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𝐀 𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐕𝐢𝐞𝐰

A/N // A short set in the universe of Biggest Fan. This takes place four months after the Prom Night short.

Warnings // Angst // Profanity // Fluff...I think lol

Word count // 3.8k

Disclaimer // Part Three // Biggest Fan Masterlist // Roman Reigns Masterlist // Join My Taglist // Main Masterlist

September 27, 2024

Well—he’s doing it again.

I haven’t heard from him or Paul in over a month. Counted the days as they passed me by in a blur. The color in my life glitching. Just like it was the months leading up to that first time in the Hamptons.

I don’t know who or what has captured his attention this time around. It’s irrelevant. My life has to keep moving or else I’ll fall into the deepest pit of misery, trying to fill the void he leaves every time.

The trip to Belize was everything to me. It unlocked an entire new universe of feelings toward him. Deeper than anything romantic. I felt bound to him in a way that I do with people I’ve known for years. The way I can recognize the weight Demi’s footsteps in the dark. The way I can immediately acknowledge Chanel 9 and picture my mother’s face because it's been her signature scent since I knew what smell was. The kind of binding and familiarity only associated with one thing. That forbidden four letter word.

I thought that week meant something to him. I was terribly wrong like I always am when it comes to him. Summer is over. No longer in paradise. The leaves are starting to turn. Nights getting unbearably colder.

In a desperate-adjacent attempt to ignite some type of spark or color back into my life, is how I find myself fresh off a first-class plane ride to Green Bay and seated in one of the most upscale restaurants I’ve ever been in. Under the comforting ambient lighting, seated across from me, smelling of that overpowering and alluring Creed scent—is a man that promises so much more than what I’ve been given—and he hasn’t even said it outright.

It’s wedged in the lines of how he had everything already planned, to the point where I haven’t lifted a finger or dug into my pockets once. The way he felt the need to emphasize that this is in fact a date. The way he spoke of the future and included me in it.

I’ve said it before. There’s no guess work with him. I know what it is at all times. It’s healthy. It’s loud. It’s rejuvenating. I can breathe around him. I don’t feel so overwhelmed with emotions that I’m suffocating. I don’t have to hide, duck and dodge. I’m not in an underhanded competition with anyone or anything else. If I am, he does a damn good job at concealing it.

I hate to compare the two. There’s nothing to be compared. Two different ends of the spectrum. Spiraled into my life at two different paces under completely different circumstances. Serving two different purposes. Receiving two different Lana’s.

Maybe I’m being spiteful being here with him. I don’t know entirely. I don’t know what to feel or even how to feel. The lines between right and wrong have been skewed since he inserted himself in my life. Only thing I was certain of, is that I needed a change of scenery and different company. Anything really that doesn’t remind me of him. The sad truth is he’s become a parasite. He’s attached hisself to all the best parts of me and most memorable factions of my life now. Making it nearly impossible to evade him. He’s everywhere. Everything reminds me of him. Even the man in front of me right now.

Jaire Alexander. I already knew the basics about him from previous late night car conversation or the occasional FaceTime. But tonight he’s dissected himself in a broader manner. Summing up twenty-seven years of life into a nearing hour conversation.

He and I have closer roots than I imagined. He was born in Southwest Philly. Only an hour away from where I grew up in New Jersey. His family packed it up and moved to the midwest just before he hit middle school. He’s the only boy, with two older sisters—which explains the unadulterated softness he displays despite being outline in secure masculinity. You can always tell which men have actually known and been around women before. They just move a little differently.

He was a beast in high school—at least that’s the picture all the articles he showed me painted. Everybody just knew he was going places. The NFL was written in his story before he even received his diploma. That is until injury after injury sat him down earlier than he ever intended.

“It was as if the devil had his hands on my shoulders, pushing all his weight down on me,” he describes.

This all happened after the pillar of his family—his grandmother passed and his father went shortly after. His father wasn’t dead—but he might as well had been. Just left one day and never came back. So the injuries and clipped ball dreams hit him harder than he’d ever knocked any quarterback on the field.

Offers reneged, benched for half the season of his senior year, and all hope disintegrating—he almost gave up on all of it.

“But I’m resilient. And I knew if I wasn’t gonna do it for myself—the least I could do, was do it for my grandma. My mother and my sisters.”

And he did. He pushed through. Molding a way when there wasn’t one to begin with.

He tells me tales of his college years. Says he felt untouchable. The way he glided through the four years like a stingray in the ocean. Earning privileges his peers couldn’t fathom. More girls than he could count, dropping to his feet—literally and figuratively. Willingly finishing his homework and him, for nothing in return but just the opportunity to say they did so.

