After leaving catering Jaime considered heading straight to gorilla position but glanced down and remembered she was still wearing the hoodie she had thrown over the top of her gear before she left the locker room. As unlikely as it seemed that anyone would want a ruined, ten year old hoodie she couldn't quite bring herself to leave it abandoned backstage and so with a sigh she turned around and headed back down what she assumed was the corridor she needed to be on to make it back to the locker room. After several minutes of feeling like a Scooby Doo chase walking down endless identical corridors she eventually spotted the Diva's locker room up ahead. As she began to focus her thoughts on the upcoming match she walked back into the room with considerably less apprehension than she had a few hours earlier and walked straight back to the spot she left her bag in before hurriedly stuffing her hoodie inside and zipping the bag closed. As she glanced up she realised there previously full room had dwindled to just a few remaining Divas while she had been on her walk and despite successfully avoiding eye contact on her first visit as she glanced around she cursed her luck as she found herself locked into a stare with the infamous AJ Lee. Although April was a girl she had heard more than her fair share about she wasn't someone she'd crossed paths with at all and although she respected the older woman as far as her career and her character went on a personal level she had absolutely no clue what to expect. And yet she was still staring she realised with a start as the smaller woman made her way over.
"You must be Jaime, right?" she asked neutrally, sticking a tiny, petite hand in front of her.
"Yeah" said Jaime embarrassed, "I was going to introduce myself earlier but there was so many people here and I figured my best bet was to get out of here for a while until it quietens down" she added hastily.
"Don't worry about it" April chuckled warmly, "we're not all as bad as some of us seem, and the girls that are will rip you to pieces whether you introduce yourself to them or not". The smaller woman shrugged and flicked her waist length hair behind her.
"Good to know some things never change no matter where you work then." laughed Jaime, "I think I'm due out there in a few minutes so I better try and find my way back to Gorilla" she added.
"Good luck, they seem like a good crowd out there" smiled April before heading back over to the other side of the room.
As the newbie and, to be brutally honest with herself, not one the 'sexier' Divas, Jaime had wanted to avoid any awkwardness and so had applied her own makeup in the hotel before she left. She was never really comfortable with anyone else doing her makeup for her and always felt like makeup artists felt the need to ether tan her a horrendous shade of orange or; at the other end of the spectrum they assumed she was going for some kind of emo look and applied enough black eyeliner to successfully coat most of the ring with stuff during the course of a match. She had definitely not worked this hard to reach her WWE debut to ruin her moment with hideously uncharacteristic makeup and so she simply topped up her lipstick in the mirror and dabbed a tiny bit more powder over her increasingly shiny nose before she turned her attention to the hair which had been, as far as she was concerned perfect when she left the hotel but after her battling through the car park outside and being stuffed under a hoodie was looking distinctly worse for wear. Thankfully times like this made her glad she had always stubbornly refused to grow her hair as she stuck her head upside down, gave her hair a liberal spray of dry shampoo and a good shake before flipping her head back up. Grateful as always that her blonde pixie crop simply fell into place she straightened her black leopard print shorts, gave herself a mental shake to rid any thoughts outside of what she needed to do in her match and headed out of the room towards the Gorilla position.
As she stood behind the heavy black curtain waiting for her cue she could hear the murmuring outside, there was no match on and no noise as such just the low rumble of thousands of casual conversations broken up by the occasional scream as someone was convinced they'd seen Superstar X, Y or Z stick a head out of the continuously empty entranceway. Just when she felt like her wait was becoming unbearable and she couldn't physically run through the match in her head anymore she seen Danielle head towards her, trailed by a camera crew Jaime assumed were filming for a new season of Total Divas. Once she was a few feet away she turned and gave the cameraman a half wave as her pressed something on the side to make the lights stop flashing and disappeared off into a corner with a guy holding what she assumed must be the sound recording equipment along with a boom microphone.
"Hey girl, you ready for this" Danielle asked her with a grin, smoothing her long, blonde hair in front of her shoulders.
"I fucking hope so" Jaime replied with a laugh. "Do they not want to film you going out for the match?" she added, nodding a head towards the corner where the camera crew were presumably reviewing the footage from earlier.
