“Do you want white or red?” She held up two bottles of wine.
“Dahlia. You must know that white wine is, objectively, not good. Right?”
Dahlia rolled her eyes before shoving a pinot noir into their chest. “Oh god, you’re one ofthose. Of course.” Carrying a bottle of white in her right hand, she grabbed London’s free hand with her left and scurried them out a side door to the courtyard at the back of the hotel.
London felt light, weightless, happy to let Dahlia lead them through dark ballrooms and abandoned courtyards for the rest of their life.
They sat shoulder to shoulder on a bench against the wall once they were outside, a shimmery lighted fountain in front of them, the night air around them cooler than before, drying the sweat on their skin.
“Wait. How are we going to open these?” London held up their bottle of wine.
“Already on top of it.” Dahlia dug around in her small purse until she unearthed a small Swiss Army multitool, smoothly extracting a corkscrew from within it.
“Wow,” London said, genuinely impressed.
“Never leave home without it.” Dahlia popped open her bottle. “And,” she added, “yours is a twist-off.”
London looked down at their pinot and laughed. “So it is.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, taking inelegant slugs from their respective bottles, listening to the night around them, all the drunken voices behind the wall screaming along to “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
As the wedding guests started to disperse into the hotel, the air settled into quiet.
“So,” London said eventually. “You’re really divorced?”
Because that was the way to break the silence.
Dahlia didn’t move beside them, didn’t flinch or stiffen or make a move to get away. Yet with each second that passed that she didn’t respond, London kicked themself a bit harder. It was just, their head was full of whiskey and mediocre wine, and they had just been at a wedding, and . . .
Dahlia sighed. “Yeah. As of last year, officially.”
“I’m sorry, if you don’t want to talk about it. You just seem so young,” London babbled, digging the hole deeper. “And I can’t imagine anyone wanting to divorce you.”
Right. Okay. London probably hadn’t needed to add that last sentence. They took another sip of wine.
“No, it’s okay. Actually, you know what?” Dahlia took another sip of wine too. “I want to talk about it.” Except then she didn’t. She just stared straight ahead at the fountain, doing her disappearing thing again. But London had time. They waited.
“David and I met in high school. Started dating my junior year.” Abruptly, Dahlia sat up straighter on the bench and launched into it. “I had never dated anyone before, never had anything other than silly crushes, and David was so handsome, so kind, so everything. I thought we were soul mates. Because you probably always believe that, when you’re in high school. But sometimes it’s true, you know?”
Her face looked wistful for a moment. London wanted to run their knuckles along her cheek.
They also knew, with sudden clarity, that they had made a mistake.
It wasn’t that London didn’t want to know about this. All right, sure, maybe they didn’t exactly want to hear about how in love she and this David had been, but they were here for whatever Dahlia wanted to talk about.
Except for some reason, when London had asked Dahlia about her divorce, they thought she’d laugh and say something like, “Yeah, life’s a bitch, huh?” Not . . . launch into her life story and start to sound sad. They had no idea why they’d thought that. Clearly they were an idiot. But they had crashed this wedding so they could see Dahlia laugh and dance, not ruminate on her failures. With each sentence she spoke, London cursed themself.
“David convinced me to go to the same college as him, George Washington in DC, even though it’s expensive as hell and my family couldn’t really afford it. But it’s a good school, and I got in, so . . . ” Dahlia trailed off.
Socool, now London was reminding Dahlia about her heartacheandher financial problems. Killing it.
London’s parents had been able to pay for their college education at Belmont in full.
They took another sip of wine.
As they watched Dahlia in the moonlight, the refraction of the fountain’s light making shadows dance on her face, London became infuriated anew that Dahlia couldn’t use $100,000 to take herself on a vacation to Fiji, or Patagonia, or wherever she wanted to go in the entire world, whatever she wanted to do. London pictured her on a sailboat, flying across the open sea, that hair blown back in the wind like a piece of art.
“David always knew he wanted to work in DC, for the government. He made me watch a lot ofWest Wingreruns in high school.”
