“Yeah?” Dahlia said nervously. “Julie said it was your favorite. But it was sort of hard to tell, over DM, if she was just messing with me or not. If you don’t—”
“No, no, Dahlia. I love it.”
London looked at her a second more and then pushed off from the countertop.
“Hey,” they said. “Stay right there for a minute. Seriously, don’t move.”
Dahlia gave them a funny look. “Okay.”
London walked behind her.
They took a few steps to the right. Considered. Yeah, this was about right. This was about where their old station would have been.
They looked at her hair, at the back of her neck. Her shoulders were tense, uncertain. Like she was waiting to be called to the Golden Circle. But her cooking tonight had been perfect. She should already know she’d blown the competition away.
London made her wait a minute more.
“This is where I fell in love with you,” they said.
Slowly, she turned. She was smiling, no teeth, almost shy.
“And this is where I fell in love with you.”
London smiled back. “But you were facing away from me. You couldn’t even see me.”
“Yeah,” Dahlia said softly. “But I always knew you were there.”
London made a quick assessment of their surroundings. The station where they had cooked the meal of their life earlier today, where she had just cooked hers, was an absolute mess, dirty pots and pans everywhere, along with a cooling sweet potato pie.
They stepped forward and shoved it all away. Except for the pie, of course. A pan clattered loudly to the floor and Dahlia gasped. London took her by the waist, twirling her around, pushing her back against their countertop. And then they did something they’d secretly wanted to do for weeks. They picked her up and shoved her on top of the table, in this place where they had cooked and pined for her and loved her. They stepped between her legs, which she immediately wrapped around them, and, at last, they leaned in and kissed her.
Dahlia kissed them back, cupping their face in her palms, tasting like peppermint, smelling of coconut and barbecue, everything striking and precious andher. For once, she was taller than them, and it felt strangely thrilling. But her tongue pressing against theirs was so familiar, the sighs in her throat the soundtrack London had been missing, her lips tugging at the most alive places in their body, the places they had already pushed so deeply away in her absence, that were thrumming back to life.
“Wait.” Dahlia broke away, pushing lightly on London’s shoulders. She took a big, shaky breath. “I was so nervous when you walked in here I could barely think. But now I have to say some stuff. Please.”
London dropped their hands to Dahlia’s sides. They pushed a thumb into her hip.
“You were right.” Dahlia swallowed. “I was disappointing, that night.”
She lifted a hand to London’s cheek.
“Honestly?” London said. “I think we both were.”
“Maybe.” She smiled, but it looked a little sad. “I should have handled myself better, though, talked things through with you. I was just so, so scared, about so many things. I’m still scared, to be honest. I still don’t really know what I’m doing with my life.” She swallowed again. “I might disappoint you again, in the future. So. Fair warning.”
London looked at her.
“The future,” they said.
“Yeah.” Her thumb grazed London’s lower lip. “If . . . if you want that.”
London kissed that thumb, and then her wrist. They kissed up her bare arm, tan and lightly dusted with dark hair, her shoulder, the heavenly spot where her shoulder met her neck.
“I want that,” they said, and felt her exhale. “Do your worst, Woodson. Let’s be scared together.”
They kissed up to her jawline, smiling when they got there. They could feel her pulse, fluttering fast in her neck.
“Really,” they murmured, “I blame Tanner Tavish.”
