The Illustration Trilogy
Part 1 – Can't Wait to Love You (Chris Jericho/Trish Stratus)
Rating: PG13 for language, and later mildly sexual scenes.
Time Frame: None, really, though there are references and mentions of 2002. No current storylines that the characters are in play a part in this fiction.
Disclaimer: The characters are all property of the WWE. The actors are property of themselves.
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After shows and local events for the past few weeks, I'd made a habit out of sitting in my hotel room alone. I'd just barricade myself inside for a good few hours, trying to drown myself in the emptiness and silence there. There was a paperback book I'd bought months ago and never had the chance to read, being on the road so much, and having the room to myself gave me the perfect opportunity to do so.
I didn't expect myself to actually pay any attention to the story, so it didn't surprise me that I was unable to concentrate on it. I just sat in a lounge chair in a corner of the room, holding the open book in my hands, staring blankly into the words.
I turned the pages every once in a while, trying to convince myself that I was actually reading, but flipping a few pages and rubbing the pad of your thumb across the dry ink on the paper barely counted as reading.
Every time I tried to set my mind on a task, I'd only drift further into my thoughts and end up settling on him. Whenever I even pictured him, I felt a part of me burst into flames. After two years of feeling this way, I had managed to control myself and my emotions, but I ended up falling twice as hard seeing him with her.
He had been dating Stacy for the past month, and God, no matter how hard I tried to just let go of him and get over my immature fantasy of being with him, and get over my love for him, I couldn't, I can't. I just got so jealous, I felt close to bursting. A piece of my heart had been ripped right through my chest. There simply wasn't anything left in me.
How he could warm up to anyone, let alone someone as fragile and sensitive as Stacy, was beyond me. If he couldn't love me, as awful as it sounds, how could he love her? I wanted to kill myself for thinking that way seeing them together. I just… I couldn't help it. I wanted it to be me he was with, me he had warmed up to, me he was kissing and holding.
But the only good I ever was to him was for teasing and treating like dirt. He just didn't have any interest in me otherwise. God, what I felt for him that night and ever since… I wish I wasn't so foolish. I don't understand how after he had always been such a cruel jackass to me, a one-time look in his eyes had me melted and… fallen for him for good.
I could kill myself for letting that one night decide the rest of my life, but I wasn't in control of it. There's nothing you can do to stop these feelings, the burning emotions, when they hit. Hell, I've denied endlessly that it's not love at all, and I'm just lovesick, pining for something. But it's been two years… I don't think I can deny it no matter how hard I try anymore. I just can't.
My heart breaks when I see them together. It has broken over and over again. Stacy is crazy about him. The two of us have always been friends. We travel together, see each other almost every day, we've grown pretty close having to spend so much time together, but we've never been sisterly really, just good friends.
God, how I just want to be with him. I just want to tell him. If anything, just casually bring up that night to him, even generally, just… anything. If I just had to bump into him someday and just mention it to him. "Hey, remember that night in Erie during Christmas one time…" It was hard to even do that, because… it was hard to talk to him.
After Armageddon, we'd gone back to the bitter enemy stage. I still don't know why he took me out there, what he was trying to do to me by bringing me with him for that walk, if he had just known I was going to fall in love with him or something. But he obviously didn't care if I had, and he obviously couldn't see it in me afterward. I was just 'blondie' to him again. I returned to just being one of the many people he had no care for.
But God, he's with Stacy! Stacy, for crying out loud! I don't even know how those two work together, they're like the odd couple. How he can put aside his love for only himself to love someone else, someone like Stacy… God, I wish it was me…. But, how he could be that way with someone seemed so strange to everyone else, and so painful to me.
The door handle turned, and I jumped out of my thoughts into reality. I still held the book in my hands, which were just trembling slightly, but now my focus was turned from my thoughts to the door.
"Hey, Trish!" I recognized the voice before I could clear my head in time to recognize the face. I just shook the distant look off of my face and smiled at her.
"Hey, Li. What's up?" I tried concealing the feelings of distress I was drowned in from my appearance, hoping she wouldn't notice in my eyes how I'd been feeling. Lita was always good at those things. She just seemed to know. I amazed myself keeping my feelings for Chris from her so long. Two years and counting.
She slid her jacket off and hung it over the arm of a chair by the door. She walked straight into the bathroom of our apartment, but continued talking to me. I heard the faucet running in the background as she spoke.
"Eh, nothing. The lobby downstairs has a café. Stace and I were down there with a few of the girls." Li seemed kind of exhausted, and I really wasn't in the mindset to be having an intelligent conversation with her, but I tried my best to hide that anything was bothering me.
"Sounds like fun… was Chris with her?" Everyone had been talking about the two of them since they started dating. I wasn't the only one that thought they were so wrong for each other. I wasn't the only one surprised at how Chris suddenly showed feelings for someone else. I wasn't the only one surprised that Stacy could love someone like Chris. She was too nice, and too sensitive and fragile, too good a person to be with him. It was odd how she could love him.
God, I felt ridiculous thinking that. I loved him. How could she?! Everyone thought it was crazy the way Stacy fell in love with that man, myself included. But I did. I fell in love with him, it couldn't be so impossible for someone else to.
"Hm… no, he wasn't. I don't know where he was. Stace was talking about him though. She is head over heels, I just do not understand it." She walked out of the bathroom, toweling off her face, and looking at me as if examining for something.
"How'd you get so far in that book? I've never seen you reading it before." Her eyes were turned, full of question, and her voice was still tired, but her tone was bright, and she seemed curious.
I looked down at the book and realized I'd flipped so many pages, I was in the last section of the story. "Oh, I've… um, been reading it for a while. Before I fall asleep every night, I read some."
