"What the hell were you thinking?"

Dolph rolled his eyes a little as he avoided his brother's gaze. He could still feel his eyes boring into him, but he ignored it and continued to stare up at the ceiling. He was in his safe place, his home, thousands of miles away from AJ and what was left of their relationship. He'd done what he had to do, and now he was suffering through the ramifications of it. He never thought getting over a relationship that never was would be so difficult.

After his conversation with her on Monday, they hadn't talked to one another, and he wasn't sure if it was because he was avoiding her or she was avoiding him, but it was probably a mixture of both. He wasn't sure what AJ was thinking, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he believed he'd done the right thing. Letting go of something that was never going anywhere was better than hanging on and being the only one left when she walked away.

"I did the right thing."

"The right thing?"

"The right thing is basically pushing her into the arms of a guy who is awful. We both know how awful he really is, we both have friends who dated him and know about what a terrible guy he is."

"Yes, because if I tell her that, which I'm sure she's heard, it won't make her want to be with him more. She's stubborn, the kind of stubborn that doesn't like someone telling her what to do. So I go in there, tell her all the horror stories I've heard firsthand about Punk, and she just falls into my arms? No, she won't, she'll tell me off and probably go sleep with him just to prove me wrong."

"So what, you're doing the whole letting go and if it was meant to be she'll come back shtick? That's bullshit," his brother was almost yelling at him with how vehement he sounded about this. "You need to fight for this girl if you want to be with this girl."

"I can't fight for nothing!" Dolph turned his head to the side to look at Briley. "There was no relationship. We were friends with benefits, that means nothing. It's not like I took her out or made anything official."

"Please, I've hung out with the two of you, I've seen the way you look at each other."

"You hung out with us like twice, and we weren't even sleeping together at that point," Dolph turned his head back to look at the ceiling again, like all the answers would be up there. At the very least, it meant not having to look in the accusing eyes of his brother. "At the end of the day, Punk has more in common with her, and maybe heh as changed."

"Oh my God, are you listening to yourself right now?"

"I'm telling the truth! I'm seeing the truth!" Dolph sat up, hunching over to rest his elbows on his knees as he ran his hands through his hair. "The reason AJ and I didn't move into relationship territory is because we wouldn't work as a couple. We worked as friends, we worked as people who fucked each other, but as boyfriend and girlfriend, it wouldn't have worked."

"You're lying to yourself to make yourself feel better, but sure, let her go to Punk, let her get emotionally abused like all the rest then she'll come out of that a broken mess."

"AJ isn't Beth."

"And Beth wasn't Maria," Briley said, "shall we go on maybe?"

"No, we shouldn't," Dolph said, sometimes whenever he had occasion to see Maria and hang out with her, he still saw her face after Punk told her that their lives weren't going in the same direction (this was after Maria believed Punk's odd behavior was because he was getting set to propose).

"I think the point is made, don't you?"

"The point is it's her life, I can't make her decisions for her. She's an adult, and—"

"That's not the point I'm making," Briley told him. "The point I'm making is that we both know that you're in love with her, you've told me, and I'm saying that because of that, why would you ever let her put herself in a situation that could end badly. You love her, don't let her fall for that shit. And don't give me that bullshit about how you don't have anything in common, that doesn't fly, man, that is just crap you've come up with to convince yourself that you're doing the right thing when you're not."

"So I just go up to her and tell her that I don't like the idea she's seeing him?"

"No, you go up, like a man, and tell her that whatever it was that got you two together, those feelings have changed. Don't let this slip you buy," Briley was passionate about his words. He wanted to see his brother happy, and AJ made him happy, why wouldn't he root for that?

"It's not that easy."

"Nothing in life is easy. Do you think it was easy for me after getting released from WWE? I didn't know what I was going to do after that happened, but I'm here, I'm moving forward."

"It's different."

"Not really."

"I can't just…what if she doesn't feel the same way? What if I go up to her and I tell her how I feel and she rejects me? What if it sends her right into Punk's arms?"

"Then at least you tried, right? I mean, who wants to go through their life wondering about the what ifs. If it's not AJ, you'll get over it, but if you don't do it, you'll always stew about it."

"You're disgusting, you know that," Dolph said, scoffing at his brother's wisdom. He hated that he was being told all these wise things by his younger brother. He was the one who was supposed to be the smart one, the wise one, and his life just felt like a big ball of chaos.

