I’d really like that.
My heart kicks against my ribs so hard I have to set the phone down on the table for a second. The words swim.
He noticed. Not just as a story to tell his teammates, not as fan number 5,206. Me.
Old reflex rears up fast—do not screw this up, you must have impressed him somehow, now don’t say something stupid. Right behind it, newer, smaller, stubborn: you get to choose. This isn’t a prize being handed down.
“Zlata?” Eva is practically vibrating. “What. Did. He. Say.”
I pick the phone back up, thumb tightening around it. My mouth feels dry. “He… uh.” I swallow, then force the words out. “He says it was special and weird. But… he’d like to see me again. Dinner. Or a drink.”
There’s a beat of stunned silence, then the table explodes.
“He wants dinner?” Eva half-shouts, then clamps a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Indoor voice. He wants dinner?”
Anna’s eyes are wide, but her smile is slow. “That’s… actually very decent of him.”
I scroll back up, just to make sure I didn’t hallucinate it. His words are still there, stubbornly kind.
“What do I do?” I ask, and I hate how desperate it sounds. “Seriously. What do I even do with that?”
Eva doesn’t even hesitate. “You go,” she says. “You put on that black sweater that makes your shoulders look illegal, you have dinner with the sad, hot Austrian, and you live my dreams.”
Anna nudges her. “Let her breathe.” She looks back at me. “You don’t have to answer right now. You just got down from a nightmare lift, you’re shaking, you have schnaps in your veins.”
“Also true,” I mutter.
“Hot bath first,” Anna decrees, in her best teacher voice. “Then food. Then the strategy. Whatever you answer, don’t do it cold, drunk, and on an empty stomach.”
Eva sighs dramatically. “Fine. Responsible adulthood. But after your bath, we are absolutely workshopping your reply.”
I look at the message one more time, then lock my phone and shove it back into my pocket before I can type anything on reflex.
“Deal,” I say, and suddenly the idea of steam and pasta and a room that doesn’t move sounds like the only thing keeping me from floating away entirely.
***
The apartment feels like a different planet. No wind, no bass, no shouting kids—just the soft hiss of the radiator, the clink of plates, and the smell of garlic and olive oil. Anna has somehow conjured pasta out of our half-empty cupboards; Eva has contributed a bottle of Riesling and a packet of emergency Pringles.
By the time I’ve had a shower hot enough to peel my skin off and pulled on leggings and an oversized sweater, my hands have stopped shaking. Unfortunately, my brain has not.
“Sit,” Anna says, pointing at the chair opposite her. “Eat. Then we plot.”
Eva tops up my glass the second I sit down. “To Zlata,” she declares, raising hers. “Unhinged, wild, and upgraded from selfies to dinner invitations.”
I click obediently. “It’s not dinner yet,” I say. “It’s… the idea of dinner.”
Anna snorts. “Pretty sure that’s not how it works.” She twirls pasta onto her fork, then looks at me. “Okay. Options. What do you actually want?”
I open my mouth. Close it again. Want feels like a dangerous word.
“I know what I don’t want,” I say finally. “I don’t want a boyfriend. I just got rid of one.”
“Reasonable,” Anna says.
“And I don’t want to sit in some restaurant pretending I’m not one of those girls waiting in line again.” The words come out sharper than I mean them to. “I’ve done my time as the girlfriend hovering at the edge of a room while everybody looked at him.”
Eva leans back, studying me. “Okay, but this time you’re not the plus-one to a local DJ in some smoky bar. You’re… I don’t know, the international mystery woman who blew his mind in a gondola.”
