Part 5

Lita walked slowly down the hallway, her head hanging miserably. Tonight had been the worst night in her entire life, no exceptions. When she thought about what had happened, she was kicking herself... she should have seen it coming. When Chris Jericho called her for the Highlight Reel and brought out Matt Hardy, she should have known. She should have known a week ago, when Matt himself called her to explain to her that he was jumping to Raw. She should have known when he told her he was sorry for all he had done in the past, and that he wanted their old relationship back. Matt Hardy could not be trusted, period. She should have been smarter. Matt waltzed down to the ring and acted as though nothing ever happened between them, grabbing her and hugging her tightly. Even when he got down on his knee and told her he had a question to ask her, Lita's mind was screaimg at her the whole time to not even give the idea of being with Matt again a second thought. To think that that sorry excuse for a man would have the nerve to call her selfish.

Lita paused for a minute, hoisting her bag up over her shoulder and blinking back tears. She was just so heartbroken... first Christian, and now Matt all over again? Why were men always out to make a fool out of her, to get a cheap laugh at her expense? The feeling she got in her stomach when Matt jumped off of the apron earlier that night, refusing to be tagged in during their match against Molly and Eric Bischoff, was inexplainable. She knew right then and there that the whole thing was a setup. As if Eric Bischoff pinning her - thus costing Lita her job - wasn't enough, then Matt had to get in the ring, dumping her on national television... for the second time. What an ass that made her look like. She thought back to when she stood in the corner of the ring, watching painfully as Matt glared down at her.

"All you had to do was join V1 on Smackdown," he told her, as if he didn't know how important competing on Raw for the Women's Championship was to her. The idea of going to Smackdown had bikini contest written all over it, and Lita was not about to be turned into a redheaded version of Torrie Wilson. Finally, she heard the three words that hurt her the most.

"We are through!" Matt Hardy's voice bellowed through her head, painfully slicing her heart.

Lita once gain forced the tears back, glancing up as she finally saw the door. It was only down the hall, but it still seemed so far away. To be honest, though, as much as she wanted to get the hell out, she was dreading it at the same time. She wanted, even more than to reach the door, for it to just disappear. Lita wasn't dumb... she knew that once she stepped outside that door, everything was over. Once she left the arena, everything - her career, her relationship, her life - was all over. Glancing down at her bag, her lip quivered as she caught sight of her dog, Mason. Tears finally escaped and slid down her cheeks as she met his tiny eyes, ones that almost looked as though they held sympathy. Christ, even her dog was feeling sorry for her. Then, a thought occurred to her. All of her friends were in the wrestling business. Now that she would be off the road, away from all of them, she would be all alone, with her dog as her only companion. God, how pathetic would that be?

Trish had approached her earlier in the Women's Locker Room while Lita was getting her things together a short while earlier to assure her that their friendship would remain intact, regardless of what happened to her. "Lita, just because you aren't a WWE employee anymore does not mean you and I aren't going to be friends," she had said. "You're one of my best friends. I love you, and nothing that Eric Bischoff does will change that." As confident as Trish had sounded, Lita was afraid that it just wouldn't happen that way. Sure, for a few weeks or so after everyone would call to check up on her, and people would come visit her on their days off, but she knew that soon after, they would forget. It would be just like her neck injury all over again. Once people got the idea that she could make it on her on, they'd forget, leaving her to fade away.

"What am I going to do?" she asked herself.

Never before in her life had she experienced such feelings of despair, nor had she ever felt so lost, out of place. Even with all of the moving she did when she was younger, the constant jumping from place to place, never during all of that time did she feel the way she did now. That was because she had stayed here, in the WWE, long enough to form relationships with people, long enough to get attached to her coworkers and to her job. She didn't think she could ever get over it.

As she continued to silently trudge down the hall, her bag flung over her shoulder, her keys slipped from her grasp, dropping to the floor. On any normal day, she would have simply bent down to pick them up, but because of her day, and the amazing amount of stress she was under, she wanted to scream. All she had done was drop her keys, and she felt like picking them up and chucking them down the hall as hard as she could. Sighing exhaustedly, she leaned down to pick them up. When she grabbed a hold of them, she glanced forward, noticing a pair of feet in front of her. Great, she thought to herself, I wonder who that could be. She had been expecting someone like RVD, or Tommy Dreamer, or maybe even Jericho to be standing in front of her, but she knew it was none of those three. She stood slowly, her eyes widening slightly as she discovered who was standing in front of her.

"Christian..."