A/N: I planned so much more for this chapter but I realised I'd gone past 4000 words and had a tantrum over the fact that things were moving too slowly (hence the long gap between chapters lol) but I'm over it now and here it is. I think this one fully establishes the overarching plot besides Ari's pairing with Seth and what exactly happened between her and her dad, so chapters after this one probably won't be as long and I'll be able to churn them out a little faster. Thanks for reading, everyone!
Step Three. Always be upfront about your intentions.
"Hey, Ari," Declan said, raising one of his hands.
Once I got over the initial shock of seeing my cousin - somebody I used to see every couple of weeks - for the first time in thirteen months, I took notice of how different he looked. In the past, it had always been obvious that I was the oldest cousin; even last year, I (seventeen turning eighteen) looked like a lanky grown-up and Declan (thirteen turning fourteen) looked like a little kid. Now, Declan was a full head taller than me, with a broken voice to boot.
"You're- you're, like, a dude now." I stammered, walking over with my arms outstretched.
"Well, I was always a dude." He countered as we hugged and patted each other's backs, "I'm just older."
"Yeah, well, you know what I mean." I chuckled, releasing Declan and taking a step back to properly take a look at him.
The teenager standing in front of me was a long way off from what he looked like then, but I could still vaguely remember when I met my oldest cousin for the first time. My mom had taken me over to Uncle Shane and Marissa's house to see their new baby one afternoon when he was about a week old. From what I can recall, I watched him in his bassinet for approximately five seconds before promptly turning back to my mother and asking: "We're not getting one of these things for our house, are we?"
Thankfully, by the time my parents did bring another baby home two years later, I had become much more agreeable to the idea.
"Have you visited Rory, Murph and Vee yet?" Declan asked, "They're not… here." He added quietly.
The question caught me off-guard and before I could even think about how to answer truthfully, I found myself blurting out a reply: "Not yet, but I'm going to."
I knew that responding to Mom's general crappiness with crappiness towards them wasn't the right thing to do, but I genuinely didn't know if I was going to try and see my sisters. I thought about going over and I just felt scared; scared to see my mom, scared to see if they hated me for leaving, scared to see if
"ARI'S HERE!" A high voice from behind Declan boomed. I spun around to see my youngest cousins running down the hallway towards me. I softly squealed as I shuffled towards them, arms out to pick them up; it had been my job for as long as they both could walk - the older cousin that could just scoop them off the ground and swing them around.
"Hey, you guys?" I exclaimed. Meeting them in the middle, I lifted Rogan, but, when it came to Kenyon, I got him only a couple of inches high before faltering. "Oh, wow." I gasped.
Had I been gone so long that I couldn't lift both my little cousins up in the air anymore?
Before I could think about it any harder, the familiar scent of Estée Lauder perfume and old money hit me in the face, and I looked up to see a woman standing at the end of the off-white corridor, her lips pursed and cheeks red with rouge. One hand on her hip, she raised the other and beckoned me over with a single finger, a small smile tugging at her lips.
I ruffled Kenyon's hair apologetically before beginning to slink over to the older woman. As soon as I got close enough, she took my hands into hers and squeezed them exactly three times. For a few moments, we just looked at each other, both of us wearing dampened smiles. Eventually, the woman gently let go of my hands and moved them to my face, tucking my frizzy, caramel hair behind my ears affectionately.
"Hey, Linda- Ow!" I hissed, being met with a slap to the side of the head before the words had even fully exited my mouth. The woman had always hated being called anything other than Grandma; in fact, I don't know what I was expecting other than a smack when I dared to utter the word. A smile still etched onto her face, she softly shook her head before tilting mine down and pressing a kiss on my crown.
"It's been a while." I uttered after lifting my chin back up, barely biting back the urge to call the short-tempered woman 'Linda' once more for amusement.
"Too long." She immediately added on, before pausing for a moment to look me up and down once again. "Though you haven't changed a bit. You're still just as gorgeous as your momma. Oh, how I wish you'd just have a conversation with that woman, Ari. It would have been wonderful to have everybody here tonight."
