8. Alana
Going backto work on Monday felt weird. Alana’s whole life had changed over the course of the weekend, and everything was still the same in the office. She had switched the ‘engagement’ ring that Hudson had given her to her other hand so she could wear it without anyone asking too many questions.
Could she have just kept it at home and not worn it at all?
Well. Yeah.
Was she going to spend time contemplating why the thought of wearing a ring he had bought for her gave her upsettingly high amounts of dopamine? No. No she was not. What she was going to do, however, was email HR about adding him to her insurance, and she was going to…she checked her calendar and bit back a groan. And right after she sent a two sentence email to Rhoda in Benefits (which she did not have time to overthink), she was going to sit through a meeting with someone on the financial auditing team. And while Patrick explained to them for the one hundred thousandth time that if they were spending money on software upgrades and consultants it was because they were necessary business expenses and not a cover for some devious financial crime, she was not going to panic about the email she’d sent.
Was being a little bit of a conspiracy theorist a prerequisite to being a member of the financial auditing team? It certainly felt like it to Alana.
‘Dinner together tonight while I finish packing?’ Shannon texted her. ‘I want to hear EVERYTHING.’ Shannon was leaving for Montana the next morning and Alana was not ready.
‘I am going to personally murder JP,’ Alana replied. ‘If Hudson hasn’t already.’
‘OMG what did he do?’
‘Sorry have a meeting now byeeeee.’
‘Liar.’
‘You’ll never know.’
‘*middle finger emoji*’
Shannon was in the middle of loading up a pickup truck when Alana got home. “You have to tell me everything that happened.”
“Everything?” Alana asked. “Also, good God, could you get more cliched?”
“At least it isn’t covered in mud and cow shit,” Shannon responded. She hefted one last suitcase into the back of the truck and dusted her hands off. “Shit, it’s cold. I ordered soup and you’re going to sit down and tell me what exactly happened on your honeymoon.” She snickered. “This will never stop being the funniest thing that has ever happened.”
“I don’t know if I’d use the word funny to describe it.” Maybe in a decade she would find the relationship seminar funny. She wasn’t quite there yet. “It was a weird weekend. But we’re legally married and hopefully Hudson should be on my health insurance soon. And then I can go to the doctor, and he can quit his job and be an artist. Which hopefully does not involve nearly as much temper tantruming as it did over the weekend.”
“Temper tantruming?” Shannon locked the pickup truck and the two of them headed inside and up to the apartment.
“I’d never seen him work before, and apparently he’s having…artist block now, I guess?” Alana giggled. “It’s actually really cute.”
“Really cute.” Shannon waggled her eyebrows. “You know, people who aren’t into other people don’t particularly really find artist temper tantrums adorable.”
“He just pouts a lot. It’s really funny. Especially because like, you wouldn’t look at him and be like, Ah, yes. Hudson Miller. Famous up and coming artist who makes magic out of things you would never think could be made into art. Looks like a lumberjack became a banker. And he acts like one too. Like, I have never met a human being who was so repressed.”
“I don’t know if I would call him repressed. I think you just like to needle him and your version of needling him is to–”
Alanna laughed. “Terrify him just a little bit?”
“Oh, we’re calling that a little bit.”
Alana thought about the conversation she had had with Hudson over the weekend. “Well, I don’t know. It’s just fun. He’s fun to bother.”
“And we’re not reading anything into this?”
“Why would I?” Alana asked. “You’re also fun to bother, but like, in a different way.”
“Well, yeah, we’ve already discussed that neither of us want to fuck the other one,” Shannon said, unlocking the front door to their apartment.
It was still her and Shannon’s apartment, even when Shannon left for Montana. Alana was not going to consider an alternative universe where Shannon didn’t come back to New York.
“That was not what I meant, but okay.” Alana hung up her coat and dropped her bag on the table before flopping on the couch. “This is stupid.”
“Your feelings?”
“No.” Alana said. “My uterus.”
Shannon, who was on her way to the kitchen, whirled around. “Already?”
“No, not yet.” Alana sighed. “Probably soon though.” She looked at her nails mournfully. “Really hope I can manage to get to Ophelia before I’m incapacitated for a couple days.”
“Well, the fridge is fully stocked,” Shannon said. “And I think the freezer is, too.”
“You are the best roommate,” Alana said, “Even though you are an enormous pain in my ass.”
“I love you,” Shannon said.
“Love you too,” Alana grumbled.
