My Man

The flyers pinned up all over Clarksville read:

TWA PRESENTS: OVERLOAD ‘25 MAIN EVENT: “ROTTEN” T.J. RATIGAN vs. “THE NEW DIAMOND” NATE COLTON!

But they didn’t tell the whole story.

How could they? It’s not like a poster can see into the future. It’s not like even the most bombastic headline can convey how much this show will affect someone’s life.

No, that was covered by the small print at the bottom.

“Card subject to change.”

# # #

Twenty minutes to bell time.

Backstage at a wrestling show is always chaos. The same amount of chaos, no matter the size. So, if the show is smaller than you’re used to…

“Tycho, where are we at?”

“Has anyone seen my boot?”

“Hey, where’s the music guy? I picked a new song…”

“Everyone’s here, except Midnight. Can’t reach him.”

“Look, I need enough room for the shirts and tapes…”

“Jesus Christ, do you ever wash that thing?”

“He’ll get here. Check around for some campers, just in case.”

“That ain’t me. Ratigan came through twenty minutes ago.”

“The powerbomb ain’t working for me anymore; I gotta try–”

As he changed from his gym wear to his ring gear, Nate took it all in with an easygoing smile.

Nate & Blake’s Wrestling Adventure brought them to one of the last big territory promotions in the country. Operated by the Buckley family for several generations, currently stewarded by Tyler–“Tycho,” he insisted–Buckely and his half-brother, Chase Sloane.

“I mean it, guys. Anything you need,” Chase told them–well, he told Nate–for the seventh time in the last hour.

“We’re good, thanks,” Nate told him. For the seventh time in the last hour.

As the taller, slimmer, better-looking half of TWA management walked away, Nate shook his head and let his smile slip. “Didn’t I tell you? Total grease guy.”

“Wait, why is Chase a ‘grease guy?’” Blake asked. He thought he knew all the lingo, but every show brought new phrases.

“‘Cause he’s slick. Guys like that are the reason Rule 33 exists.” Rule #33: Count the money before you leave the building. “Wait…so why are you working for him?”

“You can’t avoid ‘em. Most promoters are grease guys. Even Dad, to an extent. They’re the ones who know how to sell a show. The advertising, the posters, all that…they’re great at it.”

“So what about Tycho?”

“He’s a gear guy. Good at the details, making sure all the little stuff gets done. If he does his job, it all runs like clockwork.”

“Oh. That kind of gear. I thought you meant a guy made of boots and trunks and stuff.”

“Ha! But you get me, right? Like, Chase probably isn’t a bad guy. I’m not saying don’t trust him. Just…don’t completely trust him.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

Nate took the opportunity to mess up his brother’s hair before returning his match preparations.

“I’m glad they kicked Ratigan out of the locker room before we got here,” Blake said as he straightened his hair again.

“Oh, no doubt. That guy’s the worst. He’s probably still talking shit about me, whether I hear it or not.”

As Nate laced up his boot, Blake looked over at his brother. “Nate…how come it doesn’t bother you when guys say stuff like that? Like, I know the Rule–” Rule #6: If someone’s trying to get in your head, don’t hold the door for them. “--but…like, how?”

The New Diamond shrugged. “Dunno. I guess it’s…like, he doesn’t know us, right? He’s sayin’ shit to get a reaction, like any bully. At least Colt Smith was good at it; Ratigan’s been the same loudmouth jackass for twenty years. Fuck what he thinks.”

“Huh.”

I hope you’re getting that lesson. That’s my biggest worry with you, kid.

“So…why is it different with RIA? Like, I’ve seen I–Iv–”

Nate rested his hand on Blake's shoulder while the young man gathered himself enough to continue. “I’ve seen people call you a coward before. But you went nuts when she did it. How come?”

“It’s…”

Because she means it

“It’s ‘cause she’s my friend. At least, she was.”

Because she’s right

“And it’s one thing to give your friends shit. But she’s taking cheap shots.”

You’re all right

“Like, this thing with Kohime…I want to fix it. You all know that. But she keeps trashing me like I fucked it up on purpose.”

I fucked it up in the same way I ALWAYS fuck it up, it probably is on purpose at this point

“And she has the nerve to call me a coward? To my face? Just ‘cause I don’t stay nailed up on a cross 24/7?”

I am a coward

“Again, she’s supposed to be a friend. Someone I respect…or did, anyway. Now…well, if she wants to fight so goddamn bad, that’s exactly what she’ll get.”

Maybe she’ll crack my head open, it’s what I deserve

“Afterwards, if she still don’t want to be an adult, that’s on her.”

