Rhonda was sitting at work, waiting for it to be time to clock out. Part of her was dreading going home and having to face Stephen again. She stared at the faint bruises on her wrists and wondered how she would explain that to Stu. Stephen's venomous words echoed in her mind over and over. She hated to acknowledge that at least part of what he said was right. She cared for Stu and was attracted to him, even before she met him, and her actions could have been construed as those of a promiscuous woman. But it was an isolated incident. She wished she had just slept with Stu and never had brought Stephen into the mix. Drew either.
She soon clocked out and drove the few miles home. Stu was smiling and waiting for her at the door. "There she is! My working girl!"
She looked at him "uh, Stu, I am glad you are proud of me, but can you not call me a 'working girl'? Sounds like I am hooker."
"Oh, sorry love." He kissed her sweetly and led her over to the couch. She sat down and nervously looked around, wondering where Stephen was. Drew came in from the kitchen "hi lassie, how was your first day on the job?"
"Um, it went fine."
"Anything exciting happen?" Drew asked.
"No! Nothing! Why do you ask?"
"Oh aye, calm down. I was just asking."
"Sorry, just a bit tired and edgy. Stu, I am going to go shower and go to bed, okay."
"Sweetheart, don't you want to have a drink or get something to eat?"
"No, not really, I think I just need to rest."
"Alright love. I will come tuck you in when you get out of the bath."
"Okay, thanks. Goodnight Drew."
"Goodnight." As she walked away, Drew asked "you think she had a bad night?"
"I don't know. She's not really acting like herself. Maybe just first day stress."
Rhonda took a long hot shower, trying to calm her nerves. She felt bad for jumping on Drew and for blowing off Stu, but she really didn't think she could handle acting like nothing was wrong at that moment. After her shower, Stu kept his promise and came to tuck her in. He curled his arms around her and held her until she finally fell asleep. He could tell something was bothering her, but wasn't going to press her. He would wait until she was ready to talk to him about it. After she fell asleep, he went back into the living room and played video games with Drew for a while until Drew said he was tired and went to bed as well.
"Well, here I am again, the Lone Ranger. Damn insomnia." He played for a couple of hours until he got bored of that and snuck into their room to get his laptop. He decided to watch Netflix on Demand with his headphones so he didn't wake anyone up. After his movie was over, he still wasn't sleepy so he logged into Twitter. He saw that his timeline was blown up and he couldn't figure out why. No one really cared too much that he was gone since he had been hurt. His eyes widened and he stared in disbelief at what people were saying. "Can't be true! No way possible!" He opened the link and his heart stopped in his chest. "Oh. My. God."
He ran down the hall to their bedroom and yelled "WAKE UP RHONDA!"
She rolled over and yawned "huh?"
He flipped on the light and told her "you have to get up, right now!" Rhonda could hear the urgency and distress in his voice so she quickly sat up. "What's the matter, Stu?"
"You won't fucking believe it! Come here!" She got out of bed and followed him down the hall where his laptop was sitting on the coffee table. "Come see this."
Stu's Twitter page was pulled up and he had thousands of mentions and he was trending. "What's all this about?"
"Here, see this." He clicked the link that was in one of the messages and it pulled up YouTube, and as soon as it loaded, Rhonda's face fell. Her mouth gaped open and she gasped. There on the screen was her and Stu having sex: her facing the camera while he was fucking her, full audio and all.
She screamed "what the fuck….how the fuck did that get on there!?"
"You bloody well tell me!"
Rhonda glared at him "yeah right, like I put a video of us on fucking YouTube! Maybe you did it for the publicity!"
"The hell I did! What if my mum sees that?!"
"Well, if you didn't, and I damn sure didn't, who did? And how did they get it? Did you give it to one of your boys to watch?"
"No, of course not. Did you?"
"Stuart, who the hell would I give it to? The only people I know are the people you know except the people I just met at work."
"This is legitimately mad! This cannot be happening!" Stu shrieked. He saw his phone blinking and picked it up, seeing several missed calls and lots of texts. "Fuck! Is the whole world up at 5 am? Does everyone know by now?" He read one of the texts from Heath that told him he saw an article on TMZ about it already. "This is utter bollocks. Complete madness."
He sat down on the couch and covered his face with his hands. Rhonda sat down beside him, still reeling from shock. He pulled up Yahoo and there it was: WWE Superstar XXX-Rated Sex Tape Leaked; WWE Superstar Wade "Bare"-It In Sex Tape Shocker; Bare-Knuckle Boxer Bares All; World Wrestling Entertainment? Family-Friendly Rating In Question With Latest Sex Scandal; WWE Talent Wade Barrett Better Between the Sheets Than In The Ring; Wade Barrett Sex-Tape Review: An Up-Close Look At The Barrett Barrage; WWE Wrestler Barrett Bares It and Shares It in Sex Tape Bombshell and the list went on and on, ranging from The Huffington Post to wrestling dirt sheets.
"My career is over. I am the bleeding laughing-stock of the WWE! Who will take me seriously as a wrestler, or even an actor now!? How the fuck could this happen?" he shouted.
"That is what I would like to know! Everyone I know will see that! I won't be able to show my face in public!"
