Lauren was bouncing with excitement as she searched for the right room number. Payson was going to be so surprised to see them. It was a total bummer that she couldn't come home for winter break because Sasha was making her stay in New York to train, but Lauren, Kaylie, and Emily coming to New York for a few days was the next best thing.

She still thought Payson was nuts for training again. Lauren loved gymnastics as much as anyone else, but there was only so much a body could take. It took half a miracle to make it through one Olympics safely, much less a second one. Payson was going to school at the same time, too, which was just doubly nuts. School by itself was hard enough for Lauren.

None of them were really surprised when Payson told them over a group Skype that she was training to compete again, even if they did all think she was insane. They were a little surprised when she said that Sasha was taking over the head coach position at her New York gym, but it made sense once they stopped to think about it. There weren't any Olympic contenders at the Rock anymore, and Sasha would be bored coaching regular-old gymnasts. He was the best coach in the world, so he needed the best gymnast. As much as Lauren hated to admit it, Payson was the best. She had six Olympic gold medals to prove it.

Emily was the first one to spot Payson's dorm room, and the three girls gathered together in front of the door before Lauren knocked enthusiastically. Coming here was such a great idea.

When the door swung open, Lauren, Kaylie, and Emily yelled "Surprise!" The girl on the other side was nonplussed… and also non-Payson.

At first Lauren expected Payson to come join the strange girl at the door, but several seconds passed and no blonde head appeared. Lauren's excitement plummeted to disappointment as she realized that her friend must not be in her dorm. "Sorry," she said. "We were expecting Payson. You must be Natalie, right?" They had never met Payson's roommate before, but they had seen her in the background during some of their Skypes.

"Yeah, I am. Payson's not here right now. I don't know where she is."

Natalie didn't seem very friendly. Lauren was about to get snippy when Emily cut her off. "Do you mind if we come in and wait for her?"

"Sure, whatever," Natalie said. She walked back into the room and left the door open behind her. They took her less than welcoming invitation and dragged their luggage in behind her. Natalie had a suitcase of her own lying open on one of the beds. She threw a few things into it as she said, "I'm about to leave, so if you want to wait here then you'll be waiting by yourself. I'd call Payson if I were you, though, or you might be sitting around for a long time. She practically lives at her boyfriend's place. Sometimes she doesn't come here for days at a time."

They were probably all thinking the same thing, but Kaylie was the first to speak. "Payson has a boyfriend?"

The other girl gave them a scathing look. "You're the ones she's always talking to on her computer, right? I thought you were supposed to be her best friends. How do you not know this?"

Emily had drifted over to dump her bags on Payson's bed, and she was staring at the bookshelves built into the headboard. There were a bunch of photos of the four of them there, but Emily wasn't looking at those pictures. She was focused on one in particular, but Lauren couldn't see what it was.

Emily picked it up and turned to face the rest of them. "I think I know why Payson didn't tell us she was dating anyone—" She showed them a picture of Payson with a man, their foreheads pressed together and smiling as they almost kissed. It was definitely a couple, and the guy was definitely familiar. "She's dating Sasha."

"What?!" Kaylie screeched, grabbing the frame out of Emily's hand. She looked at it closely, like she was searching for evidence of a fake. It was no fake, though. Holy crap, Payson was dating Sasha.

Wait, Natalie had said that sometimes Payson didn't come back to the dorm for days, so that meant she was sleeping at Sasha's place. Holy crap, Payson was screwing Sasha!

"Well, well, well," Lauren drawled. She pulled out her phone and started to dial Payson. "Let's just see what little miss Keeler has to say for herself."

While the phone rang, Natalie zipped up her suitcase and left with a huff. The door slammed behind her just as Payson picked up. Lauren smirked at her friends and said, "Hey, Pay. Guess where I am?"

"Well, since you're out of school for the semester, I'd guess you're back in Boulder with the girls. But that doesn't seem quite special enough for you to call me and play games." Payson's voice held that special mix of annoyance and endearment that she only ever used to with Lauren or Sasha, the two people who could drive her nuts faster than anyone else.

"Well, you're half right. I am with Em and Kaylie, but we're not in Boulder. We're actually standing in your dorm room right now, but you don't seem to be here."

Payson squealed. "You're in New York?" Her voice faded a bit as she turned her head away from the phone and said, "Sasha, the girls are here!"

Well, she wasn't making too much of an effort to hide the fact that she was with their coach, so Lauren pushed it a little bit. "Oh, Sasha's with you? Are you at the gym?"

"No, I'm at his apartment." Wow, she really wasn't hiding it. "I was just starting dinner. Why don't you guys come over here? It's not that far from Columbia."

Lauren was so thrown by Payson's nonchalance that she found herself agreeing before she could even question her friend further. She got directions to Sasha's place and then hung up to stare blankly at Kaylie and Emily. "Uh… apparently we're going to dinner at Sasha's apartment. I'm not really sure how that happened."

