“I don’t understand what changed,” Van says. The air between them becomes thick, every breath humid inside Alice’s lungs. Alice watches as Van blinks, the way her long, delicate eyelashes sweep against her cheeks. The constant want inside Alice’s body starts to change from a tug she can resist into something that will sweep her off her feet and directly into Van’s chest. “You—you kissed me at the hospital. Why?”
Alice isn’t quite sure what to say. Her brain isn’t moving quickly enough; she can’t think right. “I don’t know,” she finally says, her eyes slipping closed. “I just…I couldn’t not, anymore.”
“You…couldn’t not?” Van asks, and Alice opens her eyes, almost laughing at the look on Van’s face. Something hopeful but confused, still torn. “I—help me out with that double negative.”
“I had to,” Alice whispers into the electric, crackling space between them, and she sees the way Van almost shudders. “I couldn’t go another second without having kissed you.”
Van is so close now. Almost looming over Alice, and Alice can smell her hair and her skin and she remembers with perfect clarity what it was like to kiss her, to press her body into Van’s,to feel Van’s hands slide up her back. Alice feels mesmerized, like her body and mind are out of her control, and all she can do is stare, unblinking, and move closer and closer until the space between them would have to be measured in atoms instead of inches.
“And now?” Van asks, her voice a whisper too. “What about now?”
Alice swallows. She’s never wanted a person this badly in her life, never felt this desperate need for someone else’s body and affection before, but there’s something sticky between them. Well, several dozen sticky things. An entire syrup factory of complications and lies, but their chests are almost touching now, and all Alice can think to say is, “Aren’t you with Sarah?”
Van blinks. “Not any more than you’re with Nolan.”
Alice huffs out a breath. It’s a point well taken. Van is scarred from Alice being with Nolan, even though it wasn’t ever real, and now Alice will never heal from how deeply the image of Van holding on to Sarah is gouged in her brain. Regardless of what’s happening between Van and Sarah—if that was one weak moment, or if Van is seriously considering trying again with her—neither of their hands are clean here. Although Van’s hands are lightly dusted and Alice’s are caked with mud, so it’s not the same.
It’s all so entirely messed up, she knows that, but Van doesn’t step back, and neither does Alice. She’s fully wrapped up in the hypnotic haze of Van’s presence now, what Van so clearly wants, and it looks like she may have hypnotized Van herself. It’s all both of them can do to stand here in this tiny, molding kitchen, only electrons between them, and breathe the same air. Want the same thing, which they still absolutely cannot have.
“It won’t change anything,” Alice manages to say, becauseit won’t. Throwing herself at Van now, sleeping together, letting Van devour her, doing everything Alice wants and more…it won’t change a thing. Van is still sick, and Alice is still a coward, and Babs is still a homophobe, and Nolan is still awake. Nothing is different, except Alice is back on the night shift and her life is over. “It’ll still be…this.”
“And what is this?” Van asks, but she’s almost smiling.
“Fucked,” Alice says, and Van laughs.
“So,” Van says after a beat, taking another step closer, even though Alice would have sworn there already wasn’t any space left. “If we don’t do this, it’ll all be fucked. And if we do, also, still fucked.”
Alice sucks in a deep breath, which is a huge mistake because all she smells is Van—it’s like she’s buried her nose in Van’s neck and inhaled. Maybe it’s the cologne in the air, maybe the electricity jumping between them, but it almost sounds like Van is making a good point. If her life is going to suck either way, why not give herself this?
Some part of her knows that this is incredibly shaky logic, that sleeping with the person you’re desperately pining for but can’t have has literally never made a situation better, but it’s surprisingly easy to squash that part down underneath the weight of how badly she wants this.
“Tell me to go,” Van finally says, and Alice should. The fact that Van’s devastatingly sexy and smells delicious doesn’t change the lie or the MS or Alice’s trauma. Literally nothing is different now from when Van walked out on Christmas, except this time Van is saying, “Tell me to go and I will,” and Alice can’t.
She won’t.
She reaches out instead, grabbing the cuff of Van’s sleeve.
The part of her that knows this is a terrible idea is gettingquieter and quieter under the ringing in her ears, the thundering sound of her heartbeat, the rushing whoosh of everything she wants rising up from her toes to overwhelm her. It’s like Van’s very presence has pressed the mute button on all of Alice’s higher-level thinking—or maybe just her anxiety—and all she can do now is exist. Is do what she so desperately wants to.
“Don’t go,” she says, and Van steps into her.
Van doesn’t kiss her like she’s drowning, or like she’s oxygen. She doesn’t kiss her like she’s dying, or like this is the last kiss before the world explodes. That’s how they had kissed in the hospital bathroom, like it was their only chance, like they knew it was a moment snatched out of a different life. Fleeting, temporary, secret and furtive and desperate.
But today, in this small kitchen, Van kisses Alice like she has time. Like she has hours and years to spend exploring Alice’s mouth, like this is the first of countless millions of moments they’ll spend pressed together like this. She kisses Alice not like she needs her to survive but like she’s going to savor her forever.
One arm wraps low around Alice’s back, and the other cups her head so gently and tenderly that Alice has to bite down on Van’s lip to keep from crying. Van’s mouth is working smoothly against Alice’s, full and warm and caring, and when she sucks on Alice’s tongue, Alice feels her knees buckle. Every shuddering breath Alice takes smells like Van, tastes like her, and she doesn’t realize her own hands are moving until Van’s shirt is halfway unbuttoned and her fingers find the warm, impossibly smooth skin of her chest. Van gasps into Alice’s mouth, and Alice immediately digs her fingers in to make Van do it again and again.
She’s not sure how long they stay there, kissing and trying to fuse together next to the coffeemaker, but eventually Vanstarts to take steps backward, pulling Alice along with her. They back out of the kitchen, still attached in every possible way, and then Alice takes the lead.
This is the worst idea anyone has ever had, but also already the best thing that’s ever happened. She walks backward, pulling Van along with lips and grasping fingers, both of Van’s hands hot and gentle on her cheeks, not stopping until the backs of her legs hit her bed, grateful for once for her tiny studio apartment, for how few steps it requires to go from the kitchen to the comforter. Alice wordlessly lays herself down, trusting Van to follow her.
She opens her eyes enough to see the look on Van’s face as she plants her knees on the bed, crawling slowly up to where Alice is. It’s the hottest thing Alice has ever seen, and she’s reaching out to pull Van down on top of her before Van’s even made it all the way.
“Please,” she hears herself say, and she’s not sure what she’s asking for until she has it. Until Van’s lips are back on hers, Van’s tongue brushing against hers, Van’s body coming to rest, heavy and perfect, on top of hers.
Alice feels like all of her skin is too small, too hot. She needs to get all of her clothes off, and all of Van’s, but she also needs both of them to never, ever move from this perfect position, this perfect moment. She licks into Van’s mouth, and Van makes a moaning sound that has Alice curling her toes and clenching her thighs.
She probably should have assumed Van would be a slow, careful, thoughtful, incredibly generous lover, but she’d been trying so hard not to think about Van in this context that every movement of Van’s feels like a surprise. How long Van kisses her before sitting up enough to pull Alice’s shirt off, how meticulously her hands map out Alice’s chest and stomach andback before even reaching for her breasts. How deeply she kisses Alice while Alice is trying to unbutton the rest of Van’s shirt, how she finally shrugs it off her shoulders like they have all the time in the world, like building Alice’s pleasure one tiny movement at a time is all that matters.