Lita shrugged her curiosity off and thought nothing of my reply, or so I thought. It was perfectly reasonable; she always fell asleep before me. The jet lag and road travel affected her sleep more than mine, I guess.
"Oh," she said nonchalantly. She put her towel down and walked toward me. She sat on a corner of the bed, which my chair was next to, and for a few moments just looked at me, an unreadable expression on her face. Her eyes skipped from place to place in the room, and she bit her bottom lip into her mouth.
She sighed deeply before she began talking. "Trish, honey, you haven't really been acting yourself lately… are you okay?" She put a hand on my shoulder. I stared into my book for a while before closing it and sitting it on the floor between the chair and the bed.
I couldn't look at her. I couldn't. My eyes would show, if I looked at her, that I was hiding something. She would know, and I couldn't risk that. The reason I hadn't let anyone in on how I felt, even my closest friends, was so I wouldn't be tied down to the emotions forever.
"Yeah, Li… I, I'm fine. I'm great!" I made a desperate and deliberate attempt to sound painfully giddy, so she couldn't expect anything to be wrong. I guess I tried too hard it seemed obvious I was trying to conceal something from her.
I never bothered telling Li about Chris, or that night, or anything, any of the madness I'd driven myself to. I wanted to grow out of the love I felt for him, and if I told her, I'd be keeping alive all of the feelings I want gone. I figured that somehow, if I just kept struggling to hide how I felt, they would all disappear inside me. If I told Li, if she knew, I'd never be free from this.
Apart from that, Lita hated Chris as much as I did. She didn't mind Stacy being with him, because the two of them weren't close. Chris being in a relationship kept him away from her. Li always spent her precious time defending me from his harassment, and his cruelty to me. Lately I welcomed anything from Chris. If he had something mean and degrading to shoot at me for fun, I didn't mind it so much, because anything was better than being ignored by him.
"You sure, hun?" She looked up at me. My eyes were turned from her, and the way she asked, it was more than obvious she knew I was lying. I couldn't look her in the eye and say that there was nothing bothering me. I would have broken into tears that very second, having to lie to her face.
I already wanted more than anything to be able to tell her. Hiding anything from Lita killed me. We had been best friends for so long. We hardly kept anything from each other. We really had no choice. Traveling with a bunch of guys, the women had all bonded. Li and I shared hotel rooms from the beginnings of our careers. She knew everything, and I was so inexperienced at keeping secrets from her.
"I'm positive. I don't know why you'd think anything was wrong." I shrugged my shoulders at her. Finally I made eye contact with her, though the look in her eyes burned me through and through. It hurt her to be lied to, I could see it. She trusted me more than anyone, and for me not to return that trust killed her. Just that look in her eyes made me want to confess everything and say it, say what I'd been hiding for two years from her. But I was hiding it for myself, not because I didn't want her to know. It was because I couldn't say it.
Lita's eyes shut, and she looked as if she was holding back tears, but being the amazing friend she was, she didn't push me to tell her anything. She just grabbed my hands and whispered to me, eyes open and warm, "I believe you. Trish, sweetie, I… I know this is going to sound so cliché, and so overdone, but… Trish you know you can trust me, and you know you can tell me anything, and if… if you ever need me, well then I'm here always. Always, hun…"
God, it hurt so badly to lie to her like that. Part of me didn't even know what or why I was hiding. I'd been so distant from Lita, and from everyone, since it happened. I've tried so hard since then to just give it up, give up feeling anything for him. He hadn't changed, as much as I wanted him to, he hadn't. It didn't matter what I saw in him that night, because I saw something that didn't last beyond then.
I stood up and bent over Lita, wrapping my arms around her and giving her the biggest, tightest hug I could manage. If I couldn't be open and honest with her anymore for my own well-being, God, I just had to let her know how much she meant to me some other way. She was more than a friend to me, knowing that she cared so much and so deeply about me and how I felt, it was wonderful, and made all my worries and fears disappear for a moment. I loved that girl, always have.
"Lita… you're the greatest. But, really, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm…….. I'm fine."
She knew by the trembling in my voice, the struggling I had to do to follow through with my denial. She knew I was lying. I could feel it as she hugged me back. She felt betrayed as a friend. Lately everyone I talked to felt betrayed by me. My trust was running so slim, my contact with people was so much less than it ever had been. If only Stacy and Chris… if they hadn't put this on me again, I would have made it.
Jealousy struck me the first time I saw them together. Chris had never acted so awfully to Stacy, like he had me. I guess he always liked her, and that's why he'd never treated her cruelly.
I was the first person out of that arena. I was just in the right place at the right time. It could have been anyone else. He was just waiting for someone to walk with, it didn't matter who. Just by luck, I walked out of that door first. I was the first person to pass him. Christian had a match after mine, so he didn't have the time to be the one Chris took. And I did. I refused him, and he would have let me go, but I changed my mind.
So just like that, just by making a stupid mistake, walking with him when he even said I didn't have to, I ruined my own life. Just by luck, it was me. Just by luck, he took me. Fate, luck, whatever it was, that was the reason that I fell in love with Chris… and it didn't take long before it was destroying me. One night has the power to do so many awful things to you. Change you completely. God, it could have been anyone else.
Anyone else, but it was me. Love strikes like lightning; it's impossible to know where or when. It just had to be me out there… me, damn it. I had to fall in love with my worst enemy, and now he had to be in love with one of my friends.
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So, there we have it. Trish is losing everything she has because of something that happened two years ago. I think I had some tense problems while writing this, but I'm too lazy to go back and fix them. I don't usually write in first person, can you tell? Anyway, I'll keep the chapters coming if you keep reviewing!