“Yes,” Alice manages, shoving the panic as far down as she can. Each breath smells like butch now, and Alice closes her eyes for a second, letting it ground her. “Sorry. Yes.”
“Van, this is Alice,” Babs says. “Nolan’s girlfriend.”
Van’s eyebrows shoot up and she abruptly releases her grip on Alice’s arms like Alice’s sweater was about to burst into flames beneath her palms. “Girlfriend? Nolan?” She looks around, almost like she’s double-checking that she’s in the right room. “Seriously,girlfriend?”
Alice swallows. Van looks skeptical about all of it—the existence of a girlfriend and said girlfriend being Alice—and that’s very much a bad thing. Or, is it? Alice, lost in a butch haze, can’t quite remember if she wants to be found out or not.
“Isn’t it just like Nolie to keep such a sweet girl from us,” Babs says, shaking her head and patting her son fondly on the leg over the blanket. “He’s such a funny boy sometimes.”
Marie rolls her eyes. “Can you blame him, Mom? The last time he let you meet someone, you asked how fertile the women in her family are.”
Alice, still more than halfway to a panic attack, chokes back a laugh.
“What?” Babs says, for all the world like that’s a normal thing to have done. “It was only a question.”
“We hadn’t even ordered drinks yet,” Marie says with the kind of exasperation only teenagers can muster, and Alice finds her attention sliding away from the family drama and back to Van, like the woman is some sort of magnet.
Van looks at Alice again, like she’s taking an X-ray with her eyes. Alice feels Van’s gaze slide over her reddish-brown hair, which after the night and day she’s had, and the number of times it’s been wet in the rain, is more oily frizz than careful wave. Van’s eyes take in what must be dark exhausted circles under her eyes, dropping down to her body—twenty pounds heavier than Alice would like it to be—and her clothes, all of which were bought off bargain basement sales racks at least four years ago and are, in a word, uninspired. Alice knows thatshe absolutely does not look like someone who should be dating any tenants of the office building, not to mention one as well-dressed as Nolan.
“Alice, this is Van, Nolan’s sister.”
Well, yes, Alice had guessed, based on the same-face situation, but still good to get confirmation. “Right,” she says, like maybe Nolan had mentioned having a sister during one of their many dates. Two sisters, in fact. “Van. Of course.”
“Van, honey, did you reach your neurologist?”
Van tears her suspicious eyes away from Alice, and Alice tries not to be obvious about her relief. She’s still only about an inch away from losing it, and being scrutinized by the hot butch doppelgänger of her forever crush is certainly not helping to make any of this less complicated.
“Yeah, for a minute. She said basically the same thing as the one here.” She says a bunch of words in a row that Alice recognizes separately but has no idea what they mean when put in that order, and one that sounds like “hippopotamus,” which surely can’t be right. Luckily Alice isn’t the only idiot in the room; everyone else makes confused noises until Van translates. “All we can do is wait and see.”
Babs sighs. “Oh, my poor boy,” she whispers, and strokes his hair.
Alice drops her gaze as Babs starts to cry. Fuck, she really shouldn’t be here.
Marie and Aunt Sheila both fold in on Babs, murmuring words of comfort. Van stays where she is, her hands scrunched into her front pockets like she doesn’t know what to do with them.
Alice obviously doesn’t know her at all—that’s kind of the whole deal about right now—but something about the clearly gay sibling standing so outside the family dynamic, so apartfrom the womanly display of grief but not out parking the car with the men…damn. Alice is trying not to get any deeper in with this family than she already is, but Van’s very presence is gripping at the edges of her rib cage with something that feels an awful lot like maybe Alice was the one getting CPR.
Three
By eleven in the morning, Alice is so exhausted that she’s not sure she can keep her story straight anymore. She works from nine at night until seven in the morning, and she’s usually asleep within an hour of getting home. And it’s not like today has been calm or normal in the slightest.
She’s sitting in one of the plastic chairs in the waiting area, trying to figure out how to get the hell out of here without blowing her cover, but her brain is moving too slowly to come up with any actual plans.
It feels like each of her blinks is taking longer than normal, which explains how Van is somehow able to come and sit next to her without her noticing.
“Hey, no offense,” Van says, “but you look dead on your feet.”
Alice looks over at her, trying and most likely failing to scowl. “That’s probably a very offensive thing to say in a hospital,” she hears herself saying. But, oh shit! Bad Alice! Don’t make dead people jokes to the person whose brother is in a coma right now. “Fuck. Sorry. I didn’t—”
But Van cuts her off with a laugh, something low and deep that feels oddly private. “You’re good, Allie.”
“Alice,” she quickly corrects, and Van nods her apology.
“Right, sorry. Alice.” She drops her head back, rubbing at her eyes. “I knew that. Alice, wonderland, et cetera. Long morning.”
“Yeah,” Alice says softly. “No worries.” Van’s eyes are closed, so Alice lets herself take in Van’s broad shoulders, her long neck, her delicate ears, the sharp lines of a recent haircut at the nape of her neck. For the first time, she actually thinks about the fact that most humans are not awake at four in the morning and Nolan’s family must have all been woken up by a phone call from the hospital, grabbing whatever clothes were nearest and bolting. “Probably not the best wake-up call you’ve ever had?”
Van lets out a sarcastic little chuckle, dropping her hand and opening her eyes again. “Yeah, can’t say I recommend it,” she says. Alice wonders if her voice is a little hoarse because she’s tired, or if that’s how it always is.