“I wish you didn’t have to fight.”

“I’m fine with the fight. I wish she hadn’t made it personal. ‘Cause I promise, this ain’t gonna go the way she wants.”

“She’s pretty dangerous, big bro.”

“Oh, I know it. Even if she wasn’t mad, she’d still be all I can handle. But I still gotta handle it. ‘Cause we’re Coltons…and what are the two things Coltons never do?”

“We don’t back down…and we don’t lay down.”

“There it is,” Nate said, ruffling his brother’s hair again. “Sometimes you gotta fight your friends in this business. Nature of the beast. Can’t take it easy, either; you just gotta hope that–”

Nate cut himself off as Chase Sloane approached them again. “Hey, Nate. There’s some chick that says she knows you. Probably a ring rat.”

“Courtesan.”

“...Sure. We don’t let them in the building, so I told her she could wait in the parking lot. If you’re…interested.”

Chase winked, and went back about his business.

“Who do you think that is?” Nate asked. “Maybe it’s RIA, trying to sucker punch me before our match.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Blake said…more insistently than usual.

“Nah, you’re right. Maybe it’s…wait. You don’t think…”

“Think what?”

“You don’t think…it’s ‘Hime?”

Nate didn’t wait for his brother’s opinion before running away with the idea. “It’s gotta be! Who else could it be?” He threw his jacket on, stuffed his phone in his pocket, and headed out the door.

It was a short trip to a service entrance, then a longer one around the building and all the way to the parking lot. Every step quickened his pace, like he believed the sooner he could reach his destination, the sooner he could put this whole nightmare behind him.

By the time he hit the asphalt, Nate was practically running. He darted his head, trying to spot her.

Maybe she found my car. She’ll be waiting there, I’ll get down on my knees and apologize and beg and maybe she’ll come back and then–

“...”

And there she was.

# # #

Five minutes to bell time.

Ten minutes since Nate ran out of the locker room.

About the same since Blake asked a question, with no answer.

@BWColton: @kmori Are you in Clarksville?

Chaos erupting all around him, as Chase Sloane and Tycho Buckley argued back and forth.

“How is this my fault?”

“How the hell is it not? You booked Midnight Kid on our show and didn’t even tell him?!”

Blake didn’t like the yelling.

Especially when his headphones couldn’t block it out, and he was alone in a room full of strangers, and he didn’t know where his brother was.

“I left a message!”

“Fucking Christ, Chase! You have to get confirmation! Dad never–”

“Dad’s not in charge anymore, is he?!”

He felt a tightness in his chest. His leg started jittering. Oh God, he was about to lose his shit in front of all these people.

Time for the Secret Weapon.

Blake jammed his hand in his pocket, rooting around until he felt them.

Before he and Nate left on this adventure, he’d dug them out of the little box of secrets he kept under his bed. In a house, and a family, that shared so many things, Blake needed a few that were his alone.

The most precious of all were three slivers of cardboard.

Puzzle pieces.

He’d taken them from the family puzzle night when he was four years old. Squirreled them away in his room, finding more secure hiding places as he grew older.

Why he took them, why he kept them…he never knew. They just…seemed important.

Blake traced his fingers over their edges, the tabs and blanks grown misshapen over the years. Would they still fit, if returned to the box?

It was something to think about. Something other than the yelling.

Blake didn’t like the yelling.

“Now we’ve got nobody for the opener!”

“Get one of the campers; it’s fine.”

“There aren’t any! They all left when we told ‘em there were no seats left!”

Grease guy and gear guy, Blake thought. He understood, in a way. He worked better with checklists. Habits.

Rules.

Blake was definitely a gear guy…and now, the gears were turning. Rule #4: Always bring your gear. He looked down at his still-open bag. Trunks. Boots. Pads. Tape. Only ever used in practice before, and it didn’t have the family’s traditional look. But it was something.

…

No. That was crazy.

“Okay smartass, do you have any ideas?”

“Fuck, I dunno. Turn the Scooter/Naptime match into a three-way?”

“Oh, please. Johnny Naptime’s so boring he puts himself to sleep. You think Mom wants that for her friend’s prize student?”

Blake’s mind kept turning, while he focused his nervous energy on the puzzle pieces. He couldn’t possibly be thinking this; he was nowhere near ready– Rule #5: The most important fight is the one against fear. “A tag match, maybe?”

“Against who, Chase? All our teams are watching the Flynn! Anyway, we’d still need someone for him to tag with!”

