“Yeah.” A car driving by blared its horn.
“What did you want to be when you grew up, when you were a kid?” London asked.
Dahlia was quiet a moment, but finally she answered.
“A writer. When I was in elementary school, I filled notebook after notebook with these stories about girls at camp. My parents could never afford to send me to camp, at least a real sleepaway camp, not just, you know, summer classes at the Y. So I lived out all my camp fantasies in those books.”
“What was the camp called?”
“Camp Sunnywood.” Dahlia smiled, and London saw her shoulders relax. “Whenever I finished a story, I’d rip the pages out of the notebook and make a front and back cover out of construction paper, and tie it all together with purple yarn.” Her smile grew. “I gave them to my dad to read, and he’d write blurbs on the back of each one. Like, ‘Woodson’s finest Sunnywood yet!’ ” She laughed, and London laughed with her. They were approaching the hotel now.
“Oh! Oh man. I definitely spent almost the entirety of fifth grade working on Camp Sunnywood: Super Edition #1. Tiffany and Molly got in a huge fight and tipped over each other’s canoes and then Molly dumped Sunny D all over Tiffany’s clothes.”
London pressed the button for the elevator and looked down at her. Her eyes were so bright now.
“What a bitch,” London commented as they stepped inside the elevator.
“No, listen, Molly was just going through some stuff,” Dahlia said emphatically. “Her parents were going through a divorce, and honestly, Tiffany was acting real petty that summer. She never let Molly ride her favorite horse at the stables.”
London realized they would be perfectly satisfied to spend the rest of the evening learning every single facet of Camp Sunnywood.
They also wondered when, exactly, Dahlia had given up her dreams of being an author.
“Okay, okay, I’m shutting up now,” Dahlia said as they walked down their hall. “What did you want to be when you were a kid?”
London thought on it. There had been lots of things, including, for a while, a chef, but only one thing had been consistent.
“A musician.”
“Really?” Dahlia looked over at them, eyes wide. “Oh my god, London, were you like, in a band ?”
London huffed self-consciously.
“You are overestimating my coolness. I was in concert band, if that counts.” They reached the door to London’s room. London leaned against it, while Dahlia leaned against the wall, facing them.
“What did you play?”
“Trumpet. Still play, actually.”
“Wait.” Dahlia actually held out her hand in a stop gesture. “You play the trumpet? Like, currently. Just for fun. Or, oh my god, are you like, in a jazz quartet or something?”
“No.” London squirmed, feeling embarrassed. “Just for fun.” Although they shouldn’t be embarrassed. Playing an instrument was a totally normal hobby. They had no idea why Dahlia was so amused.
“Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” She smiled. “It’s just, kind of sexy. Playing the trumpet.”
London stared at her. “Dahlia, have you ever actually seen someone play the trumpet? It is not sexy.”
This was true. It wasn’t.
But London might have spent the rest of the night blushing in their room anyway, congratulating themself on graduating from cute to sexy in the eyes of Dahlia Woodson.
They walked home together on Tuesday night, too. After London won the Elimination Challenge, which had been about hearts. “Ugh, this is disgusting, of course you love cooking with hearts, you heathen,” Dahlia had said to them, her face crinkled and adorable, back to her regular self.
Even though Dahlia did just fine with her own heart. Jacob, however, did not.
After he got the boot on Tuesday, Barbara shifted over to take his place at Dahlia’s station on Wednesday morning. When Janet made the change, Dahlia had literally jumped up and down and clapped her hands. London had pretended to write some recipe notes in their notepad, but mostly they smiled pathetically at nothing. Ahmed was totally onto them, and slugged their shoulder, which was embarrassing.
By the time Dahlia and London walked back to the hotel on Wednesday night, after another Face-Off and Ingredient Innovation day, London was starting to feel dangerously confident. At cooking on set. At making Dahlia laugh. At settling into this new routine.
But when the door to their hotel room clicked shut, they sank into the chair in the corner and took a deep breath.