Chapter 4
Becky, Nattie and I arrive at the arena on Saturday and go check the card. We find that we are going to be teaming up in a match against Carmella, Alexa and a returning Eva Marie in the main event. No one had seen her since early in the summer when she got suspended for violating the company's wellness policy. We all share a look when we see her name on the card not happy about it at all. But we know better than to say anything out loud. We go to the locker room and start to get ready for the night. After changing into our gear we head to hair and makeup. I have been keeping my eyes peeled for Dolph all night but I haven't seen him yet. When there is a couple matches to go before ours I head off to the trainer's room to get my wrists taped and that's where I find Dolph.
"Hey." I say and he looks up from taping his own wrists and a smile spreads across his face. I go over to a drawercvx of supplies in the trainers supply cart and pull out my stash of brightly colored prewrap and tapes choosing pink prewrap with lime green and teal tape, the colors perfectly matching my brightly colored gear. I take a seat on the table across from Dolph and begin wrapping the prewrap around my wrists. Dolph smirks, "you have very colorful tape. Not gonna lie, I'm kinda jealous." He looks sadly down at his own wrists wrapped plainly in white. "You can use it whenever you want. There is pink in there too." He goes over to the drawer and pulls out the pink tape and begins to wrap it around his wrist. "Much better." He says stopping to admire his work and I shake my head in amusement before going to work on my own wrists. "Want some help?" he offers so I nod handing him the tape and let him tape both of my wrists. "Thanks." I say to him when he is done. "Anytime." I have to get to gorilla. I'll uh see you after the show?" he asks with a grin. "Yeah. I'm the main so it will be late though." He shrugs, "no problem. I'll wait." He backs slowly out of the room and I leave a moment later to go meet up with the girls to plan our match. Everyone is there except Eva who saunters up several minutes later and barely pays attention to what we are doing as she tries to take selfies. It takes all I have to not snap at her because technically she is a "veteran" having been on the main roster for a few years to my few months even though in those few months I am pretty sure I have had more matches than her but yet she keeps getting all these chances. Everyone is scared to speak up against her because they don't know who she has it in with to be getting these chances.
We all make or entrances and take our places on the apron as Becky and Alexa start the match off. Things progress and I find myself in the ring with Eva. Until this time she hadn't even been in the match her team even wanting to keep her out of the match. I got a few blows in before she calls for a counter and a back body drop. I reluctantly agree and take a forearm from her and later her whip me into the ropes. My momentum carries me towards her and she goes to lift me but doesn't get me very far and I have to twist my body in the air in order to not land straight on my head. I try to get myself into the position to take the bump properly on my back but I don't have enough time and I come crashing down hard on my right hip. There is immediate pain and I try hard to no sell the pain but it hurts so bad. Eva goes for a pin and I kick out which sends a shockwave of pain down my leg. I weakly call out that I am going to tag so I struggle to my feet and hit her with a neck breaker before crawling to the corner and tagging a confused Nattie who goes in and finishes the match as I roll out of the ring putting all my weight on my good leg before slowly testing my bad one. It doesn't seem horrible, but it hurts pretty bad. They hit Nattie's music and both she and Becky come over to me. I slowly take a few painful steps as Becky and Nattie come to stand on either side of me and help me back up the ramp to the back.
Once through the curtain Dolph is immediately at my side looking worried. "You okay?" he asks me, and I nod, "Yeah…I think so." I say taking a limping step forward out of the hold Becky and Nattie have on me. "Let me go cleaned up and we will get out of here okay?" I look at him and am distracted by how good he looks dressed in a tight pair of black jeans, a teal t-shirt and his hair up in a man bun. "You sure? We can postpone, go get you checked out by Doc…" I shake my head. "No way. I'm just a little sore and I've been looking forward to tonight. I'll be fine." To prove my point I walk away hiding my limp and go get cleaned up. In the shower I let the hot water hit my sore hip and it feels magnificent.
As I get out of the shower I notice a huge purple welt already forming on my hip. "Fan-fucking-tastic." I mutter to myself before I finish getting ready. I grab the clothes I had packed specifically for tonight and lay them out in my locker before I try to decide what to do with my hair. Girly things are way outside of my comfort zone and I am totally lost when luckily Becky comes to my rescue. We keep my hair simple and straight and she applies a minimal amount of makeup to my face. Before I can leave Nattie becomes my favorite person when she brings me some ibuprofen for my hip. I thank them both a thousand times over before grabbing my bags and heading out of the locker room.
