CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
"It's time for pushups, girls!" Trish screamed.
In front of her lay the seven other girls of DEAR, on their backs after doing a killer amount of sit-ups. Everyone wore their workout gear, which mainly consisted of sports bras, tank tops, and yoga pants. No one seemed happy to be working out in the gym at eight o'clock on a Wednesday morning. This, however, didn't stop Trish from waking them up at six so that they had a good breakfast-and time to digest it, of course-and then dragging them out at seven to start working.
"Trish, you haven't worked for a second." Gail groaned sometime around one o'clock, just after their promised lunch break, rolling onto her stomach and starting to do some pushups at Trish's orders. "Don't you think you should? You're riding all of us so hard, why don't you work a little?"
"Is that… is that back-talk, Frail Kim?" Trish had taken to calling everyone in the group but Lita by the names which Lay-Cool had designed for them as of the night before, after she'd regained her senses. Post-Jazz meltdown aside, Trish was a completely new woman… and quite a bit worse than she had been before. "Because, if that's back-talk, you can stand your tiny Korean ass up and walk on out of here. Do not even bother entering the open-invitational battle royal at SummerSlam."
"God damn it, Trish…" Gail muttered, shaking her head and continuing to do the pushups. "I'm going to enter the battle royal."
"Come on, Trish, just give us a break." Lita pushed Gail Kim over so that she was on her side. "Let someone else take over from here."
"Fine."
For the rest of the day, until five o'clock-exactly ten hours from when they'd arrived at the gym, including their lunch break-Mickie and Trish worked DEAR to the bone. They cooled down with an hour of yoga led by Lita and Trish together, and then Trish decided she was going to do something to make them a little less angry. Taking the girls out to dinner, she made sure they only chose healthy options, and then everyone was in bed by nine o'clock.
"Make sure you know what you're doing, girls. At least eight hours of sleep, because we're going to do even more work tomorrow."
The collective groan that the other seven girls omitted could be heard the floor below their penthouse.
"That was fairly awful for the first try at the Mickie-DT. The jumping tornado DDT is a lot higher than that, Blondie." Jazz's words were tinged with a sort of verbal poison, but Kelly didn't flinch as she made eye contact with her leader. "Again."
Kelly had been assigned to portray Mickie going up against AJ Lee, which wouldn't have been a problem had Jazz not been calling all of Mickie's most difficult moves on Kelly. On top of that, she was still being ridden hard by the leader of the Diva's Army, and was forced to wear ankle and wrist weights during the workouts.
Not a complaint had been spoken on Kelly's behalf, by anyone.
"Got it." Kelly nodded, and then grappled AJ into position. She bent her knees slightly as she leaned back, and then jumped up into the air.
Just as she had done the last time, AJ fell back, bringing Kelly to the ground next to her as Jazz shook her head. "Higher! Again! How many times have you done " AJ raised a hand, almost shyly, and Jazz sighed. "What?"
"I'm getting a bit tired of the same reversal. Can I fight Victoria?" She motioned to Kennedi, who had taken Victoria's duty.
Jazz rolled her eyes and waved for AJ to leave, bringing Natalya to Kelly. "Go on for a while, freestyle, but for the end I want to see the elbow smash-to-Mick-a-rana combination." From her place inside of the ring, she moved into the opposite corner of where Kelly and Natalya would be performing. "I want the reversal to be after Blondie's take-off. Grab her and hit her with a belly-to-back."
Natalya nodded, and for a few minutes, she was set up for the combination from "Mickie". The weights made every movement extremely awkward and very melodramatically large, but Kelly fought through, and hit a near-perfect Mick-a-rana halfway through. Then, she took what she got from Natalya without a complaint or a shout.
Both blondes in the ring looked to Jazz outside after Natalya helped Kelly to her feet, and Jazz shook her head.
"What? Did I not do the belly-to-back right or something? Kelly's combo was perfect."
"Blondie's combo could use work. Your belly-to-back was fine. Everyone, you're free to go… except you, Blondie. I need to see more work out of you. More free weight workouts, and running the ropes. Go for it."
Kelly looked to Natalya, AJ, and Kaitlyn, who frowned a bit, and then shook her head at her friends. "No, Jazz is right. I wasn't even near-perfect, and that's not good enough. I'm going to do this until I get it right."
Gail Kim sat in the hotel bar early the next morning, sometime after midnight. She'd wandered the hotel for a while, her muscles and joints aching desperately. Thank God all of the other girls were heavy sleepers. She was the only light sleeper among them, and she had no problems when it came to sneaking out of their penthouse at night.
Now, she was drinking whatever the bartender was giving her, and the entire bar was practically deserted. The bartender was cleaning out cups and preparing to close up as soon as Gail was finished, because he could tell that she wasn't an alcoholic or a drunk, and that there wasn't going to be an issue getting her back out. Besides that, she was drinking a glass of water for every glass of alcohol she had. She'd be fine.
"Gail?"
Her head turned immediately to look at whoever had spoken her name, only to see that it wasn't one of the Diva's Army girls.
"Maria?"
"What are you doing here?"
Gail had to think long and hard about that. What was she doing there? She'd needed a break from the girls, but was drinking her answer? Trish would have killed her, had it been Trish at the door. Justin would have, too. He would've said she was ruining her body, even though he drank with everyone most of the time. "I… just couldn't sleep."
Maria nodded, breathing a sigh of relief. "Neither could I. I woke up about an hour ago and have been laying in bed since. I figured I could use a drink, and didn't want to pay twelve bucks for a bottle of water." Noting the bartender's presence, she commented, "No offense."
"None taken," he laughed, shaking his head as he turned around and started counting the cash he'd made thus far.
Silence went on between the two girls for a moment, Gail continuing to drink while Maria sat next to her, until Maria spoke up again. "Gail, can I tell you something?"
"Sure." Gail shrugged, setting down her drink and turning on the barstool to face her red-haired friend. They weren't close, but Gail wasn't the type to gossip. "What's up?"
"Well… I feel bad. For what we did to Eve." Gail's eyebrows raised, but Maria didn't stop talking there. "And now, knowing that we may or may not have completely ended Beth's career… this is all Beth wanted. Whenever she got hurt, all she could talk about was getting back in the ring. What about now? What will she do if she can't wrestle again?"
"You think you've got problems?" Now the alcohol was talking. "I betrayed everyone in the Diva's locker room who was my friend for the past few years for this. I betrayed the man… the man I love for this." She had to force out the word, but knew it was true. That was the right word for how she felt about Justin. "And on top of all of that, I unintentionally set up Molly Holly to get her head shaved yet again, and that was completely my fault."
"Why are you still here?" Maria's tone could have been icier, but it wasn't. It was like a melting ice cream. You could tell it was trying to be cold, but it just wasn't able to do so.
"Because, Maria." Gail stood up, preparing to leave the bar as she dropped the money she owed for the drinks-in cash-on the bar next to her drink. "I don't want to go back to being overlooked by the WWE again. I'm better than that, everyone knows that now, but the WWE will just shove me back down and try to stifle me like I'm nothing if I go back to being just another Diva. I'm not just another Diva, Maria."
"I know that-"
Maria's attempt to calm Gail down was interrupted as Gail continued. "I couldn't go back even if I wanted to, you know that? Nattie, Tamina, AJ, Kaitlyn. They'll never trust me again. I'm nothing more than a bump in the road on the way to success for them anymore." Maria was in a stunned silence, and Gail filled it up with a question. "This stays between us, right? No one else will know about this? Trish or Lita, especially."
"Agreed. Let's go back and try to get some sleep."