Not in my Job Description - Avery Clavens Book 1

Chapter 13 - Push me, shove you, Oh yeah? Says who?

The way to the gym was very quiet. I didn’t want to talk and Nate seemed afraid to open his mouth to allow room for skewering to commence. It was probably a legitimate fear on his part.

Being two o’clock on a Monday afternoon, the gym looked like a ghost town. He followed me to an empty room that had mats lying down on the floor just for our purpose.

“Chances are good we’re going to get a little sweaty doing this. Do you want to change before we get started?” I asked, breaking our silence.

“I don’t plan on staying here all day, so I think it’s best to wear what you’d be wearing during an attack. Sweats, or workout clothes in general, are a different texture and feel. Something you can do in your jeans may not be as easy, or it could be easier, in sweats. Long story short, at least for now leave what you have on.” He was rambling quite a bit.

“I asked if you wanted to change, not me. I’m wearing a t-shirt and jeans. I thought maybe you’d prefer to change out of your fancier clothes to keep the sweat stains down. If that’s not the case, where do you want to start?”

“Let’s start with what disciplines you’re acquainted with.”

I was bored already. The blue mats on the floor held more interest than talking about what disciplines I knew. I wanted to get right to the fighting.

“I’ve taken a lot of self-defense courses, basic and advanced, Aikido, Hapkido, Karate, Judo, Bojitso and I’ve spent some time in the ring boxing. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m also pretty handy with a knife.” I refrained from counting everything out on my hand.

“That’s a little bit more training than the normal computer tech tends to take,” he unnecessarily replied.

“I’ve had time on my hands. Before recently, I went to work, then home, and that was all there was to my life. Training made me feel a bit more confident about myself too. Can you imagine how bad I used to be if this is me with more confidence?” I waved my hand up and down in front of my torso, in case he forgot who we were talking about.

“So, why did you want to do extra training today, if you already have all this knowledge?”

“Because I feel like it, okay? I don’t want to sit in the office all day wondering what will happen next. I want to keep busy and training was the most likely reason Mr. Irving would accept for me to get out of the office. Are you going to actually help with that, or are we going to stand here talking all day?”

“Fine,” he answered. “As I’m sure you’ve done many times in your self-defense classes, let’s practice getting out of some holds.”

He walked behind me and wrapped his arms around me in a death grip. Holds were not my idea of fighting, and the one he put me in was so basic I almost laughed.

“Now, get out of the hold,” he instructed.

Categorizing the things I knew about my situation, I remained absolutely still, so he couldn’t tell what was about to happen. Having noticed he wore pretty thin shoes, I swiftly raised up my foot and brought it down with all my might on his right foot. Even in just sandals, it still made an impact. He grunted and loosened his hold. At that point, I just slipped out from under his arms.

“Done,” I announced. I was fairly certain a baby could’ve done it, so I didn’t feel too amazed by my own accomplishment.

“Crap. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought I’d be getting an elbow to the rib or something,” he said while he massaged the top of his foot, idiotically through his shoe.

I thought about going and getting one of my usual trainers. I was certain Nate was going to go too easy on me and the frustrations I needed to get out were going to remain bottled inside.