Chapter 16
NOVEMBER - PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA / CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA
Now playing: Strangers - Ethel Cain
I woke up tangled in sheets, sunlight beaming through the window, illuminating the snow covered outside in a painfully white glow.
Everything smelled like him.
It was early, I knew that much because my alarm went off on my phone. It was six in the morning. We had an eight o’clock flight to Charlotte for Front Lines. Our first main event match ever. It still didn’t feel real. God, it didn’t. None of this did.
How did I get here? Laying here, in Callum’s bed, in his apartment, realizing my worst fear: this thing we were doing wasn’t just nothing. It never was. And now, there was no escaping it.
But we couldn’t have this. I knew we couldn’t. Surely Cal did too.
The thing about this world, this industry… difference would never be accepted. Gay wrestlers? That wasn’t even in the question. Especially gay rivals. That wasn’t even on the list of okays in the world of scripted outcomes and kayfabe.
My thoughts jolted at the realization I was in the bed alone. And surprisingly, I smelled food cooking.
Cal could cook?
I sat up, searching for my pants, and tugged them on lazily before making my way down the hall with an anxiety I don’t think I’d ever felt in my life.
Right in the kitchen, there he was. A gray hoodie on, jeans, and surrounded by food. Bacon, eggs, potatoes, orange juice. He was pulling a couple of pancakes off a pan on the stove.
I walked up. I couldn’t help but smile. He’d woken up even earlier to do this?
“You cook?” I asked softly.
He nodded. “When I’m actually able to, yeah. I love it.” He slid a pancake onto a plate. “I’m almost done.”
He leaned over and kissed me sweetly, like we’d been living this routine for years.
I walked around and sat in one of the bar stools at the island behind Cal. He turned around with a stack of four pancakes.
“Oh, I didn’t forget,” he said, going over to the refrigerator and pulling out a bottle of black cold brew coffee.
“Even got the coffee,” I teased as he poured a huge cup of it.
“Of course I did,” he said, bringing it to me. “I get it for you practically every morning on the road. Figured I’d do it here.”
“When did you have time to get coffee for me?” I asked, taking a sip.
“Before I came and got you yesterday. I went and grabbed some stuff for breakfast. I told you, I wasn’t letting you stay at a hotel on Thanksgiving, babe.” He poured orange juice for himself.
Babe.
My heart swelled at the thought, at the sight. This was all I wanted, right here, right now. Cal was every single thing in this lifetime I never viewed myself as worthy of having. And here he was, in front of me, looking at me with a look I could only describe as love.
“Let’s eat. We gotta make our flight,” he said, sliding a plate over to me.
We sat at the island and ate together. It felt routine, like we’d done this a thousand times. And I guess in a way, we had.
“Your family coming for Front Lines?” he asked.
I shrugged. The thought of my dad and uncle coming in our home state made me uneasy. I’d have more to prove, more than just the two of them to make proud.
“Maybe. I haven’t asked them. They probably will, it’s like a three hour drive from home.”
“Did you tell them about the push?” he asked.
“No,” I said, staring into the black swirling pool of coffee in my cup, my brain holding on for dear life. “I don’t know how. I mean, I think they’d be proud of me, sure, but I don’t know… I guess I feel guilty. They were supposed to get this outcome, not me.”
“You deserve every bit of this, Si. You’ve busted your ass. You’ve done more than any of us, myself included. You deserved a push from day one,” Cal assured.
“I guess. I just… sometimes I worry I’m only getting this because Murran didn’t get the chance to capitalize on the pill head and the drunk,” I said flatly.
“So? Fuck them. Your dad and uncle didn’t do this work to get here. You did.”
Cal was right. My uncle and dad didn’t have a thing to do with where I had gotten in the UWF. All they’d done was teach me who, and what, not to be. And they knew that. Hell, I knew that.
“Si,” Cal said, his hand landing on my thigh.
I looked over at him. His eyes were sincere, his smile soft. My heart was floating away, and my mind was ready to run straight out of his front door.
“I’m proud of you, really,” Cal said as he leaned in, cupping my face.
I wanted to pull back, to set the walls, to tell him this was too much. But I couldn’t. My mind couldn’t. My heart fucking couldn’t.
He kissed me, slow, meaningful, love fueled, and I kissed him back tenfold.
