Post by Evan De Parker on Jun 12, 2012 3:09:23 GMT -4
Author's Note: This is the end of the "Georgia Trilogy" for Evan Envi. Part One and Part Two are in the convenient little hyperlinks right there.
Also, this takes place the day BEFORE the June 11th edition of Monday Night Meltdown. Just so there's no confusion.
I hope you all enjoy this piece of development, and hope you enjoy the Sienna, Andre, and Michelle characters as much as I do.
If not... Maybe one day, lol.
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“Why don’t they…
Do what they say, say what they mean?
One thing leads to another..
You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long
But then
One thing leads to another…”
As mentioned before, Evan Envi’s weekend was overall much better than his first two days in Georgia. Saturday went quite smoothly and Sunday did as well…
Until roughly 11:30 that evening, however-- more on that later.
Sienna Harrison returned to the guest house a little past noon on Sunday, moments after Evan returned from the gym. Sweat is still dripping from his forehead into his eyes and he turns, mopping his face with a hand-towel as Sienna strolls into the room.
”Greetings, baby brother.”
Evan doesn’t respond, annoyed by the term “baby brother” that Sienna loved to throw around so often.
”Where’s Michelle?”
”She left this morning to go take care of some things at home. Got lunch with her roommate or something… She has to work today---”
”DAWWW, you looked so sad when you said that! You’re falling for this girl, aren’t you?”
”Goddamn you can be annoying as sh---”
”DAHAWWW, you’re blushing, Ev!”
”Will you stop?”
”Are ya gonna go visit her at work? Are you going to be that guy?”
”She told me to drop by at night when they were about to close…”
”And you’re gonna do it?”
”I do what I want, bitch.”
”Sassy.”
”It’s not like I have much else to do in Atlanta besides chill with Dre. Which is cool, but I‘m not gonna do that 24/7.”
”I resent that! I’m right here.”
Evan laughs a bit, at the fact that Sienna legitimately seems to be offended that Evan failed to consider her as an option as far as looking for things to do in Atlanta. In his defense, she had spent most of her time with that British, suckish-Indy-wrestler/mediocre med school student/fake high school teacher dude. Aside from hijacking Michelle for most of the day on Friday, Sienna hadn’t tried to make too much of a presence in Evan’s life in about a week.
”Well, what do you wanna do?”
”I don’t know. What’s Dre doing?”
”Well, I convinced him to go to the gym with me. We got back twenty minutes ago so by this point? Probably napping.”
Sienna laughs, fully aware that it was a huge possibility. ”Well, I’ll go drop by soon. Maybe we can catch a movie.”
And that’s exactly what Sienna did, sometime between Evan taking a shower and getting dressed into a pair of beige shorts, which had a beige-and-brown miniature-checkered pattern running throughout the entire design. This complements a dark-brown shirt Evan pulls over his torso, advertising Where the Wild Things Are loudly on the front.
Andre agreed to join the two a bit later in the afternoon. To the best of Evan’s knowledge, Becca was spending the day with her parents in honor of one of their birthdays. He hadn’t bothered to get too much information on it. He was, however, excited that Andre would be joining them since it was rare that they got to spend time with Andre without Becca. Evan had nothing against the woman, but having her around took away from the comforting feeling of nostalgia at times.
While waiting for Andre to get ready, Evan asked Sienna what she and Becca had talked to Michelle about… But Sienna simply smiled and told ”little brother” not to worry about it. This annoyed the APW North American Champion, but there wasn’t much he was going to be able to do about it. And before he could press the situation further, the guest house’s doorbell rings, prompting Evan and Sienna to meet Andre at the door and waste little time heading to his driveway.
Evan had been fond of Andre’s car since he got it in 2008-- a gray Dodge Magnum. He mumbles in annoyance as Sienna calls shotgun. There was that nostalgic sibling rivalry.
He climbs into the back seat of the car and once they pull out onto the road, the inevitable conversation begins.
”So. How do you like Michelle?”
Evan can’t help but laugh at the way Andre asks the question, as if Michelle was a car, or a television show rather than a person.
”I’d say I like her just fine, sir.”
”Smartass… I mean, are you two gonna keep seeing each other? Or is she just someone you’re gonna fool around with while you’re in town?”
”I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.”
”Don’t listen to him, Dre.” Sienna turns and smirks at Evan. ”He’s in it deep. Baby brother’s infatuated.”
Evan rolls his eyes, sighing.
”I have to say, ‘infatuated’ is a bit too strong of a word for the situation.”
”Do you? I think it’s perfect.”
”Ooooh. Gonna ask her to be your girlfriend?”
”Probably not. I don’t think that’s what she’s… What we’re trying to do here. She’s a cool person to hang out with.”
Andre briefly glances at Evan through the rearview mirror. ”So you’ll be in the area more often then?”
”If you mean so I can see Michelle… I don’t know.”
It seemed like a safe answer. Nobody can demand anything from “I don’t know.” Nobody can expect too much from it.
”Jeez, man. We used to talk about girls all the time. What happened?”
Evan, who had been gazing out the back window of the Magnum for the past few minutes laughs dryly and turns, looking back at the rearview just in time to briefly lock eyes with Andre, who soon after focuses back on the road.
”Some of us haven’t been with the same chick for ten years. It’s rough out there, man. Bitches eat your soul.”
”Hey!”
”Bitches. Not ladies. Ladies have no need to do that, because they earn access to your soul. And before you guys ask, yes, I consider Michelle a lady.” Evan pauses to consider the events during the preceding afternoon on the faux Oval Office at the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum. He amends his statement. ”Well. A unique lady.”
”Heyyy, I’m not completely naïve. Becca and I have broken up before. Right after high school, we were broken up for almost a year. She had gone to a party, and I heard some things, and I reacted and said some things I shouldn’t have… Took her months to forgive me. But she didn’t just move onto some other guy or talk trash about me. She ignored me. She made sure that I saw her every single day, looking amazing, pretending I didn’t exist. And the few times she did? She knew exactly what to say to make me wanna curl up in a ball and die.”
