Her throat is shredded as she lowers her head, bangs bouncing in her blinded eyes. She—God, what even is the word for the way she walks—unapologetically wide-legged, swaggering and primal, unafraid and angry and heavy? She has never walked this way in real life, has never taken up this much space, has never allowed herself a single atom of ugly, if she could help it.
But something about wearing Florida Woman like a second skin turns her entire being into something else completely, an idea, a thing, a creature, an archetype. She’s some minor, forgotten goddess who pays no heed to mortals, who sucks in every sound from every throat, tender offerings laid at the tips of her wrestling boots. At the ring, she slithers in under the lowest rope, rolls over with an almost sexual energy, writhing across the ring until she’s on her back by Harlan and TJ, who stare down at her, curious, until she does a kip-up to land on her feet in a near-squat, glaring at TJ like she’s a living beam of light who just really needs, on a primordial level, to either fuck him or fuck him up. She grins, baring her teeth, hoping the cameras are catching it.
She has never felt more herself, for all that this isn’t herself.
Or maybe it’s some lost part of her she buried long ago.
“Florida Woman, are you ready?”
Harlan leans in with the mic, but not too close, like he’s scared of her. Good.
“I’m gonna beat him like he’s my ex-husband shopping with his side bitch at Walmart,” she growls.
The crowd barks their laughter, screams their hunger for the fight.
Harlan says something else, and then he’s backing out of the ring with his mic. TJ rounds on her, likewise moving into readiness, up on the balls of his feet, hands up, eyes snapping.
“You ready for this?” he whispers.
“Born ready,” she replies, right as the bell rings.
The glittering chalk cloud descends, and they throw their heads back to faux inhale and then refocus with a new, deeper level of animalistic threat. Chelsea is supposed to go first, so she does, tucking her head and ducking under his armpit, pulling him into a full nelson from behind. TJ allows it because they’ve practiced it, and at the last possible moment he slips out and goes for his own hold. What they’re doing is some strange intersection of fighting, poetry, and surgery, real and violent but artistic and melodramatic and yet also extremely careful and practiced. Chelsea gets into the zone, fully immersed in the fight but also flowing through it like water, like liquid mercury, dancing with TJ as if doing the flamenco in a spotlight. The crowd recedes, the overhead lights burn like the sun, and the only time there’s anyone else in the world is when one of them pins the other and waits for Pauley to dive in and count down to two before they kick out or otherwise remove themselves from the perceived trouble.
They’re nearing the end of the match, and it’s gone by so swiftly that Chelsea is startled to hear Harlan announce they only have thirty seconds left. She has to get into a position for TJ to finish her off with his new token move, the Cuban Sandwich, which is really just a modified version of Rampage’s signature pin. She acts stunned as she waits for him to spring, and he takes her down with a gorgeous combo. He’s so delicate and precise that she barely feels it, even as she lands on the springy ring. But as he pins her and Pauley runs in to count, she realizes that…she doesn’t want it to go down this way.
Her baby is here.
Watching.
Her daughter, who spent her entire life watching Chelsea get taken down a peg nightly, who watched her take abuse, suffer cutting comments, accept whatever bullshit remarks David doled out about her body, her clothes, her food, her work.
She doesn’t want Ella to see her lose.
“TJ, I know you’re supposed to win, but my daughter is here,” she whispers in the quiet, dark tent of their bodies, their faces hidden from the crowd as Pauley counts down slowly from ten to maximize the drama and the crowd screams encouragement. “I haven’t seen her in months. Any chance you’d let me have this one?”
His breathing is labored as he says, “I don’t mind, but will Harlan?”
“Who gives a shit?”
He pauses, panting.
“She watched her dad beat me up, TJ. I don’t want her to see me for the first time in months with…with…”
“With you as a victim again,” he finishes with that familiar, calm cunning. “Kick out and pin me.”
He loosens his grip—she feels it happen—and she kicks out dramatically, doing a back roll and immediately throwing herself on top of him, yanking his arm behind his back in a way that’s got to hurt, but he has enough self-control and chivalry to only gasp.
“A shocking reverse for Florida Woman!” Harlan shouts. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is indeed a surprise as the ref counts down an incredible kick-out. Boy, The Killer Cuban must be feeling that…” Chelsea loosens up her hold a bit.
Pauley counts down to zero and slaps the ring, and Harlan is there, grabbing her arm and hoisting her to her feet, her fist up in triumph as she feigns momentary confusion, like she’s just waking up.
“You saw it here live! Florida Woman strikes again! Believe what you read in the news and don’t put anything past her. She’ll surprise the hell out of you.”
Chelsea does a circle of the ring, pumping her fists and screaming along with the crowd, drinking in their adulation and delight and devouring their fury and disappointment. Behind her, TJ dramatically drags himself up from the ring floor as if he’s been pulverized. He hasn’t, but he’s a great actor. She owes him one, definitely.
She scans the audience, hoping against all odds that her daughter will be in the front row, that their eyes will meet like that moment in the movies when life changes forever for the better, when the music swells and everyone takes the deepest breath and feels their heart crack perfectly open for just a moment.
Ella isn’t there.
At least not where Chelsea can see her.
These seats originally sold for fifty dollars and got scalped for upward of a thousand, or so she heard. Of course her daughter isn’t here.
But she doesn’t let her mask waver. Florida Woman doesn’t do hangdog.
She doesn’t do disappointment.
Florida Woman chews people up and spits out their bones while throat-kicking gators.
She climbs up the ropes and gives one last fist and pelvis pump before Harlan shoos her out like a lost rattlesnake, and then she’s marching up the aisle in the spotlight, meeting gleaming, energized eyes and slapping the sweaty hands that strain for her. Some kids hold out glossy photos and a Sharpie, and she signs with an uppercase FW and a big, shiny star, which Arlene and Harlan suggested would keep her from accidentally using her own signature, signing her real name. Arlene pulls her back through the door, and the sudden calm is like being slapped in the face by a fish, cold and still and dead, compared with what came before. She collapses into a chair, drooping like a cut flower.