I make my way down the hallway towards the exit to the garage. As I approach Dolph he starts to jog towards me and takes my bags and offers me a hand for support. "How you doing? You sure you don't want to go see Doc?" he asks me. "No. I'll be fine. I think it's just bruised. It's already a brilliant shade of purple." He grimaces, "ouch. But you look nice tonight." I blush. "Thanks, you do too." We reach the car and helps to lower me into the passenger seat before putting my bags into the back. Once he is in the car he pulls the restaurant up on his phone's GPS and we head off. We eat dinner at a nice little Italian place near the arena and even after all our mornings having breakfast together we still have not run out of things to talk about and the conversation flows effortlessly all through dinner and continues on through the three hour drive to our hotel.
We pull up to the hotel and find a place to park. I start to open my door to get out but Dolph stops me, "hang on!" he jumps out of the car and jogs around to my side of the car opening my door and offering me a hand. I get up stiffly, gently flexing my hip which is stiff from the long drive. We go check in and find that we have rooms on the same floor so we head off to the elevators and head up to our floor. We step out of the elevators as the doors ding open on our floor. Our rooms are at opposite ends of the hall but neither of us makes the move to leave first. "I had a good time tonight. Thank you." I tell him with a shy smile on my face. He grins back at me, "I did too. We should do it again. Until then, breakfast tomorrow?" I laugh, "of course. I'll meet you downstairs in the morning." I assure him. "Awesome. I hope you have a goodnight." He starts to take a step towards me but then changes his mind. "Night." He says again before going off to his room. I shake my head before limping off to my mine. I slowly change, taking care of my sore hip. I glance in the mirror and grimace at the sight of the massive black, blue and purple bruise on my hip and how swollen it is. I snap of a picture of it to send to Ravyn with a joke about it being as colorful as her hair.
I finish changing into my pajamas just as there is a knock at my door. I stand confused for a moment wondering who the hell could be at my door at two in the morning before going to look through the peephole. My heart skips a beat seeing Dolph standing there. I open the door quickly, "hey…" I say to him, "want to come in?" I offer but he shakes his head, "no. I'm not going to stay long. It's late, I just wanted to bring you this." He holds up an ice pack. "I remembered that I carry one of these in my bag just in case. I used to bang up my elbows pretty good doing those repetitive elbow drops every night back in the day. I thought maybe you could use it tonight. I stopped at the ice machine and filled it up for you." I'm touched, "aw thanks. This will actually be great. My hip is pretty swollen and very colorful." I laugh taking the ice pack from him. "This is very sweet, thank you." He gives me a little smirk, "No problem. I'm glad to help, oh and I also forgot to do this earlier." Before I realize what is happening he is leaning and placing a gentle kiss on my lips. I close my eyes, savoring the moment until he pulls away and all the blood rushes to my cheeks. "Goodnight." He says walking away and I go back into my room with a giant smile on my face.
The next morning I get up stiff and sore. I take a few ibuprofen before I go down to meet Dolph. After we eat we meet up with Zack and head to the arena. As we walk in from the parking garage Dolph takes my hand, smiling at me as all the blood rushes to my cheeks. We enter the building hand in hand and there waiting for us with his arms crossed is a very cranky looking Doc. I stop in my tracks as he glares at me, "What's this I hear about you getting hurt last night and then not coming to see me?" He seems genuinely pissed off at me. "It's just a bruise…" he shakes his head, "you should still have come to see me. It could be worse than that. Now I want you to go change into some workout clothes and come see me in the trainer's room." I nod, "Okay, just give me fifteen minutes." He walks off to the trainer's room and I look sheepishly at the boys, "Guess I'm in trouble. I'll see you guys later." I give Dolph's hand a squeeze before heading off the locker room.
In the trainer's room Doc pokes around at my hip and examines the bruise. He has me flex my hip in various directions testing my range of motion. "Well…I don't think it's anything too serious. Seems to just be a hip pointer. I'm going to keep you off the card tonight and tomorrow and then we will reevaluate you before TV on Tuesday." My heart sinks, "I have to be on TV Doc. I have to redeem myself for last week." I all but beg him. "I'm sorry, but I won't clear you until I see how you are on Tuesday." I sigh. "Is there anything I can do to try and make sure I'm good? Should I use crutches? Ice? Heat? Meds? Anything?" I rapid fire these questions at him. "Ice for sure. I'll go ahead and warp it and give you some anti-inflammatories and crutches wouldn't hurt anything if you want to be that extreme." He says with a shrug. "I will do anything to make sure I am good to go." I say desperately. Doc wraps my hip and gives me several doses of anti-inflammatories to last me over the next couple of days and a set of crutches. "Just come early for TV on Tuesday so that I can get you evaluated and tell creative what is happening." My mind is spinning as I see my chances of being on the Survivor Series team crumbling away.