It’s not the story that causes the Harrison siblings to be awkwardly silent, but how casually Andre Savi tells it. Both of them had known the two went their separate ways for a while after high school, but neither knew the details.
”But it didn’t last forever. I realized that women can’t all be horrible. Not all the time.” Andre steals another quick glance at Evan through the rearview. ”I know you like her, dude. But you’re not gonna let her in. I already know you’re not.”
”What?”
”He’s right. You’ll find some reason to push her away and make her hate you. I swear, it’s like you get off on it.”
”I don’t think I’ll be doing that.”
”Well, no, I don’t think you ever start off with the intention of doing it. But you get really pissy when people wanna find stuff out about you and get close to you. You think everyone’s out to get you.”
Evan feels a pang of guilt, knowing that there must be some air of truth in Sienna’s words. After all, A.C. Smith had said the same thing on Meltdown last week… And he’d said it before APW. Evan had heard it several times in his life, most noticeably over the past couple of years.
”I don’t think Michelle is out to get me. I promise you guys that.”
”Well, good. She’s a good person. I’m surprised you’re with her though, considering all that baggage.”
”Baggage?”
”Ooooh, this sounds potentially juicy.”
Andre arches an eyebrow, seeming to be concerned that Evan is so clueless as to whatever it is he’s talking about.
”Well, yeah. She just got out of a three-year relationship with this douche bag. What was his name… Mike something. Something really common. I wanna say Edwards…”
”Oh, cool, he has a name. A name that I don’t actually give two shits about. Why should I be worried about this guy?”
”I don’t know if it’s necessarily him you have to worry about. He brings a lot of attention wherever he goes though. He’s a bit of a local celebrity. Or so he and a few people around here like to think.”
”What’s so great about him?”
”Well, he was a pretty big high school football star. He could’ve gotten a free ride through university but he wanted to be a… southern rapper. Spent most of his money on an unnecessarily large house a few dozen miles upstate, built an equally as unnecessarily giant studio, and started doing his thing.” Andre glances at Evan once more. ”Lately he’s been trying to build ‘street cred’ so he can take his career to the next level. Or something. I know you were trying to keep a low-profile here, so--”
”I really, really think this information would have been beneficial a few days ago.”
”It slipped my mind.”
”This isn’t what I need right now. A loud-mouth. Does this guy come around a lot?”
”Often enough. Poor Michelle. I dunno how she puts up with it.”
Andre went on to tell Evan stories about Mike often coming into S.R. Happy’s while Michelle was working and verbally assaulting her shortly after their breakup. It was apparently no secret that the two remained in close contact, with false rumors circulating that Michelle was pregnant, only to be discredited after a few months. Mike (rap name, M-Radical), was garnering attention from media outlets and radio stations by early 2012 and attributed a lot of his success to Michelle, the subject of many of his songs, though none of them portrayed her in a positive light.
”Don’t let this become a distraction, Ev.”
”I won’t… Dre, is this guy in town? I really don’t feel like dealing with a crazy-ex-boyfriend the day before my match.”
”Eh, I don’t see why he would. You should be safe.”
Wrong.
Around 10:15 on Sunday night, Envi found himself walking up to the crystal-clean windows of S.R. Happy’s. Internally he felt a bit child-like in the approach… Sienna and Andre dropped him off in the rental. Sienna was using it for the night, as Envi had very little use for it while with Michelle.
He wasn’t aware quite yet that tonight was going to be different from the previous ones. He wasn’t yet cognizant of the idea that he might be taken out of his comfort zone… But that’s a story for later.
Currently, Envi stands with his face pressed against the glass, making peculiar faces at Michelle as she stands behind the register. It takes about thirty seconds before her eyes leave the computer and a grin stretches across her face as she sees Evan standing on the other side of the door. With eagerness, she half-runs, half-skips to the door, pulling it open. She snakes her arms around Evan’s neck and the two share a passionate kiss.
A startlingly passionate kiss.
It doesn’t register until the two break away, and by the blush on Michelle’s cheeks, she felt something similar. Whatever the two were thinking went unsaid, however, as Michelle beckons Evan inside so she can lock the door… As she resumes typing codes into the register, Evan finds an empty chair, gazing at Michelle as she talks about her day, complaining about the rudeness of some of the customers and the incompetence of some of her employees. In that respect, it didn’t sound too different from Evan’s career.
She was beautiful.
Nope. No pushing it to the back of his head this time. In the brief silence that followed Michelle Weaver’s soft-spoken tirade, Evan found that the word was being screamed in his head, even as she sat there in her tacky snot-green-and-menstruation-red S.R. Happy’s work uniform. Her hair, though down now, was a tangled mess due to hours of being tied up in the trademark green hat.
He lost track of how long he actually sat there waiting for Michelle to complete her tasks… It couldn’t have been too long because before he knew it, he was climbing into the passenger seat of her Taurus, and the two spent every second of that ten minute drive talking about everything under the sun.
Everything, that was, except for Mike Edwards.
Soon, Evan would wish that the chick had said something about that bastard Mike Edwards.
The radio snaps off, halting the New-Wave sounds of The Fixx.
”Home sweet home.”
Michelle says this in a sing-song voice and casts Envi a wink before pushing open her door, collecting her purse, and stepping out into the humid Atlanta air. Evan follows suit and the two make their way inside the lobby of the complex, which consists of no more than two couches, seated on the opposite side of the room that led toward a velvet-colored spiral staircase and an elevator.
Hm. An apartment. Evan had never dated a chick that lived in an apartment before. But then again, he’d never dated a chick that worked at a burger joint before either.
Evan is led to the elevator and up to the fifth and top floor of the complex. As they step into the hallway he notices that there are only two doors. He’s led to the one at the north end of the hallway, where Michelle slides the key into the knob and pushes it open. Evan is met with another familiar smell… That same grassy, smoky, half-pine, half-skunk odor that drifts into his nostrils. Apparently, the culprit had attempted to mask the smell of their miniature party with some “Hawaiian Aloha” scented Febreeze.
