Trouble

TWO

TWO

The Hardy Boys dominated the conversation at lunch. Actually, Matt dominated it. Jeff made random comments as he felt inspired to and spent the rest of his time making funny faces at Abigail. She may not be a normal kid, but she wasn't immune to Jeff's charms. I've yet to meet anyone, young or old, who really is. He's just a genuinely good person. Don't get me wrong. He's screwed up a lot in his life, but ever since Ruby was born, he's worked hard to stay sober and when he's sober, he's not an asshole. Abigail actually cracked several smiles at Jeff as he went out of his way to help her relax.

Matt managed to ask a million questions and still learned almost nothing about Emily. Her answers were vague unless she was talking about wrestling. She listed every promotion she'd ever worked for and I wondered if it wouldn't have been easier to list who she hadn't worked for. WWE was the only one I could think of that she didn't mention.

"So, Emily, where are you from?" Matt asked.

"Oh, you know, everywhere," Emily said. (See what I mean about her being vague?) "I move around a lot. I've called a lot of places home."

"So where do they bill you from?" I teased her. "Or are you billed as a wandering spirit?"

"Actually, Abstract is billed from the Land of Dreams," she informed me. I kind of loved that. Her character got cooler by the second. I tried to play a guessing game to figure out where she was actually from. Her accent adapted based on whoever she was talking to. With Matt and Jeff, she slipped into a slight drawl. With James, she sounded vaguely British. With me, there was no real accent, which seemed to be her default accent. It was impossible to guess her place of birth.

After we ate, we headed back to the arena. I had a match against Bram, something I was really looking forward to. I loved TNA, but with my undefeated streak, they often handed me baby matches I couldn't possibly lose or they had me cheat. I'm a heel. This is what heels do. Bram, however, would give me nothing short of an all-out hardcore brawl. That sounded like Heaven to me. A lot of people forget I'm actually very hardcore. I don't care if you bust me open with a chair, or throw me through a table, or hit me with Janis. I actually love all of those things, because the fans love seeing it. When you can read everyone's minds, it just seems wrong not to give the people what they want.

I knew Bram and I could have a great rivalry or at least one hell of a match. I'd begged Dixie to make it happen for three months before she agreed. For all you Internet Marks, no, Dixie Carter isn't actually my aunt. She is, however, as overprotective of me as the fiercest aunt/mama bear in the world, and she hates seeing me get hurt, even if it's planned and staged. We bonded when she rescued my ass from the Island of Misfit WWE Rejects and helped me remember I am actually good at my job and why I love this business. I still don't know what it was about me that made Dixie latch on to the point that EC3 was born, but I'll always be grateful to that woman for saving me from possible self-destruction after the top company in the business decided I wasn't worth spending any more time on.

Matt and Jeff were facing the Revolution again. The fans were eager for this. It wasn't a bad dynamic, but ever since Khoya had tried to murder Jeff Hardy in front of a live audience by moving the steel steps to the wrong spot, the Revolution matches made me nervous. He almost succeeded. Don't let the dirtsheets or TNA's press releases fool you. It was a planned spot to write Jeff off for the U.K. shows, but Jeff was supposed to hit the ground, not the steps. I don't think any of us had ever been as scared as we were that night. Remember how I told you a lot of wrestlers are psychic? Well, just like there are good guys and bad guys in the world of wrestling, there are good psychics and there are bad psychics, and the bad ones have a thing for trying to murder the good ones. Jeff was the unofficial leader of what we liked to call Team Good. Khoya was on the other side of things. Sometimes, good people played bad guys on TV, like me. Sometimes, it was the other way around. Occasionally, however, the real life battle between good and evil bled over into our storylines and it got hard to tell the difference between where storyline battles ended and real-life ones began.