“Al, how are you doing? Really?”
Alice lets out a long, shuddering breath. Isabella and her family moved away when Alice was eleven, but when they were little they’d been inseparable. Isabella is one of the only people in the world who knows what Alice’s life has been like. Who could make a decent guess of what walking into that hospital is doing to her.
“How about Sunday?” Alice hears herself saying. Today is Friday, she’s pretty sure. “I could come over Sunday.”
“Good,” Isabella says, the sound of a toddler wailing now blaring in Alice’s ear like a siren. “Sebastian, I said stop hitting—Okay, I gotta go because my child might be a sociopath, but I’ll text you the address, okay? Come whenever. Prepare yourself for some light chaos. Sebastian! That’s it, you lost a sticker!”
“Okay, I’ll—” The wailing cuts abruptly off, and Alice is left holding her phone in her hand, her elitist coffee slowly cooling in front of her.
Seven
A few hours later, Alice is washing her hands in the bathroom at the end of her shift. The thought of having so much daytime left on this lovely, cold Friday—and then a whole weekend where she won’t need to sleep during the day—is so foreign that she honestly has no idea what to do with herself. Well, when she’s not expected at the hospital all the time, that is. Delilah invited Alice to happy hour sometime with her and some of her friends, and Alice knows she should say yes to what is honestly a ridiculously kind invitation, but it’s been so long since she’s done anything like that she worries she’s forgotten how. The night shift took so much from her, and she had so little to give in the first place.
She walks back out into the lobby and stops short at the sight of Babs and Aunt Sheila standing at the desk, chatting with Delilah. Aunt Sheila catches sight of her and waves her over, and it’s only when Alice takes a few more steps that she sees Van, hovering behind her mom with her hands in her pockets like she’s worried about taking up too much space. Shelooks devastatingly handsome in her thick jeans and the same familiar quilted green jacket, and it’s probably Alice’s imagination but she’s almost convinced she can smell Van’s cologne from ten feet away.
“Alice, honey, there you are!” Babs says, holding out her arms.
Alice’s heart stutters as she closes the distance between them and lets Babs wrap her up in what Alice is quickly coming to realize is her signature squeeze. The woman must be part boa constrictor; she’s not very muscular at a glance, but she has some kind of hug-related super strength for sure.
Once Babs releases her, Aunt Sheila gives her own hug—less tight but still affectionate—and then it’s awkward. Woman code means Alice should hug Van, but the part of Alice’s brain that is screaming about how hot Van is makes her think she should probably keep as much physical distance between them as possible.
Van doesn’t take her hands out of the pockets of her jacket, and she and Alice end up sort of nodding at each other from very close by. It’s not Alice’s finest moment.
She makes it worse by failing to say anything kinder than, “What, um, what are you all doing here?”
“We came to get some things from Nolie’s office to decorate his hospital room,” Babs says, taking hold of Alice’s arm like maybe she knows Alice is a flight risk. “After that we’ll all stop by his condo before going right on over to the hospital together, okay, dear?”
Oh no. Certainly not. Aside from the whole Alice-does-not-know-this-man of it all, what even is a condo? Alice definitely would have referred to his place as a house or an apartment, so thank goodness Babs said it first. Although they’re all looking at her weirdly, and Alice’s heart sinks as sherealizes what they’re expecting from her. “Oh, I would love to help,” she says quickly. “But I don’t have keys to his, um, condo. We hadn’t gotten to that point yet.” This is true, of course, because she figures that if Nolan had made a list of people to give his house key to, she’d probably be somewhere on page eighty-nine, between a fictional character and a long-dead U.S. president.
“Oh,” Babs says, and Alice mentally wipes off her brow. Whew. Close call.
But then, fucking Aunt Sheila chimes in. “Well, I’m sure his condo board can let us in.”
Shit. So close. Alice resigns herself to this happening, and hopes they know where this condo is, because lord knows she doesn’t.
“Okay,” Alice says, hoping she doesn’t sound robotic. Or terrified. “Great.”
Delilah, meanwhile, is handing out guest passes to the upstairs offices like they’re golden tickets. “Alice has told me so much about all of you,” she gushes before winking over at Alice. Alice has told her as little as possible, because she doesn’t want to lie to the person who will hopefully be her new friend, but she can tell that Delilah is covering for her. It makes something in her chest thrum, the knowledge that there is a human being in the universe who would cover for Alice, maybe even actively enjoy her company, and not because they think she’s dating their attractive and comatose family member. It’s been over a decade since Alice has had someone like that. Even after this all inevitably ends with the Altmans, either because Nolan is dead or because he wakes up and the truth comes out, Alice hopes she’ll get to keep Delilah.
Alice takes a little peek at the pass Delilah has handed Aunt Sheila, unsure if Delilah tilted it over at the perfect angle forAlice to see the suite number on it because she knows Alice is a huge fucking liar, or if the flourish is simply part of her customer service charm.
Either way, Alice now knows they’re headed to suite 1403. “Great,” Alice manages to say again, this time through gritted teeth. “Up we go.”
She follows as Aunt Sheila makes a beeline for the elevator and then pushes the button like a thousand times until it arrives. They all pile in, and as the doors close and the elevator climbs, Alice anxiously picks at her fingernails. What if there’s a picture of him and some other girl in his office? What if they run into someone who was out last week with Nolan and his secret gay boyfriend Rolf? That would be extremely fucking bad, right?
Babs and Aunt Sheila talk a mile a minute about how much nicer this building is than where his last office was, while Van is silent, opening and closing her hands like they’ve fallen asleep or something. Alice wants to curl up under her arm, lean against her broad chest, and close her eyes for the next week or so.
But instead the elevator dings, the door opens, and much too quickly, Aunt Sheila is blazing a trail into the suite markedHayes and Associates. Babs goes right up to the receptionist, introducing herself as “my sweet boy Nolan’s mother” and asking her to let them into Nolan’s office. The receptionist is—of course—a young woman, prettier and thinner and much better dressed than Alice. Alice pulls down on the bottom of her black sweater and tucks her hair back behind her ears, cursing herself for never learning how to properly put on makeup or use a curling iron, skills Nolan probably values and this woman certainly has.
The receptionist is gushing over Babs in a second, comingaround the desk to hug her, happening to demonstrate that she looks great in a pencil skirt, can walk in four-inch heels, and has perfectly swishy hair. She looks like the kind of person who vigorously exercises before work, which Alice has always hoped she would be if she had the time and money, but has a sneaking suspicion she would not.
There is absolutely zero reason Nolan Altman would ever pick Alice over someone like this, even if he were too lazy to hit on someone more than ten yards away from him.
Babs introduces her to Aunt Sheila and Van, which is polite but pointless because this office is fancy enough that even the receptionist has a nameplate on her desk.Kerry Anderson, it reads, in perfect white font.
“And this is Alice. Nolan’s girlfriend.”
Kerry blinks. “Girl—girlfriend?” There’s panic in her perfectly lined eyes now, and Alice doesn’t need to be an expert at reading people to tell exactly what’s going on.