”Oh. Wonderful. Guess Jen didn’t have to work tonight.”
Michelle yawns and turns the lights on in the living room. Evan gazes around and immediately regrets his earlier judgment of Michelle—it may have been an apartment, but it was one of the best the area had to offer. A loft. The entranceway gave way to the living room which was attached to the dining room. Another room was at the end of the hallway which lacked a door, but rather featured tye-dye themed tapestry hanging in the doorway.
”Jen’s my roommate, if that wasn’t obvious from the pungent weed-flavored odor pouring out of her room.”
”At least she knows how to have fun.”
”She’s a bus driver overnight.”
”A female bus driver? At night? In Atlanta?”
Michelle gives Evan a smirk and shrugs.
”She has ways of handling herself.”
”Like what?”
Michelle laughs, finding some humor in the situation that Evan isn’t quite able to pinpoint.
”Well, the last guy that tried to fuck with her nearly got his arm ripped right out of the socket. She’s an ex-marine. Had some anger issues once she got home, got in some trouble, got fired from S.R. Happy’s.” Another bashful giggle escapes her mouth. ”It was really funny, actually. Some customer was giving her a hard time about the way his steak was prepared or something, and she’d already been working a double shift and was having a bad day…” Once more, Michelle has to stifle a giggle to finish the story. ”I was in the back when it happened, but at some point she throws this guy through a window and he has to get nineteen stitches in his forehead. I’d say she held onto her job for approximately twenty-six seconds after he went through the glass.”
”Jesus. And how’d you end up deciding to live with this chick?”
Michelle shrugs. ”She’s a crazy bitch, but she’s my friend.” In a considerably quieter tone (so quiet that Evan has to pause and register for a moment to make sure she said it), Michelle adds, ”I owe her everything.”
Evan chooses not to inquire as to the specifics of the question quite yet. It doesn’t come up again in conversation as Michelle tells Evan to wait in the living room as she changes… Making haste, she changes into similar evening-wear from the night before—this time, a violet colored tank top and a blue-white-and-purple plaid pair of boy shorts, eager to get comfortable after a hard days work, prompting Evan to do the same, changing into a black wife-beater and nylon shorts, fully content with spending the evening relaxing, because the next day would be anything all day. Autographs in the morning, training in the afternoon, and a journey to Duluth in the evening… Yeah, Evan was pretty certain he’d earned one last night to relax.
However, just as Michelle turns on the television and begins to make her way into Evan’s arms, a piercing, electronically-amplified voice cuts through the serenity.
”AYYEEE, BITCH!”
Like a bullet, Michelle shoots upright, panic etched over her face. Evan narrows his eyes and he immediately asks the obvious question, ”The hell was that?” but is wildly ignored as Michelle leaps off of the couch and runs toward the sliding glass door separating the couple from the balcony.
Evan, with absolutely no hesitance pushes himself from the couch and follows Michelle out to the balcony.
There, in the parking lot, sitting on the hood of a bright white Cadillac is a man that Evan is certain is Mike Edwards—the “southern rapper” that went by the name of M-Radical. He is flanked by two men that outweigh him by at least a hundred pounds and tower over him by a solid six inches.
The boy doesn’t look much older than Evan. Hell, he doesn’t look as old as Evan. If Andre hadn’t informed him of the kid’s age earlier, Evan would have assumed that he was still in high school. He didn’t look intimidating… Not by any stretch of the imagination. The kid was wearing white skinny jeans for Christ’s sake! He was wearing a flat-billed white cap, advertising some record label that Evan didn’t care enough to remember. What he did remember was being mildly impressed that Mike’s all-white ensemble matched the Cadillac perfectly.
”AYE!”
”Ohmygod…” Michelle shakes her head from the balcony, her eyes still wide with fear.
”Bitch, I don’t know why you thought any PARTS of this was gonna fly! You wanna hit me up—you wanna hit up M-Rad on the daily and shit like you tryna come back, and then I have to find out on Twitter that you’re hangin out with this clown?”
”Whoa! Whoa-ho! Make no mistake, my friend. I am not a clown. Please reconsider your tone.”
Mike Edward lowers the megaphone, turning toward one of the larger men standing outside of the Cadillac, laughing. ”He wants me to reconsider my words. This cat wants me to reconsider, like I’mma apologize or some shit. Maaaaaaaaan…”
Mike raises the megaphone to his lips.
”No.”
”I’ll go down and talk to him. I’ll get him to leave. Just---“
”AYYEEE YO, BITCH! Don’t talk to him, talk to me! You have all this shit I’m sure you tryna say behind my back, but there ain’t a DAMN thing you got the guts to come say to my face, BITCH!”
With that, Evan turns away from the balcony and marches inside, stepping into his shoes as he does so. Worriedly, Michelle between the ground from the balcony and back toward Evan who is making a beeline for the door.
”Where are you going?!”
”I’m gonna go have a word with your friend.”
”EVAN! No, please—“
”Don’t worry. I’m just gonna go ask him to turn down his megaphone. It’s a little loud, don’t you think?”
That’s not exactly what ended up happening.
Evan Envi marches across the parking lot, his eyes set on “M-Rad”, the self-proclaimed radical Mike Edwards. Edwards slides down off of the hood of the Cadillac, still speaking into the megaphone, which by this point has drawn the curiosity and attention of many others in the apartment complex.
”Ladies and gentlemen, we got a celebrity in the house! Evan Envi’s fuckin’ my girl, everybody!”
Evan could smell the booze from a dozen feet away. He stops as the two men approach him, sporting the looks of two fellows that were largely unimpressed.
”Evan. Nice to meet you.”
Mike approaches Evan, his head poking up between the shoulders of the two men standing before him. Evan never looks away from Mike.
