______________________________________________________
She knew she should have felt badly about what she'd done, but... well, she didn't...
Lita rolled over onto her other side to face her sleeping boyfriend. Chris Jericho's long blond hair was spread out, fanned around his face, his crystal-blue eyes closed. The lids moved ever so slightly, signaling he was in REM sleep - dreaming...
...Somehow, she hoped he wasn't dreaming about her...
She supposed a part of her really did still love Chris, but damn it, they'd been steadily growing apart for the last couple of months. All they did was fight, and the redhead had to attribute that primarily to the fact that they were just too different... Although... as much as she hated to mentally acknowledge it, she knew she was no longer in love with Chris. She loved him, but not in that deep, magical, passionate way...
That was not to say, however, that she was not in love... She loved the man with whom she'd been cheating...
They'd been friends and had started out that was nearly four years earlier. There had always been that mutual attraction there, but neither of them had done anything about it. Lita supposed that, back then, all either of them had wanted was just friendship. How very different things had become...
The redhead bit her lip as she shifted herself up so that she was sitting, her back pressed against the headboard. She glanced over toward the window, over toward the window, noting the ever increasing rays of light filtering in through the drawn drapes.
After a beat, she lowered her gaze to Chris. He was still sleeping soundly, and in the exact same position he'd been in a few minutes ago. Seemingly nothing could wake him up, and as they said, he could sleep through a war.
But at this point, Lita was almost afraid of what would happen when he did awaken... She now knew what she had to do, and it was not going to be fun...
The diva turned her head to face forward again, bending forward a bit to rest her chin on her updrawn knees. She couldn't help but recall a conversation she'd had with one of her best friends about this very subject...
*
"Oh, Lita...This is so unlike you!" the blonde woman exclaimed, her brown eyes wide after hearing her friend's story.
"I know...I know..."
"And you don't even feel a little guilty?"
"Believe it or not, and as bad as it sounds...no," Lita admitted, her eyes taking on a faraway look.
"Jeez..." Stacy Keibler said, surprise still clear on her pretty face. "God, if I was cheating on Randy - even if it was with my ex, Test..." She shook her head. "Well, I would feel horribly guilty every time I looked at him, you know?" She squinted her eyes upon the last few words of the question.
"I know..." the redhead spoke. She met Stacy's eyes steadily. "I know I should feel at least somewhat guilty, but I don't..."
"Do you love him?"
Lita was silent for a beat as she thought about the man she'd been secretly seing for the past couple of months.
"Yeah...yeah, I do." A smile came to her face.
"What about Chris?" the leggy blonde asked, question marks in her brown eyes.
The redhead sighed.
"That's the thing, Stace...I do love Chris, but I'm no longer in love with him..."
Stacy gave her a grave, knowing look.
"Well, then..." she said, bowing her head slightly. "...you know what you have to do."
Lita blinked and nodded.
*
"Good morning..."
She looked to her right abruptly, a bit startled by the sound of his voice. She'd been so deep in remembering that she'd not even realized he had awoken.
"Hi..." Lita managed.
Chris Jericho smiled up at her, smiling a little as he stretched. Then, quickly, the smile disappeared and he just lay there. The way he stared straight ahead made Lita think he too was now deep in some thought - perhaps lost in some memory, as she'd been.
"Chris...We have to talk..."
The blond man looked up at her sharply, frowning at the way she'd said that. He sat up and cocked his head as he continued to eye her.
"Uh oh," he said. "That's never good when someone you're dating says that."
Lita bit her lip, and it was now that she was finally starting to feel guilty. She looked away and steeled herself. She'd thought of saying something to him plenty of times before, but it was a lot harder to actually do it.
"Look..." she continued. She turned to face him, her face completely serious. "I can't lie to you anymore...I...Chris, I know there's no easy way for you to hear this, but..." She hesitated as she took a deep breath.
"Lita, you're scaring me..." Jericho said. He shook his head, trying to puzzle out exactly what she was getting to.
"I...Chris, I love you - but I am no longer in love with you..." She lifted her eyes and gazed directly into his clear blue ones.
"What? Lita, how can you-"
"I've been cheating on you for the last two months..." the redhead blurted. There, that was the final, but no less painful, cut she had to render.
"What?!" Chris' handsome face looked shocked and outraged simultaneously.
"I'm sorry..." the diva nearly whispered. "I think we need to...go our separate ways..."
"Who is he? Huh? Who the fuck is he?!"
Lita looked into his eyes, all of her being now feeling defeated. She hated hurting him - she didn't like to hurt anyone, not even when they hurt her first. But there was no way she could get around telling him who she'd been cheating on him with...
*
[One Month Later]
Lita smiled as she stood in the gorilla position waiting for him.
She was so happy... Well, she hadn't truly felt that way in the beginning. Chris had been so hurt, so angry and upset that she'd felt just plain awful - but after a couple of weeks of the blond man not even speaking to her, they'd gotten together to talk things out. Jericho had come to the realization that their relationship hadn't been working and that it was better for them to just go back to being friends. He'd even gone on to say that he could understand that she and the other man had fallen in love...
"Hey..."
"Hey, there's my girl!" The man for whom she'd been waiting, and who was her new boyfriend, embraced her and kissed her tenderly on the lips.
"Oh, that's nice..."
"It sure is..." He grinned, and she felt goosebumps all over with the sight of his gorgeous smile.
Then, Lita and Edge walked, hand-in-hand, back to the locker room.