"Hey, I know what I'm talking about," Briley shrugged. "If you want to do something, you should do it soon, before she decides to settle for that guy and get hurt like all the others."

Dolph still wasn't sure what to do when that weekend rolled around. This week, he was scheduled to be on the same house show circuit as AJ, so she would be there, and much to his luck, Punk wouldn't. That might work to his advantage if he could just work up the courage to talk to her. He didn't know how to broach the topic of the two of them, and he wasn't sure he even wanted to at this point.

"Is something going on between you and AJ?" Kaitlyn snuck into the seat next to him in catering.

"What?" Dolph looked over at her, trying to remain neutral. He didn't need anyone to know about him and AJ. His brother knowing was already enough of a headache as it was. He didn't need big-mouthed Kaitlyn knowing too. If he told her then the next thing Kaitlyn would do would be to run to AJ and tell her.

"I don't know, but she's been acting weird," Kaitlyn explained, which caught Dolph's attention.

"Weird how?" he wondered, his voice rising a little bit at the end. It made Kaitlyn pause slightly, but if it piqued her interest, she didn't show it.

"Just, I don't know," Kaitlyn repeated, and Dolph wanted to shake the information out of her, but didn't want to be so obvious. Instead, he swallowed it down and cleared his throat slightly, making himself relax. His body slumped just a little bit in a convincing imitation of calm.

"Don't know?" Now he was just trying to prod her along.

"I brought up going out to dinner with you tonight, and she was just evasive about it, and I didn't know why," Kaitlyn finally spit it out. "I just thought maybe there was something going on between you guys because it didn't seem like she had a problem with me."

"So she has a problem with me?" Dolph asked, hoping AJ said something that might indicate there was something on her end that he needed to know, something that would make talking to her a little bit easier.

"I don't think she necessarily has a problem with you," Kaitlyn bit her lip a little bit as she recalled her conversation, "it was more she was a little sad, so I thought you guys had a fight, did you? You guys haven't seemed to hang out as much the last couple weeks. I know she's been going out with Punk, but I figured she'd still have time to hang out with us."

"She went out with Punk once though, I mean, like on a date."

"No, they went on another one," Kaitlyn told him, and Dolph's heart sank.

"When?" he asked, his voice suddenly dull and monotone.

"Tuesday, after SmackDown, I think they caught some midnight movie and they went out for a late night pancake fest or something afterwards. She just told me they were at IHOP until like 4 in the morning."

"Really? So they're like a thing now?"

"I don't know," Kaitlyn didn't pick up on the vibe that Dolph was sending out. With every word that Kaitlyn spoke, Dolph was slowing losing the nerve to talk to AJ. She'd taken his advice, and now he was too late and it was only his own fault. It deflated his entire soul to know the cause of his pain was himself and his stupidity. He was always self-sabotaging himself, no more than right now.

"You don't know?"

"I don't know because she hasn't said anything, and she did say it was casual right now, and that she wasn't sure she wanted it to be more, so yeah, I don't think they're really a thing now, but they have been out together a couple times, and I heard they were going to go out next week, he's actually going to be in Florida at the performance center, so I think he's going to spend some time with her."

"I see," Dolph said, that was a lot of information, and it wasn't all bad, "there's nothing going on between me and AJ, nothing bad I mean, we're still cool, I just think we've been busy doing our own thing that I don't think we've had enough time to spend together."

"Yeah, okay, well, you should, I think she misses you." With that, Kaitlyn trounced off to bug someone else, her words lingering in the air like a sweet perfume. Dolph sighed and cleaned up his plate before he went to get this over with. He found her stretching in a far off corner of the arena, and he was lucky for his knowledge of her because he knew she liked these dark corners for herself. When she stood up, she was surprised to see him, he could tell with the way her eyes widened and her lips quirked up slightly.

"Hey, stranger," she said to him, straightening herself up a little bit more. "I haven't heard from you in a while."

"I heard you've been busy with Punk," he said without thinking, and her eyebrows knitted together.

"Not really," she told him, "can we get together tonight?"

He didn't know what she meant by that. Did she want to sleep with him tonight? Did she just want to spend time with him? Was it only because Punk wasn't going to be here tonight that she wanted to spend time with him? Did he want to spend time with her when there was so much hanging between them? Could he conceal his own feelings for a whole night with her? If they did sleep together, would he be able to keep it impersonal? "Where?"

"Just after the show?" she asked. "I mean, we haven't, and I thought—"

"Yeah, let's hang out."