Page 57 of Fight
“Mind your own business, dude,” Daniel shot out as Lena tried to remove her arm from his grasp
“I told you,” Jake spat out bitterly. “Sheismy business.”
Anger erupted inside of him as he pulled his arm back and rammed his fist into the left side of Daniel’s jaw. Daniel fell back into the table behind him as Lena flew into Morgan’s arms. There were shrieks and screams as the people sitting at the table Daniel crashed into quickly pulled back to avoid getting knocked over.
Daniel touched his lip and then brought his hand up to his eyes. Seeing the blood, he narrowly avoided running into Lena and Morgan as he rushed into Jake’s abdomen, hitting his left side with his shoulder and knocking him into the wall behind him.
Jake was lost in a blur as he and Daniel went at each other in a haze of pain and grunts. He didn’t know how long they were at it, but Jake took at least one knock to the eye and a hard punch in the gut before he felt himself being pulled back by Ian in a full-nelson hold. He struggled to get free until he heard Ian’s voice yelling in his ear loudly.
“Jake! Jake! Stop it. Relax!” Jake shook his head and looked over to see Cole had somehow entered the fray and was holding Daniel in a similar position. Daniel had an angry red mark on the side of his pale face and blood dripping from his nose. Jake breathed in and out heavily as he calmed down and looked for Lena in the faces of the gathered crowd.
“Come on,” said Ian when he saw that Jake had calmed down, he relaxed his hold and dropped his arms. “Let’s go.” He wrapped his arm around Jake’s shoulders, leading him through the mob of people.
“Where’d Lena go?” Jake asked in a raspy voice as he scanned the faces of the crowd that parted to let them through. He saw some familiar faces in various expressions of shock, but there was no sign of Sadie—hopefully she’d managed to slip away in the craze.
“I think Annie and Morgan got her out of here,” Ian replied as he reached over and opened the front door of the bar for them. “Maybe they’re outside.”
When Jake finally got outside, he was slapped in the face by the cool evening air. He felt like he was underwater as he leaned down and rested his hands on his knees, taking several heavy breaths. Lifting his head and looking up and around the empty parking lot, there was no sign of Lena, Morgan, or Annie.
When he straightened his back, standing upright, there was Ian staring at him with a disapproving frown, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Man, what were you thinking?” Ian asked, shaking his head disbelievingly.
“I–I don’t know,” Jake stuttered. “He was touching her and she was letting him get away with leaving her in the fucking woods.” He stood straight and leaned back on the building, tilting his face up toward the night sky as he delicately touched the bruised area around his left eye where Daniel had gotten in a pretty good punch.
Ian continued to shake his head deliberately before he pulled out his phone. “I’m getting us an Uber. I’m sure the girls already managed to get one, otherwise they’d be out here.”
He tapped on his phone in concentration for a few seconds before putting it back in his pocket and leaning against the building next to Jake. They both looked at the opaque, starless sky in silence for a few minutes before Ian finally spoke.
“You need to figure this out, Jake. That was sloppy.” Jake looked over to see Ian watching him intently. He was clean shaven and had not a hair out of place, although his clean button down shirt was a bit ruffled after pulling Jake off of Daniel. “Is this really how you want to start a relationship with Lena? With a bar fight?”
Jake rolled his eyes—Ian’s priorities were so out of whack. “I can’t always be as neat and orderly as you are about the girls I’m into, Ian. At least, if there’s something I want, I go for it.”
Ian grunted as he pushed himself off the side of the building as the Uber pulled up. He walked toward the car and opened the back door. “That may be so, man,” he said as he slid into the car. “But you’llneverpull me off of some dude in a bar fight.”
Chapter 18
Lenastaredatthenight sky, dazzled by the show the heavens put on above her. The bright, white light streaming down from the stars and moon contrasted with the dark sky to create a pseudo-daylight effect that brightened the shore of the lake and the campsite with an eerie silver glow, casting crisp black shadows over the landscape. Lena wondered if this is what daylight was like on some far-off planet on the other side of the galaxy.
Rising from where she laid flat on her back next to Annie, dozing peacefully on top of their shared sleeping bag, Lena tiptoed around the others’ sleeping forms. She walked to the shore of the lake and stood staring out at the grand expanse of water and mountains, flexing and curling her toes in the cool sand. The waters of the lake were smooth and flat with the images from the night sky precisely reflected as gentle waves lazily lapped against the shore.
Sinking down to sit in the sand, she focused intently on the scene in an effort to carbon copy it onto her mind, so that she could use it in her art later. She was soon distracted by a towering form walking toward her from down the beach—reluctantly looking over, she saw that it was Jake.
With the light and the setting, Lena felt dreamlike as he walked closer to where she sat in the sand with her arms wrapped around her knees. Once he stood just a few feet away from her, she could make out his features perfectly in the bright light of the sky. His eyes were trained on her and his mouth was pressed down in a frown, which gave him a weighty, disapproving look as he approached her.
Without saying a word, he sat down a couple feet away and joined her in staring into the night’s glow. Lena stole a couple of peeks at him and saw that he was wearing AirPods, from which she could hear the low sound of music.
“What are you listening to?” she asked him in a quiet voice, not wanting to wake the others, sleeping not far behind them.
He didn’t answer her though—he just kept staring at the lake. She waved her hands up and down to get his attention.
Finally, he took out his right AirPod and looked over at her questioningly.
“What are you listening to?” she asked again in the same quiet voice, pointing to his ears. He was silent for a few beats before looking over at her discerningly.
“Old Crow Medicine Show,” he finally answered.“Here.”
He reached over to hand her his right AirPod.“‘We’re all in this Together,’” he said. “It’s the perfect song for a night like this.”
