Chapter 2
"You sure you
want to be in a place like this right now?" Trish asked Paul as she
nervously looked around the bar. He looked back at her and nodded, the
expression on his face telling her that this was exactly where he wanted to be.
She sighed and followed him to a secluded booth. Paul sat down, dismissing
the waitress with a curt "Beer. Whatever you have." Trish
just smiled weakly at the woman and asked for some water. This didn't
surprise him; he'd heard she wasn't exactly the partying type. If he was
in any other frame of mind he might have felt bad about bringing her to a dive
like this, but right now, he didn't really give a damn.
He ran a hand over his tightly pulled-back
hair, a nervous habit of his. All he wanted to do right now was drink
himself into a stupor, and maybe kick someone's ass while he was at it.
Working the show had been hell, plain and simple. And when Paul had seen
Rock on the monitor backstage, he had almost lost it. He'd fallen into a
fury, yelling and almost destroying the TV (the price of which was coming out of
his paycheck, contributing to his foul mood). With everything as it was he
wanted to tear someone's head off.
"Paul? Earth to Paul."
He looked up at Trish who was half out of her seat trying to get his attention.
"What?" he snapped. She cringed noticeably and sat back down,
saying, "I... I'm just concerned about you, Paul. I don't like seeing
you like this! I like to think of you as a friend. I mean, we may
not be close, but we had fun when we worked together in that Steph angle and on
Excess, didn't we? I just want to help you through what that bitch Gab is
doing to you." Was that a hint of a smile that crossed her lips?
Paul mentally shook himself; now he was starting to imagine things.
He let out a breath as he apologized,
"I'm sorry, Trish. This whole thing is really fucking with my
head." He stopped talking when the waitress came to the table with
their drinks. He took the beer and swallowed almost half of it in one
gulp. The woman was walking away when he grabbed her arm and said,
"Hey, keep 'em coming and you'll get a good tip, you got it, babe?"
She nodded happily and went back to the bar.
He looked back at Trish who was smiling
slightly, he was sure of it now. "What are you smiling about?"
She just shook her head and chuckled,
"You take your drinking seriously, don't you?"
Paul saluted her with his beer as he
quipped, "Damn straight," then downed some more of it before
continuing. "Why, you got a problem with it? I know you don't
drink..."
"Oh, I have no problem with it at all,
don't worry. No problem whatsoever," she replied, a definite gleam in
her eye.
"Good. Because I'm definitely
doing a lot of it tonight." He took the next beer from the waitress
and nodded his appreciation to her as she left.
Trish smiled again and asked wryly,
"So how's your hand?"
Paul chuckled a bit himself as he flexed
the aching appendage. "Doc said it'll be fine, no stitches or
anything, just a few bandages."
Trish sipped at her glass of water before
speaking again. "I heard you had an... incident backstage during the
show. Do you want to talk about it?"
Paul's demeanor darkened as he drank some
more before he replied. "I saw Rock on the monitor. I lost
control. I swear, that prick is lucky he's the cocky son of a bitch that
he is. If he didn't demand his own dressing room, if I had to share one
with him, he'd be fucking dead right now. And he better thank GOD that
we're not working any angles together. Only reason I haven't gone after
his ass is... well... I figure if Ga-... if she wants him, she can have him.
I guess I can't take that away from her." He chugged most of his beer
down. "That, and the fact that I'd be out of a damn job. No way
in hell Vince would stand for me mangling his top pretty-boy face like
that."
"That's totally understandable.
Dwayne is definitely not worth losing your job over. Especially a job you
do so well," Trish agreed as the waitress brought Paul yet another beer and
took away the two empty bottles, "but can I ask you something,
honestly?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"Why aren't you that mad at Gabrielle?
This is just as much her fault if not more. She was your girlfriend, not
Dwayne." Trish stared intently at Paul, waiting for an answer.
He kept silent while he finished his third
beer. When the waitress gave him his fourth, he held it and frowned.
"She doesn't like me to drink heavily, ya know," he said quietly.
"She usually stops me after my third." He let out a small growl
as he lifted the beer to his mouth. "Fuck her," and drank a
third of the bottle. There it was again, he could have sworn Trish was
smiling... "I don't want to talk about her right now," he said
with his eyes on his beer but not really seeing anything, "I don't want to
talk about any of it. They want each other? They can fucking have
each other." And with that, he finished the bottle.
back to Tangled Webs: Paul
