before you go ↦ vallas
dallas: "ah come on, the dine and dash is part of the process" he chuckles to himself at the memory and slouches a little into his seat, can feel himself physically relaxing into this conversation. it never felt forced between the two of them, even now with such unspoken tension lingering. being around vanessa is still far from a chore, and it shows. he pins his thick eyebrows together when she temporarily plays dumb? about her wedding. a part of him expected her to be overcome with excitement, willing to dish about the preparations to anyone that will lesson. but after his brief talk with elliot at the bar he's coming to realize that there's more to this engagement than she's willing to let on. still, he nods along as she speaks and tries, but fails to hide the amount of unconvinced in his features. "yeah, well i hope you're ready to become mrs. miles hollingsworth the rest of your life..." he never paid much attention to the younger male prior to this whole debacle. and even after, he's only scrolled through his instagram once, maybe twice. and from what he could gather in his brief search, despite the heavy editing and forced smile in their family portraits, it isn't one he'd want to marry into. in fact, it seems exhausting.
vanessa: "you say that, but i got paired up with frank delucio who not only spilled his milkshake all over himself but /also/ got it in my hair! it took me like two weeks to get the smell of strawberry out of my hair." vanessa's tone was light, joking, a complete contrast to how she first was when dallas arrived. she noticed it right away, but dallas had a way of putting her in a good mood. it was his eyes, vanessa decided, they were always kind––even when it seemed he hated her. "wouldn't any girl be? you'd want for nothing." the one part of this conversation that was true. any girl would want to be with miles, to be a hollingsworth. that family came with status, with money, something vanessa never had but their family strived for. it would make her father happy, her family proud, but it wasn't what she wanted; not that that mattered anyway. this is what vanessa's family raised her to be: someone's trophy, but she sure as hell didn't feel like a prize. "how's jenna?" vanessa finally asked, wanting the attention off her for the first time in her life, jenna, the name she had discovered after about 30 minutes of investigative work, was the girl who he though was so 'available'.