Kerry and Nolan totally fucked.
Recently.
Not frequently enough for her to thinkshewas his girlfriend, but certainly enough for her to have thought he was single.
“Don’t worry,” Alice says, trying to stave off a public spectacle and end this interaction as quickly as she can. Now not only is Alice lying to the Altmans, she’s also making this perfectly nice stranger think she’s a homewrecker or something, and that doesn’t feel awesome. “No one knew,” Alice adds, which is a bit of an understatement, but technically true.
Kerry blinks at her, and Alice can practically see the millions of things running through her brain—probably an advanced calculus of her own sexual history with Nolan, her knowledge of his tastes, and all of the ways Alice falls short ofhis usual standards. Her eyes linger on Alice’s hair, her waist, and Van takes a step closer to Alice, clearly reading the same vibes. She’s right up behind Alice now, like a bodyguard. Alice can see in her peripheral vision that Van is still opening and closing her hands, and she wonders if she’s doing it to intimidate Kerry.
“You look familiar,” Kerry says slowly, not nearly as friendly as she was before Babs said theg-word. “Have you been up to visit him before?”
“No,” Alice says, trying to not fidget, trying to channel Van’s steady strength into her own bones. “I work at the desk downstairs. And, um. You know. Coming up might have seemed, like, unprofessional?” Alice figures that’s sort of not a lie. As visiting him upstairs would have involved a few minor felonies—breaking, entering, and she’s pretty sure a stalking charge would stick—unprofessionalmay be generously vague, but no one could say it isn’t true.
“Wait. You’re the one who saved him, aren’t you?”
Alice shrugs. She’s getting more and more uncomfortable with that term, because he’s still not, like…super alive. She tries to sound dismissive and casual as she says, “I mean, I gave him shitty CPR. The doctors at the hospital are the real heroes.” That’s laying it on a little thick, but Babs wipes a tear from her cheek, so Alice figures maybe it landed okay.
Kerry looks at Van, her eyes running up and down her body the same way she’d evaluated Alice. “And you’re Nolan’s…sister?” The slight pause beforesistermakes Alice’s hackles rise. Kerry didn’t say it in an affirming way, like she was checking in about Van’s pronouns. No, she meant it as an insult, like Van’s handsomeness is a bad thing, that her masculinity is something to be judged instead of drooled over.
Alice opens her mouth, unsure what she’s going to say but positive it won’t be nice, but Van talks first. “Listen, Cherry.”
“Kerry,” Kerry corrects. She’s still looking at Van in that way that straight girls sometimes do when they see a butch—critical and low-key homophobic even while they pretend to be friendly. Alice feels herself straightening up and moving between them in a vain attempt to shield Van’s tall, broad body with her own. Even butch superheroes deserve protection.
Van’s voice is harder now, even as her hand comes up to Alice’s elbow and closes over it with exquisite tenderness. “Can you show us to his office, please, Cherry? We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Of course,” Cherry Kerry says, clearly deciding against pushing it in front of Nolan’s mom and his girlfriend, who is either very magnanimous or unbelievably oblivious. She pulls a key out of a drawer and starts to walk down the hallway. “Follow me.”
They all do, and Cherry unlocks an office at the end of the long corridor. She opens the door and leads them inside, and Alice almost trips over her feet. One wall is entirely windows, and Alice has never seen Portland from this high up before. It’s beautiful, even in the last dregs of winter daylight. The rain is more of a heavy mist right now, so it feels like she’s standing inside of a cloud. The city looks gray and cold in the kind of way that makes Alice want to curl up in the corner with a mug of tea and a romance novel, Frank on her lap and Van next to her, steady and solid and warm.
“Thanks, Cherry,” Van says, and Alice chokes at her dedication to the bit. “We’ve got it from here.”
Cherry looks pained, but she nods and backs out of theoffice. “Let me know if you need anything,” she says, but her eyes linger on Alice before she closes the door after herself.
Babs and Aunt Sheila are already poking around, touching everything on Nolan’s bookshelves—mostly technical manuals and unlabeled three-ring binders—and leaving fingerprints on his massive glass desk. Alice steps farther into the room, taking it all in and pretending she’s seen his belongings before, like she’s not desperately searching the office for clues that will help her pull off this ridiculous charade.
But she’s pretty sure, as she swivels her head around, that she’s shit out of luck. It’s a minimalist office, all glass and steel. It’s decidedly impersonal—the only thing Alice gets from it is that Nolan is rich and wants people to know it. He doesn’t have any photographs or notes from satisfied clients, and all of the clothes and knickknacks scattered around are pretty generic: a mug from the company, a Portland Timbers bobblehead, a black raincoat hung up on a hook on the back of the door.
Alice walks over to a wall with two framed diplomas, glancing up at them out of the corner of her eye. The smaller one is from the University of Southern California, awarding a bachelor of science to Nolan H. Altman in the area of finance.
Alice files that away in her very meager mental folder calledNolan Facts.Nolan went to USC. Nolan’s middle name starts with anH. So does Alice’s; two weeks ago she’d have thought that made them soulmates.
The bigger diploma is from USC too, this one commemorating him for his master’s in business administration.
That’s an MBA, right? Okay. Two different finance degrees from California. No wonder he has a rich-person office and a rich-person desk and a never-ending series of rich-person suits.
No wonder he fucked Cherry.
No wonder his dad wants Marie to major in business too.
No wonder Van doesn’t.
“Alice,” Babs says, holding up a mug from next to his enormous Mac desktop. “This reminds me. Have you been in touch with any of his brothers?”
Alice blinks. Brothers? What the hell! How many fucking children does this family have? What the actual shit is going on right now?
“B-brothers?” she stutters.
The mug says what looks likeExin a weird font, and has a white cross inside a blue shield. It’s absolutely incoherent to Alice. Ex what? Ex-brothers? Alice feels like reality is tilting out from underneath her, her mind spinning like a hamster trying to outrun a predator using only its squeaky, utterly useless wheel. What the hell is an ex-brother in a family of only sisters?
