Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ASHER
There is a crease in the couch where Asher remains for a couple long hours, staring at the chipped paint on a wall in a hotel room not far from Prichard Towers, unable to function.
His phone won’t stop vibrating. An endless list of people have been checking in—his friends, his parents, Roux, Val, Harley, a bunch of other folks from the Performance Center.
He sits there and thinks, I should update them.
But doesn’t. Because the only person he really wants to talk to is Caleb.
And for the first time in his life, he knows when to shut up. Knows when he isn’t wanted.
It’s unhealthy and probably kind of obsessive, but he starts looking up and then poring over every article about them, scrolls through every post, and stares at pictures of himself and Caleb until his vision turns blurry.
He saves a few—a grainy screenshot of Caleb giving him a fond look outside the trampoline park, a picture of them with their heads tipped back mid-laugh at a gym in Atlanta.
He has never taken a single picture of Caleb. There have been too many cases of leaked photos throughout the industry; Asher knows better than to take that risk. It’s just another thing he mindlessly gave up. The world now owns so much more of them than they do themselves.
And then he went ahead and behaved recklessly anyway.
Worst of all, he doesn’t regret it. He is, somewhat unsurprisingly, not all that upset about being outed.
Call it what you want—idealism, stupidity—but up till now, he’s usually open about letting others know who he is.
He wants to believe that people, ultimately, are good and that the world is kind, but the longer he exists in the world, the harder it is to cling to that faith.
Maybe that makes him a bad wrestler. Maybe after everything is said and done, he simply isn’t cut out for this business.
He wishes he could go back to the person he was at eighteen. He was still new to the Performance Center then. He remembers being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to burn it down and change the wrestling landscape, fixated on one star.
Or maybe he could go back to the person he was at twenty-two—a year before getting called up to the main roster.
Still living in that shitty apartment, comfortable at the Performance Center with its progressive storylines and mixed tag matches—ones that most of the public don’t get to see.
He used to throw himself off the top ropes and into the air, a staunch faith that he had enough in him to land upright and in one piece, dust himself off, and go at it again.
He thinks about dreams, what he thought he could achieve in GEW and where he is now. The vast canyon in between. His championship belt hangs on the back of a love seat across the room. He’s living the dream, isn’t he? He’s proven himself to be a champion, so why does the victory feel hollow?
Ever since getting called up to the main roster, he’s never stopped running. He’s contorted and creased until he’s about to break right down the middle. The person in his dreams didn’t look like this.
In the deafening silence, he is forced to confront the possibility that he’d put everything on the line and made it only to find the dream he’s living isn’t the one he’d spent his life envisioning.
He had come to GEW ready to bring that Performance Center fighting spirit with him only to find himself stalled at every turn.
His side plates are fastened onto the championship belt—the emblem of a golden dragon on each end—but what makes it more than a toy if he can’t do anything valuable with it?
He sees himself for what he truly is—childish and naive.
Clinging to an unfounded belief that things would get better and that he could jumpstart those changes, that he could look an empire in the eye and rip it down.
But they haven’t, and he doesn’t know how to make any real impact.
He sees now that the business hasn’t really changed all that much.
Who is he to believe that he can make a difference?
He’s just a blip in the universe. An ant staring up at these giant systems, powerless. Then what? What was any of it for?
Minutes inch by, but the moon finally rises outside his window. It’s late. He should get up. Eat something. Hop into the shower.
He tries to get some sleep, but the freshly laundered sheets have been doused in detergent.
They don’t smell like Caleb. That is what does it.
He’s gotten used to waking up draped over Caleb’s chest, his back turned against the sun, wishing he could write his name on it.
Now he thinks about clicking his heels and wishing for Caleb.
He’s gotten used to complaining about Caleb’s cold feet against his legs, thinking about the possibility of years ahead of them together.
Now he might never get to inhale Caleb’s scent on anything ever again.
That fact alone is enough to discombobulate him.
Gin helps. Across the room, a bottle of Bombay Sapphire awaits in the minibar.
It isn’t his drink of choice, but is enough to get the job done.
