We drank. ‘You feeling better?’ Dylan asked.
‘Well, I am now,’ I said, gesturing to my champagne.
She chuckled.
‘But yes, I am feeling better,’ I said. ‘You caught me in a… how should I put this?’
‘Rocky moment?’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘But I’m okay now. Or I will be. Or something. I’m not actively crying, which is the important thing.’
‘I remember what it’s like,’ she said. ‘When my marriage felt apart… Rocky moment is the wrong phrase, really. It’s more like a quicksand moment. Like you’re trying to stand and you’re trying to get your balance but the ground just wants to suck you up.’
‘Yes!’ I said. I meant to tap my fingers in emphasis against the table, but I was a bit too enthusiastic, and we both had to steady our glasses. ‘That’s exactly it. And the tiniest little thing can knock you over. Like – and this is just an example,it definitely never happened – your mum putting a nice note in your lunch.’
Dylan grinned. ‘I know everyone says this, but it really does get better with time. The ground turns solid again. I promise.’
I let out a breath. ‘I hope so.’
She held up her glass again. ‘To finding solid ground.’
‘Absolutely.’
I took another sip and then set my glass down. ‘So that’s why I’m here,’ I said. ‘Why are you trying to get onMarry Me, Juliet?’
‘In a way, it’s the same sort of thing,’ she said. ‘I’m at a – I was going to say crossroads, but that’s not right. I’m at a dead end. This is, like, an attempt to go off-road until I find the highway.’
I must have looked confused, because Dylan laughed and started explaining. She was a nurse, but she’d been slowly coming to the realisation that it wasn’t for her. ‘I like looking after people, but the reward isn’t worth the cost,’ she said. ‘The work is long and hard. The pay is garbage. The respect is non-existent. I don’t get to spend anywhere near enough time with my kid. I’ve been thinking about leaving for a while anyway, but now there’s this virus on the horizon, and it’s kicked me into gear. I want to help – and I will help, don’t get me wrong, as much as I possibly can – but I know how nurses get treated. I already know we’re going to get thrown under the bus.’
She picked up her almost-empty champagne flute, drank the dregs, and started twirling it in her fingers. ‘Going onMarry Me, Julietis a bit of a Hail Mary,’ she said. ‘I’m not desperate to find a man or anything, but you’ve seen how much money some of the old contestants make, right?’
I nodded. I followed a lot of ex-contestants on Instagram, and some of them were clearly making big bucks in sponcon.
‘It’s not like that’s what I want to do with my life either,’ Dylan said. ‘I don’t know what I want to do, really. Just not what I’m doing right now.’
‘Me too!’ I said. ‘I don’t have a goal for the show. If I find someone there, great, but if I don’t, that’s fine. I just need to do something completely different for a while. Reset.’
We ordered another round and began talking about the show. It turned out we’d both watched every season, and we shared a lot of the same opinions. ‘Yes!’ Dylan said, slapping her hand against the table. ‘Thank you! Brett absolutely should have picked Mary-Ellen! Some of my friends were like “noooooo, he has so much more in common with CJ, they have an intellectual connection,” but—’
‘But there was no spark, right?’ I said, gesturing wildly and nearly knocking over my champagne glass again.
‘Yes!’ Dylan said. ‘When they kissed, it looked like someone mashing a Barbie and Ken together. And didn’t you get the sense that CJ didn’t even really like him?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She was always making these little comments,’ she said. ‘Like, he’d tell her something personal about himself, and she’d smile and pat him on the shoulder, and then they’d cut to an interview with her and she’d be like, “We can work on that once we’re together.” Like he was some house she wasrenovating instead of a person she might end up in a relationship with— ‘hey, are you okay?’
‘You know how in the application form you had to write down your five worst features?’ I said, brushing my tears away with my wrist and blinking furiously. ‘Number one on my list is that I cry too much. Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise,’ she said, reaching over the table and taking my hand. ‘You cry as much as you want.’
‘I don’t want to cry, though,’ I said. ‘It’s the quicksand thing again. The smallest thing makes me think of my ex, and… waterworks. Every time. I hate that I’m like this.’
‘So your ex was a bit of a CJ?’
I dabbed at my eyes with a serviette while I figured out how to phrase my response.
‘My ex is brilliant,’ I said at last. ‘Jac had – has – really high standards, and after a while…’
