In Mike's fantasies, he always cradled Daya after lovemaking. 

In reality, he spent the night afraid to move on his half of the bed. He got most of the blanket, because Daya was a hot sleeper, but his muscles ached from the imposed immobility. He even thought about returning to his own room. 

Nobody is going anywhere tonight.

So he stayed put, closed his eyes, opened them again.

And he stayed.

Whenever he couldn't hear her breathe, he held his own, panicking that he dreamed it all up, and he would wake up in his own hotel room.

But no, he was in Daya's bed, alone with the post-coital fallout. Emptied, because it had happened after so long an obsession and was so short an act in comparison. Getting used to the memory of what it was like replacing the dream of what it might have been like. And fighting the primal need to misbehave, wake her up and not let go till her womb quickens.

How he fell asleep, he didn't notice. Then the woman who kept him afraid to sneeze for hours, woke him up with a minty kiss. "Sleepyhead!"

Her skin was cool, with a lingering smell of soap. She had a black Lulu on... the same Lulu or the new one... who could tell... Her skate suitcase stood by the door, the outfit bag with the costume hanging over it.

"I hated to wake you, but I wanted to tell you that the room key is on the table." She pointed to a plastic rectangle next to his glasses.

"Could I check out of my room now?" he asked, picking up her hand, and threading her fingers through his. This is where the ring will go.

Daya pretended to think. "Hmm, if you're moving to Ontario, you'll need every dollar, so yes. Stop paying for an empty room." She reached for the receiver of the hotel's phone.

Mike folded his arms under his head, playing cool. "It might go better with the front desk if you officially accept my marriage proposal. They might be conservative here, you know."

"Uh-huh." Daya pressed zero by touch, holding his gaze and smiling. "Good morning. It's room 815... yes, everything is great. My boyfriend has just proposed, so I was wondering..."

She paused for the excited noises on the other end of the line. Mike couldn't quite make out the words, but the voice was feminine. 

"Oh, thank you, thank you very much. We were wondering if it's okay for him to get added to my room, if there are any extra charges and ... okay, thank you so much."

"Thank you again." There were more noises before Daya grinned. "My fiance's name is Mike Wilson. He'll be right down."

She hung up the receiver and caressed his cheek, unknowingly bringing him back from the dumbstruck state her words left him in. "Sorry, honey. Now you don't get to sleep in."

"It's perfect..." Mike said after he regained the gift of speech. "Perfect..."

"I don't eat during the competitions, but I texted Shanti to meet you for breakfast. She'd been dying to meet you."

She got up with a regretful sigh. "I must run now, or I will be late for practices. Mike... will you be okay with Pavel this time?"

Mike smiled and stretched. "Me, jealous? After listening to you breathe next to me in the night?" So what if Pavel was tall, handsome and blessed with a ridiculous combination of the athletic and artistic qualities? Every man in the world should be jealous of him, Mike Wilson.

"I'll take it as a yes." She blew him a kiss from the doors and left.

Mike jumped out of bed the moment the rattling of her suitcase died down. 

His do-list was long.

***

His do-list was long before he answered five texts from Shanti who put an Oscar-winning performance to side-step the obvious: Daya charged her with supervising his nourishment. 

He kept his face straight while she delivered the party line about the twins needing a good example with eating the most important meal of the day. He discussed the advantages of the hotel's chocolate chip muffins vs mystery jam danishes with the grateful younger audience. Rajni and Veer stared at him with eyes like Daya's. 

Uncanny.

Even more uncanny, Daya's mother's eyes were exactly like Daya's. 

The Dhawans being on the stands for their daughter's competition was not a surprise to him. Even if he was dim-witted enough to not expect this plot twist, Shanti repeated it for him at least fifteen times under the blanket assumption that men in love lacked mental focus.

She was mistaken: he had laser clarity. That's why he picked out Mr. and Mrs. Dhawan in the VIP section reserved for athletes' relatives right away. 

Him, distinguished, with first streaks of gray in thick mane and beard, an occasional twinkle of amusement in dark eyes. Her, with the most daring hints of gray eradicated, smiling like a pudding, but glancing sharply from under the familiar arched brows.

"So, you're to marry my daughter, young man. But where are the herds your father should have promised me?" Daya's father asked, stroking his beard.

Mike blinked away a vision of twenty elephants marching unhurriedly down the Transcanada highway. "All is in order, Sir. A blizzard held up the caravan in Winnipeg, but you won't be disappointed."

"For a surprise groom, he's all right," Darvesh half-turned to his wife. Mike felt like exhaling in relief but held back. "What do you think, Amrita? He's all right, hmm?"

"You and your jokes..." Amrita pretend-slapped her husband on the wrist and set her penetrating gaze on Mike. "The warm-up is about to start, Michael. But tomorrow Daya is in practice all day until they skate the free program at four pm. Why don't you join us for lunch, and we can catch up on when you're moving? Make wedding plans, get to know each other, little things like that...."

You wanted a family, Mike reminded himself with a swallow. "I think it would be wonderful."

When he squeezed past Shanti and the twins, her lips folded in what he could only call a smirk. 

She checked that her mother didn't have a line of sight on them before whispering to him, "Elope."

Tempting, as it was... "Never."

He took his seat—it was away from Dhawans since his athletes' friend voucher came from a different source—and glanced at the ice, kneading his cold hands. 

The lights brightened, and Skate Canada introduced the judges on the loudspeaker. Soon. Really soon.

He was glad that as the newest qualifying pair Dhawan/Sorokin would skate first. The printout of the schedule lay crumpled on his knee, and he still was caught off guard by Daya coming out of the gates.

Maybe in a few years he would get used to Daya transforming from the black-clad girl with a thick braid and lovely features into a crystal fantasy in colors bright enough to be visible from the last row. His mother carried theater with her at all times. Daya didn't.

And there she was, a princess in blue and silver, about to meet the prince, and Mike knew how it went. Step sequence, triple twist, double axel, throw, etc.

Only last month it looked different. 

Pavel loomed, big and pivotal, and Daya twirled around him in the shape of a hopeful butterfly around a sunflower. It was pretty, and as far as he could tell, mechanically correct. But it wasn't powerful.

Today, Daya was a fire dancing on a log, and devouring it. The music was still the same, sweet and playful, the drive and speed was new. No, not speed; they would have been off the music. It just looked like they were flying. Art starts when the audience no longer notices expertise. 

This is it, Mike thought. Daya had ascended.

Okay, so maybe he was besotted, but he felt how the energy of the crowd mounted behind his back. Even those without his bias couldn't take their eyes off of her, he was sure.

And then Daya fell. 

Pavel launched her into the air, she landed, and slipped, and fell. The crowd applauded—they always applaud when a skater takes a fall—Daya was up like he had imagined it, but he could see the spot of white on her blue dress. 

He labored for breath as if someone socked him in the gut, both from knowing she was hurt, and not knowing how much, including the score. But sci-fi aside, there was no turning back the clock.

He lived once again through the lasso lift, and the spiral, and the combo spin. 

On the step sequence, his anxiety shot off the scale. Daya and Pavel held the final pose to the applause for the last countdown. 

It was Mike's signal to act. He pushed up to his numb feet and went to the boards.