Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or real people portrayed in this story. The characters are owned by the WWE, and the people own themselves. This story will contain swearing and maybe some adult situations, I haven't decided yet. It will also portray people you might like in negative lights, so if that bothers you, you might want to move along. Also, this is a work of fiction, take it as thus.
A/N: I shouldn't start another story, but here I am, starting another story. This is a Dolph/AJ story, if you don't like them, don't read it, if you do, I hope you enjoy the story. If you want to leave a review, I'd really appreciate it as it helps me decide if I want to continue or not, so let me know. If you want to be brutal, go ahead, I've been through this way too many times to be thin-skinned. Enjoy! :)
She had to give him credit where credit was due.
He never kept any pictures of her on his phone, and that, she guessed, was something smart on his part, like hiding it, like not taking pictures of them together meant that he could keep it a secret. Her husband, the smartest guy in the room, ladies and gentleman. She scoffed at the notion now. At one point, she did think him smart, and funny, and just a little bit cocky, but she liked that about him, she loved that about him, and that's what hurt.
She should have seen it coming.
A lesson learned her mother told her, her sympathy in every word and phrase to her nowadays. She could hear it laced in every conversation she had nowadays, and she could see it in the eyes of everyone she encountered. Pity, is what it was, pure pity, and she hated it because she didn't want people's pity. She kind of wanted revenge, but what good would that do when the person you wanted revenge against didn't even care what you were doing.
Red flags had been everywhere since the very beginning. She ignored them because he was fun and exciting and took her places and showed her things, and it was all such an easy whirlwind to get caught up in, and she liked it. She never thought she'd be the kind of person who wanted to get caught up and fall into something so serious so quickly. She always thought she'd date someone for a couple of years, they'd talk about marriage for another year then sensibly get engaged then married. That's how she pictured it, and it's not how it was, and now she realized that's how it should have been.
When a man flits from girlfriend to girlfriend and is deathly afraid to commit to someone, chances are, you aren't going to be the one to change him. She'd let herself believe the fantasy of it, that she would be the one. She'd be the one that he'd devote himself to and change himself for, and she'd be the one to prove everyone wrong about him. Then he cheated on her, and didn't seem to care that he did it, and now she was getting a divorce, and he wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible so she could be forgotten about.
"I hate him," she muttered under her breath.
"What was that?" her sister looked over at her, and she shook her head.
"I didn't say anything, sorry," AJ said, picking at the food on her plate. She wasn't really in the mood to eat, but she supposed that she needed some sustenance in all of this. Erica just stared at her. "What?"
"Nothing," Erica said, "you've barely eaten."
"I know, I'm not that hungry," AJ told her. She'd made the mistake of going online this morning, and all through her replies were pictures of him with his new flame, and it made her sick to her stomach.
"You have to eat," Erica said.
"I know that too," AJ told her.
"Are you going to be okay?" Erica asked earnestly. She was worried for her sister. It wasn't like her to be so down, so upset, but then, she'd never had her marriage broken up before, and she'd never had a husband who couldn't care less about her less than three weeks after leaving her for another woman.
"Yeah," AJ said, but she didn't even sound convincing to herself. "I hope so, but I just…it's still so new, and it's like, he's out there, having fun, acting like we never happened, like he wasn't married at all, but then I should have expected that from the way he cheated on me, right?"
"He's an asshole," Erica said, having to physically restrain herself from forming her hands into fists. If she ever saw that guy again, she was going to make sure he never forgot her or her sister. She could barely tamp down the anger she had for him every time she thought about him. How dare he treat her sister like she was nothing.
"Yeah," AJ echoed, but still didn't sound too convincing. She did hate him, she did, but you can't just go from loving someone to hating them like that, at least she couldn't, he seemed to have no problem doing just that.
The suddenness of it all, the quick shift from married to separated to divorcing, it made her rethink the entire relationship. The way she felt about him now, she wondered if she'd ever really loved him, if what she felt wasn't just the fact that everything was so new and fresh and alive. Certainly, his love had an expiration date, and she was waiting for the droves of women before her to tell her the exact same thing one-by-one.
She wondered if they all had a club together, if she would receive a membership card in the mail and a welcome letter. Maybe they had meetings where they all just talked shit about him and laughed, and maybe they all held hands and told the newest member that they would move on, and they would become bigger and better and something so untouchable by his dirty hands.
"You'll be okay," her sister said, saying what she really kind of didn't. "You'll move on, and you'll be better for this. Lesson learned, right?"
"You sound like Mom."
"She's pretty smart," Erica said, going back to her food. "Besides, we never really liked him anyways, just kind of went along with it because you liked him. We didn't ever really want to tell you, but since he's out of your life, I feel comfortable saying that he was always kind of a jerk, you deserve better."
