Dirty Laundry Excerpt: Page 7 or 77 Challenge from Facebook. Let’s see, who has tagged me? Amy Lane, Lou Sylvre …Shit, who else tagged me? Damn it. Anyway… Here goes.

From Page 77 of Dirty Laundry.

“I’m good.” I tried sitting up, but the gym swirled a little bit. Bobby slid his arm under me and hoisted me to my feet.

“Let’s go get you checked out. I probably gave you a damned concussion.” Bobby sounded worried. It was hard to see his face because everything was skewed and a bit dark. Blinking, I tried to clear away a fuzzy line across my right eye, focusing on the black ant trails it made.

“Shit, dude.” I dug my heels in. “You knocked my fucking helmet sideways. I can’t see a damned thing. I’m fine. Just need to shake it off.”

“Go on! Get back to what you were doing,” Jojo grumbled at the boxers crowding around the gym. “Dawson, get your boy off the mat and watch his head.” Jojo’s palm was bright pink, his leathery skin stretched tight over his bony upright fingers. He took my helmet off, and I breathed a sigh of relief, sucking in air. “How many am I holding up, McGinnis?”

“Two,” I answered. He gave me one of his patented shar-pei frowns but let Bobby hoist me under the ropes.

“Get him into the showers. If he starts tossing his cookies, you get him to the ER,” Jojo muttered at Bobby’s back. “Fucking asshole. Next time you don’t watch where you’re hitting him, I’m going to give you an ass kicking myself.”

“I think you pissed him off.” I was speaking to Bobby’s armpit. Straightening made my head spin a bit, but it was better than before, and I was no longer whiffing my best friend’s sweaty hair clumps. “Pissed me off too.”

“Yeah, I thought I’d see if I could get you mad. Shake things up a bit.”

As apologies went, I’d had better blow jobs from the air dryers at a bus station, and those only ruffled the hair on my crotch.

“Yeah, I don’t need things shaken up,” I replied sarcastically. “Least of all my fucking brains.”

“Said I was sorry, Princess.”

By the time we got to the showers, I was feeling better and my legs were responding on their own. I detached from Bobby’s grip, stripped, and headed in to let the shower work my muscles loose. My arm stopped tingling, and, slowly, my shoulder responded. I’d strained it too much, and in a couple of hours, I was going to be purple and black from the bruising I’d given myself. Bobby joined me, taking up the next stall, eyeing me every once in a while to make sure I was steady.

“He texted me last night,” I said over the pounding water. “Told me he loved me. In Korean, but fuck it, I’ll take what I can get.”