Of course. Of course he was ready! Hadn’t he grown up in the business? Didn’t he bust his ass for the last year, even dropping out of college for this? Wasn’t he a Colton?! He could take on– Rule #8: Be confident, not arrogant. Okay, he wasn’t ready for the kind of people his brother fought. He probably couldn’t beat a RIA Lockhart, or even a T.J. Ratigan. But he’d watched tape on Danny Tallent with his friend Khalil; Blake knew he could take him.

He turned to the half-brothers and opened his mouth, but his voice died in his throat as the argument continued.

“I can’t think of everything, Tycho!”

“You can’t think of anything!”

Maybe he was getting ahead of himself. Dad had a plan, after all. Blake just wasn’t ready yet. Rule #1: “This place would be nothing without me and Mom! Dad could never–” The world won’t wait until you’re ready… “YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT DAD!”

His left hand clutched tight around the puzzle pieces, Blake stood up and marched right toward the half-brothers, both red-faced and screaming. They didn’t even notice his presence until he cleared his throat. Rule #13: When you speak, speak with confidence. “Hey.”

# # #

And there she was.

Framed in the sunset. Beautiful on its own, but against her, it couldn’t compare.

Nate looked into her eyes and felt…

He just…felt.

If emotions were volume knobs, then Nate Colton was Spinal Tap. Everything, all at once, all the way to eleven.

He stared into her eyes and he wanted to laugh and cry and smile and scream and sing and curse and pull her close and push her away and punch a windshield and stroke her hair and–

Most of all, he wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her. If they could just do that, everything would be all right.

He stood there, staring. Too scared to open his mouth.

Instead, he let his fingers do the talking.

“Skye.”

“Nathan.”

Still so beautiful. Maybe more than ever. A smile that could bring sunlight to the bottom of the ocean…

“How could you?”

…but she wasn’t smiling now. She looked hurt. Close to tears, even.

She looked like he did, every time she left.

“I-wha–” Nate sputtered, before remembering himself, and forced his hands into her kind of words. “What do you mean?”

Skye brought her phone from her purse and pointed the screen at him. There he saw his own face, next to his brother in a Chicago bar after the 2CW show.

Nate remembered the night, vaguely. He’d gotten drunk and ranted about the state of his love life. Apparently it had made its way to the Scandal Sheet.

He recalled hearing about the video, but dismissed it because the blurb said he’d been talking about Kohime Mori. He knew for certain that wasn’t true.

But that was the worst thing about Savannah Scandal’s reporting. Not the lies. Not even the truths (rare though they are.) No, the worst was the thin poison coating on those little nuggets of fact.

The footage was mostly authentic; only a person’s name was changed. A decent enough fake; there was no way of telling the lie unless you were there that night.

Or, you could read lips.

She put the device away, allowing her to speak freely.

“My friends showed me this. It made me so happy at first, seeing you again. But then you said…that. It broke my heart, Nathan. You broke my heart.”

How about that. Some of these knobs go to twelve.

“Skye, that’s…”

Seeing her in person after two years was more than he could bear. For her to look at him with such sadness, such heartache…that was impossible. Nate couldn’t carry all that, no matter how strong he tried to be.

“That’s…”

The burdens he carried went no further. In that moment, he could only hold on to one thing…

“That’s pretty fucking rich.”

Outrage.

“I broke your heart?! Do you even know how much you hurt me? How many times I cried my fucking eyes out over you?!”

“I never…I didn’t want that!”

“Then why did you always leave? Every time we were together, you left, and not once did you even say goodbye! I lost my scholarship, I nearly tanked my career…I finally had something good going and I fucked that up too–all because of you!”

Skye’s eyes flashed with anger, her indignation matching his own. The ex-lovers continued their screaming match in utter silence.

“Don’t you dare blame me, Nathan! That is not my fault!”

“No, it’s mine. For being so stupid, so fucking weak, that I always tell myself it’ll be different, and it never is. I keep fucking up my whole life, because I don’t know how to let you go.”

“That’s not fair, Nathan! I loved you! I still–”

“No you didn’t. You just…used me.”

“Don’t tell me how I feel, you asshole!”

Nate’s bitter retort died on his fingertips. She could have screamed those words loud enough for the whole arena to hear, and they wouldn’t have echoed inside him this much.

“I always hated leaving you like that…but I had to! If I stayed another second longer, I’d…I just would have stayed.”

“...”

The bottom fell out of Nate’s heart again. For all the time they spent together, Nate was never great at reading her. The endings always caught him off guard. Was she being honest now?

Before choosing his next words, he laid his outrage down…and picked up his sadness.

“Would that be so bad?”

She waited with her answer. When it came, her signs were measured. Deliberate.

