Man in the Making
Chapter 12: Behind Every Great Hero
A/N: I feel like I need to warn y'all that this chapter is especially long, but it felt like it needed to be. This version of Randy is my favorite - at least, of the ones that I've written, and I've always wanted to explain exactly why he is the guy that he is. Why he cares so much about the girls that he's with and why he's so drawn to chicks who seem not quite like his type. I hope this chapter does that for you - that's my aim, and I kind of love it. Hopefully, you will, too! (Kim, you might need a tissue - I don't know.)
When I first came to St. Louis, it was with every intention of knocking Randy Orton flat on his non-existent ass. He ruined everything in my world and I wanted him to hurt as badly as I did. Hell, I wanted anybody to hurt as badly as I did. Three days later, I don't know what's happened, and I'm not sure why I don't hate him. I should feel like the world is going to end tomorrow, but I don't. I certainly shouldn't smile so much when I'm around him, but I do.
It feels wrong, like I should feel guilty for enjoying this time, but not at all wrong at the same time. I know that probably doesn't make much sense. Nothing I've been feeling for the past few days makes much sense. I used to think my life was an emotional roller coaster of sorts, like it was never going to stop being up one second and down the next. Turns out, I was just standin' in line for the ride back then. Because since I met Randy? It's been ten times worse. Or better. Fuck, I don't even know.
I only know that Randy hasn't talked to me at all since we left the restaurant. Since we saw his amazingly sexy ex-girlfriend. Tatum is . . . I don't know how to explain or describe her except to say that she is the epitome of mystifying beauty. The kind you shouldn't find hella sexy, but you just do? That's Tatum, in a nutshell.
"Randy," I finally say after we've gotten home and made our way into the kitchen. "Are you okay?" He's spent so much time over the last few days checking on me. Seems like I should return the listening ear.
His back is turned as he looks for something in one of the kitchen drawers. I know he's not fixing a snack - he couldn't possibly be hungry after all of that fucking food we just snarfed down. "Yeah," he nods and shrugs his shoulders, his head bent in abject concentration. "Why?"
He's not okay. Years of living with a man who is not really big on the conversation have taught me how to read body language. Randy's says that he is riddled with thoughts. Of what, I'm not sure, but I'm betting they're dark and beautiful. "You've just been really quiet since we saw Tatum," I speak softly, in case he might be prone to snapping. I never used to cringe every time a man opened his mouth, terrified that I was going to get yelled at. Not before.
At the mention of her name, he drops whatever he was holding. "Tatum's," he starts and then slides the drawer shut, turning and shooting me the fakest fucking smile I have ever seen in my life. "It's a long story. She's, um," he shakes his head and I can almost see his thoughts rattling around in his head. "She's a recovering addict."
Wow. That girl, beautiful and clear-eyed, is a drug addict? Damn. "Well, it looks like she's maybe doing alright now. She looks good." I'm not really sure how to answer something like that. I mean, that statement alone lets me know that I don't really know anything about Randy Orton at all. I would have imagined all of his exes to be stunning supermodels with miles of legs and enormous, fake boobs. In my mind, they were all perfect. Not drug addicts.
"She does." His eyes never really rest on anything as he steps around me to open the refrigerator, withdrawing a beer. "She's actually really healthy now."
I want to express my . . . uh, my what? Congratulations? That's not the right word. I want to let him know that I'm happy for her, but I'm not entirely sure that he is. Not with that look on his face. "And that's not a good thing?" Guys say that we're confusing, but what about them? They're kinda fucked up, actually. Way more moody than we are, I think.
Randy leans back against the kitchen counter, resting his arm behind him against the marble. "No, it's great," he says in a tone that says it's not so great at all. "She just seems to think that she has all the answers now to everybody's problems. Since she's tackled her own shit or whatever." He rolls his eyes and it kind of bothers me.
I mean, he has every right to act weird about seeing his ex. But there's something else behind his eyes that I don't like. Something disgusted. Something almost angry. Resentful might be the right word for it. "But you don't think she has the answer for yours?" I cross my arms over my chest and lean against the refrigerator door.
"Most times, I'm not sure there's even a problem to have any fucking answers for," he speaks, his eyes drifting to the floor.