”I’m a huge fan. Huge fan. But it’s been brought to my attention that you and I don’t exactly see eye-to-eye on a few things, homie. ONE of those things includes you layin’ pipe in Shelly when I ain’t even done with that yet.”
”You are done, actually. You’ve been upstaged by somebody that actually has an iota of talent. I know that it’s something you’re not quite used to since your biggest daily threat occurs while holding rap battles against the drywall in your basement.”
Evan briefly glances at the two men in front of him. One of them looks vaguely Hispanic in his ethnicity while the other was a blue-eyed behemoth with a bright blonde beard, though a beanie covered his presumably bald head.
”So while this doesn’t have to get violent, I wouldn’t have come down here without preparing for the worst, ya know? So instead of me knocking you on your ass in front of your friends and the dozens of people watching from their windows right now, how about you take your little megaphone and hop back in your car with Nancy and Sally here. You guys head on back to St. Louis or whatever city you’re currently pretending to rep, and I’ll continue laying pipe in whoever I want, wherever I want, without interruptions from a Mac Miller wannabe and the extras from Prison Break.”
The three men stand in there in stunned silence for a few moments, though M-Rad hardly looks pleased at Evan’s comments. For what appears to be a minute at the least, the four men stand there seemingly frozen in time.
Finally, with a great sigh (which sends the smell of whiskey in Evan’s face) Mike raises the microphone to his lips, still peeking between the shoulders of his two lackies.
”Kill him.”
They might’ve tried. They really might’ve, had the next twelve seconds not proved to be completely detrimental to their plans.
Evan waits patiently for one of the men to strike him, refusing to deal the initial blow. As the Hispanic man’s elbow comes toward his temple, Evan throws up an arm to brace himself, deflecting some of the impact. He stumbles backward, kicking his foot upward, launching his untied shoe into the Hispanic man’s face. This is followed by a powerful right hook, which knocks him to the asphalt without so much as a groan.
The man’s bald lackey looks at his fallen comrade, eyebrows arched—and Evan delivers a straight left fist to his nose, quickly followed by a right—which is quickly followed by another left, in stiff and rapid succession. The man drops, considerably easier than his partner.
Evan claps his hands together, whistling softly as he slowly turns toward Mike Edwards.
”Did you see what they just tried to do to me?!”
Mike glares at Evan, though his look of contempt is plagued with a look of fear. He shakily lowers the megaphone to his mouth again.
”You have no idea who---!”
Evan strikes the megaphone, causing it to rebound straight into Mike’s mouth. Mike cries out and staggers back, into the side of his Cadillac. He glares at Evan, holding a mouth to his bottom lip. Evan simply clears his throat and turns, prepared to walk back to Michelle’s apartment complex.
”I meant to tell you earlier, but your megaphone’s too damn loud. And for the record, I think this is the part where you reevaluate your drunken, half-baked idea. Because to tell you the truth, Mike, I’m not in the mood for your bullshit. I don’t know you. I don’t care to know you. I have more important things that I need to worry about, but don’t feel flattered when I say this…”
Evan points a single finger at the man that refers to himself as “M-Radical”, the premier rapper of the south.
”I’ll gladly take fifteen seconds out of my schedule to rearrange your entire fucking cranium in front of your ex-girlfriend.”
Evan shrugs.
”If I may borrow a line… You’ve caught me during a transitional period, so I’m not gonna do that. I’m gonna let you leave while Michelle calls the cops on your two friends here for second-degree assault.”
With his left hand, Evan gestures toward the two unconscious bodyguard-like men that Mike Edwards had brought along.
”So whatever this was supposed to be, understand that it failed miserably. Now. This is the part where I leave to go back up to your ex-girlfriend’s loft, where I will remain for the entire night. Is there anything else you’d like to say to me tonight, Michael?”
Mike Edwards doesn’t say another word. With a scowl, he turns and climbs into the Cadillac, keying the ignition and tearing out of the parking lot before Evan could utter another insult.
As Evan lies in Michelle’s bed, he finds his thoughts racing at a million miles a minute, for the lack of a better term. She’s sleeping peacefully next to him, and a part of that frightens Evan.
In less than twenty-four hours he would be competing in a tag team match with one of his opponents being someone he had no idea how to prepare for. That kept him awake. He was being forced to coexist with the rat-faced bitch that wanted to take his North American Title… That bitch wanted to take his baby away, and that was another thing.
It was neither of these that plagued Evan the most.
It was the fact that Michelle Weaver could sleep so peacefully when it was more than likely that Evan would be packing his bags and leaving Georgia in a couple of days. The visit had been nice… The week without constant press conferences, photo shoots, and local television spots had been a nice change of pace. It wasn’t going to last forever though. Evan knew that. He was damn sure Michelle knew that, but she seemed okay with it. More okay than Evan was with it.
There was so little he knew about her, and tonight had proved it. Once Evan returned to the loft that night, Michelle embraced him in the loving and affectionate way that he expected, but there was a new coldness in the room—one that had never been present before.
Evan was sure it was his own fault. He’d blatantly disobeyed Michelle in her own house. He went out and punched out two grown men in her parking lot. Had his pride not been in the way, Evan would have done the logical thing and waited for one of the neighbors to call the police… But Evan wasn’t a fan of the logical thing these days, now was he? Here he was, putting his heart at the mercy of a girl he’d known for less than four days. How was that consistent? How was that logical?
As much as it pained Evan to admit it, he hadn’t accomplished as much that night as he hoped. Everything he was learning about Michelle was negative. Everything he was learning about himself was too frustrating and confusing to put into words.
After Meltdown, everything would be different. Maybe all Evan needed was a confidence boost. Another “W” to his record would do the trick. It always did.
Evan falls asleep, not dreaming of the woman sleeping next to him, but dreaming of the future. Dreaming of success. Dreaming of himself. Dreaming of holding the Undisputed Championship high above his head.
That night, Evan Envi sleeps with a smile on his face.
Also, this takes place the day BEFORE the June 11th edition of Monday Night Meltdown. Just so there's no confusion.