“It would be amazing, Nate. But it would also mean giving up my dreams. Living someone else’s life. I’d never ask you to do that…so please don’t ask me.”

Nate silently thanked her for never asking that question. After all that happened between them, he still knew what his answer would be.

Music drifted faintly through the air, some generic metal tune. Somewhere, the show was starting without him, and he didn’t care. All he could think about was Skye Reeves.

Just like always.

“Skye, I…”

“Nate, please.”

Even now, he wanted to hold her. Kiss her. Pin her against the car and tear off her dress and–

Wait, what the fuck is that

“I know things were hard for you. They weren’t easy for me either. No matter how you felt, I didn’t deserve to see you talking about me like that for the whole world to see.”

That’s a new song

Wait, I know that one

Skye continued, but Nate’s attention was drawn away. “Don’t look away from me!” she signed.

I KNOW THAT ONE!

Of course she couldn’t hear what Nate could. Or the alarm bells it set off in his head.

“SHUT UP!”

She couldn’t hear that either, but Nate got the point across.

He focused on the sound; a classic guitar riff…one all too familiar to the family.

“Life in the Fast Lane.”

Nobody else on tonight’s card walked out to the Eagles. In seven years, he’d never met anyone who used that band, except…

Oh, FUCK

Blake, what did you do

“I have to go.” He half-turned toward the building, over Skye’s protest.

“Nathan, we’re not done here!”

That got him to stop, for as long as he dared.

“Yes, we are. I’ve got a much bigger problem. Now do what you do best, and get out of my life.”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

For the first time, Nate Colton turned his back on Skye Reeves.

Fuck fuck fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

He raced toward the Wilma Rudolph Center, then circled around to find the service entrance. Was he headed in the right direction? No clue.

God DAMN that woman, she’s fucked things up AGAIN!

No time to get his bearings or double back.

Maybe he’ll take the whole song, I can still stop him

The song wasn’t even playing anymore. He picked up the pace, pumping his arms and ignoring the pain that sang in his shoulder.

Does it still count if I stop the match? Are no contests official?

He reached the door–he’d gone the wrong way after all–and pounded on it with his fist.

“OPEN UP, GOD DAMMIT!”

Nate was already running through scenarios about a possible security guard–bowl him over and apologize later–when someone finally opened up, god dammit. Tycho Buckley, the pale, slightly overweight, already balding half of TWA management.

“Nate? Where have you been?”

“Gotta go!”

Again, he bolted toward the ring, his boots threatening to slip out from under him with every step. Luckily the Rudolph isn’t that big, and he quickly arrived at Argyle.

But still, far too late.

There he was. Blake Colton. Nate’s baby brother. In the ring…for real, this time. His first professional match.

Four fucking months too early.

This is a disaster, Nate thought. He needs that extra year! There’s no way he’s gonna…

…

Oh damn

Kid’s kicking some ass out there

Nate stared through the curtain as his brother escaped a vertical suplex, ducked a desperation backfist, then grabbed the outstretched arm and tripped the other man, twisting the limb into the family’s signature hold…a variant of it, anyway.

Oh, that was SLICK

DING DING DING

“YES!!” Nate shouted, his panic temporarily forgotten. He kept watching as Blake leapt to his feet, so excited he almost forgot to let the referee raise his hand.

“The winner of the match, by submission…BLAKE! COOOLLLLLLTOOOOOOOOONNNNN!”

The youngest Colton made his way backstage, jumping more than walking. The applause was light–a lot of the crowd wasn’t even seated yet–but he carried on like it was the Colossus main event.

Nate waited by the entrance. Bad enough he’d missed most of his brother’s debut; there was no way he’d miss this.

When Blake met with his brother, the already ecstatic young man smiled as big as all outdoors. “Big bro! Did you see me out there?”

“Hell yeah, buddy! You tore it up!”

“That was SO COOL!” Blake yelled, throwing his arms around Nate in a big ol’ bro hug.

“Yeah it was little bro. Now go hit the showers; I can smell the victory on you.”

“Ha!” Blake laughed, headed for the locker room.

As soon as the kid turned his back, the smile left Nate’s face. He knew his first order of business–to text his father. The plan’s fucked Nate also knew his next order of business.

He carried too much in his heart. Anger. Frustration. Resentment.

For so long, he tried to control it…but it hurt too much, for too long. He couldn’t hold it anymore.

No, he had to get rid of it…

By putting it into someone else.

# # #

The results on RingDispatch.com read:

Blake Colton d. Danny Tallent by submission at 7:38 after the Inverted Colton Clutch (inverted cobra clutch)

But they didn’t tell the whole story.