Love & Other Disasters(63)

Sai smiled good-naturedly. “Perhaps. But if you had timed things well, you would have already planned to take your cake out of the oven fifteen minutes early to allow it to cool before applying your icing. This disadvantage will simply require some creative thinking. You have three minutes to decide.”

Sai made a big show of setting a timer on his smartwatch.

“Go.”

Khari and Cath huddled toward Dahlia. She didn’t say anything at all for the first thirty seconds, her face a strange blank while Khari and Cath talked heatedly around her, their voices a low murmur. London was contemplating calling for the medic. There was clearly something going on with Dahlia.

And then she frowned, deeply, crossing her arms in front of her chest, and jumped into the conversation. She looked pissed. London very much wanted to kiss her.

“Ten seconds!”

Dahlia rolled her eyes and sighed, drooping to the back of Tanner Tavish’s chair.

“Aaand time is up!” Sai snapped his fingers. “Judges’ table, we’re ready for your decision. Khari, who has fifteen minutes less to bake today?”

“Ahmed,” he said.

Ahmed groaned and hung his head.

“And, Dahlia, who’s the lucky soul who gets to take the rest of the day off ?”

Dahlia closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, she looked to the side of the set, off camera. London glanced in the direction of her gaze, confused. Who was she looking at? Janet?

Dahlia opened her mouth. And it wasn’t until her tongue lifted to roll out an L that London even thought about what she was going to say. It wasn’t until she finished it with izzie that London realized they’d been positive she’d say something else.

It sounded wrong. It felt wrong, in London’s gut, hearing that name come out of Dahlia’s mouth.

London knew it was only a silly advantage for extra drama. That this was just a TV show. But they also knew they would have fought to save Dahlia, if the situation were reversed, to give her extra peace of mind if they could. They never would have gone along with saving Lizzie.

Who was currently gasping, behind them. London turned around to watch her clench her hands to her heart.

“Congratulations, Lizzie! You can put away your apron for the day and go rest your feet.” Sai Patel flashed his award-winning smile.

“Oh!” she trilled. “Wow! But . . . ”

London thought they saw Sai Patel’s mouth twitch.

“Do you mind if I finish the bake anyway?” Lizzie asked. “I’m already halfway through; I’d hate to see a good cake go to waste!”

“Oh, good lord,” London muttered.

But Sai Patel allowed it. Dahlia, Cath, and Khari were released back to their stations.

“London,” Dahlia said urgently as she retied her apron. “I’m sorry, that was—”

“The clock’s running again,” London said. “You should work on your ganache.”

They sensed her pause next to them, the heaviness that had settled over their station.

London smashed apart peppermint sticks with perhaps a smidge more force than was necessary.

Yet it was satisfying, seeing Dahlia jump with each loud crack of their hammer. Watching a solid confection break into sharp shards.

As Dahlia worked on her cake beside them—chocolate sponges with layers of raspberry jam, topped with decadent ganache—London knew, somewhere in the logical part of their brain, that there was no way Dahlia had wanted that to happen. Cath, too. Khari must have pushed to save Lizzie.

Like many of the other contestants—everyone who had sat in awkward silence during that meet-and-greet dinner weeks ago—London hadn’t ever been sure where they stood with Khari. No one else had stomped off that night like Lizzie had. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe Khari thought they were an abomination, too.

Either way. Dahlia should have fought harder for them than Khari fought for Lizzie.

London felt good about their cake; they weren’t worried about elimination. They didn’t need the advantage.

But when Dahlia said Lizzie’s name, everything Lizzie represented was brought from the depths of London’s subconscious into the forefront of their brain. Painful, present, impossible to ignore.

The truth was that London had gotten very good at pretending Lizzie didn’t exist on set, but they were only pretending to pretend. Like they pretended with their dad. Like they pretended almost every hour of every day that they were in public.

The fact that London would always be surrounded by people who either didn’t approve of their identity or didn’t understand their identity was not a fact that could simply be ignored. London could push it away in order to exist. But it was always lurking in the shadows, making London on guard for how they should act, what they should say in front of other human beings.

They had become so used to this mode of existence that they only truly comprehended the depths of it when they imagined what the opposite would feel like. If there was a society where everyone rejected the binary, where gender norms didn’t exist at all, where bodies were just bodies, every one real and valid and equally human, and you didn’t have to worry about what people were assuming or not assuming about you.

The idea made London feel so light and free that it was only then that they fully felt the weight of the invisible stress they carried, compacted in their bones.