Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
ASHER
Asher lets out a startled squawk when Thea slams her phone down on the breakfast table.
“They’re comparing it to the Montreal Screwjob of ninety-seven,” Thea announces. “Baby’s first headline! They grow up so fast.”
A Bleacher Report article glares back at Asher.
Inlaid in the top right corner: a grainy picture of the official match card posted on Instagram by an anonymous source, timestamped thirty minutes after the pay-per-view.
Mere seconds after the image had been leaked, the audience put two and two together.
The ending that was meant to happen, versus the ending that Caleb forced upon him.
“Can I please have a singular chew of my eggs Benedict in peace?” Asher begs.
Neither Thea nor Bailey, cradling a bowl of yogurt across the table, seem to care. Bailey drags the phone across the table, shushing Thea, who complains about the camera lens getting scratched.
“Experts are likening Asher Ross to Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart, who was infamously screwed out of his slated championship win during the World Wrestling Federation’s Survivor Series pay-per-view in November 1997,” she reads out loud through a mouthful of raspberries.
“Till this day, accounts differ as to who exactly was involved in the plan and the extent of their involvement, but the general consensus is that a group of WWF employees had covertly manipulated the predetermined outcome of the match in favor of The Hitman’s opponent, Shawn Michaels—the Heartbreak Kid. ”
Alexei slides in next to Bailey, wincing as he sinks down into the cushy booth.
Gripped in one hand: a plate piled high with bacon strips and hashbrowns.
In the other: a dizzyingly colorful issue of Pro Wrestling Illustrated.
The plate clatters onto the table, and Alexei yanks off his sunglasses to reveal a nasty laceration down his right eye—a memento from his last-man-standing match against Apollo Wilder at Fyter Fiesta.
“Good morning, starshine,” Thea chirps.
Alexei slides the magazine over to Asher. “Hurts to talk,” he grunts out of the corner of his downturned mouth.
Asher stares down at the picture splashed across the front page.
By now, he’s regrettably seen over a dozen pictures from last night, numerous shots of himself caught in varying degrees of humiliating surprise.
But this is one he hasn’t seen before: Caleb retreating back up the ramp with his head hung low.
The GEW championship belt dangles limply by his side.
Groaning, Asher shoves his still untouched plate away.
“Do we know who posted the picture?” Bailey asks.
“An anonymous source tells Cageside Seats that the picture was leaked by a company insider,” Thea narrates, flashing yet another article at the group before she adds, “Dave Meltzer is having a field day.”
Asher opens and closes his mouth a couple of times.
For once, he’s rendered speechless. It’s a rare feeling.
Social media has been, and continues to be, a garbage fire ever since the match card was leaked, from commentaries and analyses on what fans have dubbed “The Dragon versus the Ice Prince” to think pieces on whether it was a screwjob or an elaborate work.
What no one seems to be talking about, however, is the fantastic match that he had put on last night or the death-defying spots he’d put himself through.
Asher clenches his jaw. Doing what they do is fucking hard. But it’s harder for him. He’s a person of color in a predominantly white industry. He always has to be better and do better. His whole existence is a constant fighting of tooth and nail to be seen as someone worth taking seriously.
He had done everything perfectly, played his role to a T.
Time after time, match after match, he pushes past the ache in his ribs, ignores the twinge in his knee, brushes off every screaming muscle and bruise.
He cuts himself down and rips himself apart to be whatever the company needs him to be.
Yet, no matter what he does, he falls short.
With every passing day, the quietly persistent voice in his head grows louder.
This is all GEW will ever let him amount to: a tool used to prolong Caleb’s reign over his kingdom.
This is how it’s always been: grab some nobody, a textbook token rarity like him, a young Singaporean American wrestler with a female trainer; slap on an underdog label; profit.
Once they’ve served their purpose of elevating those who the company actually values, fade them back into obscurity.
The writing has been on the wall this whole time—the matches won, the seemingly astronomical rise out of nowhere, the sudden push from Creative.
But he shoves it aside. What other choice is there?
He has to tell himself that as long as he works hard and dedicates every piece of his soul to this company—this dream company—he, too, can get there.
It’s a formula he’s carefully and painstakingly mapped out for himself, the plan he’s willed himself into following no matter the personal cost, as long as he ends up right where he needs to be: with the championship in his hands.
