Page 86 of Oh, Flutz!

“I forgot about that.” He lifts a shoulder, sliding me his signature sunshine smile. “Oops? Whatever. Let’s go.”

“And then she says,Jules, you have the emotional acuity of a plastic spoon,” our assistant coach is telling us, gasping through fits of laughter. “And I said, why thehellare you quoting Harry Potter to me right now?”

“God, why are we like this?” Bryan says, grinning ear to ear. “What is it with competitive figure skaters and being absolutely fucked in the head?”

“What a shame. Hell, I’ll toast to that, though.” Juliet raises her glass. “I love you, but I am so glad it’s you competing and not me. I went crazy under all those lights.” She seems almost sad for a second, but then she looks back at us, and she’s smiling again. “To Andreyeva and Young.”

We raise our glasses, and I glance at Bryan. “May everything we touch turn to gold.”

After a while, Ican feel the alcohol and the adrenaline rushing to my brain.

Bryan is face-down on the floor, face smushed against the carpet and the tiniest of snores escaping him. Juliet is curled up in the armchair, eyes lidded and heavy with sleep.

I stretch slowly, limbs feeling twice their usual weight. I crack my neck, feeling like my body’s moving through quicksand.God. This is why I don’t get drunk during the season. I wince as the thudding in my head seems to become more and more insistent behind my eyes.

Then I’m wide awake.

No, no, no.I raise a hand to my head, as if it’ll do any good, and the other to my mouth as I stumble along the room, feeling against the wall, looking for the first dark enclave I can find. I finally fumble at the bathroom handle and let myself in, practically collapsing onto the floor, drawing myself up and burying my head between my knees. A debilitating wave of nausea sweeps over me, and I gag, pressing my hands tighter to my temples, feeling the wetness leak out of my eyes and down my arms.Why? Why now? Why tonight? I haven’t had one since—Sanjivpromisedme this wouldn’t happen—

I sit there for who knows how long, waiting for the relief that doesn’t seem to come, trying to hold on and just get through it instead of attempting in vain to fight what’s already happening.

And then, as if things couldn’t possibly get worse, I hear the sound of a knock at the door.

“Katya? You in there?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

BRYAN

“Katya?” I ask cautiously,stopping short as I see her curled up in a ball next to the toilet.

“Close the door,” she begs, voice choked with tears, and it takes me a second to unfreeze before I do, uneasily taking a step closer.

“Uh…what’s wrong?”

“My head,” is all she says, voice breaking.

I’m stuck. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. Is she sick? “I…do you want me to go get you an aspirin or something? Juliet might have.”

She shakes her head miserably. “It won’t help. Nothing helps now.”

I take another step, following the sound of her voice through the dark. I gingerly sit myself down next to her, her knees drawn up to her chin as she lets out another sniffle.Yeah, no, this isn’t a hangover.

“Is it a migraine?” I ask, making sure to keep my voice down. She nods.

I bite my lip, lowering myself to her level. “Come here.”

She doesn’t even put up a fight, just crawls over into my arms.

I’m kind of frozen for a second, trying to figure out what’s okay and what’s not—this is so freaking weird. All her defenses are nowhere to be found. Then I remember that it’s because she’s tipsy and in excruciating pain, so I shake it off and let myself wrap my arms around her, pulling her into my chest so she’s in a slightly more comfortable position.

How long has she been fighting these?Guilt seeps through me, although it isn’t my fault she chose to keep yet another thing from me in some dumb attempt to seem bulletproof. Still. It doesn’t feel good, seeing her like this.

I glance down, and that’s when I see that she hasn’t even taken her hair down yet. I might be an idiot, but even I can figure that the extremely tight bun her hair is wound up in can’t be helping.

“I’m going to take this out, okay?”

She nods, face still screwed up in a look of sheer pain, and I feel around for the dozens of bobby pins and hair ties, carefully removing them until there’s a long Dutch-braided rope of red hair for me to unravel. I go slow, gingerly undoing and combing through the stiff, hairspray-coated waves with my fingers.Huh. That’s weird. The roots are lighter than the rest of it. They aren’t even really red. I make a mental note to ask her about it later, picking out the last stray hairpin.

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