“Dahlia.” London scoffed. “You have to know that I don’t give a shit about Lizzie right now.”
Dahlia needed to keep moving. She’d been standing still too long.
She was running out of things to say, things that could keep this overwhelming sadness at bay. Nothing was working, and a pressure was building behind her eyes. She knew if this conversation didn’t end soon, or get better somehow, the tears would start. And she didn’t know, if she let them start, if she’d be able to make them stop.
She picked up a book she had started three weeks ago and never finished, and tossed it into the suitcase.
“Although maybe that was how this all was supposed to shake out in the end anyway,” she muttered, half to herself. The effort to keep it together was starting to make her feel half-delirious. “Lizzie wants to start a bakery, right? Isn’t that why people normally try out for this awful show? To actually start a career in food? Why’d they even the let the two of us on here? God. Maybe we are just two idiots.”
Dahlia slammed a bra on top of the book. “I don’t . . . ” London’s voice wavered. “I don’t think you mean that.”
She didn’t. She barely understood what she was saying at this point. It did seem kind of funny to her, though, now that she thought about it. That neither of them fit the narrative of this show, how it was supposed to be. That they had both somehow found their way here anyway.
“I don’t think we’re idiots at all,” London said quietly, after a horrible, awkward minute of silence as Dahlia looked under her bed for missing socks. “But I do think you’re acting like an idiot right now.”
Ouch, Dahlia thought. At the same time that she thought,Fair.
The pressure was prickling at the corner of her eyes now.Danger zone.She stood, spinning in a circle, seeing what else in the near vicinity she could throw into her suitcase.
“Dahlia,” London said, frustration ringing in their voice now. “Can you please stop fucking packing andlook at me? Show me I mean anything at all to you? I don’t . . . I don’t understand why you’re being like this.”
Dahlia ran a shaky hand through her hair. She needed them to go, now. It was too much.
She turned to face them.
With David she had learned what it felt like to break your own heart slowly, torturously, fight after fight, month after month.
Now she knew what it felt like to break it all at once.
“London.” She licked her lips. “We knew this would happen. You don’t even know how grateful I am for . . . you, for everything, but now we have to both go back to—”
“Don’t do that.” London took a step closer. “Don’t you dare fucking do that. What are you saying, that this was afling? You’re just declaring it over? Don’t I get a say?”
Dahlia couldn’t look at them. She stared just past their shoulder, at the door, at a loss for what to say. She wanted to explain it all better somehow. Explain what they actually meant to her, what this had all meant. She knew she was saying all the wrong things, but all she could hear was Tanner Tavish saying her name for the last time. Maritza, with her kind, sad eyes, telling her a PA would bring her plane ticket soon.
They should have talked about all of this before, she and London, but they hadn’t, and now, when she should have been telling them how much she loved them, all she could taste was her own bitter loss.
“Dahlia.” London tried again, gentler this time, and the audacity of them to be gentle at all with her right now, when she knew she was being awful, was just gut-wrenching. “Don’t run away. Wait with me. Be with me.”
She swallowed.
“You’re braver than this,” London whispered. “Don’t run away.”
Dahlia closed her eyes. There were so many things she could have said.
I’m not braver than this.
I love you.
But what she said was “I think you should go.”
London froze. They stared at her for too many beats, each second feeling too long. Waiting for her to take it back.
“Please, London,” she whispered, the pressure in her head painful now. “I want you to go.”
Their face changed then. They clenched that beautiful jaw and looked down at the floor.
“Fine.” London sighed, and finally, finally, in that heavy puff of air, Dahlia heardgoodbye. “Your self-fulfilling prophecy has finally come true. Congratulations, Dahlia. You’ve disappointed me, too.”
