“She’s perfect,” Alice says. She nuzzles her nose into Van. “You’re perfect.” She knows she’s the one who brought it up, but she’s suddenly very aware of the feeling of Van’s hands on her body, her chest under Alice’s palm, and she’s ready to stop talking about Van’s mother and baby sister now. She sets her tea down on the coffee table and then swings a leg over, straddling Van’s lap.
“Hi,” Van says, her hands automatically going to Alice’s thighs, high enough up to be a promise.
“Hi,” Alice says, already dipping her head down and letting Van take absolutely everything she has.
They move to the bed when Frank gets a bit too involved. Alice should have been asleep for hours now, but she’s pretty sure she’s never going back to her job. Not when it would keep her away from Van, would mean spending days alone in this bed and nights alone behind that desk, instead of nights here like this, with Van’s lips pressed to hers, Van’s hips pinning her down on the bed, Van’s fingers slipping inside her.
No, she’ll find another job. She’ll put all of this behind her—the night shift, that lobby, Nolan, the enormous lie—and she’ll stay right here. On her back, in this bed, listening to Van whisper encouragement in her ear and then slowly falling asleep with her legs still wrapped around Van’s, Frank quietly snoring in the corner.
Epilogue
One hand interlaced with the other, Alice thumps down rhythmically on the middle of the chest, chanting out loud. “Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive—god, I should work out more, why are my arms so weak—stayin’ alive.”
There’s a muffled laugh that sounds suspiciously like her girlfriend, and the CPR teacher calls out, “Try to focus, everyone.”
Oops. Alice concentrates on the dummy in front of her. Van and Stephanie are hosting a free CPR training for their clients, staff, and the local community, and while Alice is ostensibly the poster child for needing to know how to do CPR, she’s mostly just embarrassing herself because apparently she has the worst technique in the entire class. Van and Stephanie were due to be recertified, and it had been Van’s idea to drum up business for the practice by making it a public event.
“You’re doing great, babe,” Van says, supportive as always, and Alice almost laughs. She’s not, but it’s okay. The dummy doesn’t seem to know the difference.
“When do I breathe into his mouth?” Alice asks the instructor. She’s named her dummy Bradley, and decided he’s been injured in a devastating water balloon fight.
“We don’t recommend performing rescue breathing unless you’re trained to do so,” the instructor says. “Just keep going with the compressions.”
Well, shit. Alice will take “Information That Would Have Been Useful Eighteen Months Ago” for five hundred dollars, Alex.
“Oh no,” Van says, using the dry tone of voice that everyone thinks is serious but Alice knows is a joke, always accompanied by that quiet twinkle in her eye. “But you were so looking forward to playing tonsil hockey with Bradley.”
The instructor frowns down at Alice before kneeling next to Van and readjusting Van’s hands on her dummy’s chest. She does not seem to enjoy Alice’s jokes, and is apparently fixated on the nuances of Van’s form, clearly having pegged her as the person with the best chance of actually saving someone if push came to…well. Not breath, apparently.
“Like this,” the instructor says. “Harder.”
Van’s ears turn pink, and Alice somehow resists the urge to mount her then and there. “Yeah, Vanessa,” Alice says, forgetting to thump on Bradley’s chest at all, letting him go gently into the good night. “Give it to him harder. He needs itharder,baby.”
The instructor shoots Alice a deeply disappointed look. “This is very serious,” she chastises. “This is life or death.”
Yeah, Alice knows that, actually.
The instructor is saved from Alice puttingherin a life-or-death situation by Frank bounding up to the class and proceeding to lick every dummy in the face. “Frank!” Alice calls,hauling him off Bradley. “She said not to do rescue breathing unless you’re trained for it.”
Frank seems unperturbed, and Van quickly stands up and tugs him across the open space filled with exam tables and exercise mats, back into her small private office tucked next to the bathroom.
“Sorry,” one of the kids in the circle says to Alice, looking embarrassed. “I went into the office to say hi to the dog, but he slipped out.”
“That’s okay,” Alice says quickly. “It’s fine.”
The instructor, wiping dog saliva off her thousand-dollar dummy, looks like she might not think it’s very fine. Alice would apologize to her if she hadn’t spent the last hour glowering at Alice’s jokes and only helping Van with her form. Yes, Alice is being stupid and Van is talented and strong and very likely to save a human life and is also super hot—which the instructor definitely has noticed—but, like…lady. Try to triage, damn! There is a teenager across the circle who had his dummy face down for the first twenty minutes. Not sure if she knows it or not, but this is, like, life or death?
Before Van is back in the circle, the front door to the clinic opens and twin tornados sweep into the building. “Minivan!” Hazel shrieks as Sebastian skids up to Bradley, kicks him hard in the groin with one light-up sneaker, and announces, “I have to pee!”
“My children, everybody,” Isabella deadpans from the door, holding out an arm to hug Van.
“They certainly know how to make an entrance,” Van says, hugging her tightly. The CPR lady looks like she might have a conniption, and Alice takes pity on her, scooping Hazel up into her arms and pointing Sebastian toward the bathroom.
“Hey, nugget,” she says. “You ready to have a sleepover with Cousin Frankie tonight?”
Hazel nods. “He donna teep in my ded,” she says. She’s three now, and while her sentence structure is advanced, her pronunciation is still garbled enough that half the time Sebastian has to translate for Alice. She got this one herself, though.
“He’s gonna sleep in your bed? That’s so fun.”
