I step forward slowly, like she’s something wild I’ll spook if I move too fast.
“Kat… this is…” I shake my head. “Incredible.”
She motions awkwardly toward the food. “The noodles are… slightly firm.”
“They’re perfect,” I say before even tasting them… because she made them for me.
We sit, knees brushing under the table, and it feels like I’ve walked straight into the version of life I wasn’t expecting us ever to have when Luka told me that the bet was real and that I would be marrying his sister.
She hands me a piece of French bread. The bottom is black.
“Don’t eat that part,” she warns.
I grin and take a massive bite anyway.
Her eyes widen. “Scottie—”
“It’s great.”
“It’s burned,”she says, her voice shaking as if she wants to tear up over the scorched bread, but I won’t let her.
“Just on the underside.” I chew, swallow, lean in. “Besides… watching you get sauce on your nose while you pour wine? Worth eating charred bread for the rest of my life.”
Her face flushes hard. I like seeing this side of her. She’s trying, and that’s more than I can ask for.
We talk as we eat. She tells me everything her grandmother said. The warnings. The questions. The fact that the woman livestreamed opening night.
“She watched it?” I ask, almost dropping my fork.
“Yes,” Katerina says quietly. “She said it herself.”
Then I tell her about my dad.
About the trial and the rejection.
Her breath catches. “Scottie… I’m so sorry.”
I shrug even though it feels like something inside me is collapsing. “It is what it is. Mom said the waiting list is… years. Maybe longer. And the longer they push him back, the less likely nerves are still alive enough to—” My voice cracks. I look down at my plate. “There’s nothing I can do.”
She reaches for my hand under the table without hesitation. Her fingers thread through mine like she’s been doing it forever.
“There might be something,” she says softly. “My grandmother knows the neurologist running the program. She said she’d… consider reaching out.”
I stare at her. Hope can sometimes be a dangerous thing, but right now, it’s the only thing I have.
“You’d ask that of her?”
She nods. “For you? Yes. It’s not for sure… she only said that she would consider it. He owes her a favor, but pretty much everyone does.”
I can’t speak for a second.
So I squeeze her hand instead. “Thank you for asking. Even if nothing comes of it.”
After dinner, we clean up side by side, like we’ve been doing for the last month or so.
She hands me a plate; I dry it.
I bump her hip; she bumps mine back.
