I nod, still waiting for the man to tap before his arm breaks.
“You’ve watched MMA fights before?”
“I had a boyfriend who was into this garbage.”
He clutches his chest. “Words hurt, you know.”
My lips twitch. “You said you wanted to prove me wrong.” I cross my legs and tap my foot. “Let’s hear it.”
TJ swivels on his stool to face me, exposing his tattooed legs. “Any kind of fighting takes skill. It’s more than size and throwing your fists around. It’s more than how strong you are. Your mind needs to be sharp. You need to know your opponent, assess his skills, and calculate how you’re going to counter those skills. You need to figure out your next attack while you’re in the trenches taking fire.
“On the other hand, you can know all the technical moves in the world and still lose the fight. You need heart, too. You need the tenacity to stay and fight.”
I might not be into fighting, but the way TJ talks about it is the most passionate I’ve heard anybody talk about anything in a long time. It makes me want to hear more. Or maybe I just want him to continue talking so I can keep staring at him.
“So what would you do if you were that guy on TV right now? Your opponent is on top of you. He’s clearly stronger than you, and he’s about to snap your arm like a twig. How do you get out of that?”
“Sometimes, you don’t get out of it,” TJ says. “One of the skills you need to have is the art of losing.”
I raise my beer. “Now there’s a skill we could all use.”
“Oh, yeah? What’ve you lost?”
My stomach twists at the reminder. I take a few long swigs of beer instead of answering. One of my skills is the art of ignoring the things I don’t want to talk about.
His eyebrows lift. “I’ve hit a nerve.”