After taking a moment to cringe, I spoke up. "It's not that simple, Grandma."
For a while after, the woman standing in front of me didn't say anything; she just kept her hands firmly planted on the sides of my head, brushing her fingertips against my temples. Then, suddenly, Grandma's hands shifted down to my shoulders and she pulled me closer to her. Once we were near enough for our noses to almost brush together, Grandma muttered:
"You need to have a think about when all this grudge is going to stop hurting your mother and just start hurting you."
With that, she took a step back and cast her gaze towards the den room. My own eyes followed; immediately seeing the shape of somebody sitting in the charcoal recliner in the centre of the room, surrounded by a faint cloud of cigar smoke. As Monday Night Football continued to blare from the area, a low grunt would ring out from the chair now and then - a sound somewhere between encouragement and annoyance.
"Does he know I'm here?" I asked Grandma quietly, my eyes not leaving the figure in the chair.
"Of course, he knows you're here." She replied immediately, taking her hands away from my face. "Go on in. He's waiting for you."
Nodding, I cleared my throat before gingerly heading toward the den. It was a nerve-wracking thirty-foot walk to the area, my heart beginning to race once again at the prospect of facing someone for the first time in a year. The journey also wasn't helped by the copious amount of family photos around - an entire hutch right by the entrance to the den dedicated to exhibiting moments from the extended McMahon family's lives.
There were many, many photos of my mom and I on the display, even some of my 'dad' still (although the new gaps indicated that there had been an attempt to quietly erase Paul Levesque from the family history). However, the one image that seemed to just capture my attention like none of the others did was a photograph from the day I was born.
I was a preemie - arriving on September first when I was supposed to come along on October first - so the cannula shoved up my nose and the fact that I was the size of a foot-long sub were the two most obvious things in the picture. However, once you got over that, another detail caught the eye: a look of pure, unbridled joy on the face of the man who was about to spend the next eighteen years raising me. Fit snugly in both his hands, he stared down at me intently and with absolute adoration. He had just met his little buddy. His bam-bam. His teenybopper (okay, he didn't start calling me that until I got a little older, but I couldn't not bring it up). His world, for better or for worse, would never be the same.
I had so many questions about that photo. Questions that, considering my hatred of my mother and Paul Levesque's hatred of me, would perhaps never be answered.
A sudden yell coming from one of the commentators on the football game drew my attention back to the den. I hadn't noticed the lump forming at the base of my throat, and I had to fight to make it go away before I continued. As I got closer and closer, darkness began to engulf me, the only light in the particular part of the house being the projector and the faint orange glow of the cigar in my grandfather's left hand.
"Who's winning?" I spoke quietly as my feet hit the carpeted area of the den.
At first, I was only greeted by a short snigger, followed shortly thereafter by the disappearance of the orange light and a quiet hiss from a square marble ashtray on the armrest of the recliner.
"Pats… But you wouldn't know it by the way they've started this quarter."
"How've they been playing this season? Can't say I hear a lot about the NFL in south-east Asia." I commented, taking a seat on a matching lounge beside the recliner.
"Too good to justify only being up three against the Bills." Grandpa sighed, before finally looking over at me. A small smile tugged at his lips, prompting one to soon appear on my own.
"How you been, Grandpa?"
My grandfather only responded with a wave of his hand; a simple dismissive flick of the wrist. He had never liked concerning me with his affairs and that wasn't going to start now.
"You have a good time in Vietnam?"
"I went to Thailand, Grandpa."
"Close enough." The man shrugged his shoulders; cultural sensitivity would never be one of his strengths.
"It's a good place for me," I answered honestly, nodding my head.
"It was a good place for you."
I faltered for a moment before slowly nodding my head again, "Sure."
"You talked to your mother?"
"No, I haven't. I'm sorry" I answered meekly, staring down at my bare feet. Unlike Grandma, I didn't find any satisfaction in exasperating my grandpa.
"Don't be. She's got nobody but herself to blame. Don't tell your grandmother I said that." He said bluntly.