I hope you all enjoy this piece of development, and hope you enjoy the Sienna, Andre, and Michelle characters as much as I do.
If not... Maybe one day, lol.------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Why don’t they…
Do what they say, say what they mean?
One thing leads to another..
You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long
But then
One thing leads to another…”
As mentioned before, Evan Envi’s weekend was overall much better than his first two days in Georgia. Saturday went quite smoothly and Sunday did as well…
Until roughly 11:30 that evening, however-- more on that later.
Sienna Harrison returned to the guest house a little past noon on Sunday, moments after Evan returned from the gym. Sweat is still dripping from his forehead into his eyes and he turns, mopping his face with a hand-towel as Sienna strolls into the room.
”Greetings, baby brother.”
Evan doesn’t respond, annoyed by the term “baby brother” that Sienna loved to throw around so often.
”Where’s Michelle?”
”She left this morning to go take care of some things at home. Got lunch with her roommate or something… She has to work today---”
”DAWWW, you looked so sad when you said that! You’re falling for this girl, aren’t you?”
”Goddamn you can be annoying as sh---”
”DAHAWWW, you’re blushing, Ev!”
”Will you stop?”
”Are ya gonna go visit her at work? Are you going to be that guy?”
”She told me to drop by at night when they were about to close…”
”And you’re gonna do it?”
”I do what I want, bitch.”
”Sassy.”
”It’s not like I have much else to do in Atlanta besides chill with Dre. Which is cool, but I‘m not gonna do that 24/7.”
”I resent that! I’m right here.”
Evan laughs a bit, at the fact that Sienna legitimately seems to be offended that Evan failed to consider her as an option as far as looking for things to do in Atlanta. In his defense, she had spent most of her time with that British, suckish-Indy-wrestler/mediocre med school student/fake high school teacher dude. Aside from hijacking Michelle for most of the day on Friday, Sienna hadn’t tried to make too much of a presence in Evan’s life in about a week.
”Well, what do you wanna do?”
”I don’t know. What’s Dre doing?”
”Well, I convinced him to go to the gym with me. We got back twenty minutes ago so by this point? Probably napping.”
Sienna laughs, fully aware that it was a huge possibility. ”Well, I’ll go drop by soon. Maybe we can catch a movie.”
And that’s exactly what Sienna did, sometime between Evan taking a shower and getting dressed into a pair of beige shorts, which had a beige-and-brown miniature-checkered pattern running throughout the entire design. This complements a dark-brown shirt Evan pulls over his torso, advertising Where the Wild Things Are loudly on the front.
Andre agreed to join the two a bit later in the afternoon. To the best of Evan’s knowledge, Becca was spending the day with her parents in honor of one of their birthdays. He hadn’t bothered to get too much information on it. He was, however, excited that Andre would be joining them since it was rare that they got to spend time with Andre without Becca. Evan had nothing against the woman, but having her around took away from the comforting feeling of nostalgia at times.
While waiting for Andre to get ready, Evan asked Sienna what she and Becca had talked to Michelle about… But Sienna simply smiled and told ”little brother” not to worry about it. This annoyed the APW North American Champion, but there wasn’t much he was going to be able to do about it. And before he could press the situation further, the guest house’s doorbell rings, prompting Evan and Sienna to meet Andre at the door and waste little time heading to his driveway.
Evan had been fond of Andre’s car since he got it in 2008-- a gray Dodge Magnum. He mumbles in annoyance as Sienna calls shotgun. There was that nostalgic sibling rivalry.
He climbs into the back seat of the car and once they pull out onto the road, the inevitable conversation begins.
”So. How do you like Michelle?”
Evan can’t help but laugh at the way Andre asks the question, as if Michelle was a car, or a television show rather than a person.
”I’d say I like her just fine, sir.”
”Smartass… I mean, are you two gonna keep seeing each other? Or is she just someone you’re gonna fool around with while you’re in town?”
”I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.”
”Don’t listen to him, Dre.” Sienna turns and smirks at Evan. ”He’s in it deep. Baby brother’s infatuated.”
Evan rolls his eyes, sighing.
”I have to say, ‘infatuated’ is a bit too strong of a word for the situation.”
”Do you? I think it’s perfect.”
”Ooooh. Gonna ask her to be your girlfriend?”
”Probably not. I don’t think that’s what she’s… What we’re trying to do here. She’s a cool person to hang out with.”
Andre briefly glances at Evan through the rearview mirror. ”So you’ll be in the area more often then?”
”If you mean so I can see Michelle… I don’t know.”
It seemed like a safe answer. Nobody can demand anything from “I don’t know.” Nobody can expect too much from it.
”Jeez, man. We used to talk about girls all the time. What happened?”
Evan, who had been gazing out the back window of the Magnum for the past few minutes laughs dryly and turns, looking back at the rearview just in time to briefly lock eyes with Andre, who soon after focuses back on the road.
”Some of us haven’t been with the same chick for ten years. It’s rough out there, man. Bitches eat your soul.”
”Hey!”
”Bitches. Not ladies. Ladies have no need to do that, because they earn access to your soul. And before you guys ask, yes, I consider Michelle a lady.” Evan pauses to consider the events during the preceding afternoon on the faux Oval Office at the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum. He amends his statement. ”Well. A unique lady.”
”Heyyy, I’m not completely naïve. Becca and I have broken up before. Right after high school, we were broken up for almost a year. She had gone to a party, and I heard some things, and I reacted and said some things I shouldn’t have… Took her months to forgive me. But she didn’t just move onto some other guy or talk trash about me. She ignored me. She made sure that I saw her every single day, looking amazing, pretending I didn’t exist. And the few times she did? She knew exactly what to say to make me wanna curl up in a ball and die.”
It’s not the story that causes the Harrison siblings to be awkwardly silent, but how casually Andre Savi tells it. Both of them had known the two went their separate ways for a while after high school, but neither knew the details.
