—
After a week of night shifts, Alice knows she needs a different job. She knows that. This isn’t the only office in the entire city—someone must need a receptionist during the day. But the transition to vampirism has entirely jacked up her sleep cycle and she’s so exhausted—body, mind, soul, wallet—that searching for one feels impossible.
Since the sun sets around four-thirty in the afternoon, Alice’s commute home after her shift is literally the only time she sees daylight now. She’s pretty sure that would be enough to throw anyone into a depression, but that’s honestly the least terrible part of being back on nights. It’s only been a week, but Alice misses people so desperately. Her people, yes, but also customers and the baristas at Fresh Grounds, visitors and tenants at work, her neighbors on the stairs or doing laundry, the regular commuters on the bus she exchanges friendly nods with.
Alice is alone all the time now, and the silence is almost physically painful. All her limp, exhausted brain can do is taunt her with memories of Van: the scent of her cologne, the way rain looks on her black hair, the sound of her laugh, the comfort of being tucked in the car with her, the feel of her hands sliding under Alice’s sweater. There’s nothing to distract Alice from her agonizing longing for everything she doesn’thave, and the texts from Isabella with videos of the kids or pictures of the drawings they’ve done for her only make it worse.
Alice could survive losing Van and the Altmans because she had Isabella and the kids and daylight and the promise of a better, non-nocturnal life. And now she has nothing, and every single loss is cutting deeply enough to maim her, and there’s no reprieve in sight.
Just an endless stream of nights.
Twenty-Four
Alice is trying her hardest to sleep, even though it’s early afternoon, but someone won’t stop knocking on her front door. It’s the middle of the night for her, and while she hasn’t totally reacclimated to her new night-shift schedule, her body desperately wants to be turned off right now.
“I don’t have weed,” she yells from bed, her eye mask still firmly in place. She can’t afford blackout curtains, so the eye mask is a godsend. “He’s next door.”
“I’m not looking for weed,” says a voice that makes Alice sit straight up in bed, ripping off the eye mask. She’s groggy, and the voice was coming through the door, but still. That sounded like…
“Alice?”
Alice skids across the studio, hardly noticing the way the floor is freezing under her bare feet. She opens the door, and her heart stops beating.
It’s Van.
She’s standing right there, tall and sturdy like an oak tree, a frown on her face and water dripping from her jacket.
Alice opens and closes her mouth a few times, but the words don’t come. The sun is up but it’s the middle of the night, and she’s so lonely that she’s been nauseous for the last week, and now Van is here. At her apartment. Looking serious and focused and a little disappointed.
“Can I come in?” Van finally says when it’s clear Alice isn’t quite capable of forming words yet.
“I—sorry, yes. Of course.” Alice nods too many times, belatedly backing up and making space for Van to come in. Alice is wearing only her sleep shirt and a pair of soft shorts, no bra, and she wonders how weird it would be to go get dressed before another word is said.
Van seems to be opting for bulldozing through the awkwardness. She takes off her jacket and steps out of her boots like she’s expecting to stay, and Alice blinks a few times, trying to wake herself up. She’s had more than one dirty daydream that started this way, but she’s pretty sure this is real life and Alice is not in fact a character in a low-budget porno who is about to pay for a pizza by dropping to her knees.
Van comes to stand in the middle of the apartment, one hand on the breakfast bar that also serves as kitchen counter and dining room table. Alice goes to the other side of it, planting herself firmly in the kitchen like eighteen inches of peeling laminate countertop will protect her from whatever is coming.
“What…” It comes out as a bit of a croak, so Alice clears her throat and tries again. “What are you doing here?” Van swallows heavily, and Alice realizes how that sounded. “No,” Alice says as quickly as she can, reaching her hands out. “I didn’t mean…” She takes another breath, tries to reset herself. To be slow and measured and careful, like Van always is.“It’s always good to see you.”
The side of Van’s mouth twitches up, and Alice knows they’re both thinking about the last two times they saw each other, in those two parks, when it was distinctly not good at all.
“I just mean…hi, I guess,” Alice says, feeling like an idiot.
Van dips her head but doesn’t take her eyes off Alice’s face for several beats too long. “Hi.”
Alice doesn’t know what to say, or do with her hands. Her floor feels like an ice rink against her bare feet, and she only slept for, like, three hours. She decides to make some coffee to have a task to accomplish, something to do with her hands. She wishes her mind were racing, trying to figure out what’s going on here, but it feels like every one of her thoughts keeps getting caught in a tangled cobweb of exhaustion.
“I want to apologize,” Van finally says. Alice freezes, her back to Van while she measures the coffee grounds. “For how I acted at Christmas.”
Well, that’s not right. If anyone should be apologizing here, it’s Alice. Van hasn’t done anything except be perfect and irresistible and have morals. Alice is the lying asshole here. She turns to Van, a full scoop of coffee in her hand. “You have nothing to apologize for,” she says as vehemently as she can muster in her exhausted state, but Van shakes her head.
“I knew the situation,” Van says, and Alice sets the scoop down on the counter, sure her hand is going to start shaking and not at all in the mood to clean coffee grounds off her floor. “I knew you were with my brother, and I pushed it anyway. I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you for being in the position I knew you were in.”
Alice shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have done that kiss withhim.” It’s nearly a whisper, her voice almost hoarse. “I shouldn’t have gotten under his blanket. It wasn’t…” She lets out a puff of air. She’s so tired and lonely and Van is right here. Standing in her kitchen/dining/living room, looking beautiful and strong and sad.
“I think the only person who wanted any of that to happen was your mom,” Alice adds. “I shouldn’t have done it.”
Van holds Alice’s gaze as she moves around the counter in the deliberate and careful way she so often does, stepping into the narrow kitchen with Alice, close enough to touch, her strong body blocking Alice in.
