#Chapter 65: Love Doctor
Nina
As the crowd cheered over our victory, Enzo sat up with a smile stretched across his face. He wasn’t looking at the scoreboard, though. He was looking at me.
Before I could resist, Enzo Rivers reached out and cupped my face in his hands, pulling me toward him and kissing me firmly on the lips in front of the entire school. When he finally pulled away, I felt my face go red as I realized that we were still being projected on the large screen that hung over the stadium.
“You’re mine now,” Enzo said, his voice sounding somewhat stern. I could only nod, too bashful to speak.
Enzo stood, the injury to his head having already healed, and helped me to my feet. The crowd erupted into a mixture of cheers and boos as he slipped his hands under me and scooped me up into his arms, twirling me around on his skates while his team jumped and cheered for their victory.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Enzo skated with me to the edge of the rink and set me down. “You’re coming to the party, right?” he said. I blushed, feeling the eyes of the students on me as they began to flood out of the arena. “I was just gonna go home–”
“No way,” Enzo interrupted. “You’re coming to the party Wait here for me and I’ll take you.”
I didn’t have a chance to protest before the rest of the team got off the ice and surrounded Enzo, cheering and shouting over their victory I watched as they ushered him to the locker rooms, letting out a big sigh once they were out of sight.
“So, you and Enzo, huh?” Tiffany said, catching up to me as I walked over to the bleachers. “Took you two long enough.”
I blushed even harder than I already was and shrugged. “Yeah,” I replied, looking down at my feet. While I was embarrassed at the way he basically announced our relationship to the entire school and I hated the attention I was already getting over it, there was a huge part of me that was happy to finally be public about what was going on between us.
When I looked up and saw the way that some girls were looking at me, however, I felt a lump in my throat. There would no doubt be plenty of backlash over this, especially from those who were huge fans of Lisa.
“Oh, honey,” Tiffany said, crouching in front of me and grabbing my leg. “You tore up your knee on the ice.” I looked down and suddenly noticed that my pant leg was torn around the knee. My flesh was completely scraped up and covered in blood.
“I didn’t even notice,” I said somewhat numbly as I inspected my knee. I hadn’t felt any pain when I fell on the ice, and hardly felt anything now.
Tiffany sighed and reached into her bag for some supplies. I winced as she wiped the wound with an antiseptic cloth and pressed some gauze into it once it was clean. “It’s really bad,” she said. “You should rest for a couple of days. I would even give you stitches if the skin wasn’t too torn up to be able to sew it together.”
I frowned, watching as the gauze soaked with blood. “I really don’t feel much,” I said.
Just then, Enzo returned from the locker rooms and walked up to us. As soon as he saw Tiffany holding gauze to my knee, his excited smile turned into a deep and worried frown.
“What happened?” he asked. “Nina tore up her knee nice and good on the ice,” Tiffany replied. She removed the bloody gauze and rolled up my pant leg, then secured more gauze with an ace bandage.
“I’m really fine,” I said, furrowing my brow. Tiffany looked up at me with a frown.” You’re probably in a little bit of shock with everything going on. Don’t downplay your pain. “I’ll take care of her,” Enzo said. ”
Don’t worry.” Tiffany let out a sigh and nodded, rolling my pant leg back down and standing. “Come see me in the morning,” she said. “I want to make sure you don’t get an infection.”
It didn’t seem like I had much of a choice, so I complied and watched as Tiffany left with her medical bag. Enzo held his hand out to me and helped me stand, concern written across his face ” Do you still feel okay with going to the party?” he asked. I nodded. “I’m oka–”
Just then, as I stood, I felt my head get light and I stumbled into Enzo. He caught me in his strong arms and sighed deeply. “I’m taking you home,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “You need to rest.”
Enzo took me back to my dorm that night and helped me up to my room, where a confused Jessica and Lori sat. I explained the situation, but admittedly felt too tired to talk. Almost as soon as Enzo helped me get into my pajamas and get to bed, I fell asleep.
I woke up on Saturday morning, feeling much better. It was dark and rainy outside; the early autumn beauty had passed now that Halloween was over, and we were rapidly headed toward winter. It was like this every year in this region, being so far north.
As I slowly started to wake up, the notification light on my phone flashed continuously and drew my attention. Yawning, I reached out and grabbed my phone.
When I unlocked it and looked at my notifications, my eyes widened. Pictures of Enzo and I as I held his head in my lap on the Jumbotron from the night before were already circulating Twitter
The longer I scrolled, the more it became obvious to me that there was a stark divide between the fans who were angry that Enzo was, in their eyes, no longer “available”, and the people who shipped us, for lack of a better word.
Groaning, I sat up and threw the blankets off, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and getting up. I heard voices in the kitchen, so I followed them with the hope that at least Jessica and Lori might have something comforting to say.
“Well, if it isn’t the Love Doctor,” Lori said with a smirk as I walked out into the kitchen.
“Oh, god,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes. “Is that what they’re calling me now?”
Jessica, who was sitting on top of the kitchen island with a coffee cup in her hand, shrugged. “Hey,” she said, “it’s better than Nerdy Nina, or whatever it was that they were calling you before.”
I groaned again and crossed over to the coffee machine to pour myself a cup of coffee. Maybe some caffeine would make this newfound stardom less… irritating.
“I’d rather people not refer to me as anything,” I replied. “I didn’t ask for any of this. And now people are gonna be fighting with each other over me “They’ll stop eventually,” Lori said with a mouthful of cereal.
“Or they’ll get bored of her and start a smear campaign,” Jessica replied, taking a sip of her coffee Another groan escaped my lips. Why did this always have to happen to me?
“Hey,” Lori said, pointing at my leg. ” Wasn’t your leg all fucked up last night?”
I furrowed my brow and looked down at my knee. It was still bandaged, but I felt no pain. If anything, I felt even better than I did before. I reached down to move the bandages out of the way…
The wound had completely healed.