"No" the blonde bluntly, "apparently watching wrestlers prepare to wrestle isn't the type of thing they want on the show" she explained, cocking an eyebrow derisively.
"Yeah, god forbid" laughed Jaime, a sudden rush of sympathy for the girl overtaking her. Any pangs of jealousy she may have felt at the older woman being called up before her despite having less training were gone when she realised that being brought to the main roster hadn't turned out to be everything Danielle had clearly hoped for. Gritting her teeth Jaime reminded herself that the best way to remind everyone what it was they were here for was to put on the best match possible and resumed her cycle of mentally running through the match ahead .
As she heard Fandango's music hit she tried to arrange her face into a neutral expression to avoid the eye roll she could feel coming at the masked insult of refusing to give Summer Rae her own entrance music and instead portraying her, even in her own matches a Superstars sidekick. Although she was behind the black curtain she could see in her mind the dance down to the ring and tried to focus on waiting for her own music rather than the offensively sexist comments she could sense Jerry Lawler spewing down at the commentary table. As her music hit she wiped all thoughts of lecherous announcers out of her mind and took a final steadying breath before stepping out into a wall of noise. She knew she had been well liked in NXT and had obviously built up enough of a fan base for creative to finally agree to trying her on the main roster despite their obvious reservations but she couldn't have even begun preparing for the reaction her debut received. Trying not to lose concentration Jaime simply smiled around at the audience, amazed to see several 'Jasmine' signs which always eased her concerns for the ring name she had been given, she felt, by a person who either had not seen or spoke to her or had an incredible sense of irony.
As she reached the ring she hopped easily onto the apron, tucking both legs underneath her before sliding herself under the bottom rope and unfurling smoothly on the other side. After one more quick nod to the crown her music cut off and she felt the arena quieten down as much as it could given the number of people in there. It was by far the biggest crowd she had ever wrestled in front of and despite a decade of experience bringing her to this moment she suddenly felt more likely than ever to fall apart. Just as she was about to freak out and her mind emptied she heard a bell ring and she was suddenly locked up in slim, tanned arms with a curtain of blonde hair in front of her face.
"Don't look around and don't listen to the noise, everyone goes blank their first time out here. Just ignore the back of the arena and it's the same as every shitty gym you've ever been in" came a reassuring voice in her ear as Danielle recognised the blank panic in her eyes and gently brought her back.
As she calmed herself down she snapped back into action and pulled Danielle down into a headlock.
"You're a lifesaver" she breathed into her ear before pulling her into a hammerlock and proceeding to push her roughly towards the opposite turnbuckle. Any sense of panic had long gone as she found herself well and truly in her comfort zone and ran through her debut match in action the exact same way she had ran through it so many times in her head since she had gotten that phone call. Everything went as planned without a hitch and as they got the signal from the referee that they were ready to end the match Jaime stood up from a surprisingly forceful shoulder block, ready to dodge the long, tanned leg that was about to head towards her in the form of a spinning heel kick from Danielle. As she ducked to avoid the leg she wrapped her hands around an impossible tiny waist and flipped a slender arm around the back of her neck until she felt the blonde girl's weight lift up slightly and a split second later flipped her over landing in a bridge ready for the pin fall. Despite knowing that this time the referees hand was going to make it past two she still closed her eyes, as always, while she waited for three long seconds, still bridged over onto a small tanned shoulder, pinning it onto the mat out of an irrational fear that always struck her of someone refusing to play ball and lifting a shoulder out of turn. As she heard the bell ring, much clearer than it had at the start, she finally heard the noise she had blocked out five minutes ago ring back through. She felt a larger hand grip her wrist as her hand was raised by the referee and glanced down to see Danielle give her a rueful wink as she slid out of the ring before turning and backing up the entrance ramp, shouting as much abuse as she could get away with on the now infamously PG show. Jaime climbed up on the turnbuckle to give a final wave to the crowd, soaking in the wall of noise that had returned to the arena before hopping back out of the ring and making her way back up the entrance ramp, using every last bit of willpower she had to coolly walk through the curtain without looking back.