Love & Other Disasters(78)

She had shed all her tears between the time London left her room and the taxi took her to the airport. Time to cut off the loop now. Start a new frame.

Maybe she could apply for deferment for her student loans. It wasn’t a great financial decision, but it would only be for a little while. Everyone did it. Maybe she could get her old job back, or apply for something else at the paper. She had been a solid worker. Maybe they would take her back.

Dahlia’s suitcase slapped the floor as she dropped it next to the door. She walked into her tiny kitchen. Faced its empty cabinets.

For the last few weeks, Dahlia had cooked with the finest ingredients in the world. She had almost started to feel like it was normal, having an endless pantry full of food of the highest quality. It was so bizarre, this experience Dahlia had just had, that standing in her barren kitchen now, she wondered if it had even happened. If she had hallucinated the last month of her life entirely.

Dahlia walked into her bedroom. She curled into a ball on top of the covers without taking off her clothes. She tried to make herself small, as small and unnatural as she felt.

When she woke hours later, all she could think about was how much she missed the hotel.

Eventually, Dahlia got up. She changed her clothes. She would get through this. She just needed to make a plan.

She found a spoon and a half-empty jar of peanut butter in the kitchen and sat on her drooping Ikea couch. Okay, she had missed this rug. Sinking her toes into its high-pile luxury had been the best part of her day, sometimes. It was probably the nicest thing she had bought for herself after the divorce. She’d let David keep almost all their old furniture.

She walked to the window. Her apartment looked out over a highway, the boxy gray roofs of shopping plazas, occasional canopies of trees. Sometimes, at night especially, she liked watching the lights zipping by on the highway, so many people on their way to somewhere.

Her apartment was okay. She had been proud to have a space that was all her own.

It was acceptable, she told herself, to admit that this was hard. To admit that returning here confirmed it. That although this apartment had been an important step for her, for a little while, it still didn’t feel like home.

And Dahlia suddenly, achingly wanted a home.

You don’t belong in Maryland. You’re not happy there.

Dahlia turned back toward the living room, clutching anxiously at her neck.

Building blocks. Taking things one step at a time.

There was a U-Haul store around the block. She would go and get boxes. She would pick up bread and milk on the way back. Steps one and two.

Dahlia picked up her phone. Step three.

“Hey, Dad? Hey, yeah. So, I’m back in Maryland. I got kicked off the show. Yeah, it’s okay. Don’t tell anyone else. No . . . no, Dad, I’m all right. But I was wondering . . . How would you feel about having a visitor for a while?”

London squinted into the sun.

It was barely ten o’clock, and this day had already felt a million years long.

They had no idea how they were going to survive this weekend.

The last two days had been tolerable. Sure, London had been living in a state of excruciating purgatory, but at least they’d been able to cook. They’d had tasks to complete on set, things to occupy their hands and their mind.

After the fight with Dahlia on Tuesday, London had lain in bed, unsleeping, staring at their phone for hours, willing a text to come through. Or maybe a knock at their door. Sleep must have overtaken them at some point, and they woke to Janet banging down their door.

“I didn’t have the heart to bring the airhorn,” she’d said, when London had finally opened up. “But you gotta get going, honey.”

And by that point, Dahlia was gone.

Had someone been there to pick her up at the airport? London couldn’t stop thinking about that. Hank and her parents were in Massachusetts. Dahlia hadn’t, now that London thought about it, mentioned many friends back in Maryland, other than some old coworkers. Maybe she had called them. Maybe she wasn’t alone. The idea of her being alone made them want to set something on fire.

Even though thinking about the way things had ended between them on Tuesday night made them want to set something on fire, too.

London would be happy with an inferno right about now. Just burn everything clean. Spark new growth.

But they had followed Janet back to set on Wednesday morning. They had completed the challenges that day and the next, watched Khari get kicked off on Thursday. Listened to the judges congratulate them, Cath, and Lizzie on being the top three.

And felt absolutely numb about all of it.

Now they had a three-day weekend, before one last Elimination Challenge next week that would determine the final two contestants of season eight, who would then head to the finale.

London had no idea how to fill three entire days without Dahlia.

So they were doing what they’d done the last two nights, after they’d returned to their hotel room after filming and realized they had no desire to do anything but punch things.

They walked.

London put on sneakers, left the hotel, and walked. They walked even though they were already exhausted. They walked until their feet hurt.

Eventually, they’d call a Lyft back to the hotel.

They knew they should probably return their rental car. They weren’t going to touch it, obviously. It reminded them too much of her.

London pulled out their phone now as they walked and checked for new notifications. They had muted everything the last few weeks, after the first episode aired. It was too hard, trying to filter out the trolls from the encouragement, too time-consuming blocking everyone who said something shitty. London knew they were out of touch with the world, but frankly, they’d been too infatuated with Dahlia Woodson to care.