And low on the embarrassment scale, comparatively speaking. At least my clothes stayed on in that one. Nice save, Ward.

Bailey tilted her head, pausing with a fork full of Caesar salad. “Why, what happened?”

“On our first night there, they let us go out on our own,” I said. “Ward and I headed downtown, far away from the touristy stuff near our hotel. You know, to get an authentic local experience.”

“Obviously we didn’t speak a lick of Finnish,” Dallas added, taking a bite of his loaded baked potato.

Shiv and Bailey watched us, rapt, as we continued.

“We rolled up to this restaurant, and it was packed, so we figured it had to be good.” I tossed back.

“But with the language barrier, communicating with the hostess was an issue,” he said. “She pointed at a table, then to a group of people who were already seated. We nodded and were like, yeah, we want a table too. Then she seated us at the end of this long table, right along with these other people. We thought it was strange, but we were like, okay, maybe communal dining is the Finnish way.”

I huffed a laugh at the memory. “The other people were giving us funny looks, but we thought it was because we were American. The server kept bringing us courses of food, one after the other. We didn’t get the chance to order off the menu. Again, it was odd, but we rolled with it.”

“They even poured us wine without asking,” Dallas added. “When we were finished, we went to pay, and they wouldn’t take our money.” He paused, taking a sip of his beer, his lips curving against the mouth of the bottle. “Because we crashed a wedding reception by mistake.”

“We left a huge tip and booked it out of there,” I said, snickering.

Shiv tipped her head back, letting out a throaty laugh. “How is this the first I’m hearing of this?” She recovered partially, shaking her head. “Oh, it’s a good thing you two are pretty.”

“Sure is.” Bailey bit her lip. Her shoulders shook beneath my gray hoodie as she attempted to fight back a fit of giggles and failed.

I waved them off, fighting a sheepish smile. “Yeah, yeah.”

Dallas looked down at his plate, cutting off a piece of steak before glancing up again. “There was also the Amsterdam thing on the way home.”

Bailey turned to face me. “Amsterdam…?” Her brow knit together, expression turning wary.

I laughed, squeezing her thigh beneath the table. “We did edibles, James. Magic brownies. We didn’t hit the red-light district.”

The father of one of our teammates handled the travel arrangements for the entire team. We got stuck with a random thirty-six-hour stopover in the middle of the Netherlands. Obviously, we had to seize the opportunity to check out a “coffee shop.”