Alice hears Marie shush Sebastian, stage-whispering, “Wait, buddy, I gotta hear this!”
“Yes,” Alice says, proud that her voice isn’t shaking yet. “I meant it.”
“Did you lie about anything else?” Van asks, and Alice tilts her head. It’s not what she expected Van to ask. “Anything but Nolan?”
“No,” Alice says quickly. “Nothing else.”
And of course she technically never…whatever.
Van takes a step closer, and Marie starts making a low rumble of excited sounds, like a teakettle getting ready to hit a full boil. “What do you want, Alice?” Van asks. “Five years from now, what does your life look like?”
Alice can’t help herself. She reaches out and touches Van’s sleeves, the thick, soft material of her shirt and the warm strength of her wrists below. “You.” Her voice is hoarse now, cracking again, but she doesn’t let it stop her. “This. Us. Here, with my family, and yours. And Frank. Just…with you.” She lets out a long, shuddering breath. “I just want you, Van.”
The Marie teakettle squeaks—only once, but very loudly.
She feels Van’s arms twitch under her fingertips.
“You know about the MS.” Van says it like it’s a factual query, but Alice knows what she’s really asking. “It’s a lot.”
Alice nods. “I do. And it—to tell the truth, it freaked me out for a while. But I’m…” She takes a final step in, and she throws all caution to the wind. She reaches up and cups Van’s perfect jaw in her hands, lets her thumbs brush against the soft skin of her cheeks, still cold from outside. “I’m all in.”
Alice faintly hears Isabella make a little sound from where she and Aunt Sheila are peeking out of the kitchen, sees out of the corner of her eye that Bella has a hand over her heart and Aunt Sheila may or may not be beaming and excitedly shakingBella back and forth like a rag doll. Marie actually shrieks and Sebastian does too, likely for a different reason but it still adds to the festive atmosphere as the worry in Van’s face slowly fades into the biggest, most purely joyful smile Alice has ever seen.
Van’s hands are on Alice now, one wrapping around her neck and one warm and steady on her hip, and Alice hears what sounds suspiciously like Isabella whooping as Van leans down, as beautiful and strong and soft as she’s ever been, and kisses Alice like nothing else exists.
“Fuck,” Van mumbles against Alice’s lips. “Me too, Al. I’m all in too.”
“Mommy!” Sebastian yells as Alice finally, finally lets herself sink into Van’s body, happily begins to be devoured by Van’s lips and her grasping hands. “What does ‘fuck’ mean?”
—
It’s less than a five-minute drive from Isabella’s house to Van’s. Van drives with one hand on the steering wheel and the other entwined with Alice’s, both resting on Alice’s knee like they belong there. Aunt Sheila and Marie have been relegated to taking an Uber home—although Alice has a sneaking suspicion they may end up watching all ofMoanawith Sebastian before they leave. Ani DiFranco classics are softly coming through the old speakers of the station wagon, Ani DiFranco himself is curled up in the backseat napping off his Teddy Grahams windfall, and every breath smells like Van. Alice can’t take her eyes off Van, who can clearly tell, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth even as she keeps her focus on the road.
She pulls into her driveway and Alice gets out of the car, inordinately pleased that Van hadn’t done something idiotic like ask Alice if she wanted to go back to her own apartment.If Alice had it her way, she’d never leave this tiny pocket of North Portland, would bounce between Van’s and Isabella’s and never get cold or lonely ever again.
Van has to jiggle the key in the lock a little because everything contracts in the cold, and Alice can’t help herself. “Doorgasm,” she whispers, and Van laughs.
Frank bounds inside and Alice follows him, kicking off her shoes and trailing Van into the living room. Alice has only been here the one time, but something about it already feels like home. Maybe it’s how easily Van moves through the space, for once like she’s not worried about being too big or knocking into something. Maybe it’s how everything Alice sees is something she would have picked out for herself—the comfortable couch, the mismatched collection of round-bellied mugs with weird sayings on them likeHappy Birthday Grandpa,the pictures of family and friends and landscapes on the walls.
Or maybe it’s just Van. Maybe if they spent more time at Alice’s apartment, the place she’s lived since she was nineteen and alone for the first time, it would feel more like home too.
Van makes them both tea before they go to the couch, and Alice gets to curl up into Van like she’d wanted to at Chanukah and every moment since, tucking her knees up to her chest and leaning her whole body into Van’s. Van’s arm is tight around her waist, and the kiss she presses to Alice’s hair feels so good that Alice’s eyes almost roll back into her head. Frank curls up next to Alice, his back warm against her hip, and something behind her heart that’s been pinched and terrified since she was eight years old slowly relaxes, melting like it’s finally in the sunshine.
“What about your next five years?” Alice asks after a while, trying to keep herself from falling asleep in case this is all acruel dream, and she’ll wake up alone in her cold bed. “What do you want?”
“This,” Van says softly, the hand on Alice’s thigh squeezing slightly. “You and me, here. I want—I don’t want a flashy life, you know? I want to…take you on trips and cook dinner with you and see our families, and spend most nights just like this.”
Alice drops her head onto Van’s shoulder. “Trips, hmm? Where are you taking me?”
“I dunno,” Van says, and Alice can hear that she’s still smiling, even as she kisses Alice’s head again. “Anywhere you want to go. Especially if I can see you in a bikini.”
Alice snorts, burying her face in Van’s chest, but she’s suddenly seized by a vision of Van in a sports bra and trunks, sunglasses and trucker hat in the sunshine, and her throat immediately goes dry. She swallows thickly. Beach vacation is definitely an urgent priority.
“Do you think your mom’s going to be okay with this?” Alice asks after a few minutes. “This” being Van not only bringing home a woman, of course, but Van bringing home the very woman who lied to all of them for months. She presses her palm to Van’s chest, hard, as if to say,I’m not going anywhere, no matter what she says.
“I hope so,” Van says, settling Alice a little more comfortably against herself. “She loves you, so that’ll help, I think. Aunt Sheila’s on board and she’s kind of a force of nature, as you might have noticed.” Alice laughs. She has, in fact, noticed. “And Marie’s going to be insufferable, so I’m not sure Mom will have much of a choice, unless she wants every holiday to feature, like, a full-ass PowerPoint lecture about it.”
Alice laughs. She can picture it perfectly. Marie cosplayingas a gender studies professor, smacking a ruler on her palm and pacing back and forth, quizzing Babs on queer terminology, they/them pronouns, and forcing her to admit that Van being happy is more important than Babs’s vague, quiet homophobia.
