What had David wanted Dahlia to feel when he sent that email?
The confirmation that he was absolutely decent?
Dahlia watched the LA scenery fade away outside the window, stretch into dusty hills, the emerging morning light casting a thin golden light over the landscape. And she thought, How nice that must be, moving on. Not feeling angry at me anymore.
“Hey.” London scraped the toe of their sneaker against the gravel of the parking lot as they approached Dahlia’s side. She stood with her arms crossed, staring stonily across the fields of Graham Family Farm. “You okay?”
Dahlia glanced at them, and her eyes softened. She dropped her arms. “Yeah.”
London stuffed their hands in their back pockets. A part of them was dying to know what had happened between her and Lizzie on the bus, but a larger part of them had exactly zero desire to ask.
This was their fifth day of filming in a row this week, and London was feeling it today, the exhaustion heavy in their limbs. But their mind felt good. Limber. They were ready for this second Real World Challenge today. They had done well this week, including a win during yesterday’s Elimination Challenge. Talking to Dahlia on set had become easy, after Adam Abramovitz’s bar mitzvah, even with their continuing attraction to her, which they were working on tamping down. London was precariously close to having a surprisingly good time with this whole Chef’s Special thing.
“This view isn’t bad,” they ventured after a few moments of silence. The eight other remaining contestants milled around behind them, waiting for the producers and crew to finalize logistics. “The farms in Tennessee are better,” they added. “But this one’s okay.”
“You’ve spent a lot of time on farms?” Dahlia asked, her shoulders relaxing. “I thought you were from Nashville.”
“My roommate Eddy is on the board of this local co-op, and he got me involved in it. I tried to work at the storefront a couple times, but I was not the best at . . . customer relations.”
Dahlia grinned. “Ah.”
London shot her a defensive look. “I can be quite friendly, you know. These co-op customers are just . . . special. So now I help with runs to local farms a couple times a month, transporting stuff back and forth. Most of the farms do their own deliveries, but if we have a special order, or sudden demand . . . ” London shrugged. “Some of the farmers are old and cranky, but a lot of them are young, actually, doing really cool things. Although I like the old and cranky ones, too.”
A pang of homesickness hit London’s gut.
“I like them. The farmers. So sometimes if I’m bored, or whatever, I’ll go to some of the farms to help out. They always need help.”
They paused, aware they were rambling. Even still, they felt compelled to add a minute later, “It feels good. Seeing where your food comes from.” And then they blushed, at how earnest this came out, and they finally did shut their mouth.
Helping out the co-op, working on the farms meant a lot to them, though. For the last few years, London had made a conscious effort to give back, to be a more useful person. It was why they felt so invested in this LGBTQ nonprofit idea, if they won Chef’s Special.
Their family had always been well off. London’s parents both worked in pharmaceuticals, each in different capacities: their mom on the science end, their dad on the business side. They had grown up in a large house outside Nashville, with a nanny and private tutors, housekeepers, and landscapers. The house was surrounded by a spacious, lusciously green yard with rolling hills beyond, which London could gaze upon from the small balcony off their bedroom. The Parkers kept a boat on Percy Priest Lake and took vacations every summer, to locales both near and far.
London had loved almost everything about the external parts of their childhood. And they realized now how lucky and privileged they had been.
The internal parts of their childhood, of course, had been trickier. Julie had always been their steadfast best friend, and they’d had other friends, too, a couple of relationships in high school. But London had always felt . . . off. Painfully awkward. Never quite fitting in, at least not exactly, not the way they wanted to. They figured all teenagers felt a little strange in their skin. It wasn’t until college that London realized not all teenagers felt quite like them.
“Huh.” Dahlia was smiling now. “Interesting. So why are Tennessee farms better than this one?”
London looked out at the soft hills on the horizon. They seemed to leap from the flat earth out of nowhere, breathtaking in their own way. They were also entirely devoid of trees, and strikingly, undeniably, brown.