A rotten plank of wood flew into the dumpster, landing with a dull thud on top of a substantial pile of assorted household junk.
"That's job number one done," Seth muttered to himself. Blowing out a deep breath of exhaustion, he took a moment to wipe the worst of the dust and grime from the front of his overalls. They were hardly a fashion statement, but they had definitely been a worthwhile purchase. Emptying the utility room of all of the crap that had been left piled up in there had been a bigger mission than he'd realised before starting the job. He'd done almost all of it himself too, aside from an old desk and a table which Bayley had helped him to carry out to the small front garden, where Seth had broken them up with the aid of a large hammer.
A minute or so resting out in the fresh air revitalised him, so he headed back into the house, removing his heavy duty work gloves as he did so. The manual labour wasn't just tiring, it had made him hungry too. It was lunch time anyway, so he knew what was next on his agenda.
When he reached the kitchen, Seth stopped in the doorway and surveyed the scene. He wasn't the only one who had made a lot of progress, he saw. Bayley had her overalls on too, and a pair of yellow rubber gloves, and her hair was tied back in a simple ponytail. Even so, he liked the view a lot. She was beautiful under any circumstance. Currently, she was crouched down, back to him, scrubbing away at the interior of one of the cupboards. A bucket of water sat on the floor beside her. He could see that she had already cleaned all of the work surfaces, the sink, the top of the cooker and all of the upper cupboards. The smell of cleaning products and bleach was almost overpowering.
"Hey," he said, realising that she hadn't heard his arrival over the top of her vigorous scrubbing.
"Oh, hey." Bayley turned to give him a smile, then blew out a sigh, just as he had a minute or so earlier. Getting to her feet, she stretched to loosen the muscles in her back.
"Looks like you've made a lot of progress in here. The utility room is empty now, apart from a couple of huge spiders I noticed."
Bayley shuddered. "I hate spiders. Man, this place was in such a state. You don't realise until you really get into it, do you? Still, it's not coming up too bad, is it?"
"No, it looks good. You've done a great job, babe. Another couple of hours at it this afternoon, and I think we'll be okay to actually use it as a kitchen, at least until we get it replaced."
"Yeah." Looking around, Bayley wondered who on Earth had paid for kitchen units like these. She absolutely detested the style, but then she supposed that tastes had changed a lot since this kitchen had been fitted. Cleaning it was necessary for now, but she couldn't wait to have something a lot better to work with.
"Get changed out of those overalls. I'm taking you out for lunch. We've got well over an hour before the electrician shows up, and I'm starving."
"Yay!" Bayley loved being surprised with something nice like that. It had been impossible to hold in her excitement. She walked over to him, pulling her gloves off and throwing them onto one of the work surfaces as she did so. It struck her again just how lucky she was to have Seth in her life. "Where are we going?"
"That's for me to know, and you to find out. Now let's go get changed."
"I thought you might be taking us here," Bayley said, smiling broadly.
Seth had just parked their car a short distance up the street from Bean and Gone, the coffee shop that they had enjoyed visiting the first time they had traveled to Waukee. The small family run shop sold top quality coffee at reasonable prices, and had a warm, friendly atmosphere too. It was exactly the kind of place that they both liked, and thanks to the significance of the day on which they had first visited it, it now had special sentimental value to them as well. Bean and Gone was the place where Bayley had told Seth that she definitely wanted to move to Iowa with him. It wasn't something that either of them would forget. Seth could even remember which table they had been sitting at. On their first visit, he had also noticed that a selection of sandwiches was available, handmade to order.
"We did say we'd come back," he replied, looking over at her, wondering if she was feeling as nostalgic as he was. Definitely, he saw.
"It seems like so long ago that we were here, doesn't it?"
"Time flies when you're enjoying yourself. Come on, let's go in. There's a chicken salad sandwich in there with my name on it."
When they walked into Bean and Gone, Seth saw that the table they had used on their first visit was empty. "Let's sit here. This is where we sat the first time we came."
"I didn't think you would remember that." Bayley looked up at him, smiling.
Seth gave her a quick kiss on the lips. "Of course I remembered. How could I forget that day? Have a seat, I'll go and order for us."
"You don't know what I want yet."
"Trust me. I'll get something you like, I promise."
Bayley liked the idea of trusting him to order for her. If nothing else, it would show how much attention he paid to what she liked to eat, not that she doubted him. While he went to order, she sat down at the table and took out her phone. With a minute or two to kill, she decided to check out her social media. As soon as she loaded up the Twitter app, she noticed that she had a larger number of notifications than normal. It didn't take long to realise why. A few hours earlier, WWE had released the interview that she had recorded with Michael Cole backstage after Raw onto their website. As Hunter had requested, she had used the interview to strongly speak out about Smackdown, Daniel Bryan, Shane McMahon, their policies, and their roster as a whole. It was the first real attempt to get fans to choose a side in the upcoming battle of the brands, and judging by the reactions that she was reading, it had worked.