After that, Grandpa's eyes gradually returned to the football game, and I was under the assumption that things had gotten as sappy and emotional as they were going to get. My grandfather loved me - I know he did - but, as a man who had once given me a brief pat on the arm after finding out my life was in ruins, showing it physically wasn't really in his programming.
Then, without even looking away from the projector, Grandpa raised his hand and beckoned me closer to him with two fingers. As I leaned forward, he opened a small, mahogany box on an end table beside his armchair, revealing a neat line of capped cigars. Grandpa took out two.
I softly furrowed my eyebrows. On the rare occasions my grandfather invited someone to share a cigar with him, it had never been a woman. It was usually Uncle Shane or when he was still under the impression that Paul Levesque was my dad, him. There was even another photo from the day I was born where all three of them were smoking them together.
I continued to just watch my grandpa as he handled the two cigars; maybe he wanted to talk to me about something else and he had accidentally grabbed out two? Maybe he thought now was the opportune time to teach me how to light a cigar for someone else. It wasn't until Grandpa had snipped the ends off both and offered the one in his left hand to me that I realised that he wanted me to smoke a cigar with him
"Really?" I questioned warily, my eyebrows still lowered.
My grandfather only nodded for some time before speaking, "You were missed here, kid."
I smiled, knowing that was his way of saying "I missed you, kid", and gingerly reached out for the cigar. However, before I could take it, a voice echoed from the hall:
"You better not be lighting up another cigar in there! Dinner's ready!"
We both looked toward Grandma, still standing there where I had left her. I wordlessly threw her a 'thumbs up', leading to an eye roll. Smiling in satisfaction, I looked back at Grandpa.
"We'll have to finish these after." He muttered gruffly, placing the two cigars back on the end table.
The two of us went to stand up together but, in the end, I was the only one upright. I looked down to see Grandpa clutching both armrests, face red and a solid two inches off the seat. Thinking only back to the "your grandpa's getting older…" lecture my mom gave me in tenth grade, I gladly offered a hand.
"Fuck off." He said pointedly.
Without a word, I retracted my hand and stepped aside, watching as Grandpa slowly rose from his seat. After more time passed than either of us was willing to admit, Vince McMahon had found his feet.
"Like a spring." He simply muttered to himself, before heading out of the den. I followed after taking a moment to shake my head.
"So, what's the plan now, kid?"
"The plan?"
"Where are you going to college now that you're back here? You had your sights set on Brown but I figured since you unenrolled instead of just telling them you were taking a gap year when you left, you changed your mind."
I had changed my mind about college before I left for Thailand, only it was about attending one at all and not just whether or not I was going to Brown.
"I-um-"
"I figure it's too late to go this semester, so will you be going back in the spring semester or waiting until next fall?"
"Well-"
"I think you should just go back in the spring semester. It's no good to be shuffling around aimlessly for another year."
"Grandpa-"
"I know it's not Brown but we know a benefactor of NYU, so perhaps that's a road to look down."
Before I could properly speak up, we had reached the archway of the formal dining room, and Grandma had caught wind of our conversation.
"Is this about college? Oh, I'd love it if you returned to Brown. It sounded so regal: 'Ari's going to Brown in the fall…' 'Ari's going to Brown in the fall-"
"Okay, she gets it, Linda," Grandpa interjected before I could.
"I'm just saying it's always nice to go to one of the Ivies."
I too thought it was nice to go to one of the Ivies. Of course, that was before going to a good college went from #1 to #3699 on my list of priorities.
"What about BU like your mother?" Grandma asked, pulling out Grandpa's usual seat at the end of the table. Unoffended by this gesture (maybe because it was based on "I'm helping you because you're my husband" and not "I'm helping you because my mom told me you're getting old), he silently slid into the chair.
"Grandpa-" was all I got in before being cut off again.
"If she wanted to feel closer to her mother, I think she'd just reconcile with her." Uncle Shane pointed out after he appeared in the doorway with Marissa. "Anyway, have either of you even asked Ari what she might want to do for college? Maybe she wants to go cross-country, or maybe she wants to go to community college and major in Popular Culture."
