We should have known better.
We’ve only been home a week when we find Danika waiting for us outside our practice studio, her spiky blue hair standing out against the gray walls. She’s run the dance studio since it opened, built for her by her son-in-law Bennett. She has counseled me on more than one of my personal problems, and by the look on her face, it’s about to happen again.
We let the wheelchair ballerinas take off with their mothers, including my biological daughter Gabriella with her adopted mother Gwen.
Gwen doesn’t speak to us much, preferring to give us a quiet nod. She knows I’m Gabriella’s birth mother, but we haven’t told the little girl herself. I have to leave that to Gwen. She still feels very threatened by me. I must respect her wishes on this, because I have no legal claim to my daughter and only see her if Gwen allows it.
When the hall has cleared, Danika asks if we’ve checked our phones in the last hour.
“Nope. Totally focused on the girls,” Blitz says.
“You might want to do that now,” she says. “And please consider how you will arrive and leave the academy in the coming weeks. We really don’t need more stalkers.” She meets my gaze, and my eyes flit down.
I caused enough trouble already when my crazy ex, Gabriella’s father, refused to leave the front of the academy and wound up getting arrested. We lost a lot of students during all that upheaval.
“It’s that serious?” Blitz asks, pulling his phone from his bag.
He scrolls through his feed, his mouth turned down. “Great.”
“What now?” I ask.
“They made a video. A damn video,” he says.
Danika cuts her eyes down the hall to make sure no little ears heard Blitz.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “This is ridiculous.”
“Just show me,” I say.
He hits play. It’s a Dance Blitz promo. Barry Winston fills the screen.
“Dance Blitz lovers, you all got to see the romantic proposal between our original dance bachelor Blitz Craven and his winning contestant Livia Mays.”
“I was never a contestant,” I insist.
“Shhh, girl, let me hear!” a voice says.
I look up to see my friend Jacob standing tall and spectacular behind me. He teaches jazz to the boy dancers. He’s rapt on the video. He’s literally Blitz’s biggest fan. He calls him his “impossible crush.”
They play a clip of the proposal, then Barry comes back on.
“And now, you’ll get to see it right here, their glorious wedding live on Dance Blitz.” The camera pans out to reveal a lush garden with people setting up white chairs.
“What?” I exclaim. “We’re not even there! Are they going to have lookalikes?”
“It’s just for effect,” Blitz says. “Look, the date is four weeks away.”
A still shot showing the date and time of the live broadcast flashes up as the video ends.
“What?” I say again. “Who is engaged for four weeks?”
“Technically,” Jacob says, “you got engaged at the spring recital.”
We all turn to him with a frown.
“Just saying!” he says. “My auntie Carol married that good-for-nothing Doug after only knowing him a week. You got this.”
“I don’t have a dress,” I say.
“Nobody has contacted me about this,” Blitz says. “They can’t go announcing that without our approval.”
“Wouldn’t that be your agent’s job?” Danika asks.
Blitz and I look at each other. “Hannah,” we both say.
“Have you gotten anything from her?” I ask.
“Her emails are auto deleted,” he says. “Texts and calls have a silent alert and roll off the home screen automatically.”
“Now that’s some hard-core shade you’re throwing right there,” Jacob says.
“You better call her,” I say. “Otherwise they’ll roll cameras and we won’t even be there.”
“I’ll have Shelly do it,” Blitz says. “She’s supposed to be running interference.”
When Jacob looks confused, Blitz says, “My personal assistant when I’m shooting.”
“Isn’t she in Afghanistan?” I ask. “The women’s caucus? Volunteering? That’s why she wasn’t at the live finale.”
“Right,” Blitz says. “Well, crap.”
Little dancers flow around us as the next series of dance classes begin to fill.
“My point,” Danika says, “is that if you’re going to have a live wedding, or even if you’re not, the press is going to follow you. Please draw them away from here.”
“Will do, Big D,” Blitz says. “If we have to take a break until it blows over, we will.”
Danika nods. “Also, congratulations. I assume since all this is public, there will be a wedding soon, even if not the TV one?”
“We were planning to do it on a cruise,” I say. I was also hoping Gwen could bring Gabrielle to be a flower girl. If it’s a TV spectacle, we can’t do that.
I seriously want to cry.
“Can they make us do this?” I ask.
“Of course not,” Blitz says. “It’s just a matter of what it will cost us to refuse.”
“Is it like the proposal?” I ask. “Property of Dance Blitz?”
He frowns. “Yeah, I probably signed something foolish like that.”
“I’ll leave you two to sort it,” Danika says. She takes Jacob’s arm and drags him with her.
The parents settle on benches or hurry back to their cars for quick errands, the dancers all in their rooms. Thankfully they’re all used to me and Blitz being around and aren’t like the wild and crazy fans we encounter out in public.
I want to sit down and just weep that we’re stuck. First the stressful short season where I had to compete for Blitz, then the live proposal.
And now this.