Chapter 7 #3
Asher skips backward through the open space, palms spread out, facing the cotton candy soft clouds floating through the evening sky. “Welcome to the Performance Center.”
The Performance Center is a relatively unassuming medium-sized rectangular stand-alone building.
The letters FTR, short for “Future,” are mounted in large silver blocks above the entryway.
Numerous box trucks are parked in neat rows, emblazoned with the FTR logo.
There are a couple of empty lots, but for the most part, the parking garage is full and buzzing with the activity that accompanies the weekly show.
Weird to think that this was Asher’s whole world just a few months ago.
“How do you know so little about this place?” Asher asks. “It’s literally affiliated with your job.” He keeps his head and voice down.
Now that they’re out in the open, he sees a glaring issue he failed to take into account: they cannot afford to get spotted by fans.
Placing a finger over his lips, he wiggles past a gap in the shrubbery and tugs Caleb along onto a dimly lit path.
Loose gravel carry the sounds of their feet crunching down the narrow walkway up to the building’s back door.
Asher glances over his shoulder. “Did you think you were too good for us?”
Behind him, Caleb makes an uncomfortable noise.
Asher takes a moment to bask in his discomfort, then cracks the door open and sticks his head inside. “Coast is clear.”
The back door spits them into a packed storage closet. Asher nudges Caleb through a mess of ladders, mats, and steel chairs and out into a familiar hallway. A member of the audience walks past, fan-made sign in hand, and Asher ducks behind an unmanned hotdog cart, yanking Caleb down beside him.
“Shit,” Caleb hisses, nearly upsetting a ketchup bottle. “Every time I’m with you, I lose a year of my life.”
“Congratulations.” Asher rolls his eyes and hustles Caleb down one hallway after another. “There’s an entrance somewhere—”
“Stop pushing me.”
“I’m encouraging you forward. Now be quiet—Aha!” Asher screeches—literally, the rubber soles of his sneakers squeak against the freshly polished tiles—to a halt in front of a door partially hidden behind a heavy velvet drape.
He checks his phone—fifteen minutes since tonight’s show started. No time to reply to the group chat about new gear ideas for Fyter Fiesta. He punches out a couple of thinking face emojis instead.
How did he sneak in to watch other matches after his own again? Something about a jiggle of the handle, a gentle caress, and a prayer to the wrestling gods?
“Please,” Asher says to the locked door. “We drove very far to see you, and buzzkill over there might actually murder me in cold blood if it turns out to be for nothing.”
Beside him, Caleb scoffs.
The door appears to be moved by his begging and slowly swings open. The whine of its hinges is immediately drowned out by the sound of a body colliding with a steel step and a sizable crowd of locals who cheer and jeer in equal parts.
“Come on,” Asher mouths. He gestures at Caleb, who looks stunned as he takes in the Performance Center in its magnificent glory.
They zip their jackets up, hoods pulled low over their eyes, and slip into the back row.
“Huh,” Caleb muses when they settle into a pair of empty seats, slouched down low. “This is weird as hell.”
“What is?”
Caleb gestures around them. He stares at the ring, eyes wide with a look that if Asher didn’t know better, would say is almost awestruck.
“When was the last time you watched a show from the stands?”
Caleb scrunches his nose, thinking. “Before I was hired?”
Asher stares at him. “Nine years,” he says flatly. “You haven’t gotten to be a fan in nine years.”
“Yeah, so.” Caleb winces. “After Prichard hired me, I was turned into”—he gestures vaguely at himself—“this.”
“Ew.”
“The Ice Prince is too good to rub elbows with commoners,” Caleb says in an exaggerated approximation of Mr. Prichard’s stentorian voice.
“And so I sincerely repeat: ew.”
Caleb rolls his eyes and shrugs, as if that explains away the absurdity of what he’s said.
“What would you do in another life?” Asher asks, curious. “If you weren’t wrestling royalty.”
Caleb is quiet for a long while. “I don’t know,” he says when he finally speaks. “I guess I never thought I could be more than this.”
Asher swallows, crosses his arms, and cocks his head, trying to wade through the disconcerting honesty in Caleb’s voice.
“What about you? In some other universe where you’re not hounding my ass.”
Asher glares. “I’m making your dull life interesting.
You’re welcome.” A pause, then he raises his chin and continues.
“I’d still do this.” He prods Caleb in the chest, unable to hide a smirk when Caleb visibly startles.
“I want that belt. In any universe you can possibly imagine, there’s an Asher Ross coming for you. ”
“Are they all as intense as you are?” Caleb huffs out an exasperated puff of air. “Good grief.”