"And the other times?" I challenge. I want to help him through whatever issue he needs to work through. Maybe that will even the scales. Balance us and I won't feel so guilty for dumping all of my shit on him. But I can't do that if he won't open up to me. I'm starting to understand what Maria meant when she told me that learning to be friends with Randy was a slow, painful process and that nobody would blame me if I bailed on it.
When he raises his head, the look is different. I don't think he's angry anymore because it's not so firey, just defeated. Just a little boy, looking for someone to check under his bed for the monsters that wanna eat him in the dark. "I don't know," he smiles before taking another drink. "Maybe there is."
Butterflies slam against my stomach as I contemplate what to say next. If he doesn't wanna talk about it, he could fly off the handle and kick me out of the house. Wouldn't be the first time I slept on the porch. But if he does wanna talk, is he going to expect me to have some answers? Can I even think about solving someone else's problems when I can't solve my own? "You wanna talk about it?"
He chuckles cynically. "I never wanna talk about it," he informs me in a somber tone that nearly breaks my heart into a thousand pieces. Without another word, he brushes past me and down the hall toward his room.
And just like that, I feel as alone as I have ever felt in my entire life. Not just because he walked away, but because he shut me out. He wants to hear my problems whenever I want to talk about them. He wants to save the day for me, but he doesn't trust me to do the same for him. There's something behind Randy Orton's white knight complex. I know there is. I just don't know how to reach it.
Three hours after Randy left me alone in the kitchen, I'm laying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. I want to go to sleep, since it's about one in the morning and that's what people do at one in the morning. At least, in my experience. Or they have sex, and since that's not happening in this house - AT ALL - then I think I should be asleep.
Except that I can't sleep. I keep thinking about Josh. About his eyes, and the way his arms feel around me when we sleep. I think about how often I've dozed off to the sound of his snoring. About how I never really noticed that until it wasn't there. And I never realized how cold my back feels without his hot breath on it.
I have a million reasons to hate him - I know that. I'm not stupid, in case you were wondering. I know what he's doing to me. And I know that I'm letting him do it. I know all of the judgemental things that people say about girls like me, and I don't respect myself any more than you respect me. I don't. I never meant to be this girl - never meant to run in fear, or hide behind someone else. I never meant to cower at the feet of any man. I was as independent and free-spirited as anyone.
I feel like I shouldn't, but I miss him. I miss Josh. A part of me wishes that I could just go back and make everything like it was before. Not before I left. Before I met Randy. Before Randy noticed me in that bar. Before Josh took his job with Raw. I wish that we could edit it all, cut out the ugly fights and the possessive tirades. I wish that I could erase them all and just put together a montage of the beautiful moments when he makes me feel like a princess or says amazingly sweet things to me when no one else can hear.
"Her name was Dani," Randy's voice interrupts my musings and I roll my head to the doorway, where he leans in a pair of nylon track pants and a white tee shirt. "She wasn't a cheerleader. Wasn't the most popular girl in school or anything," he goes on, running his hand over his chin and staring at the wall as though her face might be etched there. "She was in a couple of clubs because her mom was a teacher and she made her get involved, but you could always tell she didn't want to be there." His lips twitch into a half smile of recollection. "She wasn't a loner or anything, but she wasn't the center of everything, either, ya know?"
I nod and hoist myself into a seated position, pulling my knees to my chest as he pushes off of the door frame and lowers himself to the foot of the bed. Honestly? I have no idea what he's talking about, but I owe him this. I owe it to him to listen to what he has to say. More than that, I want to hear it.
"Fuck, she was sexy," he finally laughs, his head falling back as he looks to the ceiling. "Darker than your average punk kid," he goes on, "but not quite goth, either. Long red hair and these blue eyes that just cut through to your soul. She wasn't unfriendly, but she was never the first to strike up a conversation, either.
"Might be hard to believe," he says, pivoting on the bed to face me, one leg bent on the mattress, "but I wasn't exactly this charming specimen of a man back then, so we didn't really speak to each other. At all." Picking at a thread on the bedspread, he just keeps shaking his head. "She was the girl who made me all tongue-tied, and I was the guy who stared at the back of her head like a creepy stalker all through English Lit."