"Oh god. You hear about but you don't ever think it's going to be one of your grandchildren." Grandma groaned.
"I'm not going to major in Popular Culture!" I snapped.
The silence that followed my outburst was palpable. Shane looked at Marissa. Grandma looked at Grandpa. My cousins, who had somehow silently snuck in as this was going on, looked at each other.
"Tell us all what you're thinking of doing then." Grandpa bellowed suddenly. "What's Ari's grand plan now that she's back home?"
"Well, um…" I slowly leaned forward closer to the man, both my palms touching the table. The man slowly raised his eyebrows, urging me to carry on. Slowly but surely, I revealed my grand plan:
"Grandpa, I'm not staying in America. I'm just here to sort out my visa and then I'm going back to Thailand."
"I can't believe you gave your grandfather a heart attack," Shane uttered.
"I did not give my grandfather a heart attack. No one can give someone a heart attack!" I argued.
"Oh, yes, because it was just a coincidence that he clutched his chest and keeled over his dining room table after his favourite grandchild announced she wasn't staying in America."
I swallowed harshly, and there was a short silence before I found the courage to speak up again:
"He's going to be okay, right? I mean, he was talking when they loaded him into the ambulance. And you would've made me stay with Marissa if he was in a bad way, right?" I asked nervously. Despite refusing to take responsibility, my guilt over what happened had driven me to insist on going with Shane to the hospital.
The man only sighed in response for some time, leaning back in his seat, "I'd like to think he's lived through worse."
For what felt like the longest time, Uncle Shane and I sat on those paper-thin hospital chairs (we had had a brief conversation earlier about what private hospital revenue was funding, if not proper seating at least), both looking forward in an attempt to avoid each other's gaze. At some point, I started nervously drumming the nails on my right hand against the plastic side of the chair. Even though I was outwardly denying responsibility that I had caused Grandpa's 'heart episode' - as he would later demand we refer to it, I felt so terrible about what had happened and was frankly terrified that I had just killed my own grandfather. Letting out an exasperated sigh, Shane reached over and abruptly put his hand on top of mine to still it.
"Sorry," I squeaked out.
He said nothing, simply squeezing the back of my hand in reply. Uncle Shane held it like that until we saw Grandma come around the corner; the woman looked shaken up, but not like she had just lost her husband of fifty-plus years. I couldn't help but sigh in relief.
Shane stood as she reached us and the two embraced each other in a way that I had never seen anyone in the McMahon-Helmsley clan embrace anyone before.
"They gave him Heparin in a drip and he's fine, thank god," Grandma explained once she let go. The woman shot me a glance before looking back at Uncle Shane.
"No one outside this family hears about this. Nobody. Do you understand?" She added firmly. My uncle and I quickly nodded in response; we both knew that heart attacks weren't good for business.
"I-I didn't cause it, did I?" I suddenly asked.
I expected a comforting response or, at the very least, a quick 'no' from Grandma, but the only thing the woman did for a time was narrow her eyes at me.
"Well, telling him during a dinner that was being thrown for you that you have no intention of staying in the country didn't exactly relieve him of any stress." She answered, crossing her arms. "But the doctors think that this is just a case of a pot boiling over, so, no, it wasn't… strictly your fault."
Even though Grandma's words weren't a complete absolution of guilt, I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Don't bother him if he's already asleep in there, but he was asking for you before. Go on in and see him."
I got a sense of déjà vu; this wasn't the first time tonight I had suddenly felt a vague sense of fear and apprehension over having to approach my grandfather (something I had spent eighteen previous years doing effortlessly). Once their anticipative stares confirmed that Grandma and Uncle Shane had nothing left to say to me, I gently sighed and turned on my heel.
There were no family pictures to look at this time - only sterile, eerily white walls - as I approached the room. I knocked on the door twice and received no response, still, I knew entering and confirming my grandfather was in no state to talk with my own two eyes before giving up was the right thing to do.