“You have quite a weird way of showing it,” Shannon teased.
“Shut up. Do you need any help with packing?”
“Nah, I’m done. I’ll bring down the rest of my things tomorrow, they’re going in the bed in the back and I didn’t want to leave them there overnight.”
“I would just like to state for the record, I am big mad at your family for stealing you from me.”
Shannon dropped down on the couch next to Alana. “Same.”
“Maybe the scenery change will give you motivation?” Alana offered.
“The only motivation it’s going to give me is the motivation to get the fuck out of there.”
“Doesn’t that count?”
“I don’t know if that’s going to manifest itself in the next monster book.” She snickered. “I cannot believe you told Hudson about them.”
“Well, I didn’t tell him you wrote them, I just told him I was reading one. And it’s not like he’s gone back home and bought a copy of it to read himself. We both know he’s not going to do that.”
“Okay, but the thought of Hudson Miller actually reading a post-apocalyptic monster fucking romance brings immense joy to my heart.”
Alana giggled. “I mean, same. Not that it’s happening or anything.”
“Well, at your next marriage boot camp meeting, maybe you can take turns reading it to each other. That’s a sweet coupley thing to do, right? Reading books to each other?”
Alana’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Shannon. Love of my life. Light of my heart. What do you mean, the next marriage boot camp meeting?”
“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything at all.”
“I’m telling, Shann.” Alana grabbed her phone and dialed Hudson, turning on the speaker.
“Nooooo!”
Hudson’s voice was slightly raspier and growlier than usual when he answered. “Hey.”
She should not be getting this fluttery over that.
And yet!
“Hudson, Shannon accidentally slipped and said something about our next marriage boot camp meeting,” Alana tattled as Shannon shrieked in the background.
There was silence on the other end.
“Hudson?”
“Just trying to figure out what they possibly have thought of that would be worse than Lauren,” Hudson replied. “JP did just get a slightly alarming number of packages delivered to the apartment. I thought that was just shit for his new studio setup.”
“Do you think they hired a real marriage counselor or is JP gonna get one of his actor friends to play one?”
“Honestly, it could go either way.”
“This is what happens when you have friends that have taken improv classes,” Alana grumbled. “Why don’t any of them believe that we can pretend to be married?”
“Uh, because neither of us has ever taken an improv class?” Hudson offered.
“How hard could they be? Don’t you just say, ‘yes and’ and then, I dunno, act like the sun or something?”
Shannon shrieked with laughter as she headed to the kitchen. “I’m gonna rat you out to JP.”
“Is that not what improv class is?” Alana called.
“To be honest, I’ve never taken one either, so I have no idea.” Shannon waltzed out of the room. “But I wasn’t the one disparaging.”
“Hudson, save me from her!”
Hudson was too busy laughing on the other line to respond.
“Wowwwww. We’ve been married for like, forty-eight hours and he’s already abandoned me.” Alana followed Shannon to the kitchen to help put together dinner. “I should have known.”
“Alana, the steed is not gonna harness itself.”
Alana blinked in surprise.
“Hudson, was that a sex joke?”
“No! What the hell? It was a reference to being a knight on a white horse! Why would you think it was a sex joke?”
“Uh…I was joking. I totally knew it was a white horse reference. Just making sure you did, also.”
“Alana,” Hudson’s voice dropped just a little. “JP and Shannon and everyone else might have a point.”
What in the conversational whiplash?
“Huh?”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
Shannon pulled the soup out of the fridge.
“Or maybe you are just really bad at reading me,” Alana responded as she put the pot onto the stove.
“That might also be true, but you absolutely thought that I was making a sex joke.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“A mildly kinky one, too, at that. Are you into pony play?”
“Okay, I did not reference pony play!” Alana protested.
Shannon’s eyes widened. ‘What the fuck?’ she mouthed. Alana ignored her.
“I just thought you were making a weird dick reference.”
“So, like, a leather kink of sorts?”
“Why do you think it was a kink thing?” Alana demanded.
“Because it doesn’t make sense otherwise!” Hudson replied. “Because if it’s anything other than some sort of kink-related thing, it just feels like a line from a poorly written medieval porn. Also. Why are we arguing about this?”
“You started it.”
“Jesus Christ, Alana.”
“Didn’t realize you guys were friends like that,” Alana replied, knowing full well they weren’t.
“We’re not, but sometimes you have to steal other religion’s dudes to express your feelings.”
