Meryl’s POV:
I took a deep breath and opened the door, trying to ignore the cameras that instantly settled on me.
“Hello!” I called out, the excitement evident in my voice. I briefly searched the room before my eyes settled the gorgeous man in the room: Maksim Chmerkovskiy.
“Oh my God!” I somehow managed to choke the words out as I made my way towards him.
“So nice to meet you,” I finished as he took my hands and planted a formal kiss on my cheek.
“Nice to meet you,” he spoke in his low voice, laced with a Russian accent as he embraced me in a welcoming bear hug.
After exchanging greetings, Maks began to talk. “So, I love you, and I would love to marry you-,” I giggled a little at this, “-but I need to know if you and Charlie are not dating first.” Laughing himself, Maks mumbled, “It’s a billion dollar question, everyone seems to be asking you.”
“No, we’re not, we’re definitely not,” I replied.
“Good." After a somewhat awkward pause he continued. "I’ve got, like, an elephant in the room with Derek helping you with your routines and all that. So that’s a bonus.”
“Yeah.”
“So who’s gonna be the better dancer: you or Charlie?”
“I-I feel like I like to be underdogs so I’ll say him.”
“Just so that, when it’s you-” he began, but I cut him off.
“So that I can be the dark horse, and just come in…”
“I like this strategy. I like this strategy.” Maks was smiling now. “So we’ll try to be, try to be, under everybody else.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna work.”
My phone buzzed. It was Charlie with a selfie of him and Sharna.
I got Maks, I typed in response.
“Okay, so we have the cha cha cha to All Night,” Maks read from a slip of paper, cutting through my thoughts “So let’s start with the basic steps and we’ll make it from there.”
Barely able to contain my excitement, I nodded and took his proffered left hand, moving with him until we were standing side-by-side in front of the mirrors.
“Just follow my movements,” he advised. “You’ll catch on quickly.”
Forward, back, left, left, left. Back, forward, right, right, right. The movements ran through my head as we danced to the soft rhythm of Maks’s voice: “One, two, cha cha cha. Two (back), three, cha cha cha.” Within a minute, I had fallen into step with him.
“This is literally basic step,” he told me as we danced.
We went through a couple more basic moves, choreographing a bit as we went.
“How are your spins? Well, how are your spins. The dumbest question I could ever ask,” I smiled at that.“Let’s say, you spin out, right?” Maks thought out loud as I did as he said.
“Mmhmm.”
“Can you spin into my hand?”
Having trained to do this on ice for years, I easily completed the task.
“Oh, okay,” he assessed my skills.
“Do you want two feet or one, like one foot?”
“That was…”