She'd been prepared for any evasions that Payson gave about her relationship with Sasha, ready to rag on her friend for keeping such a huge secret from them, but she didn't know how to handle Payson's total lack of denial. If she wasn't going to lie about it now, why had she hidden it for who knows how long?

Emily was still looking at the picture of Payson and Sasha. "How long do you think they've been together?" she asked.

"It must have been a while" Kaylie answered. "Her roommate said that she spent a lot of nights there. That doesn't sound like a new relationship."

"Unless Payson is secretly a slut," Lauren quipped.

Emily shook her head. "Didn't you hear any of Max's complaining after they broke up? They dated for months and she wouldn't sleep with him. She's definitely not a slut."

"Well there's only one way to find out. I can't believe I'm saying this, but… let's go hang out at Sasha's apartment."

o-O-o

There were a lot of subtle hints of Payson at Sasha's apartment. Pictures of the two of them joined the familiar ones that Sasha always kept around—his team in Sydney, his mother, one of his gymnasts from Romania. Payson's iPad was on the coffee table, familiar by its purple cover. Her running shoes sat by the door next to Sasha's. Then there were the less subtle hints, such as the way she worked in his kitchen like it was her own. She was way too comfortable there.

She sent Sasha out to get more wine. Lauren figured she was giving them the opportunity to ask about Sasha without him around, but she didn't bring the subject up herself. She was going to make them ask. Unfortunately, none of them quite had the guts, so Lauren asked a completely different question. "Since when do you drink wine?"

"I don't usually, but we're celebrating tonight. I took my last final exam this morning, so the semester is officially over."

"I don't understand why Columbia's finals are so late," Emily said. "Lo and I have both been finished for a week."

"I think it must be an East-coast/West-coast thing. My finals for the online classes I did at CU Boulder last year were earlier, too, but all the schools in New York are doing them this week. I've been jealous of you guys all week, back in Boulder relaxing while I was here studying until my brain hurt."

"And working out until every muscle in your body hurt, I'm sure," Kaylie added.

Payson laughed. "Yeah, that too. I was surprised by how quickly I got used to it again, though. I'm just glad I didn't take more than a couple of months off. It would have been so much harder if I'd waited longer."

"I still can't believe Sasha moved here to coach you," Emily said. She seemed to be trying to sidle into the issue of Payson and Sasha's relationship.

"He moved to Colorado to coach us," Payson pointed out.

Emily chickened out and didn't say anything else, but Lauren finally decided to suck it up and ask. "So how long have you been dating him?"

Lauren could detect just a hint of a smile on Payson's lips. She knew they knew and had been playing games with them, trying to get them to bring up the subject. "Almost two months now. Ever since I went back home to ask him to come here and coach me."

Once the conversation was started, Kaylie was more than willing to continue it. "So how did it happen? Who made the first move?"

"I did." Payson slid the food into the oven and set a timer, and then led them into the living room to sit and talk. "The whole thing still seems like a dream to me. I went to the Rock late that night to try to convince him to come here, but I was pretty nervous so I started working out to calm myself down. I was afraid he was going to say no, which I know now is ridiculous. We ended up spending most of the night together—first working out together and then dinner and walking around downtown, and Sasha told me that he was going to leave the Rock. I've been in love with him for ages and I just always thought that I would tell him a few years down the line, when he wouldn't think of me as a kid anymore, but I knew that if he was actually considering leaving gymnastics again that could be my only chance. So I kissed him."

The girls were all sitting on the edge of their seats. "And?" Lauren probed. "What happened next?"

"He kissed me back. I know this sounds anticlimactic, but that was pretty much it. We just… understood each other. He told me later that he'd been thinking about leaving the Rock for a long time because he hated being there without me, but that he hadn't even realized he was in love with me until that night. So when I asked him to come to New York, he didn't give it a second thought. And now here we are."

That was great, but Lauren wanted the juicy details. "So how long have you been sleeping with him?"

Payson didn't so much as blush. "I'm not. At least, not in the way you're talking about. We sleep in the same bed sometimes, but we're not having sex."

"Why not?" Kaylie asked. Lauren snorted at the question. It wasn't like Kaylie wasn't a virgin, too.

"I'm just not in any rush," Payson answered. "This is the real deal—marriage, babies, the whole nine yards. We have the rest of our lives to have sex. For now we're just getting used to being together."

"That's… disappointingly mature," Emily said. She was so serious that the other girls had to laugh.

When they got themselves back under control, Lauren demanded to know why Payson kept it a secret for two months. Her answer was again depressingly mature. "So much was happening all at once. Suddenly I was dating this man I'd been in love with since I was a little girl and he was moving across the country for me. Add that to school, training, and the media work that I've been doing and it was all just a little overwhelming. So I didn't tell you guys, and I made sure that I was always in my dorm or at the gym for our weekly Skypes. I was going to tell you guys when we came home for Christmas. I just wanted to do it in person."

