“Yep,” Alice lies. “I’m great.”
“Cool,” Van says. She rolls over and clicks off the light, and the room is plunged into darkness. Alice doesn’t move, and slowly her eyes adjust, the dim orange from the streetlights filtering through the closed blinds enough for her to make out the ceiling, the dark dresser in the corner, the contrast between the white sheets and the blood-red comforter.
It’s quiet for a long time. Alice assumes Van’s asleep. She wants to roll over but she’s afraid to wake up Van, to shake the bed, to accidentally get too close. She feels like a prey animal, like if she doesn’t move a muscle then maybe everyone will forget that she’s here and nothing bad will happen to her.
But after what must be at least half an hour, Van says something from the darkness next to Alice.
“Do you love him?”
Almost against her will, Alice turns her head. Van isn’t looking at her. She’s flat on her back too, and her eyes are closed. Pinched closed, Alice is pretty sure, like she’s screwing them shut, like she can’t bear to see Alice answer the question.
Something in the middle of Alice’s chest, deep below her sternum, clenches and throbs. She tells the truth into the thick darkness.
“No.”
“I should want you to,” Van whispers, still not looking.
Alice takes a deep breath, holds it for three, and then lets it out slowly. “Do you want me to?”
Another long pause, and then, “No.”
She can’t help it. Alice rolls toward her. “Van,” she breathes, reaching out to brush the back of her hand down Van’s arm.
Van rolls too, and only once she’s facing Alice does she open her eyes. Her hand comes up, and Alice doesn’t move out of the way, letting Van tuck a piece of her hair back behind her ear. Van’s fingers are so gentle, her face so tender in the darkness, that now it’s Alice who has to shut her eyes for a few long seconds.
“We can’t,” Van whispers as Alice finally looks at her again, and Alice nods against her pillow.
“I know.”
But Van doesn’t take her hand off Alice. She cups Alice’s face, running her thumb softly across Alice’s cheek. “But I want to.”
Alice lets her eyes flutter shut. She can’t. They can’t. She knows it. But for once in her fucking life, she can be honest about what she wishes was true.
“Me too.”
Fourteen
Alice groans at a horrific beeping sound in her ear. It takes a while to realize it’s her alarm, and longer for her flailing arm to find her blaring phone on an unfamiliar nightstand. It isn’t until Van grumbles next to her that Alice remembers where she is, who she’s with. She bolts upright as the belated spike of adrenaline hits her nervous system. She’s in Van’s bed. She spent the night with Van, tucked up under the same comforter, bare ankles rubbing together. She’s in bed with Van, and a few hours ago Alice touched her on her perfect face and told her way too many truths.
Jesus fucking Christ, she’s the worst fake-girlfriend of all time. Not only a liar, but a cheat at that.
She gets up as quietly as she can, pulling on her clothes with the sinking realization that she’s doing a true walk of shame today. She, like everyone else showing up to work in yesterday’s clothes, certainly made a questionable romantic decision last night. She just didn’t get to enjoy it as much as Delilah will hope.
She leaves the bedroom, intending to tiptoe out the front door without waking anyone—it’s only six in the morning and they were up past midnight—but before she’s gotten her boots on, Van pads sleepily into the living room, rubbing her eyes. She’s pulled on dark blue sweats and a faded OSU sweatshirt, and Alice is immediately tempted to fling herself at Van, to pull them both back into the soft darkness of the bedroom, to do something that would turn this from a sad, relatively chaste walk of shame into an X-rated one.
She’s saved from doing something that monumentally stupid only by a heavy tread on the stairs above her head. A breath later, Steve lumbers out of the hallway in a bathrobe.
“Good morning,” Van says.
“Morning, Van. Alice.”
“Sorry if I woke you,” Alice says, but Steve shakes his head.
“Always up this early,” he says, and Alice isn’t sure if the sentence fragment is because he’s tired or if that’s just kind of his vibe. “Gotta start on the latke sammies.”
Van looks askance at the boots hanging limply from Alice’s fingers. “What are you doing?” she asks. “Latkes. Breakfast. Coffee. Warm.”
Okay, maybe the sentence fragments in the morning are hereditary, but Alice can’t argue with the logic. Cold hungry bus has absolutely no appeal over latkes breakfast coffee warm. And Van.
