“Hank should go,” they said, deciding suddenly to make a real effort. At not being a jerk. At drawing Dahlia back out from wherever she had disappeared in the last five minutes. “To Nashville. It’s a great place.”
“Yeah,” she said, half-heartedly.
“What would you do with the money if you won?” London asked.
If it was possible, Dahlia became even more still.
“I have a lot of debt,” she said finally, shrugging. “It turns out divorce is expensive. And I have student loans, and . . . ” She trailed off. “I don’t know. Some money would be nice.”
Wait. This woman was divorced? She couldn’t be much older than London, and they were only twenty-six.
Maybe London, in fact, knew very little about Dahlia Woodson.
“Anyway, I should probably go. Sorry for interrupting you.”
Dahlia stood abruptly, draining the last of her bourbon as she went, leaning down to grab her bag. She dropped some bills on the table and then paused, fiddling with the strap of the bag.
“So, this is embarrassing,” she said, not meeting their eye. “But I’m not one hundred percent sure. It’s London, right? There were so many new people to meet today, and I was nervous, and—”
“Yeah. It’s London.” And then they added, dumbly, like they were reciting roll call in school, “London Parker.”
She smiled, just a little.
“I’m Dahlia.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Oh. Right. Okay. Sorry again. See you tomorrow, London Parker.”
London felt strange after she left, a little lonely, maybe, even though they had come here to be alone. They chugged the rest of their bourbon before paying their tab, not caring to linger in this bar any longer, too close to the knowledge of how much they liked the sound of Dahlia’s voice saying their name.
CHAPTER THREE
Janet’s hand landed on Dahlia’s shoulder the next morning, five minutes after the cameras turned off for a break.
“Dahlia, honey,” she said. “Time for your first interview.”
The frames of Janet’s glasses were purple today. She smiled reassuringly.
Dahlia took a breath. She had just lived through her first Face-Off challenge, where each contestant squared off against another to complete a basic culinary task. The winners of each Face-Off gained advantages for later challenges.
Dahlia had lost her Face-Off. To Lizzie, of all people. Which sucked. It sucked real hard.
And she had a slight bourbon headache.
Still, she hadn’t fallen on her face so far today.
And she hadn’t made a further fool of herself in front of London Parker. Dahlia was determined to look like less of an idiot in front of them from this moment forward.
She was trying, in other words, to have a positive outlook.
But as Dahlia followed Janet toward the back corner of the set, Janet’s curly hair bouncing in a loose knot as she walked, Dahlia curled her fingers into the hem of her tank top. Her humiliations of the past twenty-four hours, including the California rolls Lizzie had just crafted faster and more artistically than Dahlia had, dropped away as a different anxiety settled in her gut.
Dahlia had been thinking about this moment since she’d learned she made the cut for the show a month ago.
When the contestants introduced themselves in their first solo interview, they only had to state a few basic facts about themselves. Where they were from, their jobs back home, what they hoped to get out of the show.
But even trying to think of answers for these simplest of questions made Dahlia feel inadequate and confused these days.
