I want to lean into him. Want to close my eyes and let him hold me and pretend we're anywhere else. But we're not anywhere else. We're in the green room of David Glass's studio, about to tell the world everything, and there's no version of this where we get to hide anymore.
"No." I put my hands over his, press them tighter against my face for just a second. "We're doing this."
The door opens. A young woman with a headset and a clipboard pokes her head in. "Mr. Crane? Mr. Dean? We're ready for you."
Carter's hands fall away from my face. He offers me his arm instead, formal and steadying, and I take it.
We walk out of the green room and down the hallway toward the studio. The same hallway. The same journey. But everything else is different.
Last time, I was alone.
The set is smaller than I remember. Or maybe it's just that there's no audience. The rows of seats sit empty, a skeleton crew moving efficiently around the cameras.
A hastily arranged interview doesn't leave time to fill a studio with warm bodies, which means it's just us and Glass and whatever he's planning to ask.
David Glass himself is already seated behind his desk, flipping through notes. He looks up as we approach, and his face splits into the kind of grin that makes me want to check for exits.
"Carter. Jamie." He rises, extending his hand to each of us in turn. His grip is firm, professional, but his eyes are gleaming. "I have to say, when Georgia called, I thought someone was playing a prank. The two of you, together, wanting to talk? I almost pinched myself."
"Happy to make your dreams come true, David." Carter's voice is smooth, easy. The politician's mask is firmly in place.
"Oh, you have. You absolutely have." Glass gestures to the couch across from his desk and I note that the two chairs are gone. He’s going to make us sit next to each other. I should say it’s a sly move but it’s a good one. Carter may be the strategist, but even I know that us snuggling together on a sofa is going to play well.
"Please, sit,” he says. “Make yourselves comfortable. We'll get started in a few minutes."
Comfortable. Right.
I lower myself onto the couch, trying to arrange my body in a way that doesn't make me look like a beached whale. Carter sits beside me, close enough that our thighs touch. His hand finds mine again, threading our fingers together. Glass watches this with barely concealed delight.
"Before we begin," Glass says, "I don’t want to have any restrictions on questions. That’s the deal. I'll ask what I want to ask, and you can answer however you choose. Fair?"
"Fair," Carter says.
I nod. My throat is too tight to speak.
A production assistant counts down. The red light on the main camera blinks on.
And we're live.
"Good evening," Glass begins, his voice shifting into the smooth, practiced cadence of his on-air persona. "Six months ago, I had two guests on this show who didn't know they were about to share a stage. What happened next became one of the most talked-about moments in television history."
He gestures, and on the monitor behind us, footage begins to play. I don't need to look. I've seen it hundreds of times. The internet won't let me forget. But I watch anyway, because that's what you do when someone's showing you the moment that changed everything.
There I am, confident and sharp, mid-sentence about the exposé. The door opens. Carter walks in. I stop talking.
On screen, I watch myself freeze. I watch my nostrils flare as the scent hits me.
I watch Carter falter mid-stride, his composure cracking. We stare at each other across the studio floor, and even in the footage, even through the screen, the tension is palpable.
The clip ends. Glass turns back to us.
"That moment launched a thousand memes. Tabloids went wild. The hashtag CraneAndDean trended for two weeks." He leans forward, elbows on his desk. "So let me ask the question everyone's been asking since that night: what actually happened?"
Carter glances at me. I give him a tiny nod. We agreed he'd take this one.
"It was a scent match," Carter says. "Immediate. Undeniable. I'd never experienced anything like it before."
"And you, Jamie?"