Last night should have been the culmination of years of hard work.
It’s there for all to see. And Caleb stabbed him in the back.
Refused to accept a loss. Ripped the dream out of his grasp.
A selfish prince who doesn’t seem to give a shit about the business or the fans, who Asher thought he was beginning to trust. To perhaps even care for, just ever so slightly.
“I’m sorry, bud,” Bailey says when the silence stretches on for too long. She chews on a paper straw. “Maybe talk to him?”
Asher gives her his best withering look.
Bailey barrels on. “I’m just saying that it’s weird as hell. Why would Caleb go through the trouble of training daily with you only to do this?”
Thea appears deeply unconvinced.
“Like, Lex and Wilder are constantly broing out, yet they only rehearsed twice. Something doesn’t add up.”
“Why should I be the one to approach him? He’s the one who screwed me over. I demand a Notes app apology.”
“Because,” Bailey says with remarkable patience, “he’s a soggy, downtrodden cat. He’s going to feel bad and spiral. And when he starts brooding at the fucking moors, he'll lock himself up in his tower of suffering where he'll do nothing but wallow in his guilt.”
Asher rubs the bridge of his nose. A tension headache is already brewing. “I’ll think about it.”
But when Caleb steps into the dining hall and a hush falls over the room, Asher can’t think. He can’t even bring himself to look at Caleb.
“Ash?”
Asher can’t register whose voice that is. Because even though he shouldn’t, all he wants is to look at Caleb. He wants to so badly that everything inside him hurts, more so than the two cracked ribs in his chest.
But it is Caleb who glances across the room, catching Asher's gaze for just the flicker of a skipped heartbeat, and it’s brown on blue, everything else fading into the background.
Asher staggers to his feet. He needs to get out of here so he can fucking breathe. Heading straight for the exit, he pushes through the queue by the pancake station and doesn’t bother looking back.
Back in his hotel room, Asher peels off his shirt and surveys the damage in the bathroom mirror.
Much of last night remains a blur, a white-noise gap of time that got him backstage and back to the hotel, but he is left with this: a large bandage wrapped snugly around his torso and a small dark green tub of Zam-Buk courtesy of Bailey.
“My mom swears by this,” she said. “It will fix literally every problem you have.”
Asher is pretty sure a eucalyptus-and-camphor ointment will not fix the championship title he was robbed of.
It doesn’t makes a lick of sense. Why would Caleb have bothered spending hours rehearsing their match, ironing out every fine detail if he was going to throw it all away? What was the point of making amends with the roster?
Running his hands beneath the faucet, Asher unwraps the bandage and sucks in a sharp breath when it reveals a medley of angry blue-purple bruises blooming around the right side of his lower chest. They were still pinkish when he went to bed, but they’ve worsened overnight.
He dips two fingers into the jar, scoops out the ointment and smears it over the mottled skin, wincing as he tries, as gently as possible, to rub it into the tender flesh.
If Caleb had been that desperate to win, the second he realized Asher was injured, he could have called it and alerted the referee. It would’ve been a fair loss, a forfeit on Asher’s part. Nothing that risked putting his image on the line together with Asher’s.
Then he thinks of Caleb’s last words to him: I’m sorry. The resignation in Caleb’s eyes before Asher’s throat went painfully tight.
His fingers curl into a fist. Why can’t he stop fucking thinking about it? Why won’t his broken tape recorder brain stop replaying that moment over and over again, searing those blue eyes into his head?
He hates how he let Caleb into his stomping ground, that he let his guard down and let Caleb see why he cares so much. Why this win was important to him. That Caleb still fucked him over anyway.
He hates the thought that the time they spent together—rehearsals, trainings, a round trip to Florida with Caleb’s arms around his waist—didn’t mean a thing. That it was nothing more than a means to an end.
They were barely friends, but maybe they’re better off as nothing at all. The idea makes his stomach plummet. No one said showbiz was supposed to hurt this much.
He hates . . .
The realization comes from someplace deep inside his chest. It barrels into him like a freight train—fast, horrifying, and with no room for escape. Five years later and there it remains, that mind-boggling spark that, no matter how hard he tries, refuses to die out.