Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ASHER
OMAHA, NEbrASKA
Shit.
Shit shit shit, fuck, and also crap.
Asher can’t believe he’s having an identity crisis at the ripe old age of twenty-three.
Early the next morning, brain spinning in overdrive, he parts ways with Caleb.
Two Ubers pull up outside the apartment, half an hour apart, to take them to the airport, and the only time Asher manages to catch a glimpse of Caleb after that is when he is shuffling through the plane’s first-class cabin on the way to economy.
When Asher spots Caleb next, he’s stretching his legs at Eppley Airfield’s baggage claim.
Beyond the arrival hall’s glass doors wait Bailey, Thea, and Alexei, the trio already swamped by a throng of fans who somehow always manage to triangulate their locations.
That is when Asher knows he’s officially back in it, slamming the unpause button on that dream.
Bailey swoops in and hustles Caleb off to her car.
Asher follows Thea and Alexei in the opposite direction.
But there is a moment.
By the sliding doors, on the verge of reality, stale, dusty air rushing in, right before they draw up their hoodies and step into the sun, Caleb turns and catches Asher’s eye.
Morning light spills in through the blinds and cuts harsh lines across his face.
The corner of his mouth tugs upward. Something flickers between them again.
It feels like a See you later rather than a Goodbye.
Asher finds himself clinging onto that shared look with a ferocity as he eases back into life on the road, picking his way through Kansas City, followed by Springfield, then Tulsa.
He throws himself into his workouts, makes up for lost time, and brushes off ring rust, because waiting for him at the end of every day is a crowd he has to perform for.
And when that’s done and dusted, he inches closer to Oklahoma, to his rematch at Guts and Glory.
He loves it the way he always has, but none of it holds his attention for long.
Beneath it all, threading through the roar of the crowd and battle ropes and dives off the top rope are three things: moonlight woven in Caleb’s hair, Caleb’s lips against his, and a fierce, irrevocable wanting for more.
The thing is, Asher’s pretty certain he’s straight. Like, a solid eighty percent sure. Okay, make that seventy. He’s more of an ally, if anything.
If he wasn’t straight, he would just know, wouldn’t he?
The sky is blue. The grass is green. And Asher is .
. . What is he? He thinks of Ava—septum piecing, hands on their hips, glaring down the Orlando crowd, going “I’ve been as straight as boiled spaghetti since they cut me out of my mom.
” Others, like Val, are quieter, but no less proud.
Upon graduating from high school, Val allowed herself to exist someplace else, to live even when it meant away from home, far from the confines of her small town within a red state.
Like many others, Ava and Val emerged from their teenage years with a strong sense of self. So why doesn’t Asher know?
Here he is at twenty-three, learning that there is still so much about the world that he has not yet opened his naive eyes to.
He’s learning that making it is easier said than done, wanting something doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll get it, and he might be nothing more than a pawn in an authority’s grand chess game.
Would it be that much of a stretch to realize he hasn’t fully finished figuring himself out either?
Sick of his too noisy brain, he makes it until Tuesday before he’s throwing off the comforters at a quarter to five in the morning, jamming a baseball cap over his uncombed hair, and stomping down to the hotel pool.
He slips in through the gates past the CLOSED sign, pulls off his shirt, and dives headfirst into the deep end.
As he swims, gliding through the water with strong, even strokes that propel him up and down the length of the lap pool, he pours over everything he knows and holds it up to the light.
Women are great. Asher has eyes. What’s not to love?
He has receipts. Like his first kiss in middle school.
Her name was Lilian, but she insisted everyone call her Lila.
She was nice. The kiss was kind of awkward but .
. . enjoyable. He’s made out with other women since then.
It’s kind of a side effect since Ava insists they go club hopping on weekends to unwind.
Honestly if you put a couple lemon drop shots in him, he’ll probably kiss anyone. But everyone does that, right?
And then there’s high school. Oof. He really put his parents through the wringer then.
They were constantly called into the principal’s office after he and his then-best friend, Melvyn Chan, got caught sneaking out the cafeteria windows.
Truth be told, Asher never actually wanted to ditch class.
