10. Alana
It wasgreat that everyone at work loved Hudson. Really. It was. And if she and Hudson had been married for real for real, she would have been thrilled. But none of it was real and now she had to continue to pretend at work that she was happily married and everything was rainbows and butterflies and happily ever afters.
But living with Hudson was so much harder than she thought it would be. And not because he was a terrible roommate or anything. He wasn’t. He was a worryingly good roommate, in fact. Almost as though he had asked himself what Alana would want most in this world from someone she was living with, and took it upon himself to tick all of those boxes.
Minus the sex box.
That one was neglected. Empty. Abandoned. Left out to dry and everything. And it wasn’t even like she could take matters into her own hands or anything, because she was too paranoid about the thinness of her bedroom walls, and voyeurism, especially by a man with whom she had the best sex of her life and then pretended it never happened, was not really her idea of sexy.
He was always just…there. Which was fine, it was now his apartment also, and it wasn’t like she got annoyed when Shannon was around. But she didn’t want to fuck Shannon into next week. Month. Year.
Point was. She was a horny, horny mess, and no matter how many times she told herself that even just the act of thinking about fucking Hudson was a terrible idea, that fact would not cement itself into her logic. He didn’t want her, he had made that clear after Connecticut. Sure, she had been the one who had said they should forget about fucking each other, but he was even more eager than she was in agreeing.
And yet, she was haunted by him. Maybe it was just the appeal of what she couldn’t have, which was some bullshit that she should have unpacked in therapy by now. But it wasn’t like she was going to be doing that shit now. It had been bad enough that she had to tell her therapist about Hudson moving in with her, but she was a professional at this point.
“Is that going to be hard for you?” her therapist had asked.
“Why would it?” Alana had asked. It was before they had gotten married, so it wasn’t like she had to take off her rings. The ones she now actually had to wear at work because Rhoda and her big ass mouth. Not that she minded, which, again, another thing to possibly unpack in therapy but absolutely not a thing she would be mentioning.
“Well, are there any unresolved feelings between you and him?” Lane had asked. “And if you don’t think there are, things like that may unearth themselves once he moves in.”
Lane loved to use words like ‘unresolved’ and ‘unearth’. Something about the ‘un’ in the beginning of a word really did it for him.
“No,” Alana had said. “No unresolved feelings. We’d been super clear about how we felt back then, and that’s all.”
“We did discuss you lying about not wanting that to get any further so he wouldn’t have to make things weird in the friend group. You didn’t give him a chance to do anything else.”
“He could have said that he would have wanted to keep seeing me,” Alana had protested stubbornly. “He could have at least pretended to give it a bit of thought before leaping on the answer like the door that Rose pushed Jack off of.”
“I’m not going to get distracted by your…interesting interpretation of that scene in the Titanic,” Lane said, which was a shame, because Alana had hoped he would be. “And I understand not wanting to spend too much time ruminating on the past, especially when Hudson is going to be living with you for the next six months, at least. But it’s worth examining any feelings that come up. Without judgment, of course.”
God bless Lane, but he was delusional if he thought that Alana was really going to examine her feelings about Hudson without judging them.
She had plenty of feelings about the man currently walking around her apartment in just a pair of sweatpants, and none of them were acceptable to have, nor to share with her therapist. The first time she had seen him walking out of their shared bathroom after having taken a shower, she almost swallowed her tongue, and to be honest, she had not handled it well.
In her defense, how was she supposed to? He was every filthy daydream she’d ever had, and he was living in her apartment. Standing in the doorway of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel, the steam of the shower whisping out behind him? If she had been a better (or worse, honestly she wasn’t sure) friend, she would have texted Shannon about it, and told her to use it in her next alien book. The aliens had to shower, too.
“Sorry,” he had said, when he saw her in the hallway.
“About what?” she asked, which, maybe wouldn’t have been as weird if she wasn’t trying her damndest not to make prolonged eye contact with the towel. “You live here.”
Hudson had rubbed at his chest. “I know. I just…” he paused, shrugged. “My own hang ups of people seeing my chest.”
Alana tilted her head just a little. “I mean, hang ups are hang ups, but you have a great chest.” She paused, thought about the sentence. “It’s your apartment, too. Anything you’d be wearing to a beach is fine to walk around with here. And not a nude beach.” Unless you want, she added silently.
Though, she wasn’t sure if she actually meant that part, mostly because that would be like dangling a margarita in front of Matilda.
He hadn’t said anything about that interaction, but had started walking around without a shirt. Which, hooray for not having hangups, but not helpful for Alana’s continuing attempts at pretending everything was okay.