”But it didn’t last forever. I realized that women can’t all be horrible. Not all the time.” Andre steals another quick glance at Evan through the rearview. ”I know you like her, dude. But you’re not gonna let her in. I already know you’re not.”
”What?”
”He’s right. You’ll find some reason to push her away and make her hate you. I swear, it’s like you get off on it.”
”I don’t think I’ll be doing that.”
”Well, no, I don’t think you ever start off with the intention of doing it. But you get really pissy when people wanna find stuff out about you and get close to you. You think everyone’s out to get you.”
Evan feels a pang of guilt, knowing that there must be some air of truth in Sienna’s words. After all, A.C. Smith had said the same thing on Meltdown last week… And he’d said it before APW. Evan had heard it several times in his life, most noticeably over the past couple of years.
”I don’t think Michelle is out to get me. I promise you guys that.”
”Well, good. She’s a good person. I’m surprised you’re with her though, considering all that baggage.”
”Baggage?”
”Ooooh, this sounds potentially juicy.”
Andre arches an eyebrow, seeming to be concerned that Evan is so clueless as to whatever it is he’s talking about.
”Well, yeah. She just got out of a three-year relationship with this douche bag. What was his name… Mike something. Something really common. I wanna say Edwards…”
”Oh, cool, he has a name. A name that I don’t actually give two shits about. Why should I be worried about this guy?”
”I don’t know if it’s necessarily him you have to worry about. He brings a lot of attention wherever he goes though. He’s a bit of a local celebrity. Or so he and a few people around here like to think.”
”What’s so great about him?”
”Well, he was a pretty big high school football star. He could’ve gotten a free ride through university but he wanted to be a… southern rapper. Spent most of his money on an unnecessarily large house a few dozen miles upstate, built an equally as unnecessarily giant studio, and started doing his thing.” Andre glances at Evan once more. ”Lately he’s been trying to build ‘street cred’ so he can take his career to the next level. Or something. I know you were trying to keep a low-profile here, so--”
”I really, really think this information would have been beneficial a few days ago.”
”It slipped my mind.”
”This isn’t what I need right now. A loud-mouth. Does this guy come around a lot?”
”Often enough. Poor Michelle. I dunno how she puts up with it.”
Andre went on to tell Evan stories about Mike often coming into S.R. Happy’s while Michelle was working and verbally assaulting her shortly after their breakup. It was apparently no secret that the two remained in close contact, with false rumors circulating that Michelle was pregnant, only to be discredited after a few months. Mike (rap name, M-Radical), was garnering attention from media outlets and radio stations by early 2012 and attributed a lot of his success to Michelle, the subject of many of his songs, though none of them portrayed her in a positive light.
”Don’t let this become a distraction, Ev.”
”I won’t… Dre, is this guy in town? I really don’t feel like dealing with a crazy-ex-boyfriend the day before my match.”
”Eh, I don’t see why he would. You should be safe.”
Wrong.
Around 10:15 on Sunday night, Envi found himself walking up to the crystal-clean windows of S.R. Happy’s. Internally he felt a bit child-like in the approach… Sienna and Andre dropped him off in the rental. Sienna was using it for the night, as Envi had very little use for it while with Michelle.
He wasn’t aware quite yet that tonight was going to be different from the previous ones. He wasn’t yet cognizant of the idea that he might be taken out of his comfort zone… But that’s a story for later.
Currently, Envi stands with his face pressed against the glass, making peculiar faces at Michelle as she stands behind the register. It takes about thirty seconds before her eyes leave the computer and a grin stretches across her face as she sees Evan standing on the other side of the door. With eagerness, she half-runs, half-skips to the door, pulling it open. She snakes her arms around Evan’s neck and the two share a passionate kiss.
A startlingly passionate kiss.
It doesn’t register until the two break away, and by the blush on Michelle’s cheeks, she felt something similar. Whatever the two were thinking went unsaid, however, as Michelle beckons Evan inside so she can lock the door… As she resumes typing codes into the register, Evan finds an empty chair, gazing at Michelle as she talks about her day, complaining about the rudeness of some of the customers and the incompetence of some of her employees. In that respect, it didn’t sound too different from Evan’s career.
She was beautiful.
Nope. No pushing it to the back of his head this time. In the brief silence that followed Michelle Weaver’s soft-spoken tirade, Evan found that the word was being screamed in his head, even as she sat there in her tacky snot-green-and-menstruation-red S.R. Happy’s work uniform. Her hair, though down now, was a tangled mess due to hours of being tied up in the trademark green hat.
He lost track of how long he actually sat there waiting for Michelle to complete her tasks… It couldn’t have been too long because before he knew it, he was climbing into the passenger seat of her Taurus, and the two spent every second of that ten minute drive talking about everything under the sun.
Everything, that was, except for Mike Edwards.
Soon, Evan would wish that the chick had said something about that bastard Mike Edwards.
” The deception with tact, just what are you trying to say?
You've got a blank face, which irritates
Communicate, pull out your party piece
You see dimensions in two
State your case with black or white
But when one little cross leads to shots, grit your teeth
You run for cover so discreet…”
You've got a blank face, which irritates
Communicate, pull out your party piece
You see dimensions in two
State your case with black or white
But when one little cross leads to shots, grit your teeth
You run for cover so discreet…”
The radio snaps off, halting the New-Wave sounds of The Fixx.
”Home sweet home.”
Michelle says this in a sing-song voice and casts Envi a wink before pushing open her door, collecting her purse, and stepping out into the humid Atlanta air. Evan follows suit and the two make their way inside the lobby of the complex, which consists of no more than two couches, seated on the opposite side of the room that led toward a velvet-colored spiral staircase and an elevator.
Hm. An apartment. Evan had never dated a chick that lived in an apartment before. But then again, he’d never dated a chick that worked at a burger joint before either.
