Love & Other Disasters(32)

“Okay. Wait. You said the episodes start airing in a week?”

Now Barbara laughed. “Have you not been listening to Janet shout about it? Yes. Less than a week, actually. The first episode airs Thursday night.”

Dahlia breathed out. Less than a week, and everyone would see her trip and scatter her fish tacos all over the set. Less than a week, and everyone would watch London announce their pronouns on national television.

Dahlia realized she barely cared about the former now. But she had an awful sense of foreboding about the latter. People would be awful online. Maybe offline, too. It was so ridiculous. London only wanted to be themself, which hurt absolutely no one—in fact, London being themself was incredible, because it could only help everyone—and it was going to be the worst.

She bit her lip, feeling queasy. She needed food. The greasiest breakfast sandwich she could find.

Dahlia sat up.

“Thanks for, um, this chat.”

Barbara nodded. “I’ll chat with you anytime you want, Dahlia, you know. About anything. I’m in room five-ten.”

“Cool.” Dahlia nodded. She wanted to hug Barbara, badly, but she also wanted to sprint away from this hotel at top speed, and yes, breakfast would be good. “Bye.”

And then Dahlia finally stepped outside and took a deep gulp of fresh air.

She found a perfect breakfast burrito two blocks away. Her first thought, before she could stop it, was, I have to tell London about this place, which made her freeze.

When, over the last two weeks, had I need to tell London about this become her first reaction? Oh my god.

And then her brain said, You have their phone number; you can tell them about it right now.

But she didn’t. Dahlia pretended she hadn’t been reaching for her phone at all.

Because . . . she was hungover. Because she felt weird. Because, as Barbara had so astutely pointed out, either of them could get kicked off the show any day now. They were just friends. London probably already had their fill of Dahlia Woodson last night. There was no need to bring texting into it. They were already together for, like, three-quarters of all their days. Texting meant they could contact each other during the other quarter, too.

Texting meant Dahlia could tell London Parker whatever she was thinking, whenever she wanted.

And the thing was, she knew they would always listen.

Still. London’s text this morning had been thoughtful. Kind. She liked how it had been a proper little paragraph of text, all correct punctuation and capital letters. So London.

Dahlia threw away her burrito wrapper and stepped back outside. She put on her sunglasses and hopped on a bus.

She ended up in North Hollywood. She walked down Lankershim Boulevard, popping in and out of stores without buying anything. She texted a picture of a bar called the Idle Hour, which was shaped like a giant wooden barrel, to Hank, because she knew he would love it. He texted back seconds later in all caps: DUDE!! She smiled and wished he was there with her.

But Dahlia also felt a little proud to be there alone. Look at me, she kept thinking as she walked around this brand-new place, all on her own. I’m doing it.

But . . . it didn’t feel quite right. It didn’t feel like she’d hoped it would, when she was packing for this trip back on the East Coast. When she’d filled her head with affirmations and expectations about who LA Dahlia could be.

She had maybe felt like LA Dahlia last night. Wearing a sexy dress, dancing with strangers. Drinking with someone who only knew her as she was right now. Laughing by that fountain, under the muggy desert-city sky.

Dahlia sucked down an iced tea as she walked and wished she could feel like that again, right now, by herself. It felt close, right there, this new, carefree person she wanted to be, if only she could dislodge this pebble in her shoe that kept her from stepping into it properly.

She found the North Hollywood library, named after Amelia Earhart. She took a selfie in front of it and sent it to her dad. A university librarian at Johnson and Wales in Providence, her dad always dragged her and Hank to libraries wherever they went when they were kids, even when they were little neighborhood ones like this. He kept track of all of the ones they had ever visited in a tiny leather journal he always kept in his pocket to record such things. Dahlia loved her dad so much. She missed him.

Dahlia wanted to walk until everything that was mixed up in her brain—last night, David, her mom’s sad and disappointed face, old lonely Maryland Dahlia, new confusing LA Dahlia—made sense.

Instead she just walked until her feet hurt, and she knew she had to go back.

Dahlia got out her phone while she waited for the bus. She bit her lip, staring at her messages, and then she finally typed it.

Hey, she wrote. Sorry if I was weird last night.

London’s response came back immediately. You weren’t.

And then, You doing okay?

Yeah. Thanks.

Dahlia stared at her phone for another minute, her head feeling dangerously empty and chaotic all at once. She wondered if she should say more. If London was going to say something else. What should she say? What did she want them to say?

Her bus came.

Dahlia stuffed her phone back in her bag and stared out the window on the ride back to Burbank. Her headache had reappeared, and soon she closed her eyes to block out the bright sunlight, the rhythm of the bus lolling her mind in and out of consciousness. Each time she jolted herself awake, she told herself to buck up. She was determined to not miss her stop. To be competent in this new, dazzling, overwhelming place. The land of palm trees and clean cars and blue sky.