Chapter 15
15
ADAM
T he year was 2002. It was October. I’d just started at the promotion and was still a nobody, but I’d had my first big bouts as The Beast and the crowds loved me. So the promotion had seen dollar signs and put me to work building my profile. I went on press tours, I gave interviews, I attended parties in LA, fashion events in London, and in New York… they sent me to a charity gala.
I was seated at a table with strangers. I was more exhausted than I’d ever been in my life and that was the very last place I wanted to be. This French-Canadian blond kept getting on everyone’s nerves. He’d already gone off at me about an offhand comment about the price of being here. Then the oil baron across from me said something insensitive about immigration and the blond was like a dog with a bone about it. I hated him for it, for disturbing my well-earned peace. He was being thoroughly unpleasant. But the more I was forced to listen to him, the more I started to agree with what he said. When he put me on the spot and asked my opinion, what came out of my mouth was an argument in his defense. I told them how I was an immigrant, how I’d struggled, even though I’d been brought into the country as a child. The rich folk turned all their attention on interrogating me, and that blond guy just sat there listening. I was furious.
But, a little later, when everyone was distracted by speeches, he leaned over to me and whispered, “You want to get out of here?”
I nodded and we left. Just like that. Thousands of dollars for a plate and we didn’t even eat.
Outside, he lit a cigarette with shaking hands and took a long drag. “Are you famous enough that we’ll be mobbed?” he asked.
I shook my head.
We walked up Fifth Avenue. I didn’t ask where we were going. I didn’t say anything at all.
“I’m a composer,” Lloyd said. “No one recognizes authors or composers. We’re lucky. You’re a wrestler?”
“That’s right.”
“Beating people up for a living. Tell me,” he stubbed out the cigarette, “do you enjoy it?”
“Beating people up?”
“I’m not a fan of blood sports.”
“Wrestling isn’t a blood sport. It’s showmanship.”
“And you like showing off?”
That was Lloyd. Not an ounce of tact, always asking the big questions.
“What do you really want to know?” I asked. “Or are you just rearing for another argument?”
“An argument? Dear god, no. I’m trying to gauge whether I want to sleep with you.”
In the end, he determined that he did. We returned to his hotel room and, after the fact, the first words out of his mouth were, “Oh dear.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, still hovering over him.
He turned his head into the pillow, flushed and beautiful. “That was quite extraordinary.”
“That’s a problem?”
“It will be if you don’t want to do this again.”
“Fortunately,” I said, “I do.”
“Are you out yet? At work?” he asked.
“No.”
“We’ll have to keep it secret, then,” he said.
And we did. We saw each other whenever we were in the same city, and we tried to arrange to spend time in New York whenever we could. For three years, our relationship developed in secret and then, one morning when we were together in the New York apartment, Lloyd brought me coffee, the newspaper and a proposal.
The newspaper stated that gay marriage was now legal in Canada.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” I asked.
He climbed onto my lap and wrapped his arms around my neck. “I want to make you mine. I want a big house and ten children— no, fifteen. Fifteen children. I can raise them while you go out and fight.”
“You could do so much better than me,” I said.
He knew about the parties, the brawls, all the shit I was getting up to. He’d read all the tabloids and we’d argued about them more than once.
But on that morning, he’d cupped my cheek and pressed his forehead to mine. “I am far from perfect, mon cher . But we fit together. We should take advantage while we can.”
Lloyd was always so clear about what he wanted, so certain. Right up until the end. He wanted this place, a grand castle in Scotland where he could compose without distraction. He wanted the charity. “We both have a responsibility to do what we can to help,” he said. He wanted the wallpaper and the flooring and the light fixtures and the piano and the ballroom and the artwork all just so . And somehow, he wanted me. Somehow, I was meant to fit into all of that.
But the more fame I garnered, the more I could make being on the road. There’s no off season in wrestling. I felt like I had to take advantage of my fifteen minutes, my time as an upper-card superstar. But those fifteen minutes became fifteen months. I was doing loop after loop, in an endless blur of fighting, drinking and partying.
Meanwhile, Lloyd would compose and work on the house. At first, we’d talk on the phone every night. It was little different from when we were doing long distance. Until it was. Until Lloyd got tired of it. He wanted to settle, to start building our life together. Hadn’t I made enough?
But I was greedy. Next year. One more feud. One more storyline. One more title. I had to take what the promotion was offering. So many guys dreamed of what I had. Our nightly calls became nightly arguments, and some nights I wouldn’t call at all.
I’d always choose the business over everything he had to offer. Always. Until it was too late.
Lloyd believed I could be something else. I had so many opportunities to make that choice. I never did.
Now here I am, surrounded by sleeping children, with Belle, who’s gone quiet. I get to make that choice again, don’t I?
“I’ll try,” I say, so soft it’s mostly just air. But his hopeful gaze lands on me again and I know he heard. “I can’t promise anything, but I suppose I can try.”