Marie wordlessly picks up the container of lo mein and a pair of chopsticks from where she’d dropped them onto the counter, and presses them into Alice’s hands as they pass. Van usually walks with such a quick stride, but Alice finds herself slowing down to match Van as Van heads to the same balcony as before, sliding the door closed behind them and settling into a chair. She doesn’t say anything, simply eating her chicken in silence and letting Alice take the lead.
Alice plops into the other chair and tries not to think about how Van is quite possibly everything she’s ever wanted.
Van’s almost done with her kung pao by the time Alice is ready to talk.
“Both my parents died in this hospital,” Alice says to her lo mein, aiming for casual and probably hitting a tone closer to robot-about-to-fucking-lose-it. “My mom when I was eight, and my dad when I was nineteen.”
“Alice,” Van says, tender and so gentle.
Alice doesn’t look up. She can’t. She can’t possibly face the expression she knows Van must be wearing. The horror, the pity, the sorrow. She’s spent most of her life avoiding that look, and she knows seeing it on Van’s face—Van, who means more to her after a few days than most people in her life ever have—will break her.
Alice refuses to be broken.
“They were in a fire when I was eight, while I was at a sleepover.” Alice recites the facts to her noodles like she’s reading them from a book, like she’s memorized them from someone else’s life. “The apartment was really old, not up to code. The smoke was extra toxic, I guess. My mom was in the hospital for a month, but she didn’t make it. My dad lost a lung, and he was pretty sick for the rest of his life. He was always in and out of here. He got lung cancer when I was in middle school and died when I was nineteen.”
“Alice,” Van says again. “Alice.”
Alice shakes her head. Her chest feels tight and there’s tension mounting in the center of her forehead, a sure sign that her body wants to cry. She squeezes her eyes shut, forcing her tears back down with iron will, desperation, and twenty-odd years of practice.
“Alice, look at me,” Van says softly, moving to kneel in front of Alice. She takes the lo mein out of Alice’s limp grasp, placing it on the little table between their chairs and resting both her hands on Alice’s thighs.
Alice focuses on the pressure of Van’s hands on her, not heavy but solid. Present. Grounding. She blinks a few times and then lets her eyes skim over Van’s face.
There’s the look, almost exactly like she knew it would be.
“I am so sorry,” Van says, but there’s something firm underneath the pity and softness, something Alice hasn’t seen before, like Van means it, like it matters. “I’m so sorry that happened to them. To you.”
Alice shakes her head. “It’s okay,” she tries, but Van says, “No,” and her hands tighten.
Her fingers twitch on Alice’s legs. “We’ve been dragging you here with us, every fucking day, and this is…god. The worst place in the world for you. I’m so sorry. I don’t—I can’t imagine.”
Alice clears her throat, hoping her voice won’t break. “It’s okay. I mean, yeah, it’s hard to be here, but it’s okay. I’m not…” She doesn’t know how to say it nicely, how to say that in the grand scheme of things, watching Nolan die doesn’t really feel like watching her parents die, because she didn’t fucking know him and quite frankly if he had dropped dead in his apartment she would have grieved for a few weeks and then moved on to a new fixation to distract herself from her lonely, disappointing, shitty life.
“It’s not the same,” she finally says. “I can handle it.”
“You don’t have to,” Van says. “I can come to your place, call you. We can keep you updated without you having to be here.”
This is exactly what Alice has been looking for. It’s an out, finally a reason to back away without having to tell the truth, without hurting anyone. She can say,Yes,thank you for caring about my trauma,and moonwalk right on out of this situation.She expects to feel a rush of relief, a release of all of the lie-induced tension she’s been carting around, but she doesn’t.
Something that certainly isn’t relief is surging up from her gut into her throat, screaming at her to stay, to cling as tightly as she can to Babs, to Marie. To Van. As shitty as evading the truth makes her feel, leaving the Altmans—leaving Van—is abhorrent. Staying makes her a truly horrible person, but she can’t let them go, not yet.
“I don’t want to intrude on family stuff,” she says carefully. “But it seems like your mom is happy that I’m here.” She’s not proud of blaming Babs for her staying—it feels closer to lying than anything else has so far—but the churning dread in her stomach at the idea of backing away has left her with no other choice.
Something flickers across Van’s face, something that would maybe be frustration if she let it. “You don’t need to be reliving your trauma just to make my mom feel better,” she says, almost in a whisper. “You don’t—you don’t owe her anything. She’s not…”
She’s not your mom,she means.
Yeah, Alice is quite clear on that, thanks.
She closes her eyes, shoving down the unspeakably selfish, awful, evil thought that if Nolan dies and her lie is never found out, maybe Babs could be, though.
“Your mom is a really nice person and has been really kind to me,” she says, opening her eyes and immediately wishing she were still looking into her lo mein instead of at Van’s beautiful, chiseled, caring face. She stares at the little white scar on Van’s cheek, right above her faint dimple. She tries not to wonder what it would feel like under her fingertips. Her lips.
“I want to do whatever I can to make this horrible situationeasier for her,” Alice says, which is completely true and not the complete truth. It’s not why she’s putting herself through this. Not entirely, anyway. Not anymore.
The fucked-up thing is that the nicer Babs is, the more earnestly Van cares, the closer Alice feels to them, the more she lies to them. The harder she works to stay. Not to victim-blame, but if they were worse people, she wouldn’t be lying to their faces, technically or otherwise. If Van weren’t so kind right now, weren’t kneeling in front of Alice like Alice is the most important, precious thing in the world, Alice would have stopped, dropped, and rolled right out of here. She wonders whyJerry Springerisn’t still on TV; this would make a great episode. America would love to hate her.
“What can I do?” Van is still kneeling in front of her, her hands hot on Alice’s thighs. This has been quite possibly one of the least sexy conversations Alice has ever had—for some reason talking about her dead parents and unresolved trauma has never really done it for her—but she can’t help but notice how intimate this is. Not just emotionally, not just how Van seems to be holding Alice’s feelings with a steady, gentle, caring pressure, like Alice deserves kindness and isn’t a terrible liar, but physically, too. It’s intimate how close Van is. How big her hands are, how long her fingers, how Alice’s legs have fallen open to allow Van to ease her torso between them.