“I suppose, but also, we’re not just going to move right past the medieval porn thing.”
Shannon’s eyes got even wider if that was possible.
“Am I wrong, though?” Hudson countered.
“I have never watched a poorly written medieval porn, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh, you’ve only seen the well-written ones?”
“Hudson, I didn’t know people made medieval porn, and I don’t know why you know that.”
“Babe, if there is a kind of porn to be made, they make it. Ask Deacon. He knows.”
She was gonna move right past the whole ‘babe’ thing because if she didn’t, she would go full squealing girly reading a slow-burn fanfic who finally got to the part where the two main characters admitted that they loved each other. Or the fanfic where it was enemies to lovers except for someone hurt one of them and when the other one noticed they went feral. God, she loved fanfic.
“Yeah, of course he does, but why do you?”
“Would you believe me if I said I was hired to do set design for one when I was in college?”
Alana paused. “This feels like two truths and a lie. Also, maybe? I dunno. You went to an artsy college. I got my bachelor’s in computers and cybersecurity from a CUNY. I have no idea what you were doing when I was going to hackathons. Although I’m going to believe that over what was my original theory.”
“Which was?”
“That you were gonna move into this apartment with a big box full of vintage porn VHS tapes.”
“Shannon,” Hudson called. “Is she always like this?”
“You know that she’s usually worse,” Shannon responded. “But she’s a better roommate than JP is.”
“I’ll tell him you said that,” Hudson said.
Alana was on her way up to the office the next morning, after a tearful goodbye for now with Shannon, ready to spend the day moping and panicking because Hudson would be moving in tonight. She was deep in to do list making to prep for a new roommate when Sandra from Accounting dashed into the elevator right before the doors closed. “Good morning. Oh, Alana! Congratulations!” she said.
“On what?”
“Your wedding,” she replied, confused. “It was in the weekly email newsletter?”
It was what? “Oh,” she said, trying to act like a person who actually had gotten married. “I didn’t realize they added it to the newsletter. Thank you.”
She hurried off the elevator, internally in full panic. Why the hell would Rhoda add it to the newsletter? Oh, God, Patrick was going to be so upset he didn’t know. Which, if Alana had gotten married for real, he would have. He would have been at the wedding, too.
Fuck.
Patrick was waiting for her when she got to her office, because Patrick got into work even earlier than she did. “Married?” he said. “Married?”
“In my defense, I didn’t think Rhoda was going to add it to the newsletter!”
“Alana.”
“It was super spontaneous,” Alana tried. “It was a surprise for me, too?”
Patrick didn’t look convinced. “Have I at least met your spouse? Why didn’t they come to the holiday party last year? Your friend Shannon came, right?”
“He was out of town then,” Alana said, thankful she wasn’t fully lying about that. Hudson had been visiting his parents on Long Island the week of the office holiday party, which she remembered because he had been taunting the friend group with texts from ShopRite.
“Well, will he be at this years?”
“Of course. He’s excited to meet you,” Alana lied, hoping that Hudson would be available the night of the office holiday party. “And anyway, if it makes you feel better, neither of our parents were there. We’re probably going to be throwing a wedding party next year as an official celebration.”
“Barbara is going to be thrilled,” Patrick said. “Expect a call or email from her soon. You know she’s going to clear her calendar for you.”
If it was possible for Alana to feel more terrible about getting married to Hudson, she wasn’t sure. “She doesn’t have to do that.”
“Alana. You’re her favorite child. Of course she does.”
God, she couldn’t do this. She also couldn’t lie to Patrick.
Well, no, she could. Just…not like that.
Alana pushed the door to her office open, and gestured for him to come in. “So, here’s the situation,” she said, voice low. “I’ve known Hudson for a few years, and have been into him the whole time, and apparently, he’s been into me the whole time, too.” She shrugged. “We’re dumb, but we finally figured it out a few months ago. Honestly, I wasn’t planning on getting married to anyone anytime soon. Maybe never, I dunno. But things just clicked with him, you know? And he’s an artist, and our health insurance is a lot better than his.”
Patrick nodded sagely. “You know that’s why Barbara and I got married, too?”
Alana’s jaw dropped. “You never told me that!”
He laughed. “Sometimes new lore is unlocked.”
“Jaxx taught you that, didn’t he.” Patrick’s assistant was wonderful and competent and practically a fetus.
“Pleading the Fifth.” Patrick grinned. “It’s all good, kid. I’ll officially meet the husband at the holiday party, and if anyone asks, I’ll tell them you eloped and I knew about it before.”