The moment I opened the door, I heard the noise of the television. I didn't even have to look to know it was Raw; I remembered the pattern of commentary, the jeers from the crowd and the sound of heavy boots against the canvas ring like I was seven all over again and I was spending every week watching my dad (plus I knew it was Monday so it couldn't be Smackdown). Whenever he was away from a taping - which had occurred a solid four times in my living memory, Grandma had forbidden my grandpa from watching a show. He was something of a living room driver; loudly yelling directions at the crew even though nobody could hear him. However, presumably figuring that he was too unwell to go on a rampage about how the camera angles were ever so slightly off, Grandma had left it on for him on the crappy hospital television.
I shuffled into the room, finally glancing over at my grandfather in the blue-coloured hospital bed. The upper half was at a slight elevation so his half-open eyes, the bags under them even worse than usual, were the same height as the television. I couldn't quite read the look on his face, but it looked pale and gaunt. My grandfather - the man who had once walked the full length from the ring to his limo after tearing both his quads - had been defeated by something. My inner child had just received something of a knife to the chest.
"Grandpa?"
There was no response.
"Grandpa?"
Silence.
I looked down at my feet for a moment, my shoulders hunched over meekly, before giving it one last try.
"How you feelin', Grandpa?"
Without even looking over from the TV, he waved his hand at me. Again, that was none of my concern.
I continued to awkwardly stand by the door in silence until Raw went on commercial break.
"Twelve months in training, but an entire lifetime in the making…"
A pair of feet walked across white canvas, a transparent UFC logo in the corner of the screen.
"A sporting legend hunting for one last shot at greatness against one of the greatest heavyweights of the past decade…"
A man's shadowed face appeared, staring straight down the barrel of a black and white camera. I knew that guy; he was Kemal Kaplan, an MMA fighter who, even before I even left the country a year ago, had a winning streak of 9-0. He was the kind of fighter that was so good he didn't even have those cauliflower ears that fighters usually do. And, at six foot six and three hundred pounds easy, it didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out why.
You can imagine the shock that overtook me when the face of the man who raised me was the next one to appear on the television.
"What. the. fuck?" I spat.
"See Kemal 'Colossus' Kaplan take on Paul 'Triple H' Levesque on January 15 at Las Vegas' MGM Grand Arena."
My head whipped back towards Grandpa for an explanation. Expecting to see a cool, collected, unsentimental look on his face, I was instead greeted with an uncomfortable grimace as he watched the TV.
"Oh, Grandpa, let me turn this off for you," I muttered softly, walking towards it and fumbling with the channel button below the screen until I wasn't staring into Paul Levesque's face anymore. Amid my horror, I had forgotten that I wasn't the only person whose day could be ruined by reminders of him.
"I read somewhere that he was having a match, but that's different to seeing it on your television." Grandpa sighed.
I looked back upon hearing his words and slowly began to walk over to the man's bedside.
"I had no idea." I breathed out, and Grandpa only nodded sympathetically. Paul would talk about doing an MMA fight all the time when I was younger, but my mom always managed to talk him out of it. I remember she would say that he needed to 'think about his family' and that would get him to stop.
I guess things changed when that 'family' fell apart.
"He was a good son-in-law," Grandpa said suddenly, finally making eye contact with me. "I wasn't happy to lose him."
"He was a good dad. I wasn't happy to lose him either." I whispered, looking down at my feet.
Before I could get wrapped up in my misery, I shook my head.
"Are you comfortable, Grandpa?" I asked quickly, patting the pillow behind his head. "I'm so sorry about tonight. I feel like I'm the cause of this. Is there anything I can do?"
"Don't worry about me, Ari." He said gruffly. Soon, however, a frown had come to his face. "Well, I think… I think it would be beneficial for you to consider how much you're wanted here compared to how much you're wanted over in Thailand."
I smiled sadly, knowing his words were Grandpa code for: "I just want you to stay here."
"Grandpa, I-I meant any jobs I can do for you," I said quietly, looking down.
I heard the man sigh and softly hum.
"I suppose there are some things you can do for me that will make this all a little easier," Grandpa answered, nodding his head. "I need you to go to HQ for me bright and early tomorrow morning. To my office at the top. You remember where that is?"