Evan is led to the elevator and up to the fifth and top floor of the complex. As they step into the hallway he notices that there are only two doors. He’s led to the one at the north end of the hallway, where Michelle slides the key into the knob and pushes it open. Evan is met with another familiar smell… That same grassy, smoky, half-pine, half-skunk odor that drifts into his nostrils. Apparently, the culprit had attempted to mask the smell of their miniature party with some “Hawaiian Aloha” scented Febreeze.
”Oh. Wonderful. Guess Jen didn’t have to work tonight.”
Michelle yawns and turns the lights on in the living room. Evan gazes around and immediately regrets his earlier judgment of Michelle—it may have been an apartment, but it was one of the best the area had to offer. A loft. The entranceway gave way to the living room which was attached to the dining room. Another room was at the end of the hallway which lacked a door, but rather featured tye-dye themed tapestry hanging in the doorway.
”Jen’s my roommate, if that wasn’t obvious from the pungent weed-flavored odor pouring out of her room.”
”At least she knows how to have fun.”
”She’s a bus driver overnight.”
”A female bus driver? At night? In Atlanta?”
Michelle gives Evan a smirk and shrugs.
”She has ways of handling herself.”
”Like what?”
Michelle laughs, finding some humor in the situation that Evan isn’t quite able to pinpoint.
”Well, the last guy that tried to fuck with her nearly got his arm ripped right out of the socket. She’s an ex-marine. Had some anger issues once she got home, got in some trouble, got fired from S.R. Happy’s.” Another bashful giggle escapes her mouth. ”It was really funny, actually. Some customer was giving her a hard time about the way his steak was prepared or something, and she’d already been working a double shift and was having a bad day…” Once more, Michelle has to stifle a giggle to finish the story. ”I was in the back when it happened, but at some point she throws this guy through a window and he has to get nineteen stitches in his forehead. I’d say she held onto her job for approximately twenty-six seconds after he went through the glass.”
”Jesus. And how’d you end up deciding to live with this chick?”
Michelle shrugs. ”She’s a crazy bitch, but she’s my friend.” In a considerably quieter tone (so quiet that Evan has to pause and register for a moment to make sure she said it), Michelle adds, ”I owe her everything.”
Evan chooses not to inquire as to the specifics of the question quite yet. It doesn’t come up again in conversation as Michelle tells Evan to wait in the living room as she changes… Making haste, she changes into similar evening-wear from the night before—this time, a violet colored tank top and a blue-white-and-purple plaid pair of boy shorts, eager to get comfortable after a hard days work, prompting Evan to do the same, changing into a black wife-beater and nylon shorts, fully content with spending the evening relaxing, because the next day would be anything all day. Autographs in the morning, training in the afternoon, and a journey to Duluth in the evening… Yeah, Evan was pretty certain he’d earned one last night to relax.
However, just as Michelle turns on the television and begins to make her way into Evan’s arms, a piercing, electronically-amplified voice cuts through the serenity.
”AYYEEE, BITCH!”
Like a bullet, Michelle shoots upright, panic etched over her face. Evan narrows his eyes and he immediately asks the obvious question, ”The hell was that?” but is wildly ignored as Michelle leaps off of the couch and runs toward the sliding glass door separating the couple from the balcony.
Evan, with absolutely no hesitance pushes himself from the couch and follows Michelle out to the balcony.
There, in the parking lot, sitting on the hood of a bright white Cadillac is a man that Evan is certain is Mike Edwards—the “southern rapper” that went by the name of M-Radical. He is flanked by two men that outweigh him by at least a hundred pounds and tower over him by a solid six inches.
The boy doesn’t look much older than Evan. Hell, he doesn’t look as old as Evan. If Andre hadn’t informed him of the kid’s age earlier, Evan would have assumed that he was still in high school. He didn’t look intimidating… Not by any stretch of the imagination. The kid was wearing white skinny jeans for Christ’s sake! He was wearing a flat-billed white cap, advertising some record label that Evan didn’t care enough to remember. What he did remember was being mildly impressed that Mike’s all-white ensemble matched the Cadillac perfectly.
”AYE!”
”Ohmygod…” Michelle shakes her head from the balcony, her eyes still wide with fear.
”Bitch, I don’t know why you thought any PARTS of this was gonna fly! You wanna hit me up—you wanna hit up M-Rad on the daily and shit like you tryna come back, and then I have to find out on Twitter that you’re hangin out with this clown?”
”Whoa! Whoa-ho! Make no mistake, my friend. I am not a clown. Please reconsider your tone.”
Mike Edward lowers the megaphone, turning toward one of the larger men standing outside of the Cadillac, laughing. ”He wants me to reconsider my words. This cat wants me to reconsider, like I’mma apologize or some shit. Maaaaaaaaan…”
Mike raises the megaphone to his lips.
”No.”
”I’ll go down and talk to him. I’ll get him to leave. Just---“
”AYYEEE YO, BITCH! Don’t talk to him, talk to me! You have all this shit I’m sure you tryna say behind my back, but there ain’t a DAMN thing you got the guts to come say to my face, BITCH!”
With that, Evan turns away from the balcony and marches inside, stepping into his shoes as he does so. Worriedly, Michelle between the ground from the balcony and back toward Evan who is making a beeline for the door.
”Where are you going?!”
”I’m gonna go have a word with your friend.”
”EVAN! No, please—“
”Don’t worry. I’m just gonna go ask him to turn down his megaphone. It’s a little loud, don’t you think?”
That’s not exactly what ended up happening.
Evan Envi marches across the parking lot, his eyes set on “M-Rad”, the self-proclaimed radical Mike Edwards. Edwards slides down off of the hood of the Cadillac, still speaking into the megaphone, which by this point has drawn the curiosity and attention of many others in the apartment complex.
”Ladies and gentlemen, we got a celebrity in the house! Evan Envi’s fuckin’ my girl, everybody!”
Evan could smell the booze from a dozen feet away. He stops as the two men approach him, sporting the looks of two fellows that were largely unimpressed.
”Evan. Nice to meet you.”
Mike approaches Evan, his head poking up between the shoulders of the two men standing before him. Evan never looks away from Mike.