He cared way too much about his grades and future prospects, so much so that he ended up spending weekends holed up in his bedroom trying to catch up on everything he missed.
In retrospect, and with a fully formed prefrontal cortex that has finally matured past teenage angst, maybe he did care a little too much about what Melvyn thought of him.
A teensy bit obsessed, if you will. He wanted so badly to be liked by Melvyn and his stupid slicked back hair and leather jacket, to be the person Melvyn chose to spend time with in a room full of other students.
It felt like winning the most important competition.
That couldn’t have been a crush, could it?
Because if it was, he would have done something silly like .
. . like cutting class just to spend more time with him which—
Fuck.
On his twelfth lap, as his triceps and quads start to protest, he thinks about moving across state lines and putting down new roots in Florida.
When Big Rob first introduced Asher to his husband during Friendsgiving, Asher got so fucking jealous that Ava had to put him in time out.
He didn’t think much of it then. He just wanted to look like them, broad back and hard muscle and all, or so he thought.
The thing is that Asher constantly feels like he’s about to go feral whenever he’s in the locker room too, but what if he’s gotten it all wrong?
What if that envy has always been misplaced?
He’s been an ally for as long as he can consciously remember.
Writing persuasive essays in high school arguing for queer rights, making a whole event out of going to pride with Ava and the rest of the Performance Center trainees every year, waiting in solidarity outside Harley’s house when she came out to her parents.
Val rolls her eyes every time he calls himself the group’s token straight friend.
But he also remembers Obergefell v. Hodges, waiting with bated breath and screaming and later full-on ugly crying when the news broke that same-sex marriage was legalized.
He had thought that he was fighting for them, for his friends, but it felt so personal.
It still feels personal. Something that he was afraid to explore further.
Maybe it was never a them; maybe it has always been an us.
He is starting to see some merit to the saying that hindsight is always twenty-twenty. The signs are, in retrospect, not very straight.
He’s on his seventeenth lap and starting to struggle when his thoughts drift back to Caleb, the way he is beginning to realize they always have for quite some time now.
Meeting Caleb in the ring for the first time and finally understanding why poets write sonnets about the most mundane things like lips and eyes.
The pain in his head lulled away by Caleb’s hands around his chest, his waist, his hips, his heart.
Caleb, haloed by the glow of the lights dangling above the pool.
He chokes on a lungful of water as everything tilts.
Pieces begin to rearrange themselves and slide into place.
It feels like settling into his skin, like he was always going to end up back here, finding his way back home to the boy with whom it all began.
When he thinks about Caleb, the world starts to make sense, like a match head waiting to meet a striker and finally—blessedly—lighting up.
There is one more thing he hasn’t considered. It pops into his head as he drags himself out of the pool, panting heavily as he starfishes on the concrete.
“Were you trying to give me a sign?” he demands five minutes later, dripping aggressively onto his hotel room’s carpeted floor.
Ava blinks at him through FaceTime. Today there are cute little hot pink hearts dyed into their buzzcut. “Put on a shirt for once, will you? Jeez, what is up with you wrestlers and your allergy to being fully clothed?”
Asher glares into the phone, watching Ava putter around the kitchen of their familiar shithole apartment.
The lower half of the screen is an orange blur; Ava’s probably propped their phone up on one of the many Tupperwares he’s left behind.
A half-eaten, fully deconstructed avocado bagel sits on a plate on the counter.
In the background, a blender whirls noisily, a dark purple puree swirling inside.
“Acai?” he guesses when Ava pours it into a sparkly diamond-studded tumbler.
“Yep.”
“Okay. Back to the crisis at hand, is there a reason why you always lectured me about comphet?”
Off-screen, there is a clatter of cutlery falling to the floor before Ava rushes back into frame.
“Oh my God, are we finally having this conversation? I have cue cards.” They gesture toward the living room.
“Give me ten minutes to find them. I know I promised to Marie-Kondo the place, but alas, I am a hoarder through and through.”
“What do you mean ‘finally’? Why didn’t you bring this up sooner?”
“I cannot interfere, this is a canon event.”