She wanted to use his chest hair as an anchor while she fucked herself on him. She wanted to trace his heart surgery scars with kisses, she wanted him to crush himself on top of her after. That fucking prom pose followed her into her dreams; she wanted his fingerprints to leave bruises on her hips.
It was a good thing her mind was not subject to HR rules, she would have been fucked.
There was a note left on the dining room table, next to a little drawing of the view out their window. ‘Working a double today, everyone is sick. Will be home eventually. H.’
Alana toed off her shoes, took the note and the sketch, and headed to her room. ‘Do you need me to make up an emergency so you can leave early?’ she texted. ‘I can be very creative.’
‘As much as I wish you could, it wouldn’t be fair to Frankie who is suffering here with me. Also, they might kill both of us if you did.’
‘Boo. Dinner will be in the fridge when you get home. Try not to murder anyone at work, Ben doesn’t do criminal law.’
‘3’
A heart emoji should not affect her like that, yet here she was, practically swooning over one dumb little red heart.
She was also going to be framing the little sketch Hudson had done, and she was going to be putting it on her desk at work, and nobody was going to stop her.
Oh, shit, her desk at work. People came into her office. Not super often, luckily, but often enough that if she didn’t have any pictures of herself and Hudson from their wedding, someone would ask. Mainly Patrick.
Ugh, she hated when Shannon was right.
And because she was a good friend, Alana texted that to her, which Shannon greatly enjoyed.
‘I miss you.’
‘I miss you more. Montana is a hellhole.’
‘I Google Imaged, it looks nice.’
‘Sure, it looks nice. But everyone here sucks. Mostly Daniel.’
Shannon’s high school boyfriend was a power hungry piece of shit, and, in the world’s most cliched turn of events, was now the county sheriff. ‘As I just reminded Hudson– no murdering, Ben isn’t a criminal lawyer.’
‘HOW IS THAT GOING THO’
‘Hudson not murdering people? Hopefully well. He’s doing a double shift today so hopefully we can keep the non-murdering streak up.’
‘BITCH’
‘Everything is good. We’re chilling. Weird living with a guy, though.’
‘Good weird or bad weird?’
‘...both?’
‘Fair enough. And same.’
‘Ooooooooooooooh.’
‘LOLLLLL. Speaking of which. I have people to be nice to.’
‘Gross. Love you.’
A double shift meant that Hudson wasn’t coming home until at least midnight. Which sucked for him, because his normal shifts started before the sun was up.
But it meant Alana had the whole apartment to herself.
First, dinner. She had promised to make dinner.
What a good little wife she was, she thought as she changed into comfier clothing. Making dinner for her man while he was at work. It all felt so domesticated.
Helpful that Hudson was a man who meal planned, partially by choice and partially because it made managing his health easier. Which worked out great for Alana. All she had to do was follow whatever dinner he had added to the little white board that he was going to be making for this evening. Maybe one day she’d be familiar enough with what foods he ate and when, and could just freeball a recipe (and by that, she absolutely meant googling one, she was not a cook who could coast off vibes), but for now, this was good enough.
Dinner made, consumed, cooled, packaged, and the evening stretched out in front of Alana like an endless buffet.
It didn’t matter who she was living with, there was something so decadent about knowing you were the only person there. The urge to twirl around the apartment naked was there, but not strong enough for her to actually do it.
Taking a shower that was just long enough to be concerning to water conservationists, on the other hand, sounded like an incredible idea.
And an even better idea was that her vibrators were waterproof.
The water pressure in the shower was the best she’d had in a New York City apartment, and there was not a day that went by that she didn’t take that one for granted. So what if the bathtub was the size of a small dishpan, and the thought of ever taking a good bath in her own home was a pipe dream? She had a rain shower that she and Shannon had installed when they first moved in, and that shit was about as luxurious as you could get, paying what she was paying in rent here.
Even though Hudson had said he wasn’t going to be home until midnight, Alana locked the bathroom door. What if he came home early?
What if he came home early.
Heard the shower running…no, didn’t hear the shower running, he had headphones on. Walked by the bathroom with the open door, saw the light on, came in to turn it off so their electric bill was just a little bit lower, save them both some money, was about to turn off the light when she stepped out of the shower, skin glistening and wet.
Would serve him right, seeing water slide down her body, after seeing the little tracks of water make their way down his chest.
He would see her, and…
Fuck, he would see her, apologize profusely, and hightail into his bedroom, and never talk about it again.
Alana groaned, and gently thunked her head back against the wall.
The problem with fantasizing about men who didn’t want her was that she couldn’t let go of that fact, even in her daydreams.