I can imagine it, actually. As he loses himself in thought for a moment, I allow myself to picture high-school Randy, all shy and lookin' like that guy in the kitchen earlier. And I can picture Dani, all Avril Lavigne and aloof, ignoring him while he stared at the back of her head and daydreamed about the possibilities. It's endearing and makes him that much cuter than I already think that he is.
Randy licks his lips and looks at me with this boyish twinkle that I haven't seen from him in a long time, like thinking of his first love really does something to him. Something cleansing. "Dammit if every day that she didn't talk to me didn't make me want her that much more. Illusive," he nods as though that's the perfect word. "She was illusive."
"So who finally gave in first?" I ask, finding myself more sucked into this story than I expected to be. I want to know about this couple I'm picturing in my head, this awkwardly beautiful pair. Noticing each other but only from afar. Somebody had to give in. Knowing Randy, it was him doing something incredibly stupid that finally got her attention.
Turning fully on the bed, he stretches his legs and crosses them at his ankles, right next to me. "She did," he nods, his eyes shooting me this look that said she couldn't help herself, he was just so damn irresistible. And then he laughs because we both know that's a bunch of bull shit. "My dad was doin' a show in town, and her dad worked at the arena. I was hangin' around, like I always did when he was in town, and her mom dropped her off 'cause she was supposed to go to her dad's for the weekend.
"We met up smoking behind the building. She talked first. Mostly we just stared at the ground and nodded at whatever the other person might throw out there." And he's far away again. His eyes are fixed on the rainbows covering my sock, and this heart-breaking smile stretches over his full lips. "It was so high school. It was perfect, ya know? The best day of my life. Up to that point, anyway."
I stretch my legs, resting them next to his while thinking about my own high school loves. I didn' t really have one boyfriend - no big, bad love. That was Josh, years later. But I had crushes. And they were pure. Perfect, just like Randy said. For that reason alone, I can feel every vibe of innocent reminiscence radiating from him in this moment.
"After that," he finally begins to speak again, and I rest my head against the wall, allowing his movie to play out on the screen of the ceiling. "I don't really know how it evolved. I mean, she would smile at me in the halls. Dani didn't smile much, ya know, but when she did? Fuck, it was like everything else just stopped. She was like this total mystery to everyone, but I liked the fact that she dropped her guard with me. I would get out of wrestling practice, and she would be coming out of the yearbook office, and we'd walk home together and talk about whatever. One day, she started holding my hand so tight I thought she would never let go."
I let out a breath and speak without thinking. "Sounds like love." The most perfect kind of love. The kind that is untouched by sex and drama and bull shit adult egos. The kind of love I miss in the depths of my soul sometimes.
Randy nods. "It was. Intense, kinda terrifying love," he smiles and winks at me when I nod in agreement. We've both been there. Most everybody's been there at some point, I guess. First love is pretty universal, I suppose. "But everything about Dani was intense. Her music, and poetry, and her freaky little sketches in her notebook. She was like," he stops and searches for the right word, this amused grin breaking his lips when he thinks of it. "She was emo before it was the thing to be." I curl my nose - never a big fan of the whole 'my life sucks so bad as I sit here in my house in the suburbs' movement. "No, but it made her interesting," Randy defends, as though my accepting it would make it more valid. "Like way more interesting than any of those other chicks at school."
"Did she love you back?" I ask him the million dollar question, my eyes heavily-lidded with the cadence of his voice.
He leans back and rests his arms on the bed behind him. "She did," he answers with a nod. "Enough to believe in me when I told her I wanted to wrestle for a living." The slightest hint of a blush creeps into his cheeks, but he shakes it off. "I know that sounds stupid. It's girlie as all fuck," he begins to say.
"It's not stupid," I interrupt. It's not stupid. Not at all. "Everybody needs that," I assure him. I wish I had that. Of course, I don't say that. This isn't about me. But it's true.
