Love & Other Disasters(67)

Dahlia laughed.

And then an odd thing happened.

Her laughter turned into a sob.

It was a laugh-sob. Fat, salty tears hurtled down her face, at the same time that she couldn’t stop giggling.

It was possible she was still a little sleep deprived.

And it appeared that all the things that had changed in her life over the last four weeks hit her the hardest, somehow, when she heard her brother’s voice. The voice that had known her before LA Dahlia. Who would love her no matter which Dahlia she was. She wished he were here in person, could wrap her in one of his rib-squeezing hugs. Help her meld this new version of herself with all the old ones. Promise her it would all work out, that being Team Dahlia wasn’t just a pipe dream.

There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the line.

“Um, Dahlia? You all right?”

“Sorry,” Dahlia mumbled through her snot. She grabbed a tissue, let out one last weak laugh. “I, uh. I was calling because I wanted to hear exactly what you just said. So . . . thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I think? Have you come down with a case of the sads? I mean, I can only imagine the stress you’re under, baby sis. It’s understandable.”

“Actually.” Dahlia sighed. “I’m . . . I don’t know.”

“Ah. The I-don’t-knows. Those can be even worse. Well, thank god you called. Hold on a sec.”

Dahlia heard rustling and muffled voices in the background.

“Okay.” Hank came back on the line. “Gonna take my lunch break. I’m walking and talking here. You got a notebook?”

“Yeah. Somewhere. Let me find it.”

Dahlia put Hank on speaker and stood up, looking around her wonderful disaster of a room. She tossed clothes around, searching on the floor. She could tell, from the increase in background noise on Hank’s end, the moment he exited his building and walked into Copley Square.

“Ugh, there are a lot of tourists around today. I’m going to try to find a quiet spot by the library. Let me know when you’re ready.”

“Aha!” Dahlia spotted a notebook underneath the bed. This notebook was regular journal size, and served a different purpose from the small notepad she carried around set. The notepad was for food; the notebook was for feelings. “Got it.”

“Good. So I am obviously concerned you have the I-don’t-knows, and you will tell me why you have the I-don’t-knows later, if you want, but I have to say I am rather excited that you called. I’ve been storing up some truly killer ideas for a while now.”

“Fantastic. Go for it.”

Dahlia settled back onto the bed, leaning against the headboard.

“Top ten Britney songs, 2001 or earlier only.”

Dahlia rolled her eyes so hard she was positive Hank could hear it.

“Hank. We have done Britney before. Like five times at least.”

“But we keep leaving off key tracks! I realized we hadn’t included “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” on any of our previous top tens, and it’s just egregious.”

Hank and Dahlia had been crafting top ten lists to combat the sads—or, apparently, the I-don’t-knows—for well over a decade now. It started during their parents’ divorce, when Dahlia was in fifth grade. Dahlia had a particularly hard time when their dad moved out, and one night, when Hank heard Dahlia crying, he came into her room and sat on her bed, combing her hair with his fingers until she calmed down. And then he asked her to list her top ten Lizzie McGuire episodes.

Dahlia had sat up in bed immediately, taking the task so seriously that she eventually had to find a notebook to scribble her thoughts, crossing out and rewriting until she had her perfect ten episodes. Then Hank had asked her to write down her top ten lunches from the New Bedford Intermediate School cafeteria.

Looking back, Dahlia was still floored by Hank’s genius, still didn’t know what made him ask her those things at that moment. But by the time Hank left her bedroom that night to return to his own bed, Dahlia felt significantly less sad. She fell right asleep.

“No more Britney. How about . . . ” Dahlia tapped her pencil against a blank page. “Top ten cheeses.”

Now Hank laughed. “No way we haven’t done that one before, too.”

“I swear we haven’t! I know we’ve done ice cream several times, but we haven’t done cheese.”

“Fine.” Hank sighed. “Number ten. Swiss.”

“Blech.” Dahlia stuck out her tongue at her phone. Her tears had dried completely now. “Let’s do Havarti for number ten.”

Hank groaned. “This is why I don’t do food lists with you anymore.”

“Hank! Havarti is not that snooty!”

“Dahlia Woodson, I literally have no idea what Havarti cheese tastes like.”

Dahlia smiled and listed numbers one through ten in her notebook. She wrote Havarti on the tenth line.

“I’m assuming you wouldn’t support American cheese for number nine.”

Dahlia chewed on her pen cap before answering.

“No, let’s do it,” she said. “American is delicious.”

As she wrote it down in her notebook, she grinned, imagining what London would say. They would stare at her list in dismay and then gesture wildly with their hands. “American cheese isn’t even cheese, Dahlia,” they would say. And then she would kiss them.