Sasha came home soon after that and they talked about less awkward subjects like school and gymnastics. Lauren was almost weirded out by how normal Payson and Sasha were together. They weren't overly romantic or touchy-feely, but they were obviously a couple. It was apparent in the way they sat a little closer together than they used to or how Sasha casually draped his arm around her shoulders when they sat talking after dinner. They acted like they'd been married for years.

He went to bed fairly early, stating a need to be up early the next morning, and then cautioned Payson that she shouldn't stay up too late either. He would give her a little leeway because her friends were there, but he still expected her to be at the gym no later than nine o'clock. Then he kissed her and went back to his bedroom. Lightweight Kaylie, more than a little tipsy from the wine, said, "You know that's weird, right? For him to go from bossing you around to being all lovey and kissing you."

"He's not bossing me around," Payson insisted. "He's being a good coach. It's a hard balance sometimes, but we make it work."

Kaylie comments only got worse as the evening wore on, and eventually Payson had to suggest that maybe she should go to bed. Their bags were all back at Payson's dorm room, but Emily and Lauren didn't want to go through the effort of getting a drunk Kaylie back there, so instead they dumped her in Sasha's spare bedroom. Emily lost a game of rock, paper, scissors to determine who would sleep with her and Lauren settled down onto the couch. Payson, to Lauren's mild discomfort, went in to sleep in Sasha's bed.

Several hours later, Lauren woke to a surreal sight: Payson and Sasha making out. Full on face-sucking, tonsil hockey making out. It didn't look crude, though. In fact, they looked quite romantic.

It took Lauren a while to process the situation—they were in the kitchen, which she had a clear view of from her place on the couch, and Sasha was fully dressed while Payson still wore pajamas. It must be early morning and Sasha was getting ready to go to the gym. They had no clue that Lauren was awake.

She narrowed her eyes so that she could snap them shut if they looked her way. This was the perfect opportunity to spy on them while they were acting natural. She almost couldn't believe how long they kissed. She didn't have a clock handy to look at, so it might have just been a couple of minutes, but it felt like ages. Damn, they really were in love.

Eventually they stopped kissing and moved to the kitchen table, each with a bowl of cereal and some fruit. They talked in hushed voices so as not to wake Lauren, but she caught some of it. They talked about school, about the gym, about getting Christmas gifts wrapped before they flew out in a few days. It was so normal.

Payson kissed him goodbye before he left, and once the door was closed behind him Lauren stopped pretending to be asleep. She sat up on the couch and Payson jumped nearly a foot in the air in surprise. "Geez, give a girl some warning," she admonished. "How long have you been awake?"

"Long enough," Lauren replied. She liked to stay enigmatic. "Why are you awake? You don't have to be at the gym until nine and it's only—" she picked up her phone to check the time "—five thirty. What are you doing up?"

Payson sat down next to Lauren and pulled the blanket over her legs. "I woke up because Sasha was gone; the bed is a lot colder when he's not in it. Since I was awake already, I wanted to have breakfast with him. It's kind of one of our morning rituals, starting the day off together. I miss it when we don't get to do it."

"And making out, is that one of your morning rituals too?"

She turned a light shade of pink. "No, that's more of a nightly ritual, but Sasha was already asleep when I went to bed last night."

Lauren snickered, but then relented and said, "You know, you make a pretty cute couple. Not at all creepy like I thought you'd be. I give you my full approval."

"I'm honored," she replied with an eye roll. Then she turned serious and asked, "Can you keep a secret."

"Ooh, yes, I love secrets! Tell me!"

"He asked me to marry him." Whatever Lauren was expecting, that wasn't it. Her shock must have been clear on her face, because Payson clarified, "Not a real proposal; we're not engaged or anything. Just more of a promise. He asked me if I wanted to get married eventually and when I wanted to do it. We kind of… set a tentative date."

"Oh my gosh, when?" Lauren insisted.

"May of 2015. So if I do make it to the Rio Olympics, I'll be going as Payson Belov instead of Payson Keeler."

There was so much that she could say about such a huge revelation, but there was a very, very important piece of information that she needed to know first. "Am I going to be a bridesmaid?"

Payson hugged her friend tight around the middle. "Of course you are! Oh, Lo, I really am glad that you approve. I was afraid that you guys would be freaked out by this, and it means so much to me to have your support."

"You know that there will be people who don't approve, right? People will say you're too young for him."

"I know, but I don't care," Payson said. "Our families know and they're happy for us, so as long as my best friends are on our side, nothing else matters."

Lauren agreed with her for the most part, but there were some things that did matter. Things like color schemes and bridesmaid dresses and flowers and dinner options… She only had two and a half years to make Payson's wedding perfect, so she better start planning immediately.