I hobble my way down the hall and go scope out the card to see what's in store for the night. After doing that I go off in search of Dolph. I turn a corner and see him talking to Zack dressed in their gear ready to go out for their match. "Damn…" Dolph comments when he sees me on the crutches, "that can't be good." I decide to mess with them a bit and milk this moment. "Hey guys." I say my voice oozing with sadness. "What did Doc say?" Zack asks me and I sigh dramatically earning sympathetic glances. "Well…he said that…" I hang my head so to try and hide the grin that I can't keep off my face, and I bring my hand up to pretend to wipe away tears. Before I can say anything else I'm shocked to find both of them wrapping their arms around me in a group hug. I can't help myself as I start to laugh and they pull away. "Oh God, I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself." They look confused as I try to regain my composure. Now I really do have to wipe tears of laughter from my eyes. Now the boys are glaring at me not amused by my joke. "Look, I really am sorry. Doc said it's just a hip pointer. I'm just taking every precaution I can so that I can be cleared for TV. Can you forgive me?" I put on my best smile in hopes of winning them back over. They look at each other before shrugging "yeah, I mean I guess we can let it slide." Zack says trying to hide a smile. "I'm going to go track down Rawley we are next. I'll see you at the curtain Zigs."
He walks away and I shift my weight on the crutches and look at Dolph, "you aren't mad at me are you?" I ask worriedly because he has been silent since I pulled my joke on him. He sighs after a moment "no. I'm just glad it's nothing serious. I want to see you get your shot at Survivor Series." I smile. "Hopefully things go well on Tuesday so I can keep fighting for it." We start walking off towards gorilla since it's almost time for his match. Everyone else is there when we walk in. Dolph is teaming with the Hype Bros to take on Miz and the Usos. I listen as they finalize some preplanned spots for the match before splitting off to go through their individual prematch rituals. I stand back as the music for the winner of the previous match blares through arena and watch with a smirk at all the different rituals going on in front of me. The Usos are standing in the corner bobbing around as if they are listening to music pumping each other up while Miz is standing alone with his eyes closed just rolling his neck around, Mojo is running in place like a maniac while Zack does curls with resistance bands and Dolph does pushups. The team of Miz and the Usos head out first so I turn to the boys "good luck out there fellas." I say passing out fist bumps to Zack and Mojo as their music hits and they explode through the curtain leaving Dolph and I alone. "Go steal the show for me okay?" I say leaning up to give him a quick kiss on the cheek before his music hits and he back through the curtain with a smirk and gives the crowd his patented Ziggle Wiggle.
I watch the match through the curtain and am treated to quite the show. The heel team eventually cheats and gets the win and everyone make their way to the back. Dolph and Zack say they will come pick me and my bags up at the women's locker room after they get cleaned up and changed so I head there to wait. I chat with the girls for a while until there is knock on the door signally that they have arrived. Becky and Nattie grab my bags and pass them off to the boys as I hobble a long behind. We drive the few hours to the next town, check into our hotel and the boys help me all the way up to my room with my bags. Zack leaves to go to his room while Dolph hangs around to help me get into my room. He takes my key card and unlocks the door carrying my bags inside with my following behind. "Do you need anything before I go?" He offers and I think about it for a moment, "actually there is something you could do for me. Would you mind filling that ice pack for me again?" I ask him hopefully giving him my best puppy dog eyes. "I think I can manage that." He says with a laugh and I go to dig the pack out my bag and hand it to Dolph. "I'll be right back." He leaves and I change into pajamas while he is gone. He comes back a few minutes later and hands me the pack. "Thank you so much." I tell him. "No problem. I'll get out of here and let you get some rest." He gathers his bags and I walk him to the door. "I'll see you in the morning?" I ask and he stops, "of course. Goodnight." He takes a few steps out into the hall but just before the door can close behind him I grab it and call out to him. "Hey Dolph…" he turns and comes back the few steps to my door looking at me curiously. "Can I ask you something?" I bite my lower lip nervously. "What's up?" I take a deep breath "what exactly is this going on between us?" He smirks, "What do you mean?" "We've been spending a lot of time together, the daily breakfasts, riding together and not to mention that amazing dinner and the kiss that followed last night…" I trail off leaving the remainder of the conversation in his hands. "Well…I mean obviously we've gotten close…as for if there is something here…do you want there to be?" There is a hopeful tone to his voice. "Yeah. I do." I answer without hesitation. "These couple of weeks have been amazing and I can see it becoming something more." I blush as I admit this out loud.
Dolph is looking me straight in the eyes before suddenly he wraps me in his arms and is giving me a deep passionate kiss. I deepen the kiss by putting my hand behind his head and entangling my fingers in his hair. After several minutes we pull apart, both breathless and grinning like fools. He touches his forehead to mine running his hand through my hair. "I feel the same way." He finally says and I can't help but laugh. "You don't say?" he pulls away reluctantly. "I will come pick you up in the morning." I nod unable to speak. "Ok. Well…goodnight." He says stepping away but I grab his hand turning him back to face me and give him one more long, deep kiss before pulling away and disappearing into my room.