Again, his focus leaves me and floats to somewhere in the distance. The distant past. Where he was just a kid, in love with another kid, and the world was exactly as it should have been. As it should be able to stay. Forever. "She was it, man," he laughs. "She was everything." Another laugh. Like true, genuine laughter. The kind of laughter that precedes an unexpected cry of longing and heart-wrenching pain. It's the kind of laugh that masks the hurt, that you pray will be enough to hold the tears at bay, but never really is.
But Randy doesn't cry. Not really. He raises one knee and rests his arm over it, running one of his massive hands over his blinking eyes, but he just grows quiet. Head in hand. His shoulders falling further than I have ever seen them under the burden of his memory. I don't know that I have ever wanted so badly to hug someone. To offer comfort. But I know there's only one thing that I can really do for him right now. I'm just not sure he wants me to press the issue.
Drawing my legs to my chest once again, I rest my chin against my knees and listen to him sniffle. "What happened, Randy?" Whether he wants to or not, the only thing that really makes it better is talking about it. He taught me that. A couple of days ago. Of course, it doesn't make anything better in reality, but it's a momentary band-aid for the never-healing bullet wound.
Standing, he begins to pace at the foot of the bed. "It was a Saturday afternoon. My mom took my brother and sister out of town to visit my dad. Her parents were at some conference in Chicago or something. It was the day," he shakes his head and stares out the window for a moment. "Felt like I'd been waiting for it forever, but we agreed that we were finally gonna do it."
The way he bites his lip tells me exactly what 'it' was. "Ah," I nod. "It."
"Every seventeen-year-old boy's dream, right?" he shrugs.
Most guys talk about their first sexual experience in one of two ways. They talk it way up like they were the mack from day one. Or they talk it way down, and make it a huge joke, so that they can laugh at it with everyone else. Nobody ever tells the truth about their first time. Nobody.
Except that Randy looks like he might break the mold. "I wasn't worth shit that day at practice," he kind of half chuckles. "Couldn't think about anything but being with Dani. Nerves started kickin' in, though, 'round the time I headed to her house. I think I puked in the bushes about a block away from her place. I mean, we both knew it was our first times. She told me about a million times that it was gonna be awkward and we just had to get past the first one to move on to the second."
"Doesn't matter," I finally manage to say, drawing Randy's gaze from the window. "Doesn't matter if you tell yourself it's gonna be weird. Or if someone else tells you. Still scares the shit outta ya." If you say that you weren't nervous the first time you had sex, I would probably say you were lying, at least the first time you weren't too drunk to forget it. Maybe you didn't puke in the bushes, but you were nervous. We all are. I was terrified. So was Randy. It makes sense to me.
He nods and we're on the same page again and, even if the players are different, the script is the same. "I was scared, but it didn't fucking matter. I was in love with her, and that was going to be enough to make everything else okay." He nods to the bed. "We were on her bed, and she was so tiny. And back then, I was tall and lanky. Still handsome," he smiles, sort of, as though he's trying to make a joke that doesn't quite connect. "But skinny. And even though we shouldn't have, didn't look like we should have, we fit perfect. Like we were meant to fit together, ya know?"
I did know. But there was nothing to say, so I just nodded.
"The nerves kinda came off with my shirt. I felt like it was the most important thing that would ever happen to me in my life. And not because it was sex. It wasn't just about the sex. Not for me. It was about sex with Dani. About being with her. As close to her as I could be. Closer than anybody else could be."
His face clouds in an instant and I find myself shivering against his suddenly cold demeanor. "Randy?" I ask when he says nothing, only leans against the wall and stares hard at the floor, as if he's left me alone in the room of perpetual young love and escaped to somewhere else. Somewhere painful.
"She got weird after that. Started tellin' me that I was the only person she ever trusted enough. She didn't tell me why," he answered my unspoken question as his hand ran over the top of his head. "Just took her shirt off, and then stood up and took her pants off. And I wasn't ready for it. At all."
A part of me wants so badly to push him further, to demand to know what he wasn't ready for. The sex? Something else? What wasn't he ready for? But something tells me this is the part of the story he needs to tell, the part I need to just shut up and hear. In his time. On his terms.
"For the jagged marks all over her stomach and her arms. These hideous, ugly scars. All over her thighs, too," he shakes his head and tears spill over his cheeks before he can catch them. He doesn't even try, though he does sniffle and take a deep breath. When he speaks again, his voice is barely above a whisper. "Some of them were new. Some weren't."