One tweet read: 'You tell them boss. Now Raw has a real leader.'
Only a few messages further down the page was one from someone who wanted her to do something unpleasant to herself and then die. Both of those tweets were accumulating likes and retweets.
Scrolling further down, another tweet caught her eye. 'I'd like to see the bitch show up on Smackdown and start talking like that to people's faces.'
Overall, there were a lot more hate-filled comments than positive ones. It was hardly surprising, given that not much had been done yet to paint her in a positive light for Raw's fans. That would need to be addressed by creative soon, if Vince's vision of a divisive character rather than a hated one was going to work out. She trusted Hunter to make sure that it happened as intended. Even so, reading some of the hate was difficult. Not too long ago, nearly every tweet she had been tagged in was full of positivity and happiness; most of them coming from people who genuinely loved her character and treated her as a role model for their kids. All of that was gone now, and she still felt bitter about it.
"You okay, angel?" Seth asked when he arrived back at the table. He sat down opposite her. "Where did that frown come from?"
"I just looked on Twitter. They put up my interview with Cole, and they sure got the reaction they wanted. Take a look."
She handed her phone over to Seth, who took a minute or so to read some of the tweets. Seeing some of the things that were being said to his girlfriend infuriated him at a base level, even though they were really addressed to her on-screen character. The problem with wrestling fans was that there were a lot of them who couldn't tell the difference between kayfabe and reality, or simply didn't believe that there was such a thing as kayfabe. There would be people out there who genuinely despised Bayley for the things she had said on-screen recently, which wasn't an easy thing to come to terms with. It was only going to get worse in the coming weeks too, particularly with fans of Smackdown.
Plans for Bayley to appear on Smackdown at least once had already been announced. Seth began to feel a little nervous about that idea, wondering exactly what kind of reaction she might get. It had been a long time since someone had been able to generate real heat like they were trying to get for Bayley. Roman had taken some serious abuse from fans over the past couple of years, on the odd occasion it had even gotten physical, but that hadn't been WWE's intention. Now they were making Bayley public enemy number one for Smackdown fans, and then putting her in front of them to face the music. If it was anyone else he wouldn't have worried, but it felt different when it was his girlfriend that people were telling to die.
"I'm not sure I like the idea of them sending you to appear on Smackdown with some of the things in these messages," he told her, passing the phone back across the able. "You're getting some serious heat already."
Bayley considered that for a moment. Being hated had definitely never been what she'd wanted for her career in WWE, but now that she had the character of Commissioner Martinez, part of her appreciated the need for the hate. It was what made the character work. Surprisingly, the idea of standing in a Smackdown ring, having abuse and boos hurled at her while she talked up Raw - her show, did actually appeal to her. Following Stephanie McMahon's advice, she had tried to start living her new character, and the sense of pride in Raw when compared to Smackdown was the first thing to start to come naturally to her. If her new character was really going to be a long lasting one, and one that was talked about for years to come, then she had to welcome the abuse from Smackdown fans as a good thing - as a sign that she was doing her job well. Shying away from a negative reaction was not what she should be doing at all.
"Getting hated on by people is hard, but I need to try and get used to it," she told him with a shrug. "I've been given this character now, so I need to make it work. I can't let it be a flop. If I have to go out there on Smackdown and get booed out of the building, that's what I'll do. It's one thing for people to write tweets telling you to die, it doesn't mean they'll do anything if you're standing in front of them. You must know that, you played a heel for a long time. You've done it, Roman's been hated on for a long time, deservedly or not, and Cena certainly has been for even longer. There's no reason I can't deal with it too. In fact, I want to prove to Hunter and Vince that I can deal with it. I have the feeling that after that first night when I cried in the limo with Hunter and Stephanie, she went straight to Vince and told him that it was a mistake to turn me heel. If I'm right, I want to prove her wrong too. It wasn't a mistake to give me one of the company's most important characters to play. can do this, Seth. I can."
Finding her passion admirable, Seth had to concede that she was right, and that he was probably being overprotective. Tweeting abuse to someone was a lot different to causing them physical harm. In general, WWE's security was very good too. Sure, the occasional idiot managed to run into the ring, but Hunter had already taken steps to deal with that by stationing more security staff around the ringside areas. Rather than worrying and questioning things, he decided that she should be being supportive of her.
"You're right. I know you can do it, too. I don't doubt you for a second. It's just natural for me to worry about you, you know?"
Bayley reached across the table and took his hand. "I know, baby, and I think it's really sweet that you worry. But you don't need to. I've moved past the point where I wanted to cry all the time at the thought of being booed. I'm ready for it now. Besides, there will be Raw fans who support me too."
