Nobody laughed, and I realized she had probably delivered variations of that sentence before.
A few minutes later she and Mark were gone and the room fell quiet.
Except the silence felt different now. Wider, as though someone had opened a door in a wall I had spent years assuming was solid.
Mila stared into her tea. Dean sat with his elbows on his knees. Nobody seemed eager to speak first.
I looked down at the oversized USA hoodie twisted around my torso.
Mila frowned. “What?”
I shook my head. “Yesterday I thought a press conference was the worst thing that could happen to me.”
Dean snorted.
“Today I woke up wearing an American hoodie.”
Mila’s lips twitched.
I held up my tea. “And now I’ve spent half an hour discussing immigration law with the head of US Figure Skating.”
Dean made a strangled sound.
“In a bedroom.”
Mila lost the battle first. The tea nearly came out of her nose.
Dean folded forward, laughing into both hands. “Okay,” he managed. “When you say it like that…”
Mila lost whatever composure she had left. Dean folded forward again.
And suddenly I was laughing too, helpless and breathless and unable to stop. The sound filled the room until my ribs hurt.
Somehow the reality sitting in front of us looked less like tragedy and more like the kind of story nobody would believe if we told it.
When the laughter finally eased, Dean nudged my shoulder. I looked at him, and his eyes twinkled. “Worst-case scenario is getting weirder by the hour.”
Another laugh escaped me. “Yes.”
I still had no idea what came next.
Somehow that no longer felt like a disaster.
Dean
By the second block,Luka had adjusted the cuffs of his coat often enough that I was beginning to suspect he regretted wearing sleeves.
“Relax.”
He blinked. “Iamrelaxed.”
I bit back a smile. “You just checked your cuffs twice while waiting for a traffic light.”
“They are uneven.”
I took a good look. “They’re identical.”
“That is your opinion.”