“I don’t deserve you, Patrick.” She really didn’t.
“You say that before I dump a month’s worth of reports onto your lap.”
“Alright, I take it back.”
The buzzer rang just as Alana finished reorganizing the fridge, which gave her just enough time to run the garbage to the incinerator room down the hall and dash back into the apartment before the elevator chugged its way up to the sixth floor.
It was always nice to find a pro to the world’s slowest elevator.
Brushing a stray hair out of her face, Alana took a deep breath in, let it out slowly, and went to go answer the knock at the front door.
Hudson stood on the other side of the door, with two large suitcases. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
Sometimes, Alana forgot just how Earth-shatteringly gorgeous Hudson Miller was, and then, there it would be again, smacking her in the face. You would think she would have gotten used to everything that made Hudson Hudson. But no. Almost three years of them knowing each other, and she had not gotten used to any of it. Not his body, which she wanted to climb (again) like a goddamn tree, not his face, not those brown eyes that if she wasn’t careful, she would drown in, not the god-crafted jawline covered by a beard that he definitely conditioned and looked like a great seat for her, and not his hands. God, she was going to have to spend some quality time with her electronic friends later thinking about his hands. Wouldn’t be the first time she did that, and certainly would not be the last time, either. And now she was going to be sharing an apartment. With Hudson.
This was going to be a problem.
The happy explosion of color and plants were a little different than the standard minimalist-Ikea-furnished apartment that they had moved into. Alana had spent hours researching renter-friendly DIY apartment decor and may have gone overboard. But if she was going to live there, it was going to be a nice place to live. And then everything happened, and Alana was working remotely full time for a while, and not having to have to stare at four walls that were all painted the landlord special of Soulless Apartment Not Quite White And Not Quite Grey Or Beige But Some Nightmare In The Middle had been a godsend.
Juan nearly had a heart attack the first time he walked into the apartment after they finished decorating but was quickly soothed when the girls had explained how everything was removable.
The wallpapered wall, the wall with wallpaper cutout designs, the built-in furniture in the living room and kitchen, the cabinetry, the tiling, the backsplash… was it excessive for a place she was just renting? Maybe, but what was she gonna do? Live in a boring apartment? Buy an apartment?
Ha.
“I hope you’re not allergic to pollen,” Alana said.
“Only penicillin.”
“Oh, good. Well. Not the being allergic to penicillin part. Just. Not the plant thing.” Alana waved her hand. “Whatever. Anyway. This is the apartment. Living room here, kitchen here, closet, closet, closet, and down this hall, bedrooms and the bathroom.”
Hudson didn’t say much as Alana walked him through the apartment, and nothing as she showed him Shannon’s old bedroom, now his. He rolled his suitcases in, and leaned them against the back wall.
In his defense, there wasn’t much to say about the empty bedroom, complete with two large windows, and one surprisingly large closet for a Manhattan apartment.
“Where’s the other half of the fire escape?” he asked.
“My bedroom,” Alana said.
“That would explain the decor.”
“Well, it’s the only balcony we have. The cushions and throw pillows are in my bedroom. The landlord gets mad when he sees them out, that whole ‘legally not able to keep things on the fire escape’ issue. Which is also why we have the kitchen window boxes and a baby garden on the roof. Which, technically we’re also not allowed to go up and use, but nobody’s stopped us, and we’re not growing anything illegal.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I see.”
“Oh. Uh. Also. One other thing.” Alana twisted her hands together. “So, remember how I sent you the info about insurance, and that it will kick in next month?”
“Yes?” Hudson said. “Also, just reminding you to let me know how much money that is so I can pay you back for that.”
“I’ll check at work tomorrow. I was going to check today, but then…” Alana trailed off. “Uh. So. Apparently Rhoda in Benefits told people that I got married and then they added it to the company newsletter and now my boss thinks you’re coming to our office holiday party.”
Hudson blinked slowly. “When is this holiday party?”
“Next week Thursday?”
“That should be fine,” Hudson said. “I’m working the afternoon shift.”
“I’m so sorry about this.”
He shrugged. “I’ve never been to a fancy office party. And you know JP is gonna say it’s good practice for your doctor.”
“It’s too bad JP doesn’t live directly underneath us,” Alana said, trying not to fixate on the ‘us’ part of that sentence. “Because I would be ordering a pair of cement shoes so I could learn to tap dance at three AM.”