We packed our stuff and got ready in mostly silence, moving around one another much like we did on the road. This was robotic. We’d been doing it for nearly a year. We knew it. We knew how to work around one another, how to get ready together.
My anxiety only built. No matter how hard I tried to push it down, it wouldn’t stay down. I felt like I was vibrating, like if I kept moving, I was going to crash. My body felt as if it was stuck in panic mode, a panic mode I hadn’t felt since I was a kid.
“You okay?” Cal asked as we sat in our seats on the plane.
“Fine,” I snapped.
I didn’t even mean to. God, I wanted to tell him it felt like the world was crashing around me. That I needed us to get off this godforsaken plane and hide. Hide away from wrestling, from our families, from the world, everything.
Cal didn’t respond when I snapped. He just looked at me. A look of concern, of confusion, of uncertainty. I’d never snapped at him. Not once. Even when we were actually pissed at one another, I never snapped, never shouted, never moved with the demeanor of the men in my own life.
“I’m gonna sleep. Wake me when we land,” I said.
Cal just nodded at me. He didn’t seem to know what more to do for me right now, but I knew he was wracking his brain trying to find a fix. And so was I.
My mind couldn’t shut down. I tried, but decided my fate was better served pretending to sleep for the next two hours than sitting here awake with a concerned Cal, the only person in my life who seemed to give a fuck enough to care about me in that way.
I sat there for two hours, locked in my brain, searching for every loophole, every counter, every single way that this, him and I, could exist in the world we lived in.
But there was nothing. There was no silver lining, no fine print.
Not a single outcome in every universe I dreamt up where this ended happily.
Just flames. Just loss. Just him and I losing everything we’d ever known.
“Silas… we landed, baby,” Cal whispered with a nudge.
My eyes fluttered open, trying to make it seem like I really had been sleeping. I don’t know if he bought it or not.
We went straight from the airport to the arena. I drove, even though I probably shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a vehicle like this.
We didn’t speak. I didn’t know how. I don’t think Cal did either. I knew he felt me. I knew he felt I was off. We were too connected for him not to.
We walked in and went straight to the ring. We had to practice. This match was far too big to not get right.
We were the main event. The thing every fan paid to see. We had a sold-out arena in my home state waiting to see us bring the house down. I’d even got Carolina Blue themed gear for this. This was my time. We all knew it.
Our match was the Warzone one match. Two teams. Showdown vs.
Demolition. The flagship vs. the flagship.
These matches consisted of no rules, and six men on each team.
The objective: make each member tap out or be pinned for a three count.
Each member that succumbed to a pinfall or submission was eliminated, and this would go on until one team was left standing.
But this year, the focus was me. It was selling me.
It was sending me into the stratosphere, sending me to the level my dad and uncle were supposed to hit.
This was me rewriting history. This was me becoming the face of this business.
This was a guaranteed win in January at Man Overboard.
This was an absolute shot at the heavyweight title.
The match had a stacked team. For Showdown, it was myself, Cal, Evan, Julian Martinez, and two new rookies proving their place, Carter Divine and Dean Knoxville. Our opponents were just as stacked with Demolition’s top guys: Camden Coranto, Maxx Thornton, Jesse Jones, Dante Andrews, and Raven.
This match was a seller. Big names, big draw, more tickets. We were told to expect an hour in ring, to conserve energy the best we could, to be clean, to do our best to prevent injuries. To sell me.
We ran our drills. We practiced our moves on one another. And we ran through the high fly setups for myself. Especially the big one. The one that would leave the crowd speechless.
Martinez would set up tables. We were meant to make a warzone, and that’s what we were doing.
I was going to launch myself, The Shooting Star Press off the ladder, from inside the ring down to the table on the outside, and collide with Camden Coranto below.
Martinez would spot. It was intricate, but we knew we could do it.
Camden was a veteran; though he’d only been in the UWF a few years, he’d spent years on the indies and making a name in other companies.
He was older, mid-forties. His time in the ring was close to its end, and he knew that.
But much like my dad, he didn’t intend on stopping until he couldn’t anymore.
Cal listened to the run through of the move intently. “What do we do if this goes wrong?” he asked.
“Yeah, I want to know that too,” Evan added.
“You throw an X like we always tell you, but be discreet,” the match producer, Jim Dallas, said in a thick southern accent. “Don’t let the fans see, but make sure the refs or medical can.”