“Probably worse.”
“You might regret it,” Caleb says simply, and though all instincts tell Asher those words are meant to carry a threat, they don’t. They sound like a caution.
The conversation gets abruptly cut off when a high energy punk rock song blasts through the speakers. It is accompanied by a young Irish girl with a long fiery orange braid who runs out along to the beat. She hops into the ring, where her opponent, a tanned Latina with curly black hair, awaits.
“That’s Roux.” Asher wiggles excitedly, pointing to the Irish girl who moves so quickly her fists are a blur.
“She joined us three years ago. A firecracker. Nonstop movement. High risk, high reward. Last year, she got into a minor car accident because she ran across the street to pet a dog. She’s also allergic to shutting the fuck up. ”
“Sounds familiar,” Caleb says dryly.
“You’re not funny. And that’s Calyx.” He points at the Latina, who somehow manages to dodge all of Roux’s fists except for the last one and recoils against the ropes.
“Calyx only joined us a month before I was called up, so I don’t know her super well.
What I do know is that she’s tiny but stronger than most of us, very young and calls everyone older than her a boomer, and comes here to train right after class.
I don’t know how she does it. My executive function only kicks in for sixty minutes each day.
It’s not my fault they aren’t consecutive. ”
Roux leapfrogs off the top rope, completing a 540 degree corkscrew midair before her feet connect with Calyx’s chest. Instead of going down, however, Calyx catches her thigh and uses Roux’s momentum to convert the move into a reversal, slamming her face-first into the mat instead.
When a whoop explodes out of the man huddled beside him, Asher nearly falls off his seat. Caleb stares back at him, eyes wide, surprise and embarrassment intermingling. His pink nose sticks out over the hand he’s clamped over his mouth and Asher can’t help the laugh that spills out of his own.
In the ring, Roux barrel-rolls into a corner before she follows it up with a swanton dive off the top rope. It connects, and she covers Calyx for a three count. The crowd pumps their fists along to her theme song as Roux makes her way back up the ramp.
Then, unprompted, Caleb leans over and says, “I started college working toward a psych degree.”
Asher blinks. “What?”
“In another life,” Caleb explains, “maybe I finished that degree.”
“Why not in this one?”
Caleb shrugs. “Shit happens.”
“Oh.” Whatever Asher is about to say gets lost when Roux’s music is swapped for the opening chords of lovelytheband’s “buzz cut.” “You’re in for a treat,” he says instead and points to the ring as a wrestler runs out dressed in a matching black-and-pink mesh crop top and shorts ensemble.
They, of course, sport a buzz cut and a chunky silver heart-shaped choker around their neck.
“That’s Ava Kiss—wrestler extraordinaire and the most badass person to grace this dying planet. ”
Caleb arches a brow.
“What? That’s how they told me to introduce them. And in case you couldn’t tell, Ava’s buzz cut is their entire personality.”
Caleb looks like he’s about to retort when a slow, ominous beat fills the room. Big Rob walks out, all 340 pounds of menacing muscle.
“Why is . . .” Caleb glances over, quizzical. He trails off, fingers finding their way to his hair again before he gives it another go. “But this is a men’s . . .”
“Ava is genderfluid—they/them pronouns usually—and prefers to wrestle in the men’s division. They also take part in a lot of intergender matches. Is that a problem?”
“No, uh, not at all. That’s really cool.” Caleb gnaws on his lower lip, teeth digging in so hard it leaves an indent. “I just . . . I didn’t know this was a thing that could happen.”
Asher cheers as Ava meets Big Rob in the middle of the ring, capitalizing on their lithe figure and lightning-fast speed to slide beneath Big Rob’s legs.
They spin around and catch Big Rob with a thunderous right fist before following up with a hurricanrana.
“My mentor, Morgana Bate, double-hats as a producer here. She’s really encouraging about all of it and doesn’t give two shits about your orientation or gender identity.
As long as you don’t give Bate a headache, she’ll champion you all the way. ”
The crowd winces when Big Rob catches Ava midair. He drops them stomach-first onto the ring apron.
“We love Big Rob and his husband, and Ava’s groundbreaking on so many levels.” Asher feels a warmth well up inside his chest—an unshakable pride. “You’d be amazed by the talent and heart you find when you step into the world with an open mind.”
Ava recovers and leaps off the top rope. They catch Big Rob in a gorgeous moonsault, and Asher fist pumps.
And Caleb looks like . . . Well, Asher doesn’t quite know how to read it. Caleb looks like something within him is trying not to split apart. It kind of hurts to see. The thought surprises Asher.