"At least not everyone knows who you are!"
"Oh, because I am not famous this affects you more? Fuck you!"
Stu took a deep breath, "I'm sorry. Let's just calm down and try and figure this out. We made it, and put it up. Now, I didn't do anything with it, and you say you didn't, so let's go see if it is still there." They walked back into the bedroom and Stu got in the closet and found it, just like he left it. "Okay, it's still here. Then how the bloody hell did it end up on the internet?!"
"I don't know. I didn't even tell anyone about it. Who else could know….."
Both their eyes opened wide. Stu spoke up "Drew and Ste knew about it because they guessed. But they are my mates, they wouldn't…."
Rhonda closed her eyes and breathed out "Stephen."
"What was that, love?"
"Stephen."
"What about him, eh?"
"I think…maybe….he had something to do with it, somehow."
"Why would you think that? Drew could have…."
"No, I don't think it was Drew." Before she could explain, Stu stormed out of the room and went banging on Stephen and Drew's doors.
"GET THE FUCK UP!" he hollered. He went back and forth, pounding his fist on their doors until they emerged drowsily from their rooms.
"What the hell is your problem, mate? It is not even 6 in the morning" Drew said.
"Yeah, fella, what the feck, eh?"
Stu grabbed them both by the back of the neck and pushed them down the hallway. "You tossers tell me, right."
"What are you on about?" Drew asked him.
"Well, to my surprise this morning, I find out that a video of Rhonda and I making love has made its way to YouTube. So unless someone broke in and make a copy of it and left everything else, one of you two assholes did it. So which one of you did this to me yeah?"
Drew was shocked and started waving his hands "whoa whoa, what now? Of course I didn't do that! Ste?"
"What? Why are yeh looking at me? Ah wouldn't do that either."
Rhonda's stare bored a hole in his head. "You know you did it."
"Well, lass, yeh did offer it to me to watch. Told me that yeh were thinking of me when Stu was knobbing yeh. But Ah didn't post it on YouTube. What kind of man do yeh think Ah am?"
"What?!" Stu looked at Rhonda suspiciously.
"Yeah, Ah didn't want to tell yeh mate, but Ah went to see her tonight and took her flowers and balloons and such to congratulate her, yeh know. Offered just to buy her a soda on her break and the next thing Ah know she is all over me, right there in the corridor."
Rhonda went to slap Stephen and Stu stopped her "you are such a goddamn liar!"
"Mate, she groped me and Ah had to grab her wrists to keep her off me. Ah told her that yeh are one of me best mates and we couldn't have a repeat of before. Look, yeh can see the marks on her wrist. Ah am sorry, Ah shouldn't have been so rough with her, Ah was just upset. Ah didn't want to tell yeh about it because Ah didn't want to upset yeh after all that happened with Victoria. It wasn't the first time either. She has crept into my room and tried to be intimate with me before, but Ah stopped her. Look, mate, Ah should have said, Ah just didn't think it would go this far."
"You son of a bitch! How dare you just lie like this!? Stu, he is lying! He came on to me tonight at the hotel!"
Stu looked between them both, not knowing who to believe. "Fella, yeh know Ah don't know that much about computers. How the hell would Ah get it from a VCR tape to online? Rhonda, didn't yeh switch from computer science to business when yeh were in college? Stu, Ah don't know why, maybe money, but Ah reckon she posted it herself. It was her idea to make it wasn't it?"
"Yes, it was. How did you know….."
"Like Ah said mate, she told me she wanted me to see what Ah was missing, what Ah could have. She wanted to turn me on and make me think of her. Said when she was moaning and coming for the camera, it was for my benefit."
"You mother fucker! Stu, you can't really believe him!" Rhonda cried, the tears flowing from her eyes. She reached for him, and he jerked his arm away.
"Don't. Right now, I don't know who to believe. The damage is done and it can't be undone. So whichever one of you did it, I hope you are proud of yourselves. I am going to take a walk."
He walked out the door leaving them alone. Drew was dumbstruck, not knowing what he should say. "I don't know what to think of the pair of you either." He went back into his bedroom and shut the door, needing to think as well. He wasn't sure who to believe either. Although Stephen seemed to have a thing for her, Drew was certain he didn't have the technological prowess to accomplish such a feat. They were both his friends and he didn't want Rhonda getting blamed gratuitously, but it all seemed fishy. He decided, for now, he would keep quiet and let Stu figure it out on his own.
Rhonda turned to Stephen "how the hell could you lie like that? How could you do this to your friend?"
"Lass, don't put this on me. Yeh should have been faithful to him and not lied about yer feelings, all the time wanting me. Did yeh think Ah would want yeh after yeh did something like this? He is my friend and yeh hurt him like this. Ah can't believe yeh. He should have known yeh were just a slut, fucking all of us at once. Yeh don't ever bring home the whore."
"I can't even believe you are doing this! I always thought you were a good man until yesterday. Why are you doing this?"
When he was sure Stu and Drew were out of earshot, he spoke very low as he ran his fingers through her hair "Ah told yeh that yeh would come around soon enough. Yeh give me what Ah want, love and everything will be just fine. Ah will take care of yeh."