A waitress approached the table, carrying a tray with two cups of coffee on it, along with two sandwiches. "Hi guys. I've got a chicken salad sandwich."
"That's mine, thank you," Seth said.
"And I've got a tuna salad sandwich." She set the second plate in front of Bayley, followed by a cup of coffee. Both drinks were the same, so there was no need to ask. They both thanked the waitress after she set Seth's drink down, and she walked away.
"You really do know what I like," Bayley chuckled. "This sandwich looks amazing."
"So does the girl who's eating it," Seth replied, being deliberately corny.
Bayley laughed even harder. "Oh god, that's awful."
Seth pretended to take offence. "I'll remember to be mean next time then, if that's what you want?"
"Only in the bedroom." Her eyes twinkled at him over the top of her coffee cup.
While Seth was upstairs, showing the electrician around as he worked on preparing a quotation for re-wiring the house, Bayley decided to take a couple of minutes to make a call to her father. It was a call that she had been putting off for some time, but it couldn't wait forever. It was time to break the news that she was dating someone. Of course, she wasn't ashamed of Seth, far from it. It was just that it was an awkward thing for a daughter to tell her father, under any circumstances. That was why she had chosen mid-afternoon to make the call. Her dad would be hard at work at the office, and wouldn't have much time to talk on the phone. Even the fact that she was choosing the time for that reason made her feel bad, but it was for the best. After some time to digest the news, she knew that her dad would be happy for her. He had never been one of those over-controlling fathers who wanted to keep his baby girl under lock and key so that no man could ever get near her. All he worried about was her happiness and safety, and neither of those things were in any doubt with Seth. Having said that, she wouldn't mention the purchase of the house as yet. That could wait for a later date, after Seth had met her family. Giving them the idea that things were being rushed wouldn't be a smart thing to do.
When she dialed her father's cell phone number, she knew that she wouldn't have to wait long for answer, and so it proved to be. "Hey, sweetheart," she heard after only three rings. There was pleasant surprise in his voice. Plenty of other voices could be heard in the background. The office was busy, as always.
"Hi, Dad! How are you?"
"I'm great. We haven't heard from you much lately. Is everything okay with you?"
"Everything's great," she assured him. "I'm sorry I've not been calling much and haven't been home to see you. The thing is, I've been really busy. I'm uh, actually, I'm dating someone."
"Oh." Surprise, which wasn't surprising at all. "Well that's... good news. Who are you dating? Is it one of the guys on the show?"
"Yeah. I'm dating Seth Rollins. We've been dating for a while now." Putting it that way wasn't lying, but it did make it seem like the relationship had been going longer than it really had. Something else to feel slightly guilty about. She began to pace around the kitchen, for no other reason than to do something with the nervous energy that was building up quickly inside her.
"The guy you're with on-screen. I guess that makes sense." Her father was still trying to process the news.
"I need you to know that he makes me very happy, Dad. I know how you feel about mom, that she's the person you thought you would never find, who makes you happier than you thought you ever deserved. You've told me that before. That's how Seth makes me feel. This isn't some casual relationship that's going to be over this time next month. I'm not going to be calling you, telling you that he's upset me or treated me like crap. We love each other. I want to bring him home to meet you guys soon, and when I do, I need to know that you won't give him a hard time. I know you won't anyway, but I still need you to promise me. I need you to be welcoming to him, okay?"
A pause. Her dad was trying to find the right thing to say, or maybe he was still processing the idea of his baby girl falling in love with someone. "He really makes you feel that happy?" came the reply, eventually.
"Yes, Dad. I wouldn't lie to you about it. Seth's a great guy, and I'm very lucky to be with him. So, like I said, I want to bring him home to meet you and mom, and I want you to welcome him and make him feel comfortable. I know he's nervous about meeting my dad especially, so I'm counting on you for this. I can count on you, right?"
She heard her father let out out a quiet sigh, which he probably hoped hadn't made it to her end of the call. "Of course you can count on me, Bay. If you're happy, I'm happy, you know that. I'm looking forward to meeting Seth. When are you going to come see us?"
Having not spoken to Seth about it yet, she couldn't answer that question for certain. "Hopefully in the next week or two. You know how our schedules are. I'll let you know as soon as we can make a definite plan."
"Okay, sweetheart. Listen, I'm sorry, but I have to go. I've got somewhere here waiting to see me. I'll talk to you soon, okay?"
"Okay, Dad. I love you. Say hi to mom for me, please."
"I will. I love you too, Bayley."
As she put her phone down on one of the work surfaces and put her gloves back on to resume cleaning, Bayley decided that she was pleased with how the conversation had gone. Yes, there had been some reservation from her dad as far as Seth was concerned, but that was to be expected of any father. The main thing was that he had said he would be welcoming to Seth whenever the time came for them to meet for the first time. With that guarantee now secured, she was very much looking forward to proudly introducing her man to her parents.