Maybe Baby

Three in the morning and she was sitting on the floor in the middle of the near-empty living room, staring at her reflection in the dark TV screen. From here, she couldn’t see the dark circles under her eyes or the rubbed raw, puffy eyelids that would likely take a ton of makeup to conceal. Maybe she could get away with blaming allergies. Maybe if they didn't look too hard before she hit the ring, she could take a blow to the face and pass it off. Even now her mind was racing, trying to find a way to spin doctor the pain.

Shawn had moved out almost as soon as she'd come back from Toronto. That magic fix she'd hoped to find by reappearing on the doorstep - surprise - had never come. He hadn't spoken to her since that Skype call, despite his promise to talk face-to-face.

Too little. Too late.

She knew. She knew exactly how badly she’d screwed up and the blind panic over him leaving had led to an embarrassing spiral of binge drinking, posting emo images she’d found on Pinterest and begging for a scrap of attention. Instead she’d been stonewalled with silence that did nothing but make her want to break the things he’d left intact.

The blender had been first.

She’d tried to make herself a margarita with red velvet cake ice cream. Not the best idea, definitely not the best taste and the morning after, she’d thrown the remains at the wall, glass pitcher and all.

She’d added fifty dollars to the bowl on the table for that one. His keys sat on top of the folded bills and she’d done everything she could to even touch those after finding them on the kitchen counter where the toaster used to be. He hadn’t said a word when he’d left - turnabout was fair play, after all. He’d slipped out when she’d finally given up on trying to get him to react. She’d crashed for a few hours, overcome by the jetlag her impulse flight had caused, only to wake up to the sound of silence.

There was another pile of money in the bowl now, thanks to the giant crack across the middle of the TV screen’s glass. She’d thrown that damned Jimmy Choo at it and as much as she wanted to destroy those shoes for what they represented now, she couldn’t. She knew how hard they must have been for him to find. She’d looked everywhere for months, desperately putting her name on every wait list. She hadn’t told him why she needed that particular pair of sparkly, golden shoes just like she hadn’t told him about the pale pink dress she still had packed away in her cedar chest.

Most people didn’t remember how she’d almost married Alex Houser. They cared more about how she’d rebounded to Matt Stone, not realising that she’d considered him her best friend even before that.

She watched the notifications parading across her screen, scrolling back to see all the replies Shawn had made to others, feeling that ache in her chest that made tears prickle.

The silence was deafening. With him there was always some small sound. Some movement. A soft chuckle. A huff of breath. Knuckles popping. Restless shifting. The absence of those little things left a void that threatened to suck her in and the desperation that came with her depression didn't just extend to posting idiocy on Twitter. She'd declared this open challenge on a whim, sure, but she'd been motivated by the need to prove she wasn’t broken. She was and in the back of her mind she hoped to hear Social Distortion over the speakers. She hoped he would come out and make her pay for hurting him in a way that was finite and absolute - one fell swoop so it could be over instead of this daily agony.

Tears filled her eyes as she sat there in the silence that she’d bought and paid for with her own stupidity. She just let them roll down her face, hugging a throw pillow to her chest, burying her face against it.

Imperfect. Impulsive. Foolish. Childish. Immature.

She could go on for hours, heaping on the abuse because when it boiled down to it, he was right. She’d walked away. The reasoning didn’t matter, nor did her attempts to explain even though she wished she could just find the perfect image to post, to take her licks in public so that he knew she was ready to humiliate herself.

Own your shit, Ness. You did this. You. Did. This. He’s not dropping everything and coming to find you. He’s not coming back in the middle of the night to sweep you off your feet, to laugh and say he was wrong - he’s sorry. He isn’t. He won’t be. It doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t happen like the movies. Westley isn’t real and you can’t just treat people like afterthoughts.

Shawn had posted again - an image. Maybe he’d replied to her little dig.

Maybe.

She clicked on Twitter and dragged her finger down the screen, seeing that little video of him shrugging. It could have been a reply to anything, but she still let the phone fall from her hand, closing her eyes against the stabbing pain that took her breath away. Reaching for her shoes, she slipped her feet into them. It was too early to head to the arena but she tweeted it anyhow, trying to keep the despair from leaking through too much. SNARKTASTIC was a thing of the past but she could still fall back into the familiar old bitchsauce role and pretend she didn’t have two failed tag teams to her name. Pretend she wasn’t the laughingstock of the roster. Maybe she’d get lucky and Matt’s team would silence her worst critic.

Maybe.

Now, she had to flip that switch. She had to fake the overconfident genius who lived and breathed wrestling when going out there tonight was the biggest risk she’d taken since coming to Australia. The unknown awaited and she couldn’t stomach the thought of losing. Winning this, proving she could still go it alone was all she had left.

She needed something, anything to grasp and she knew if she walked out that door now she’d probably end up wandering the streets until dawn. Even with the key she’d stolen from Cryptic’s office, she didn’t feel like explaining herself right now. Wait until someone else arrived to unlock the doors and then she’d find her way to the locker room and try to grab a few hours of sleep there. At least there would be lots of ambient noise. At least she could feign dedication had brought on the exhaustion. At least she could buy herself a few hours of peace before the rest of her world crumbled.

Maybe.