He doesn’t even bother pouring it into a glass.
Just glugs it down, straight from the source.
Doesn’t stop to run the alcohol over his tongue.
Flames lick his throat going down, comforting in its ability to put a tangible physical sensation to the way he feels on the inside—burning himself down.
He sits on the couch with the bottle in hand, mindlessly puts some random channel on the TV to fill the silence.
He shoots right past the warm and fuzzy feel-good phase of being drunk in favor of oblivion.
At some point, he checks his phone. The alcohol loosens his restraints and sets free the hope that he’s been holding back. Repressing, as he once told Caleb. He’s let down every single time. It leaves an acrid taste at the back of his throat.
He must have cried himself to sleep at some point, because he wakes up, eyes crusty and disgusting, nose blocked to hell and back, head throbbing from dehydration. The television is still on with a decibel of noise that unsettles his stomach.
His hand gropes around the love seat, searching for the shape of a remote.
When he turns to switch the TV off, he catches a glance at the screen.
It’s a video of him and Caleb on Fox Sports.
He’s never seen it from this angle before though.
He’s unable to pull his gaze away, watching the shaky fan-submitted footage of Caleb hovering over his concussed body, asking—begging—him to stay awake.
They pan over to him being carried away on a stretcher before cutting back to Caleb and the look on Caleb’s face.
Oh God. How did it take this long for someone to piece it together?
They have been running on borrowed time all this while.
It’s glaring in its clarity, Caleb wearing his heart on his sleeve.
He looks not just sick with worry but something else.
Something bigger and too terrifying for him to hold.
Caleb staring at him the way Asher’s always looked back.
This whole time.
He grabs his phone, fingers flying over the keyboard.
coming to pay you a visit.
ORLANDO, FLORIDA
Less than twelve hours and one impulsive, cramped flight later, Asher is deposited into the parking lot in front of a stand-alone building. He shields his eyes, squinting up at the large silver letters that read FTR.
“Damn, kid,” an extremely familiar whiskey-warm voice drawls when Asher slouches into the training arena. “You look like shit.”
“Feel like it.”
At the sound of Asher’s voice, heads whip around.
Murmurs arise, but the gawking trainees are quickly steered back on course by the handful of trainers supervising the class.
Asher makes himself comfortable on the steel steps and waits, still dizzy from his lingering hangover as Bate gives her students a set of drills to run through before she ducks under the rope and slides out of the ring.
“Saw the news.” With a low groan, Bate settles down on the steps beside Asher.
The steel wheezes beneath their combined weight.
Bate reaches up to take off her glasses and polishes them with the soft fabric of her shirt.
“Two headlines in one year.” She twists around to give Asher a wry smile.
“You really are bent on driving me to an early grave, aren’t you? ”
“Yeah,” Asher says, desert dry.
“So, it’s true then?”
Asher exhales. “I’m so sorry. You taught me to be a professional, and I just—”
Bate holds up a hand. “How long?”
“Couple months. Little after the concussion. Not anymore I guess.”
“Do you love him?”
Cheeks burning, Asher looks up at her. "What?"
“You heard me.”
Asher sucks on his teeth. Even though they’re apart, the option of them off the table and out of his hands, the answer still comes easy.
“I do,” he says. “I know nothing lasts forever, but I love him enough to never stop trying. Sure, I might be naive and stupid, but the one thing I refuse to be is embarrassed. Not of who I am, and sure as hell not of loving him.”
“Then you have nothing to be sorry for.”
“But it’s so fucking hard,” Asher blurts out.
He waves a hand before Bate can chew him out.
“I know, I know. Whining is for chumps. It’s just .
. .” His voice goes tight, and he can’t bring himself to look his trainer in the eye.
“I found my rhythm here. A purpose. I went in so ready to make my mark, and now I wake up scared. None of it is fucking happening. I can’t do it. ”
He takes a breath before he plows on, all his grievances bubbling to the surface.
“And it’s not just me. Prichard still barely gives the girls any airtime.