“If I could spend a day and go back in time to any portion of my life—I’d go back to undergrad. They treated us like gods on campus, man,” he told me. A glint in his eye projecting the past.

“And when I got drafted, it was like undergrad times ten. Only it was more on the line. Money just didn’t stop rolling in. Sponsorships—parties with people I had only seen on TV before—people breaking their neck to make me comfortable.”

He said he got a taste of that world and went a little too off the deep end. He was fresh meat. He had a target on his back and the vultures didn’t waste any time.

“I almost got drowned out—almost lost myself, but God threw me a lifeline. I’m good now.”

All in all, Jaire is a man. Filling in the gaps his dad left behind, he made something out of nothing. And after hearing him break down all his fears and the hurdles he hopped to get to where he is now—he’s earned a newfound respect from me.

My phone lights up on the table next to my half empty plate. Wiseman. My heart skips a beat. Reality of the situation hitting me immediately after. Instead of racing to unveil the contents of the text message, I flip the phone face down. Cupping the back of my neck trying not to let these thoughts infect my brain and mood, but they double down.

Who the fuck does he think he is? Who the fuck does he think I am?

I can’t even believe I let it get to this point. Spending nearly my entire summer in Miami in that condo where the ghost of him lingers every time he leaves. His scent burned into the sheets and the pillow. Steamy and woody smell of his body soap lingering after we shower and he leaves for the day. His shirts—wrinkled and thrown everywhere, leaving a footmark and telling the story of where we started and ended up upon his arrival. Background noise of Love Island playing, as we opt for the entertainment of each other instead.

I’ll forever remember the summer after I graduated college as his summer. Actual days, lost in one another—following the endless trails, walking the different path’s of each other’s brains—mixed with long humid and lustful nights, turned to morning all over again. First time flying out of the country—exploring the world and seeing how other people live—and it was with him.

��You need to get that?” His voice thrusts me back to the present after sinking into a pit of nostalgia. Sinking so deep I didn’t even feel the consistent vibrating of my phone against the wooden table.

Flipping the phone back over, my lips tighten reading Wiseman again. I push hard on the lock button to reject the call before tossing it deep into the contents of the Dior bag hanging on my chair.

“Nope.”

“Hot commodity, I see.” He laughs.

“Not really.” I rest my chin in the palm of my hand. “What?” A smirk tugs at my lips as our eyes tip toe over each other’s faces. I can’t suppress the giddiness around him. Even in the wake of all the bullshit he’s ignorant to.

He shakes his head. His tongue resting over his perfect top row of teeth for a second. “Still in shock I got you here.” A sting of guilt in my chest forces me to break our trance. Would I even be here if he wasn’t on his shit? “Am I overstepping by asking what all the apprehension was for?” He asks.

I blow out a breath searching for the right words. I don’t even have a rational answer for him. Playing house with a married man all summer had me taking the biggest step back from him. Calls unanswered. Texts responded to only when I got a second to duck off and coach Demi on what to say. No more parked car conversations. And all for what? For somebody that left me in the same state I left Jaire in? Ghosted, without any communication as to why, leaving my head to make up all the worst scenarios.

“I think I have an idea.” He speaks again.

“Let me hear it,” I encourage.

He pauses for a minute. “The normal. I was tryna sit in a seat already reserved for somebody else.”

If only he knew. I call myself forging a seat that is already full. The seat merely exists in my dreams. He never fails to wake up to this harsh and cold reality—that everything about us is temporary and none of it is for real. That he occupies way more space in my life than I ever could his.

I adjust the diamond studded bracelet, now overflowing with different charms he’s added.

“It's complicated,” I finally say.

“We all got complicated,” he counters. I stop for a second, really digesting him and his words. I’ve been so wrapped up in the telenovela that is my life, I think I’ve abandoned the fact that Jaire is still his own person. Selfishly, I’ve reduced him to just a character in my saga when he has own life, his own goals, and challenges—just as I. Women on his line probably in the same predicament I am with him.

I need an anecdote for this hole inside of me. And no—not another person. The anecdote has to work with just me. Just Lana. People are going to come and go as they already have. They’re going to keep coming and keep going because that’s just the natural order of things. The toughest lesson I had to learn as a teenage girl—tossing and turning in the wee hours of the night, thinking every time the phone rang, it was the hospital calling to tell us the cancer had won. While the rest of my peers got to live in fantasy and fairytales—life was teaching me the darkest lesson that everything has to go eventually. Life, people, money—all of it.

