I think Robert and I both realized he was going to try to punch me at about the same time. It wasn’t hard to see it coming – he was a pissed off young guy and his eyes were wild with frustration. It was equally unhard to duck left a little to let his sloppy right hook swing harmlessly past me. The sloppier left hook he followed with was even easier to avoid.
Don’t get the wrong idea: I can’t fight worth a shit. Samantha, my beautiful but scrappy little olive-skinned girlfriend is better in a scuffle. I’m just pretty good at keeping myself and people I care about out of harm’s way. So like I said, it wasn’t that hard to dodge Robert’s flailings.
If there was any skill involved, it was noticing and doing all this while looking across the kitchen at Samantha. It’s a decent summary of my respect for Sam that a healthy teenage man swinging wildly at my face concerned me less than she did from several feet away. If she got pissed enough, someone would be going to the hospital. Little Samantha had a gift for violence.
And now she was coming.
After Robert’s first swing, I watched her head snap our way. Without a moment’s pause, she simply released her half-filled wineglass to let it fall to the floor. Then she bent her knees a little to let gravity start her forward momentum. In three long strides, she covered the distance to the loveseat that separated the kitchen from the breakfast nook where Robert and I were doing our weird little dance. Just short of the loveseat, Sam stretched her arms forward, tucked her chin into her chest, and launched herself.
I watched the forward flip start and nearly couldn’t believe it – who the fuck somersaults over a loveseat on the way to a fight? Sammie. Her near-perfect balance made it only marginally less risky than a hurdle and she’d gain a bit more momentum along the way. Her instinctive choice was good news for Robert and for me. In mid-air she’d lose sight of us as her body rotated. We could stop this early.
I sidestepped around Robert, got one big step forward towards Sam’s imminent landing and braced myself with my arms opened wide for a ridiculous game of catch-the-girlfriend.
Sam’s spinning little body hit me ass-first right in the sternum. It forced emptied the air from my lungs and nearly knocked me off my feet but still I caught her. The force of our collision folded her at the waist. Her tiny, firm rump, bare beneath the long shirt she was wearing, was planted in the middle of my chest. She would have bounced backwards to the floor if I hadn’t wrapped my arms around behind her and pulled her into me tightly in a hug. Even in this absurd position pinned in half against me, she struggled – at first confused, then angry.
“Lemme go, Hero! He pulls that bullshit after everything we’ve done for him? That little punk needs a beating!” she growled.
“Fight’s already over Sam, he just needed to take a few swings to feel better.”
She wriggled a bit more but stopped after looking at Robert over my shoulder. He had plunked into a chair and dropped his face into his hands.