The hug had been nice. The hug had been more than nice.
The hug would have to be enough. Something about the air in this hallway felt reckless, and London didn’t trust anything right now, most of all themself.
“Good night, Dahlia Woodson.”
London put their key in their door, and they stepped into the cool darkness.
CHAPTER TEN
Dahlia knocked on London’s door Friday morning.
Her palms were sweating. “Hey,” she said when London opened the door. “Want to go somewhere?”
They looked at her, eyes bleary, blinking a few times. They looked awful, as she had worried they would. No, awful wasn’t the right word. London was still in rumpled pajamas: a heather-gray T-shirt, green-and-navy flannel bottoms. That shock of hair on the top of their head pointed in several different directions. It was adorable. They were abso-freaking-lutely adorable, and maybe this was merely what they looked like at eight thirty in the morning.
But Dahlia worried that London was so disheveled not because they had accidentally slept in, but because they had stayed up too late reading the comments.
It had been immediate, after the first episode aired last night. She hadn’t watched the episode herself—it would have been too cringeworthy—but she had scrolled social media feeds in her room, her stomach tense and queasy after saying good night to London. After holding their hand.
The commenters who weren’t talking about her epic trip were talking about London. She wished they were all talking about her.
Because almost everyone was being nice about her.
OH MY GOD I HAVE BEEN NERVOUS ABOUT A CONTESTANT TRIPPING WITH THEIR FOOD EVER SINCE I STARTED WATCHING THESE DUMB SHOWS, THIS POOR GIRL, MY HEART IS POUNDING FOR HER
Even the people who were laughing at her were simply laughing at her brief embarrassing moment. They weren’t laughing at her identity, who she was at her core.
Dahlia was not surprised to see that her trip had been made into a gif. The first time she watched it, she had been horrified, but with each replay of the loop, it felt funnier and funnier to her. The surprised look on her face, the way the rice and tacos were suspended in the air. It was funny. It was totally gif-worthy, and she tried to process that her moment of shame would probably circulate on the internet for years. Surprisingly, she felt okay with it.
But Dahlia had underestimated how attached people were to the gender binary.
She had only been able to stomach it for an hour, before she put her phone facedown on her bedside table and picked up a book. A book she hadn’t been able to concentrate on, not a single word, but it had helped her fall asleep.
Dahlia really hoped London hadn’t read the comments, the threads, the hashtags. That they were smarter than her.
London scratched the back of their neck.
“Where would we go?” they asked eventually, their voice scratchy with sleep.
“Anywhere. The ocean, I was thinking. I still haven’t seen the Pacific even though we’ve been here three weeks now. It’s an injustice, really.”
A corner of London’s mouth twerked up, just the tiniest bit, and a dash of hope leapt in Dahlia’s chest.
“I was thinking we could rent a car,” she continued. “There’s a place right around the block, and it’s probably not that expensive for one day and—”
“I have a car,” London broke in.
“Really?” Dahlia hadn’t heard them talk about driving anywhere. “Did you drive out here from Nashville? I’ve always wanted to do a road trip like that.”
“No.” London cleared their throat. “I rented one. I thought you sort of needed one, in LA. Even though I’ve hardly used it so far. It’s in the hotel garage.”
Dahlia tried to calculate the cost of a car rental for that long, when you weren’t even using it, and gave up after a few seconds. She had gathered, from things London had said, that they had money.
“Let’s go, then.”
London looked at her for a steady moment, then looked down at their outfit.
“Give me a minute?”
Twenty minutes later, they walked into the garage. London tossed the keys in the air.
“Do you want to drive?” They looked over at Dahlia. “I feel kind of distracted, and—”
“Fuck yeah, I want to drive!” Dahlia snatched the keys from their hands. London smiled.
Dahlia backed them out of the garage, and they drove away from Burbank.
London had no idea how long they’d been in the car. It could have been twenty minutes; it could have been days. Who knew LA was so big? Who knew it had so much traffic?