I have to figure out how to be okay without anybody else. I have to be able to go on after he goes. Cause he clearly will go.

His head flicks to the right in a slight nod. “Come on—I wanna show you something.” He stands, reaching into his pocket counting off bills. I’m stunned and mostly confused as fuck. Too many Benjamins for me to count land on the dinner table and he holds a big hand out inching to my side of the table.

So, I take it. Willing to go anywhere with him if it means not sitting here to wallow in self pity as the phone rings all night.

He leads us out the maze to exit the restaurant, stopping twice to sign his autograph and take a few pictures. I clutch the fox fur coat tighter to me upon meeting the brisk air of Wisconsin. The consistent fever of Miami had me spoiled. I almost forgot what cold really felt like.

We’re not even all the way out the glass-door entrance of the building and onto the street before we’re being jumped. White and yellow lights at every turn from the faceless men shouting things I can barely make sense of.

He’s so chill and down to earth, I forget he is in fact famous. I use one hand to cover my eyes. The other rests comfortably in his while he leads me to the passenger side after retrieving the keys from valet. He moves with such confidence and ease, as if there isn’t a herd of photographers in his personal space—snapping pictures of a moment as intimate as a first date.

“You’re okay with that?” I study him while blinking at the blinding lights of cameras.

He hooks his seatbelt before resting one tatted hand on the steering wheel. “Yeah, why? You got somebody you need to be ducking?”

It's so far off from cheating but this rush of excitement and anxiety is very reminiscent of cheating. “I can pay them to get rid of them.” He informs after I pause.

Without thinking too deeply into it I shake my head. “No, we’re good.”

The phone buzzes in my hand again and I ignore the fuck out of it like the previous ten times.

In Jaire’s territory, I couldn’t tell you where we are. We flew on the highway for a while, exiting onto a back-way of some sorts, until he led us to a dirt road with land that stretched for miles it seemed, with no signs of human life. I probably should’ve been scared. In this secluded space with a man I didn’t know, in a state I never been. But his energy—familiar and comforting like a hug from an elder—has me suppressing any type of anxiety. The occasional swipe of his thumb on my hand where we connected atop the center console, paired with glances that read, “are you okay,” every other minute—was enough to settle me.

The headlights of his car cascade along a fence with a clear DO NOT ENTER sign hanging from it. Despite the obvious, he hops out anyway. Somehow unhooking and unlocking the chains to open one side for entry.

I use this time to finally open the thread, floored by the endless texts in grey.

He’s asking for you You left Miami? Is everything okay? I’m concerned now Call me back when you get a chance WiseMan 13 Missed Calls

I let all the angst out in the air that puffs from my nose. The fucking nerve. It’s been nearly two months and now I am expected to jump for him? Draining. That’s what this whole thing has been. He’s lifted me up—taken me to heights I never even thought I’d see at this age. Just as quickly he’s popped the bubble and I’ve been free falling since I last saw him.

It might sound ungrateful. He’s done so much for me in such a small amount of time. Got me through my last year of school. Gifted me a G Wagon straight off the lot and filled it with my favorite flowers. I live comfortably in the heart of Manhattan. Blending in with general wealth and nepotism.

My life looks the way it did in a young Lana’s dreams, who snuck to binge Sex and The City and took day trips uptown just to gawk at all the designer through the window. This newfound peace of mind means nothing if it can be taken away just as easy. It’s stupid. I should take what I’m given, be grateful for the adventures and opportunity, and just leave with my memories at best. But that’s the thing. I’m past that now. It can never be just memories anymore. And it puts a chill in my bones to think it's just memories to him—if that.

So when Jaire cuts the engine before rounding the car to open my door—I leave the phone and him behind.

“You gon’ be okay walking?” He eyes my Shark Boots. “It's further up.”

“Uh…” I peak down, assessing the two thousand dollar, leather boots.

“Just jump.”

“Huh?” I look back up. My confusions stumped, seeing his back to me.

I hop on and he carries me the whole way effortlessly. No huffing and puffing—not even breaking a sweat.

Letting me down gently, I scope the scenery. I figured from the walk up—with all its twists and turns that we’d end up on a cliff like we are now—but the sight before me exceeds any imagery I thought I’d find at the top.

The whole entire city of Green Bay from a single vantage point. I felt like a god having access to this much of the world in one sitting.

He’s quiet and I’m grateful for it. The day turning to night. A pink glow on top of the skyline. Nothing but the whistle of wind surrounding us. Everything up here is just…quiet and still. So easy for your mind to go blank.