Ya know what? I didn't see it coming. I was so wrapped up in this story of teenage love, that I nearly forgot this was Randy sharing something deeply painful. "Cutter?" I'm not sure where the whisper comes from, because it doesn't sound or feel like it's coming out of me.
He just nods. "It didn't matter, though. None of it mattered to me in that moment. She was beautiful. That didn't change just because she had a few scars, ya know?"
I can admit that I've had a crush on Randy since I met him - not to him, of course, but in my own mind. But I'm not sure I've ever been so crazy about him as I am when he speaks about this unconditional love that he had for Dani. I can't help wishing that Josh would get that same look in his eye when he talks about me.
"I think that's beautiful," I tell him through tears I didn't even realize had sprung to my own eyes. I wipe them with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, but he just shakes his head, as if to tell me I should reserve judgement until I've heard the whole story.
"I couldn't fuckin' get 'em outta my head, ya know? Couldn't stop thinkin' about 'em." He returns to the bed and sits next to me, leaned against the headboard. His arm brushes against mine when he crosses them over his chest. "So I asked about 'em about a week later.
"And she was totally honest about everything. Told me why she did it, how it all started. How she always felt like the world was crashing in on her, that she was losing control, that she had to release the pressure somehow." I don't know if this is the right way to describe him in that moment, but Randy seems like he's on autopilot now. He's not robotic, but I'm not sure he's really thinking about what he's saying anymore, or if he's just opening his mouth and letting the words tumble out. "It was so overwhelming. So fucking confusing."
"How could she love you like she said she did and keep doing that to herself?"
Randy shoots me a look that says he's a little frightened by how closely I understand the words he's not saying. The truth is that I've never been a cutter, but I can totally understand the need to get a grip on a world that won't stop moving. And I understand needing something that people say is unhealthy. I understand wanting to stop, wishing that I could, and not being able to, because the fear of the world outside of it is just too much to wrap my head around. I get that. I feel like I understand Dani. Maybe just a little.
He rolls his head back and sniffles again while looking at the ceiling, no longer trying to hide the tears. It's almost as though he's finally trusted me enough to show his emotions. At least, that's how I like to think of it. "She was my everything, ya know? I was just this shy little kid who thought he'd never stop out of his famous father's shadow when I met her. She made me believe in myself." He pauses and I know what he'll say before he says it. But I just shift my crossed arms to rest my fingers against his bicep. Anything to let him know that I'm here, that I'm listening. That I care. "Why couldn't I do it for her?"
Fuck. I wish that I could answer that question. Or that someone could answer it for me. I wish, not for the first time, that I wasn't so damn broken. That I wasn't so far beyond damaged. That I wasn't too fucked to help someone else. I wish that I wasn't worthless in this moment.
He sighs and weaves an arm around my shoulder. As my head rests on his chest, I feel tears balling in my throat. Not because it's a romantic gesture, but because it's the most comforting place I've ever been. If he can feel half of the peace that I feel in this place, at this very time . . . well, I just hope that he can. "She said that she loved me," he speaks over the top of my head and I can feel his chin brush against my crown. "Just that everything in the world didn't revolve around our relationship. That love didn't fix everything. We just weren't enough to drown out all the other bull shit in the world. In her past. The things she had seen, experienced, been through before me.
"I wasn't enough for her. Wasn't enough to save her from the other bull shit." I can feel his breath brushing against my scalp, hot and filled with sadness. It breaks my heart and I know that the tears have started to fall, but I can't stop them. "Didn't matter what I tried after that, new scars just kept showing up. I had them memorized." His hand runs lazily up and down my arm. I know he's not even thinking about it - it's an automatic response to human contact. "I knew when one hadn't been there before. And I knew they were getting worse."
For a long time we sit in silence, only breathing to fill the stillness between us. What do I say? What can I say to that? And what does he say? I mean, where does the story go from here? I'm afraid, in a lot of ways, to find out. I'm afraid of the ending. For some reason, resting here with him, I feel like I need a happy ending. I need for this to turn out well.
