"Nothing, I was just worried about her. You know, with everything going on, just
making sure she was ok."

"Are you sure she’s ok? Is there something you’re not telling me?"

"No, really Julia. Everything’s fine. I just worry about her. She tries to act all
cool, but she really breaks a lot easier than she lets on. I just like to check in on
her."

"Really Shane, I haven’t heard from her. She only got there last night and she
should be right smack on the middle of the first morning of Congressional
sessions. I don’t think I’ll hear from Alice until some time after 2 o’clock. That’s
about 5 on the east and the sessions should be done by then. Want me to send
her a message?"

"No, that’s alright. Just make sure she’s ok."

"Shane, why do you sound like she shouldn’t be ok?"

"No reason, I’m just worried about her. That’s all."

"OK."

"Hey, I was going to call Tina for dinner, want to join us?"

"You know what? That sounds great. Lets say seven?"

"Seven is perfect."

"Great. I’ll see you then."

—

Dana spent most of the day wandering DC. It was actually a pretty cold city.
Sure, there were lots of very inspirational places. The Washington Monument,
The Lincoln Memorial, but really, they were just really cold concrete places. The
holocaust museum did bring tears to her eyes. But in all honesty, she didn’t
know if she was capable of seeing what was in front of her or if the images in
the memorial just gave her the excuse to cry. She didn’t know which was real,
but didn’t care. It gave her comfort to find a reason to cry.

The fact that Dana loved Alice was never something anyone could question.
When Dana looked back on the time before she and Alice were together, she
was baffled that no one saw it. She couldn’t believe that no one called her on
what she deemed to be such obvious feelings for the writer. When they did
actually get together, sure there were some surprised looks from their friends,
but that had a lot more to do with the risk each was taking, not that they were
taking the risk for each other.