He treats them like shit and keeps Ava and everyone else here because they aren’t what”—he arches his finger into air quotes—“‘traditional, family-friendly wrestling should be.’ I thought things would be better by now, but they aren’t.
I’ve literally cut myself apart giving this business my all, and it’s still not enough.
I’m not enough. Prichard just uses me, then sweeps me under the rug once I’ve served my purpose.
What if I’ve wasted all those years? All that blood, sweat, and tears to ultimately have nothing to show for these dead-end dreams?
” He gulps, breath coming too quickly, and his chest twists.
“I can’t sit with the knowledge that this industry—this world—I’ve spent my life loving doesn’t love me back. ”
They sit together in a stretch of silence. Bate takes off her cowboy hat and places it on her lap. She rubs a hand on the underside of her jaw, picking at the fresh ink spiraling up her neck. “Do you know why we make all our new trainees study up on the history of wrestling?”
“Because you know we’re big of heart but dumb of ass?”
Bate jabs a crooked finger against Asher’s sternum, her expression exasperated but fond. “Glad to know you’re still alive and kicking somewhere in there. We do it because we want you to remember the people who came before you. Those who paved the way so you could be where you are today.”
“So, what? Am I supposed to suck it up and be grateful for this?”
“Kind of. I’m also telling you that the journey isn’t easy.
Think about wrestlers among the likes of Mae Young and Mildred Burke, who built women’s wrestling from the ground up back in the 1950s.
Darren Young and Sonya Deville, the first openly queer male and female wrestlers ever.
Others who slipped through history, who likely couldn’t safely be out because of the lavender scare but continued to fight even by existing silently.
Did you think it was at any point easy for them? ”
Asher remains silent. He listens, processing.
“Well, there’s your answer.”
Asher sits like that for a while, Bate spinning her hat between her thumb and index finger. Elbows and feet collide with the mat in the background like claps of thunder. “Prichard threatened to strip me of the title if we don’t do as he says.”
“So?” Bate’s voice is flat, like she’s staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, unflinching.
“That’s my dream, isn’t it? How else am I supposed to leave a legacy?”
Bate arches a brow. “Wouldn’t be much of a legacy if you had to rely on an inanimate object for it.”
Asher blinks. He thinks of Ava, Big Rob, Harley, and Val, the impact they’ve left on him without even being champions.
The way they’ve molded him into the person he is today.
They’ll be the future one day. He thinks of Bailey and Thea, the kind of barriers they’ve broken just by showing up day after day in spite of Prichard trying to keep them down.
The present. He thinks of Bate, scratching her nails against the tapestry of history, carving out a space for herself when no one wanted to make room. The past.
A fight that spans generations.
Maybe he’s been going about this all wrong. That’s a real fucking impressive legacy.
He thinks he finally understands.
There’s just one more thing.
“Caleb doesn’t want to fight,” he says quietly. He doesn’t want to say it out loud. That would make the loss real, but there is no choice. He recounts the meeting to Bate in agonizing detail.
“Sounds to me like he already did though,” Bate says matter-of-factly. “Just because someone doesn’t behave in a way that’s exactly what you hoped for, doesn’t mean their heart isn’t in the right place. We have to leave room for nuance, ya know?”
“What do you mean?”
“He fought for you. For once in his life, that slimy son of a bitch fought for someone other than himself.”
That startles a little laugh out of Asher.
He climbs to his feet and moves to balance on the edge of the ring apron, considering.
He remembers Ava telling him to listen to his heart sometimes.
And it’s saying, What if this is Caleb trying to care for you in the only way he knows how?
Perhaps one of two isn’t half bad if one can live to fight another day.
Bate leans a hip against the ring and nods, eyes wise and owlish behind her glasses.
“Like I said, it’s not going to be easy.
It might not even happen in your lifetime.
But if you believe in something, you owe it to yourself to try.
And when the going gets tough, you have to learn to carry one another. That’s love, kid.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
Bate bares her teeth. One of her canines is chipped, next to others that have been cracked, knocked out, and fixed a hundred times over. “Then you go down swinging.”