A week passed and I hadn't seen Annabelle since the night of my debut to the WWE universe. Luckily, I didn't have to fight on the first night of NXT—my mind was on other things and my performance would have surely suffered. Instead, I stood by and watched my mentor destroy one of the other rookies, Daniel Bryan. Despite a rib injury suffered at the hands of Jericho, I was to fight Bryan the next Tuesday night. It didn't take much effort to put the much smaller man down. It was almost an insult that I had to fight him in the first place.
After my match, Chris rejoined the other pros and I headed backstage. I had barely made it past the entrance ramp when I saw her. She was leaning against a wall just inside the entrance, her arms folded. She was smiling.
"Congratulations on your win."
"Thanks," I said. I was finding myself dumbfounded again at the sight of her.
We stood in awkward silence. She was still smiling but looked rather uncomfortable. I was at a loss for words myself and beginning to feel a little embarrassed at my inability to say more than three words at a time when I was around her. Then something strange happened; she began to laugh.
"I'm sorry," she said through laughter. "I had this speech planned out in my head of what I was going to say to you and I just completely blew it." She took a deep breath and calmed herself down. Seeing the baffled look on my face, she suddenly looked worried. "You must think I'm a basket case."
"Not at all. I'm just finding myself a little…confused."
"Well that's completely understandable," she said with a smile. "What I meant to say is that I'm sorry for last week. I must have seemed very rude."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I felt foolish after you'd left for not saying something other than 'Hello, I'm Anna'. The truth is I froze up. I couldn't believe you were standing there in front of me after all that time."
"I thought you'd forgotten me," I said darkly.
"How could I forget?" she said, a faint smile on her lips. She came closer to me so that our bodies were only inches apart. "You look the same, though your hair is shorter." She reached up, gently touching my hair. "No more curls," she added with a frown.
I wrapped my fingers around her tiny wrist and pulled her arm down to her side. She looked at me, puzzled. I turned my eyes to the floor.
"What's wrong?"
"Annabelle, you disappeared five years ago. I wondered every day since where you were, how you were doing, if you were even alive…and suddenly you reappear and act as if you'd been there all along. I'm sorry, but I can't pretend that those five agonizing years never happened."
She looked at me, her dark eyes full of hurt. "I'm sorry, Wade. I didn't know how to approach the situation. I didn't mean to make it seem like none of it had mattered. I guess I thought it'd be less painful to pretend that I hadn't lost you back then."
I couldn't bear to see her hurt. I gently touched her face, my fingers warm against her cool porcelain skin. She placed her hand on top of mine and sighed heavily. "I've missed you so much," she said.
"Ahem…Wade."
I spun around to see the ginger-haired Heath Slater standing behind us. He was looking between Annabelle and I with suspicion.
"What is it?" I barked.
"They need you backstage. We're about to shoot the end of the show."
"I'll be right there."
He looked at the two of us once more before walking away. I turned back to Annabelle who was looking a little embarrassed.
"Obviously, this is not the most private place to talk. Can I see you after the show? Maybe we can go out somewhere and catch up properly."
"Well…I'd promised Chris I would go out with him tonight."
I felt the stabbing pains of jealousy in my chest.
"Right. Well, maybe some other time then. I'll see you around."
"Wade, wait!" she called out after me. Furious, I ignored her plea and walked away. I kept walking until I found the others. They were still waiting on Justin and Skip to finish their match.
I took a spot in the corner of the room and waited for the match to end. I was still seething from discovering that Annabelle and my own mentor were going out after the show. It was strange to me that I'd had such a reaction when I knew from the moment I'd seen them together the week before that they'd seemed close. At the same time, my reaction made perfect sense. She was my Annabelle and no one else's.
"What's wrong with you?"
Heath and David were approaching me.
"You'd both do best to mind your own business," I snapped.
Heath had a devious grin on his face. "D'you have a crush on Anna March? Did she turn you down or something?"
"We have history together, not that it's any of your business."
They tried unsuccessfully to get more information out of me until the match was over. Matt Stryker entered the room along with Justin and Skip and we were forced to line up. As Stryker was talking to the camera my mind wandered back to that winter in England when I met Anna and my life forever changed.
