Sometimes Trish Stratus bets on losing dogs; sometimes she is one.
One, two, three. The boy has chocolate-brown hair, and he hates her. Well, this feels familiar.
The advantage, when you're Women's Champion, is that you can weed out all the boring, ugly boys and be privy in picking only the best ones. Best being an obvious euphemism to more athletic, more tall, more Trish's type. Or at least, they should be Trish's type. The truth? If she never had to see another beefcake wrestler, with more steroids in his veins than blood, then it would be too soon.
And yet she stared at the dorky backstage interviewer - Todd Grisham - whose microphone Christian had just thrown across the room in a fit of rage, it becomes apparent that he is different from her usual type.
A pair of fingers – Christian's: thick, calloused, unevenly trimmed – snap in front of her eyes. And just like that, she's snapped out of her momentary coma.
"Are you listenin', baby?" the blonde wrestler's tone is more command, than ask. It's only when Trish nods, that his slanted blue eyes look away, trotting off along the backstage corridors.
She stands still for a second, taking in the sight of the broken microphone which lay across the room. And then she looks at Todd. His eyes harden, but it makes no difference – she can read him like a book, written in giant type. "You're not a girl", screams his clenched jaw and furrowed brows, "You're a monster."
It nearly crushes her – nearly.
Then he walks off – possibly to the nearest production room. Trish can't help but size him up, analyzing the cellotape wrapped around his glasses and wrinkles in his rented tuxedo. He's an honest hard-working boy, she thinks, with no time for games. Too bad games are all Trish has, that's all she's really learned from the wrestling business.
She finally decides makes her way to Christian in the men's locker room. Her feet feel heavy – like they're made out of lead. So does the championship belt which sat on her shoulder. And it takes all her might not to look back.
The dangerous thing about this particular boy, Trish Stratus finds early on, is that he makes her sad.
The boys before him made her smile, and laugh, and forget – forget her status as Champion, alongside all her other wrestling allegiances. But something about the interviewer – Todd – was real. It permeated throughout his being. She'd find it in every question he'd ask, as he'd force her to rethink moves, and actions, and allegiances.
There was a strength to it that refused to die.
She sees him sat on some equipment boxes in a corridor one day before a RAW tapping. She slides in next to him, sitting down, and he sighs. He's got circles under his eyes like he hadn't slept in weeks. Or maybe that was her.
"What is it, Patricia?"
A beat, she bites her tongue. There was something so violently intimate about him using her full name. A kind of sanctity that transcended the laws of wrestling kayfabe. "Rumour has it that Kurt Angle's talked about his gameplan regarding his match with Christian tonight… I suppose you would know?"
Her voice is sickly sweet, and yet doesn't faze him. He looks at her, with big brown eyes that glimmer with honesty and disappointment. God, why does he have to be honest all the time? It's exhausting, Trish thinks. How was she supposed to win, if he refused to play the game?
He is annoyed. But is wise enough to know the consequences of disobeying a Champion, and so he slips a hand into his bag, and pulls out a rather grim looking red-notebook titled 'NOTES' – flipping through it, he tears a single page, and slides it over to her. Not remarking on the fact that Christian himself was nowhere to be found.
Big brown eyes are kind when they look at her again.
"Don't pity me." Trish lets out, grabbing the sheet with such force that it nearly wrinkles it.
But Todd simply shakes his head, fiddling with the hinges of his glasses. "I don't. And besides, it's not my problem."
And Trish can't tell if that is worse. She takes a quick glance at his gnashed knuckles, and chews on her lip. A symptom of asking another stupid question?, she wonders.
"Is it not? I think we're more alike, you and me. We'll always be the piece on the board, but never the player."
Todd quickly turns his hand to hide the wound, and his mouth twists: it comes naturally then, and Trish can nearly hear his thoughts. "I'm not like you. I'll never be like you."
He grunts, "I'm sorry, Patricia. I can imagine that your storyline with Christian, plus defending the Championship is… a lot to handle. But we have nothing in common."
Trish is quiet for a moment, digesting his words. She doesn't insist her point, it's something she had learned early on in the wrestling business – to not go digging around where dark things are buried. So instead, she smiles like she's got him all figured out. And lucky for her, it's enough to get underneath her skin.
"What do you want?" he asks her the next time she sees him, exasperated.
The air is cold in the RAW men's locker room, but somehow it is his tone which manages to make the hair on her skin stand.
She raises an eyebrow, eyes darting around the room – lighting up once they find the little object they were meant to. Dainty fingers grab a forgotten MP3 player and show it to the young man in exaggeration.
"Chris forgot his iPod." She stretches out the name of her on-again, but mostly off-again, boyfriend. "What are you still doin' here? RAW ended like an hour ago…"
Todd moves aside, allowing her to peer at a small television – fuzzy graphics showed replays of tonight's show, colours so bright that they were enough to give her a headache. "Figured, I'd make some notes on today's show. Maybe someone in production will finally give me a shot at a storyline," he mumbles. She can hear the scorn in his voice –it sounded like a jagged sword.
She doesn't feel too much pity for him. Perhaps being a lowly interviewer was what he deserved, after all wrestling was a fickle business. She had seen some of the most talented men and women cut themselves loose, so who was Todd Grisham in comparison?
Suddenly Trish can feel the power in the room. The Women's Champion and the backstage interviewer.
Trish leans in next to him, "You know, if you weren't invited to the RAW bar crawl, that's okay. You can just be honest. Which freak actually re-watches this stuff on purpose." It's innocent, mindless conversation. But enough to rile him.
He stops jotting notes in his book, "You could have anyone you want," he says with a sigh of weariness. "Go and bother…. I don't know, Kane or something. But just leave me alone, Patricia."
Bother? She cocks her head. Does he mean it? Is that all she is? A nuisance, a trouble, a bother. It rubs her the wrong way for a moment, the very next, she grabs a bottle of red Gatorade and chucks it at the television. The small electronic device hisses, before turning off with a zap.
Red liquid splashing on the ground, staining itself like some kind of crime witness.
"Oops." She whispers, half-sarcastically, half-surprised herself.
The young man is surprisingly calm, frozen in place – she can't really read him then. His shoulders slouch, "You'll never… change, will you?"
There is defeat in his voice, and Trish supposes that she's won. So, she allows herself a smile, but she can't quite take the sadness out of it. "No," she says, "That's the point, you see."
She glances quickly at the floor once more, blood red stains liked someone's just been murdered – or maybe it's just her.