Watched

Chapter 18

It’s been six weeks since my conversation with Randy and for the most part life seemed to be returning to normal. I was finally able to focus on my academics and I even managed to stay out of trouble with the teachers. It seemed as if the whole Luther thing and what happened that night was just a distant memory now, a bad dream. My practice sessions with Jordan were going great. I secretly enjoyed every moment I spent with him. Every time our bodies made contact or every stolen look. I reveled in it, I woke up every morning looking forward to it. Even when I was exhausted, battered and bruised I was happy. The fact that he pushed me, physically and mentally to my limits just made me work harder, faster, better.

Needles to say I became good at it. Not nearly as good as Jordan but good enough to protect myself and as time passed our training began to intensify. Every week he would set up small tests for me, to challenge my skills and to teach me a lesson. Yeah sometimes he would go all Mr. Miyagi on me. For example two weeks ago he made me wear a blind fold while we practiced. According to him this would force me to rely on my other senses in order to fend off an attacker even if I don’t see him coming.

Last week he made me doge an array of tennis balls while he fired them through a ball launcher. This was supposedly going to improve my agility and heighten my reflexes. I don’t know if it did all that but what I do know is, that the first few times around I was left with a lot of bruises. This week we were doing tagging exercises which basically entailed tying a loose ribbon around your neck with a tag attached to it. In the exercise the tag resembled your life. The objective of your opponent would then be to get that tag during hand to hand combat while still trying to protect their own.

The first few times we did this I failed miserably. Jordan grabbed my tag in under a minute, the second time around was a bit better but not much as I only just managed to survive a full minute. And so it went each practice session I would get better at dogging and avoiding him, this enabled me to last longer, however, it was frustrating that I still hadn’t managed to garb his tag yet. When I entered the gym this evening I made a mental note that today was the day that I would grab the hell out of his tag.

So we began the session with the usual laps and warm up stretches and then Jordan set the stopwatch, handed me my ribbon and we dove right into it.

I started off with more of a defensive posture and he did the same, eyeing me intently. I made a mental note not to look into his eyes because they were a major distraction.

“What’s the matter Bambi? Scared to make the first move?” he asked in a cocky tone of voice. I learned how to tune him out long ago; he was trying to distract me. He knew I didn't like the nickname Bambi but he insisted on calling me that.

I shot out my leg but he blocked effortlessly, and countered with a punch which I managed to dodge. He then swept he’s left leg under me in order to knock me of balance but I jumped at just the right moment. Spinning I shot out my left leg and it made contact with his abdomen. I allowed myself to marvel at my accomplishment for a second, landing a blow on Jordan during our practice sessions was rare. In fact it was so rare that it was unheard of, I attributed the fact that I was able to do it at all to one out two reasons. The first one being that I was actually getting good at this or that for some reason Jordan was off his game. I concluded it to most likely be the latter. My slight lapse in concentration allowed Jordan to land a punch. It was aimed for my abdomen but I had apparently not lost all my reflexes because I was able to dodge at the last minute and his punch landed on my shoulder instead. I winched from the impact. Jordan's punches always hurt; you would think he would cut me some slack because I was a girl and all, but no he never held back and secretly... I loved it.

I let out a grunt as I charged forward planning to tackle him to the ground in order to rip his damn tag off but clearly he anticipated my every move and he grabbed me by the shoulders using my own momentum against me and flung me to the floor. Yeah it was times like these I was thankful for the training mats.