“Surrounded by noise all the time. Big family. Always apart of a team. Games packed out with thousands of people screaming.” His hands rest in the pockets of his black jeans. “I come up here to drown all that out. Get a break from all the noise. Always so deep in everybody else—in the crowd—I forget about Jaire. Standing up here I remember. I can remember I’m still somebody too.” He steps down sauntering back to me. Sage eyes putting a spell on me. “You just seemed like you needed a second to remember Lana is somebody too. I don’t care who come and go—what’s easy or complicated.” I giggle as he bows his head making wide eyes. “Don’t let nobody drown you out,” he continues. “Not me. Not Mr. Complicated. Nobody.”

I never felt more seen by a man in such close proximity to the first time meeting him. It usually takes moving mountains to get a man to come to his senses and hone in. Not with him though. He’s almost too good to be true.

I nod. Tears threatening to spill, but I suck them up. No more sad girl. I’m better than that. It’s a shame it took a man that barely knows me to tell me so.

“Promise?” He holds out a long pinky adorned with a ring that winks at me. I hook mine onto his.

“I promise.”

He steps back allowing me a path to the spot he left. In these less than comfortable Givency boots, I step carefully over and around the scattered rocks, over the sand and patchy grass until I’m on top of the same flat plated rock he came off of.

The view is unreal. I can see everything up here, but it’s still nothing but echoes of silence. No noise. No world. No expectations. No worries. Just me separated from them. Separated from him.

“I got a game in two days,” he informs me. “I’d really like if I knew you was out there in the stands—watching me.”

I turn still on top of the rock so his voice isn’t hitting my back anymore. “And you better not lose.”

He snickers. “With my good luck charm there? Never. I’ll have to give them motherfuckers the greatest pep talk of their life in that locker room.”

My smile grows. The battle of my heart he didn’t even know he was affiliated with before today, lingering. Yeah, he lost a couple rounds in the beginning. He had all the right materials and couldn’t do anything with them because my attention had been abducted by someone who didn’t even deserve it.

The better man might just win this time.

Finally back in the five-star hotel room, I stare at the name on the screen calling again. I let it ring two more times before swiping.

“Paul?” But I can tell it's not him. I don’t know how I know—I just know.

“You left Miami?” His voice is authoritative—making the question sound more like a statement. “I don’t see your suitcase here.”

“I did,” I confirm after a moment. Heart skipping a few beats. From guilt? Excitement that I resent from hearing his voice after months? I don’t even know.

“Where’d you go?”

“Back home,” I lie. Eyes shut tight. I’ve never done that with him. I never had to.

He doesn’t say anything for a while. Every second that passes feels longer than the one before. And for a split second, I feel like he knows the truth or at least knows what I’ve told him isn’t the truth. Like he has his own eyes on me at the moment.

“I’d really appreciate if you came back, Lana.”

Theres almost an underlying desperateness in his voice. Like his wellbeing depends on my presence—when he’s just demonstrated to me that it doesn’t. I remove the phone from my ear. Eyes opening at an agonizingly slow pace to face myself in the mirror. Why do I always feel so weak for him? So helpless like I don’t have any say over my own actions—my own body.

Staring back at the girl in the mirror I shake my head at her. Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare fall for it…fall for him.

This game he’s been playing—it's unfair. It’s cruel. He’s set it up so he’s the only winner.

The overwhelming feeling he brings to me—congesting my mind and making me forgo all the contempt and smoke I previously had in the chamber for him. Then, the promise I just made to Jaire not even an hour before, forces itself to the forefront of my mind. He won’t drown me or my intuition out this time.

I stick the phone back to the side of my face. “I can’t,” I tell him. Voice so delicate and pliant—not even hiding the fact that I can be easily persuaded. So, to eliminate any chance of it—I press that red button. He won’t win this round.

A/N // it’s been so long friends. so much has happened since my last update…still in shock btw. so let’s disassociate and be delu together in this au😂

1. what the helly is going on with Joe? why has he gone ghost again?

2. do you think Lana genuinely likes Jaire or is she just trying to fill the space?

3. this girl spent her whole summer in Miami—what do you think happened between them? (don’t worry a good portion of the rest of the shorts take place during this time)

4. he took this girl out the country😂 any thoughts?

5. do we think him going ghost again paired with Jaire’s new presence is enough to make her split from Joe?

As always, so grateful for everyone reading especially in light of recent events. Feedback is always welcomed💗

Next update will be another short about Wrestle-mania 40. It will be up every soon. If not tonight, tomorrow night.

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