”I’m a huge fan. Huge fan. But it’s been brought to my attention that you and I don’t exactly see eye-to-eye on a few things, homie. ONE of those things includes you layin’ pipe in Shelly when I ain’t even done with that yet.”
”You are done, actually. You’ve been upstaged by somebody that actually has an iota of talent. I know that it’s something you’re not quite used to since your biggest daily threat occurs while holding rap battles against the drywall in your basement.”
Evan briefly glances at the two men in front of him. One of them looks vaguely Hispanic in his ethnicity while the other was a blue-eyed behemoth with a bright blonde beard, though a beanie covered his presumably bald head.
”So while this doesn’t have to get violent, I wouldn’t have come down here without preparing for the worst, ya know? So instead of me knocking you on your ass in front of your friends and the dozens of people watching from their windows right now, how about you take your little megaphone and hop back in your car with Nancy and Sally here. You guys head on back to St. Louis or whatever city you’re currently pretending to rep, and I’ll continue laying pipe in whoever I want, wherever I want, without interruptions from a Mac Miller wannabe and the extras from Prison Break.”
The three men stand in there in stunned silence for a few moments, though M-Rad hardly looks pleased at Evan’s comments. For what appears to be a minute at the least, the four men stand there seemingly frozen in time.
Finally, with a great sigh (which sends the smell of whiskey in Evan’s face) Mike raises the microphone to his lips, still peeking between the shoulders of his two lackies.
”Kill him.”
They might’ve tried. They really might’ve, had the next twelve seconds not proved to be completely detrimental to their plans.
Evan waits patiently for one of the men to strike him, refusing to deal the initial blow. As the Hispanic man’s elbow comes toward his temple, Evan throws up an arm to brace himself, deflecting some of the impact. He stumbles backward, kicking his foot upward, launching his untied shoe into the Hispanic man’s face. This is followed by a powerful right hook, which knocks him to the asphalt without so much as a groan.
The man’s bald lackey looks at his fallen comrade, eyebrows arched—and Evan delivers a straight left fist to his nose, quickly followed by a right—which is quickly followed by another left, in stiff and rapid succession. The man drops, considerably easier than his partner.
Evan claps his hands together, whistling softly as he slowly turns toward Mike Edwards.
”Did you see what they just tried to do to me?!”
Mike glares at Evan, though his look of contempt is plagued with a look of fear. He shakily lowers the megaphone to his mouth again.
”You have no idea who---!”
Evan strikes the megaphone, causing it to rebound straight into Mike’s mouth. Mike cries out and staggers back, into the side of his Cadillac. He glares at Evan, holding a mouth to his bottom lip. Evan simply clears his throat and turns, prepared to walk back to Michelle’s apartment complex.
”I meant to tell you earlier, but your megaphone’s too damn loud. And for the record, I think this is the part where you reevaluate your drunken, half-baked idea. Because to tell you the truth, Mike, I’m not in the mood for your bullshit. I don’t know you. I don’t care to know you. I have more important things that I need to worry about, but don’t feel flattered when I say this…”
Evan points a single finger at the man that refers to himself as “M-Radical”, the premier rapper of the south.
”I’ll gladly take fifteen seconds out of my schedule to rearrange your entire fucking cranium in front of your ex-girlfriend.”
Evan shrugs.
”If I may borrow a line… You’ve caught me during a transitional period, so I’m not gonna do that. I’m gonna let you leave while Michelle calls the cops on your two friends here for second-degree assault.”
With his left hand, Evan gestures toward the two unconscious bodyguard-like men that Mike Edwards had brought along.
”So whatever this was supposed to be, understand that it failed miserably. Now. This is the part where I leave to go back up to your ex-girlfriend’s loft, where I will remain for the entire night. Is there anything else you’d like to say to me tonight, Michael?”
Mike Edwards doesn’t say another word. With a scowl, he turns and climbs into the Cadillac, keying the ignition and tearing out of the parking lot before Evan could utter another insult.
As Evan lies in Michelle’s bed, he finds his thoughts racing at a million miles a minute, for the lack of a better term. She’s sleeping peacefully next to him, and a part of that frightens Evan.
In less than twenty-four hours he would be competing in a tag team match with one of his opponents being someone he had no idea how to prepare for. That kept him awake. He was being forced to coexist with the rat-faced bitch that wanted to take his North American Title… That bitch wanted to take his baby away, and that was another thing.
It was neither of these that plagued Evan the most.
It was the fact that Michelle Weaver could sleep so peacefully when it was more than likely that Evan would be packing his bags and leaving Georgia in a couple of days. The visit had been nice… The week without constant press conferences, photo shoots, and local television spots had been a nice change of pace. It wasn’t going to last forever though. Evan knew that. He was damn sure Michelle knew that, but she seemed okay with it. More okay than Evan was with it.
There was so little he knew about her, and tonight had proved it. Once Evan returned to the loft that night, Michelle embraced him in the loving and affectionate way that he expected, but there was a new coldness in the room—one that had never been present before.
Evan was sure it was his own fault. He’d blatantly disobeyed Michelle in her own house. He went out and punched out two grown men in her parking lot. Had his pride not been in the way, Evan would have done the logical thing and waited for one of the neighbors to call the police… But Evan wasn’t a fan of the logical thing these days, now was he? Here he was, putting his heart at the mercy of a girl he’d known for less than four days. How was that consistent? How was that logical?
As much as it pained Evan to admit it, he hadn’t accomplished as much that night as he hoped. Everything he was learning about Michelle was negative. Everything he was learning about himself was too frustrating and confusing to put into words.
After Meltdown, everything would be different. Maybe all Evan needed was a confidence boost. Another “W” to his record would do the trick. It always did.
Evan falls asleep, not dreaming of the woman sleeping next to him, but dreaming of the future. Dreaming of success. Dreaming of himself. Dreaming of holding the Undisputed Championship high above his head.
That night, Evan Envi sleeps with a smile on his face.