Her sister said it with a confidence she just didn't have right now. She couldn't even keep a husband, what made her think she deserved better. It was really just something people said to make you feel better. She didn't feel like she deserved anyone right now, and she wasn't even thinking about the bigger issue, the bigger fallout over this.
When she was with her husband, she'd become part of his network. His people became her people, his friends became her friends, and to accommodate for that, she had been less than…well, she'd cut people out of her life, she'd cut people out who meant something to her because they'd seen what she couldn't. They'd told her and told her, and she'd just cut them out when they said things she didn't want to hear.
"I have a lot of people mad at me," she admitted sheepishly.
"What? Who the hell is mad at you?" Erica looked like she wanted to start a fight, and AJ rolled her eyes to calm her down. She didn't. She just looked angrier at being essentially shushed. "Why would someone be mad at you over this?"
"Not over this," AJ tried to explain, "I burned a lot of bridges to be with Phil, a lot, and now there's…this gap. I distanced myself from a lot of people, and I hurt a lot of people, and now I'm stuck here, alone, and the people I need most, they barely even talk to me anymore. There are a lot of amends I need to make."
"This guy," Erica muttered, "I hate him."
AJ laughed a little at the repetition of what she'd muttered to herself earlier, "Yeah, seeing the truth really hurts, but then I look at my life now, and I was really…I let him suck me in and now he's spit me out, and I don't even know who I am anymore."
"You're AJ, that's who you are, that's who you've always been. You're a smart, beautiful, amazing woman, and you will get through this, and you will forget about that man who probably didn't even satisfy you in bed."
AJ giggled now, "Let's not go there, Er, let's just not go there."
When Monday rolled around and she had to get back to work (she'd been granted a little time off to deal with things, and she was so grateful her bosses didn't hate her), she felt very lonely when before, before everything, she would have bounced into work with a giddy smile on her face, and she would have greeted everyone, but now she felt isolated and nodded a few times to people when they acknowledged her. There was nobody here she could run to and jump into their arms for a hug.
"Hey, you're back," she looked up and saw Paige in front of her. "Welcome back."
"Thanks," AJ said, and there was the look of pity in Paige's eyes that she'd seen with everyone else, well, mostly everyone else. "Good to be back."
"How are you?" Paige wondered.
"Doing well, getting things together, getting back to Florida, things are going okay," she had the mechanical response down to a tee now. It was the same thing she'd been saying to everyone who asked, meaning her family, and the few friends she had before the wrestling business. At least they were the ones she hadn't pushed away completely.
"Good, good, well, I think you've got a match later, to get you back in the whole," she waved her hand around to indicate what she meant. "Good luck, you'll need it," Paige winked at her, and AJ was at least glad for the semi-normal conversation, but Paige was not one of the people she broke contact with.
"Thanks," AJ nodded and walked further into the den of the beast. She was not encouraged by the encounter, but at least people were talking to her.
She was almost to the women's locker room when she saw them, and she stopped. E and Dolph were laughing and joking around with Summer, poking her in the side and making her laugh. She watched the exchange and couldn't help but imagine the times that Summer would be her, and she'd be with her two boys, who constantly cracked her up with their non sequiturs and random quips.
Although she was on okay terms with E, they still didn't speak all that much anymore, and he'd stopped referring to her as his adopted mother ages ago. Still, he didn't hate her, and he didn't ignore her when they walked down the hallways, and when the divorce became news, he was one of the first people to call her to check up on her and make sure she was okay. She'd appreciated it so much that he cared enough to call.
However, she'd been hoping for another call that never came. Her eyes traveled over to the blond man who was saying something animatedly, his arms gesticulating wildly at his sides. He was making the other two laugh, and she wondered what kind of ridiculous joke he was making because he was so full of them. She remembered laughing so hard once that soda came out her nose, and man, did that burn. She missed that. She missed him.
She missed their friendship.
He'd tried so hard to warn her, and in that warning, all she could see was him not supporting her, and she'd cut him out of her life so neatly that it was like they'd never been friends at all. She could see now that he saw what she didn't, that he'd been friends with the people her husband had hurt before, and he was trying to save and protect her from the same fate. She'd pushed him away, and now everything he'd warned her against was coming true, and the biggest bridge of them all was a gaping hole between them now.
"AJ," Summer was the first to say something, and the damnable pity was in her eyes. "Hey."
"Hey," she took a few steps closer to the group, "hey, guys."
"Oh, you know," Dolph said, glancing at his watch, "I promised Zack I'd go find him before the show, he needed to ask me something and I completely forgot, so I'll see you guys later, bye."
He went away without even looking back, and she followed him longingly. She missed the man who became her best friend, and she didn't know how to get him back in her life again. There had been harsh words said, and she'd actually slapped him for those words, and that was it, it was over after that, and she had no way of knowing how to fix it or if she even could fix it, but one thing was pretty clear to her.
She had to try.