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Her hair is done up in a high ponytail, putting the sharp features of her face on display. She’s wearing a grey oversized sweater under a leather jacket, and her jeans are skin-tight. She looks fierce, like even now, she’s stalking around scoping out the competition as if this Starbucks is the grounds of the local highland games.

Except she looks way more fashionable than anyone does at the highland games. I don’t know how I expected Kenzie to dress outside the dance world, but she seems to know a thing or two about putting one of those ‘I woke up like this but also I’m perfect’ outfits together.

It’s not cozy enough to be my style, but as my eyes are doing their best to prove to me, I like it a lot on her.

“So...you’re here,” I say after we’ve stared each other up and down for a few seconds too long to be normal.

I try to sound extra judgemental and consider glancing at the clock on my phone for emphasis, but it doesn’t have the same effect after she clearly just left me speechless.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I know I’m super late. I had a...thing come up.”

“A thing, huh?” I sound a little frostier now. “Glad to know the scholarship isn’t as important to you as a thing. It will make winning even easier for me.”

I try not to cringe at my lame comeback. Two years without her in my life has my verbal jousting game in sad need of a revamp.

“Yes, Moira, some things are more important to me than a scholarship because I have this thing called a life.”

I can’t stop myself from flinching. Just months ago, that jab would have rolled right off me, but now it lands square in the center of my chest.

Kenzie’s eyebrows lift at my response, but instead of going in for the kill, she drops her gaze to the floor.

“Look, I just, uh...I had something come up with...my mom.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Kenzie Andrianakis look vulnerable before—at least not besides that fraction of a second I probably imagined when she first saw me and my broken ankle getting loaded onto a stretcher in Scotland.

Her shoulders have curled inwards, and her chin dips lower and lower as she continues to stare at the floor, like she’s expecting to sink right through it.

If she was anyone else, I’d jump up and give her a hug.

“That sounds tough,” I say instead, keeping my voice low and soft.

She jerks her head up, and it’s like watching shutters slam closed behind her eyes. Any openness flickers out of sight, replaced by solid walls and steel bars. Her shoulders assume their usual rigid stance, that one that looks so much like Catherine Stewart’s.

“I’m getting a drink.”

She heads for the counter, and I decide against following after her to get more caffeine. All it took was two minutes in Kenzie’s presence, and I’m suddenly wide awake, every part of me on high alert.

However infuriating my interactions with Kenzie are, I have to admit they’re never boring.

She comes back with a small-sized cup a few minutes later, the pen strokes on the side indicating the drink is a chai latte. They’ve spelt her name Kensee, which is a few shades more accurate than the Moyrag scrawled on the side of my cup.

“Soooo...” I take a deep inhale of the coffee and sugar-scented air in the cafe. “Do you have your interview questions?”

She places her cup on the round table next to mine and then takes a seat on the second leather armchair.

“Yes, right here.” She pulls a folded sheet of paper out of the pocket of her leather jacket and leans over to hand it to me.

I catch a hint of vanilla wafting off her skin when I reach to take the paper. My stomach does a weird little cartwheel as I settle myself back against my chair.

When I unfold the sheet to reveal her writing, the letters take me by surprise. Her writing is so much cuter than I would have expected, all neat, tiny curls and gentle swoops. It’s the kind of handwriting you’d expect to have little hearts dotting the i’s, although she hasn’t gone that far.

“What?” she asks, her stern voice at odds with the adorableness covering the sheet of lined paper. “What’s wrong with them?”

I haven’t actually started reading yet.

“Uh, nothing.”

I shake my head and focus on the questions themselves. Our meeting today is a chance to review the questions we’ve both come up with and decide which ones we’ll use. We were planning to film the interview somewhere outside, but with her being late, it might get too dark to finish tonight.