Finally, Randy's throat clears and I feel his chest move beneath my ear. "When I left for boot camp after graduation, she promised to write. And she did, for awhile. Every day. Thoughts. Fears. Concerns. Excitement." He takes a breath and I feel his his head shake. "She couldn't wait to go to college. To get the fuck outta St. Louis and away from her life.
"And then the letters stopped. Just stopped cold, and by the time I got home, I was fuckin' freaked out, ya know? I mean, something was fucking wrong. She wouldn't answer my calls. She just disappeared." He squeezes my arm and sucks air through his teeth and I can tell this part of the story makes him angry. I can feel the shift in his body language. I think that might be even more comforting in it's familiarity than just having his arm around me. How fucked up is that? "Her mom finally answered her phone after three weeks of me callin' like a stalker. Told me that Dani cut too deep, had to be put in the hospital. Then they took her to a fuckin' psych ward.
"It was such bull shit, ya know? She wasn't fuckin' crazy. She didn't need professional help. She just needed to get away from the bull shit around us." He swallows hard and kinda releases me, not enough to push me away - just enough to resume circulation in my arm. I hadn't even realized it stopped.
I find myself shifting on the bed, staring up into his beautiful, tear-filled eyes. "Did you see her after that?" I don't know why, but I need for him to have seen her. I need for him to tell me that she made it. That maybe she's still out there waiting for him somewhere.
"Visited her a couple times," he answers, pulling his arm back to fold his hands in his lap and drum his fingers together. Like he's lost. Like he doesn't know what to do anymore. "She wasn't the same Dani that I left behind, though. They changed her. Made her talk about things she didn't want to talk about. Drew these feelings out of her that she didn't want to share with anyone else. They exposed her." His tone changes again - this time to frustration, or irritation. "They broke her down completely. And the girl that they rebuilt wasn't my Dani. Not anymore."
"Was she better?" He chuckles again and I kick myself inwardly for even asking. I mean, honestly? If she was better, would he be gritting his teeth and forcing himself to breathe through his nose?
Instead of blowing up, though, he just nods. "She said she was. Healthier." His shoulders shrug again. "I don't know - I guess she was. I didn't see her after that. After she got released. Don't really know what ever happened to her, either. Just kinda lost touch. High school love just drifted away, I guess."
It happens. I know it happens. With virtually everyone. The high school relationships that actually turn into adult relationships are so rare, so few and far between. Still, for right now? In this moment? It would be nice to believe that they didn't have to. That pure, innocent love could still exist.
Randy turns his body toward me, and we're facing each other on the bed. I don't know what I'm supposed to be feeling. I don't know what I am feeling. I just know that I don't want him to stop talking. I don't want to leave this room, this moment. Ever. "Other girls came along, ya know, but they were mostly just flings. Perfect girls who had it all together, all the time. The ones that every guy is supposed to want. The ones I never did."
He's looking into my eyes and I'm not sure what he's trying to tell me. That I'm not perfect? I know that. Josh tells me that all the time. But it doesn't seem like a put down or an insult when Randy says it. It doesn't seem like a bad thing at all when he's smiling at me with that lop-sided, please-don't-think-I'm-a-freak-because-I-shared-my-feelings-with-you expression.
"Why didn't you?" I ask the only thing that pops into my head.
He smiles easily and rolls his shoulders, as though he's been in the same position for too long. "Perfect girls are pretty to look at, but they're not real, ya know? Not really. I mean, I'm not perfect. The world's not perfect. To be with someone who constantly tries to pretend that it is, that she is, only magnifies the imperfection around us. I can't be with a perfect girl," he concludes, as though it should be obvious. "Not for long term or anything."
Which brings us to drug addicted Tatum, I presume. "So you found an imperfect one?" Things about Randy start to come into focus for me in that moment, but I only roll off the bed and offer him a hand. "Take a walk with me," I invite. As much as I don't want to leave this BFF-cocoon we've created, we need to get out of this room. Out of this house for a minute. I need air that isn't tainted with his cologne and a never-ending sadness.
He follows me out of the room, and as we start down the stairs, he chuckles. "Tatum . . . she, um," he stops speaking until we reach the front door. "Tatum actually kinda found me."