I quickly nodded.
"The building will be open but you need a key card to get to that floor. Your uncle will have one." He explained.
"So, what is it that you need me to get, Grandpa?" I asked curiously.
"The work laptop I keep in there."
I softly furrowed her eyebrows, "Grandpa, I don't think the doctors would want you working whilst you're in the hospital after a stress-related attack."
The man sat there in silence for a moment before slowly tilting his head and raising a hand.
"Come here, sweetie."
My blood could have been running cold at that moment; Grandpa had never called me sweetie. Not once in my entire life.
Still, I shuffled closer to the man, leaning over his bed. Without warning, Grandpa shot forward as if he hadn't been unconscious in his own dining room an hour before and grabbed ahold of my t-shirt.
"I don't care if I'm in here fighting bacterial meningitis, you're going to get that laptop or I'm going to sic your mother onto you like a wild dog… and believe me, she is very anxious to make amends. Do you understand?" My grandfather snarled.
"Yes, sir." I squeaked.
The man quickly let go of me after that, settling back on the hospital bed. One of his pillows had fallen down to the crease where the bed slanted upwards and, to my surprise, Grandpa allowed me to grab it and return it to its place behind his head. I shook it softly so it was all fluffed up before returning my gaze to his eyes.
"Grandpa, I'm so sorry about tonight. I didn't mean to upset you or hurt you." I uttered, smiling sadly before pressing my lips in a tight line.
My grandfather only reached over and patted a hand that was gripping the guard rail on his hospital.
"You should go back to the house and get some sleep. You've had a long couple of days." He eventually said.
I didn't have the heart to tell the man that I was staying in Uncle Shane's pool house (I had already given the man one heart attack tonight), so I simply nodded my head, gave the hand that was over mine a soft squeeze before heading for the door.
"Hey!"
The abruptness of Grandpa's made me spin around, but, when I turned back to meet his eyes, the man only had a small grin on his face.
"We still have to have those cigars together at some point." He chirped.
After swallowing down the thought that we could have been smoking them together at that moment if I hadn't dropped the bomb on him before dinner, I softly chuckled.
"Bye, Grandpa."
Never one to say "I love you" as a goodbye, the last audio I heard from my grandfather was a shrill:
"DON'T FORGET ABOUT THAT LAPTOP!"
Uncle Shane was waiting for me once I exited Grandpa's hospital room, stepping forward after I had closed the door behind me.
"You better skedaddle if you don't want to have an encounter with your mother. Your grandmother's off calling her as we speak."
"What?!" I exclaimed.
"Yeah, I guess she thought it was only polite to inform her daughter that her father had just suffered a heart attack."
I softly shook my head, "Can I get an Uber back to your house?"
"Yeah. I'll tell Marissa to wait up to make sure you get home okay."
"Thanks. Tell Grandma I'll talk to her tomorrow."
"Will do. See you later, kid."
"Bye, Uncle Shane."
With that, I silently wandered off towards a pair of sliding doors at the end of the hall. Once I was finally out and exposed to the cool October night breeze, I couldn't help but take a deep breath.
"Jesus fucking Christ," I muttered.
Granted, it wasn't every day that I gave my grandpa a heart attack, but tonight reminded me just how chaotic my family was. It was emotionally exhausting, but moving to the other side of the world after living through it was like suddenly coming onto land after spending my entire life on a rocky sea. It was stable and predictable, but I was still leaving behind the only thing I'd ever known. And, coming back after all this time, it had occurred to me that I'd missed it dearly.
Maybe getting my visa and getting the hell out again wouldn't be as easy as I thought…
Letting out another big sigh and taking a seat on the curb, I pulled out my phone and attempted to find somebody willing to drive me across suburban Greenwich at 9:30 at night. At some point, whilst I was still trying to secure a ride, my ears perked up upon hearing the rumble of a familiar car.
When a gray Mercedes-Benz rounded the corner not ten seconds later, I had to dive behind a bush to remain unseen.