“Beer and baby powder?” He said to himself while sniffing the air. He turned around and found Jay standing there with his arms crossed. “Hey, you’re just in time. Grab a rake and get busy.”

“Yeah, I’ll jump right on that.” Jay said sarcastically. “Just let me go tell Rita and her friend that I can’t join them because there’s yard work I don’t need to do.”

“C’mon…” Seth tried to reason. “I’ll make it worth your while. Twenty-five cents an hour sounds about right, doesn’t it?” There was silence while Jay glared at Seth. “Thirty-five?” Seth offered, trying to look sincere. Jay shook his head and headed back for the house, leaving Seth alone with his mound of leaves. However, the smirk on Seth’s face faded when a gust of wind blew through the trees and littered the yard with even more leaves. He got frustrated as he looked over where he had already been and seen it covered again. He tossed the rake onto a pile of leaves and headed for the house himself.

“Nice day to rake the yard, ain’t it?” Nick said sarcastically when Seth entered the kitchen. He had obviously seen mother nature’s prank through the kitchen window.

“Oh yes, lovely.” Seth rolled his eyes at the thought of it. He went over to the counter and got a cup of coffee then sat down at the kitchen table.

“Have you seen Jalie around?” Nick asked. “She owes me twenty bucks.” The mention of his wife’s name caused him to narrow his gaze.

“Actually, no. I haven’t seen, nor heard for that matter, from her in days.” He took a sip of his coffee then looked out the window. “She left with Cody after the show Sunday night. I haven’t heard from her since.” Seth’s grip on his mug tightened.

“Well, you did attack Cody pretty viciously. And he is a close friend. She probably took offence to it just as much as he did.”

“So it justifies her staying with him for almost a week and not so much as calling me?” Seth said as he turned his attention to Nick. “She’s doing this to piss me off. And as much as I want to be, I’m not going to let it bother me. After all, she’s spent more time over there in the last month than she has here. I should be used to it by now.”

“Well can you blame her?” Nick asked bluntly. “You’ve been on her ass about everything lately. She can’t do anything without you breathing down her neck. And you’re even making decisions for her without her knowing about it.”

“It’s about those classes I set her up for, isn’t it?” Seth’s voice started to rise. “I’ve asked her, I’ve begged her to control her drinking for months and she did nothing. I’m trying to look after her well-being and I’m the bad guy. And you know full well she never would have agreed to go to those classes if I hadn’t already set them up.”

“Perhaps she didn’t want to go to them. Did you happen to think of that?” Nick shot back.

“Yes, I did Nick.” Seth reached under the surface of the table and pulled out two bottles. Nick looked surprised when Seth set them on the table. “You thought I didn’t know about this? Every morning when I’d make her a cup of coffee she would dump it out and replace it with whiskey. Then she would sit there right in front of me and drink it thinking it was all over my head. I’ve known about it for weeks and I didn’t say anything because I wanted her to do it on her own, but she never did. She couldn’t do it on her own so I tried to help. Why does that make me such an asshole?”

“She comes from a family of drinkers. She’s not sick, and her drinking hasn’t increased since you’ve married her. So why is it such a big deal now?”

“She has been drinking more…” Seth said while waving the bottle of liquor at Nick. “She can’t even sit down and have a cup of coffee with me in the morning anymore without switching it for this. God knows how much she’s been drinking over at Cody’s place. I never asked her to stop drinking, I asked her to not drink as much. She couldn’t even do that for me.”

“She’s doing it because of you.” Nick pointed out. “Don’t you realize you started in on her long before this started? Maybe if you didn’t criticize her every move she’d want to be sober around you, or around you period.” Seth went to speak but instead turned away from Nick. “And that still doesn’t explain why you attacked Cody like that. It wasn’t even a sudden thing, you had it planned out weeks in advance without telling anybody about it.”

“If I told her about it then she would’ve went right to him.” Seth piped in.

“Of course she would’ve. He’s her friend.” Nick shot at him.

“I’m her husband. Doesn’t that mean anything?” Seth fired back.

“So it’s a question of loyalty then?”

“No.”

“Then what?” Nick pressed. Seth went silent for a moment again.

“I don’t know…” Seth finally spoke up. His gaze went out the window once more.

“You really are a complex individual…” Nick said as he turned and walked away. Seth now sat in the kitchen alone, left to ponder by himself. Part of him wanted to just stand up and scream. To take whatever was in arms reach and hurl it across the room. To break anything in his way just to make himself feel better. This is the part of him that he had been struggling with all week to keep sub-sided. Sub-sided by the other part of him. The part that just wanted to talk to Jalie.

What the hell happened here? Mind you things weren’t perfect when I left, but they’ve certainly gone downhill since I’ve been gone. Want some proof? Let’s have a look at my opponent, shall we?

Glen Sexton.

Former NSWA Television champion. Former NSWA Tag Team champion. Former NSWA World champion. Sounds impressive on paper, doesn’t it? Very similar to myself, actually. I am a former RWA Television champion, a former two-time RWA Tag Team champion. I am also a former RWA Heavyweight champion. Again, sounds impressive on paper.

That’s about where it ends.

You can flaunt all the accomplishments you want, but it’s not going to help you inside the ring you currently stand in. You can’t rely on past accomplishments to get you through, you need to go out there and re-invent yourself every week. Who is to say that you earned any of your accomplishments on worthy competition? Who is to say I earned my accomplishments on worthy competition? That is why past accomplishments are so trivial. You can have a long list of titles and accomplishments, but it doesn’t make you good. You’re only as good as your competition lets you be. You can get by on beating people who can’t even tie up their boots but it won’t help you when you step inside the ring against someone, say, like myself. Yes, I am prone to the injury bug. But you can ask anybody who knows me, whether they like me or not, and they can tell you that I am one of the toughest competitors you will come across.

I’m not one to toot my own horn, others usually do it for me.

I got an overall impression of you when I first seen you here in the AWA. Mind you it’s all I have to go on considering I’ve never seen you in NSWA. You know what that impression was, Glen? “What the fuck are they thinking?” That is what crossed my mind when I first heard you speak. Was it because you have the intellectual prowess of a goldfish or the fact that it sounds like you talk with a mouthful of rocks? I’m still debating. But the fact remains that you were absolutely pathetic in your match at Masquerade Mayhem against Gary Mac. All that talk and nothing to deliver. I may be arrogant to think you’ll do the same come Sunday, but that’s the way I see it.