Alice tries to be patient, she really does. She tries to distract herself, but every centimeter of exposed skin, every breath and blink and kiss only spirals her need up higher and higher. She scratches lightly at the red marks on Van’s back where her sports bra has dug into her skin, and then Van sits up, pulling Alice to straddle her lap and kissing her for what feels like hours, wet and a little messy and so devastatingly hot that Alice thinks she might die.
Sitting topless on Van fucking Altman’s lap, in nothing but her sleep shorts, Van’s hands grasping at her back and hips, Van’s mouth hot under hers—this is the pinnacle of Alice’s short, relatively shitty life. She’s never been so happy to be alive, to have a body, to be a person, than she is here, right now, holding on to Van’s jaw, licking into her mouth and grinding down on her.
Although, of course, the summit keeps getting higher and higher, every second replacing the last as the best Alice has ever experienced. Because now Van’s peeling off her own bra, then wrapping her arms around Alice and toppling her gently onto her back, pulling off Alice’s shorts and Alice is unbuttoning Van’s jeans, and then Van is lying back down on top of her, naked this time, and that’s better than anything that’s happened before.
Finally Van touches her, easing first her fingers and then her mouth down between Alice’s legs, and Alice has clearly transcended to a higher plane of existence. She comes twice before Van crawls back up, and a third time along with her, Alice’sfingers deep inside Van and Van’s lips hot against hers, her hands insistent but so, so gentle on Alice’s cheeks.
Van somehow manages to pull a blanket up over them, and Alice drifts off, more than halfway on top of her, their sweaty skin sticking together, warmer and happier than she’s ever been in her life.
—
Alice has always woken up pretty quickly. Even the few times she’d woken up in someone else’s apartment, she’d always known right where she was. Probably from all of those years of waking up in a hospital room, or listening to her dad coughing and making sure he was still breathing. So tonight, she wakes up, and she knows exactly whose head is on her chest, whose arm is heavy across her stomach, whose leg is thrown over hers.
She cranes her neck to look at her clock. It’s almost seven in the evening, and it’s dark as sin outside. She has two hours before she has to clock in at work. She needs to shower and eat something before she heads to the bus stop.
And she has to deal with the fact that she just slept with Van.
That she just had the best sex of her life with Van, and then fell asleep with her. That she’s woken up feeling better than she has in recent memory, if not ever.
She looks down at Van, at her perfect, handsome face. She looks younger in sleep, some of her worry lines eased, her lips open, each of her breaths warm and soft against the naked skin of Alice’s chest. Alice feels a rush of tenderness, so strong and fierce that it brings tears to her eyes. This woman, this gorgeous, incredible, strong person, sleeping so bonelessly on top of Alice—god. Alice loves her.
Alice loves her.
But in the harsh, stark-naked reality of the evening, Alice knows her choice isn’t a lifetime of this—of mind-blowing, tender, loving sex—or a lifetime of emptiness. “This” doesn’t exist: a life where the lie doesn’t matter, where Van isn’t sick, where no one cares how Alice ended up in the family in the first place. No, the choice is a lifetime of wanting Van and watching her slip away as she gets sicker and sicker—cut off from her family because of Alice’s lie—or a lifetime of not having her at all.
Alice wants to grab onto Van with both hands and keep her close forever, but she can’t. That’s not a real option. The only options are to lose her slowly or lose her quickly, and Alice has never found herself to be particularly brave.
She eases herself out from underneath Van. She gets dressed as quickly as she can, and she leaves her apartment two hours early. She can shower at the gym in the basement of the office building. She can buy herself something to eat from one of the fast-food places off the bus line.
She sends Van a text from the bus, something bland about being sorry for leaving, something that says absolutely nothing about how Alice feels, about what it meant to her, about how stupid and beautiful it was, and then she lets herself cry all the way across the river.
Twenty-Five
It’s almost dinnertime on Saturday—the only time Alice’s schedule overlaps with the kids’—and the kids are in what Isabella calls their “witching hour.” Hazel has already had two meltdowns and Sebastian is on the cusp of one himself, one small Lego-related indignity away from losing it completely. Henry is out of town for a conference, so Isabella is more frazzled than usual, and she and Alice haven’t gotten to talk much yet.
“Isn’t this so fun,” Isabella says as she mops up the milk Hazel has spilled all over the table for the fourth time. “Don’t you want kids so badly?”
“So badly,” Alice says, matching her sarcastic tone. She absolutely doesn’t want kids—she feels like she still hasn’t started her own life yet and has zero desire to put herself on the back burner to wipe someone else’s butt, even if they are very cute and snuggly—but she’s missed these two. Being an auntie is exactly the amount of kid time she wants, thank you very much.
“So what’s going on with you?” Bella asks as Hazel shoves a literal fistful of cheese into her mouth, like the icon she is. “You seem sad…der than usual.”
Alice bites her lip. It’s weird to talk about this in front of the kids, but they live here, so beggars can’t be choosers, etc. “I did a very, uh, adult activity on Wednesday.” She lifts her eyebrows, and Isabella makes a truly delighted sound.
“Ohreally!” Isabella says, and Hazel uses her moment of distraction to grab way more shredded mozzarella out of the bag than Isabella would have given her. “With whom?”
Alice grimaces, bracing for the backlash she knows she well and truly deserves. “With, um…Van?”
“WHAT?” Isabella’s squawk is so loud that Hazel starts crying and Sebastian throws his hot dog onto the floor. There’s some bustling around as Bella hauls Hazel out of her high chair, plops her on Alice’s lap, and rescues the hot dog, telling Sebastian she’s getting him a new one from the kitchen but really just holding the old one out of sight for ten seconds and then making it magically reappear.
He enthusiastically tucks into the “new” hot dog, Hazel goes back to eating cheese by the fistful, and Alice fiercely wishes all of her problems could be solved so easily.
“With Van?” Isabella says, almost whispering now, clearly trying to overcompensate. “How? Why? When? How was it?”
“It was…” Alice pauses, trying not to think about it, but instead remembering it in vibrant Technicolor. The way Van’s mouth felt on her, the gentle way she’d brushed Alice’s hair out of her face, the tender encouragement she’d whispered into Alice’s skin, how strong and sturdy she was, how gorgeous. “It was better than I could’ve imagined,” she finally says, proud that her voice only shakes a little.
“Alice, honey…” Isabella pauses for a second, like she’snot sure if she should say what she’s thinking. Hazel swipes at her milk, and Alice catches it before it topples over.
“Say it,” Alice tells the milk.
