Chapter 5 First Press Conference
MIA
The room is smaller than it looks on TV. That's the first thing I notice, standing backstage with Caleb's hand hovering an inch from my back, waiting for permission.
"You can," I mutter.
His hand settles. Light.
Derek whispers through the plan one more time. Smile. Don't overshare. Let Caleb field the hockey questions. Keep the family stuff vague. I nod along, watching reporters through the curtain gap, counting cameras.
"Ready?" Caleb asks.
"No."
"Good. Neither am I."
That surprises a laugh out of me right before we walk into the lights.
Questions start easy. How'd you meet. How long has this been going on. Does the team know. Caleb answers smooth, the practiced ease of a boy raised on cameras. I hover half a step behind, exactly like Derek wants.
Then a reporter in the third row points at me.
"Mia, is it? What's it like dating the guy half this city already has an opinion about?"
I feel Caleb tense, ready to run interference.
I answer first.
"Honestly? Exhausting. I have to remind people he's not actually that impressive in person."
The room laughs. Caleb turns to me, something startled and delighted breaking across his face before he catches it.
"She's not wrong," he admits into the mic. "Ask my equipment manager. I leave my gear everywhere."
"I don't manage his equipment. I manage the whole team's. His is just the messiest."
More laughter. Derek, off to the side, looks like he's watching a stock rise faster than projected.
A different reporter jumps in. "So you two have history beyond dating. You work with the team?"
"Three years," I manage. "I've watched him lose his mind over a missing roll of stick tape like it was a national emergency."
"It was a good roll," Caleb mutters, mock-serious, and the room laughs again. Something about this room full of strangers laughing at something actually true makes the whole thing feel less like performance than I expected.
Some questions crawl under my skin. What it's like to be seen with someone like him. Whether I feel lucky. I answer those with a shrug and let the sarcasm do what it's always done. Keep people at a safe distance while looking like I'm letting them close.
Caleb watches me do it. Catches me more than once, something unreadable on his face.
Near the end, a reporter asks for a photo. Just the two of us, unposed.
His hand finds mine without a question this time. I let it happen. His thumb brushes once across my knuckles. Barely there. Gone before I decide how I feel about it.
The cameras go off in a wall of light.
Afterward, by the vending machines, Derek scrolls his phone with manic energy.
"Look at this," Caleb manages, turning the screen toward me.
A photo. Us, mid-laugh, his hand around mine, my head tipped back at something he murmured. We look like two people who actually like each other. We look like nothing I planned.
"That's a good picture," I admit.
"Forty thousand likes already."
"Great. My face is worth forty thousand likes now."
"I meant we're good at this," he presses, quieter. "I didn't expect that."
"Don't get used to it. I'm still mostly doing it for the money."
"Mostly," he repeats, like the word snags on something.
I don't correct him.
Derek's voice carries down the hall, still cataloguing engagement numbers like scripture. Caleb glances toward him, jaw tightening for half a second before he smooths it away.
"He'll want us out again this week," Caleb cuts in. "Faster than planned, probably."
"Fine by me. Faster means the six months goes faster."
"Right." He breathes out it like he agrees. Doesn't quite sound like he agrees.
We stand there a second too long, both of us pretending to study a photo we've already memorized, and somewhere down the hall Derek is still talking about engagement like it's the only thing in the world that matters.
Derek finally waves us over, already onto the next agenda item, some sponsor he wants at the next appearance. Caleb answers on autopilot, half his attention still on me.
"You okay?" he asks, once Derek moves on.
"Fine. Why?"
"You got quiet. After the photo."
"Just thinking."
"About?"
I consider deflecting. Don't.
"About how easy that was. Standing next to you, letting people believe something that isn't true. I didn't expect it to feel this easy."
"Is that a bad thing?"
"I don't know yet." I fold my arms against the cold hallway air. "Ask me again in a month."
"I will," he allows, like it's a promise instead of a joke, and something in the certainty of it sits strange in my chest the rest of the walk to the parking lot.
He drops me at the bus stop, waits until I'm settled inside the little plastic shelter before he finally pulls away. I watch his taillights disappear, still turning his answer over.
Ask me again in a month.
A month feels like nothing and everything at once. Thirty more days of appearances, of coffee, of this strange, careful thing we're building on top of a lie.
My phone buzzes as the bus finally arrives.
Home safe?
Getting there.
Good. Text me when you land.
I do, twenty minutes later, curled on my own couch, and his reply comes back so fast I know he was waiting for it.
For a second, standing next to Caleb with forty thousand strangers' approval between us, I almost forget it isn't real.