And nothing killed the vibe, and her horniness, like being smacked in the face with reality.
But she was already in the shower, and she had added one of her precious few shower tabs, so she was going to enjoy this, even if she didn’t get off to the thought of Hudson grabbing her naked body, tossing it down onto his bed, and fucking her until she came so hard she all but passed out. Maybe it was a sign that she should let it go.
Let him go.
Well, not literally, yet, but figuratively. Let go of any sort of what ifs, scrub that night in Connecticut from her memory, pretend that nothing ever happened and that all they’d ever been were casual friends. That nobody had seen the other”s genitalia…well, to be honest, neither of them had seen the other”s genitalia. It had been dark, and they had both been too desperate.
Hudson had shoved her (gently) back against the tree, and Alana had been more than happy for him to take over. Sometimes men expected her to want to dominate them in the bedroom, and while the want surfaced once every other blue moon, Alana was in charge of enough things in her life that she was more than happy to delegate getting fucked to someone who was not her. And Hudson had somehow known that, deep in his bones, because not once did he ask her if things felt okay, or if he should pinch her nipples harder, or if it was okay if he penetrated her now.
He had looked down at her, his eyes slightly wild, and had said, “You tell me if you need anything different than what I’m giving you. At any point.”
She had nodded frantically, because he had said that to her while finger fucking her, and she had been so close to coming. And she hadn’t had to correct his rhythm, to readjust any angles, to readjust herself. He had been hyperfocused on her pleasure, on wringing every drop out of her, that Alana, for the first time since she had started having sex with others, could just. Let go. Let it happen.
She reached over for her vibrator, lost in the memories of that trip. The tension had been simmering the whole of that long weekend, and she had reveled in it. It had, at first, been nothing but a fun way to distract herself from the miserable excuse for a human being who had dumped her two days before the trip, telling her that she was good to fuck, but he needed a girl he could be seen with. Convenient, wasn’t it, that he posted a picture with his girlfriend on Instagram the next day, and she was a small blonde wisp of a woman, though, after one small search, it was clear she was more a girl than a woman.
Nothing cured you of lingering feelings than finding out the guy you were seeing had a nineteen year old girlfriend, except for maybe finding said nineteen year old girl’s social media handle, and messaging her to let her know what kind of guy she was seeing. (Also messaging his mom, but nothing came of that except a screed about what a terrible liar Alana was in return. Sometimes it was easy to see why men were the way they were.)
Avery was doing great now, she had just started her master’s and was currently dating a sweet history PhD candidate who worshiped the ground she walked on, and was twenty three to her twenty two.
And that’s where Alana had been, sliding into Cal and Jamie’s rental car. Riding high on the knowledge that she had, even just a little, fucked up the life of a man who had never been told no.
Maybe that’s why she’d reveled in teasing Hudson that weekend. She was invincible, and she didn’t think there would be any consequences to it. He’d ignore it, the same as he had before.
But something had been different. Maybe he had been, too.
She hadn’t expected anything, not even after he had pushed her up against the tree and kissed her senseless. God, she wished she remembered what she had said to make him finally react, in her quietest moments, she wondered what would happen if she tried it again. If she pushed him hard enough for him to break.
He had surprised her at every turn, and she could still feel him thrusting into her, the bark scratching into her back. She had been just as desperate as he had been, clinging to him, because maybe if she let go, so would he, and then all of it would have been just in her mind, and not also imprinted into her soul.
The shower poured down around her, and Alana was wet enough from the memories that she didn’t need to use the lube she’d brought with her into the shower. It wasn’t the same thing, nothing would be the same thing, but it would work for now. She leaned against the wall, bracing her body as she fucked herself.
What if Hudson did walk in. Not this Hudson, a different one. The one from Connecticut. What if he walked into the bathroom, saw her there, against the shower wall, plunging a hot pink vibrator in and out of her pussy, trying to reach a fraction of the euphoria she had found with him. What if he would see her.
What if he would see her. Maintain eye contact while taking off his own clothing, step into the shower, and take control of the vibrator himself. If he leaned over her while fucking her with it, asking her if she was so desperate that she couldn’t wait for him. If he laughed while she came, then turned off the vibrator, tossed it aside, and replaced it with himself. If he braced her against the wall, whispered into her ear, ‘it’s a good thing the bathroom window is closed’ before making her come so hard the neighbors would probably hear. If after, he washed her, fingers tracing circles over her body as she came down from the high, if he wrapped her in towels and carried her into his room to do it all over again.
She twisted the vibrator just a little, and came.