19. Alana
The problemwith realizing that you may have accidentally fallen in love with your fake husband, Alana thought as she walked into her empty apartment the day after Hudson left for his art trip, was that there was nobody she could tell.
Hell, she continued to not say anything to Lane about being married. She just told him about Hudson being her super platonic and very normal roommate, because exactly how was she supposed to explain actively breaking a law (at least, marrying someone for the express purpose of getting around bullshit healthcare rules was probably not legal, and Alana was not dumb enough to google it to find out for certain) without her therapist maybe having to report her or something?
She couldn’t tell Shannon, because that would involve telling her about everything that had happened until then and she wasn’t sure if she was ready to split open her veins like that quite yet.
So instead, here she was, moping around the apartment she had so consciously decorated, with the express purpose of being a happy safe space, and all she wanted was for a certain six-foot-four slightly grumpy man to be sprawled on the couch or on her bed, or be sitting at the table, bent over some very small fiddly little project.
And instead, he was somewhere in the Catskills, hopefully making art. It was selfish of her to want him to come back home. But, fuck, she did.
Telling herself that this was going to be good practice for when they got divorced was not helping. She had gone back and forth over whether she should ask Hudson if he wanted to keep living in the apartment with her post-marriage, but the thought of living with him and watching him date other people would kill her.
Honestly, he could be dating other people now. They had agreed that the marriage was going to be in name only. The fact that they were now also having some truly spectacular sex didn’t change that.
Should she have better self-respect than to keep on sleeping with a guy who she knew wouldn’t actually date her for real (exhibit a: Connecticut and the next two years after that)? Well, sleeping with him wasn’t the issue. The fact that she now had feelings for him that weren’t just lust? That was a big fucking problem.
Alana was not the only woman in her family who looked the way she did. (Well, she was the only purple-haired one, as far as she knew.) And she knew, with all too much certainty, what happened to women who married the men who really only wanted to keep them as dirty little secrets.
A fat girl was good to fuck, but the second you were perceived as being in a relationship with her? Either she got skinnier, or the relationship ended.
Her mom, in the days before Alana finally cut her off, used to tell her stories about who she was before she met Alana’s father. Every single story was phrased as a funny little anecdote, but once you really looked at it, it was a horrifying story that should have ended with her mom and her dad breaking up, or cutting off contact with other relatives, and with everyone in therapy. All of them were stories about how Alana’s mom had been different than what everyone wanted her to be, how people told her she was too much, in every way that counted, and instead of telling those people to go fuck themselves and leaving, her mom twisted herself into the smallest version of herself that she could make. Smaller and smaller and smaller, and Alana, in all her too-muchness, was the nightmare of her past, reminding her of all the ways she had failed.
That was what happened to people who became smaller for others.
And yet, here she was, pining after someone who, sure, on paper, looked like he was all in when it came to being in a relationship with her, but in truth, wasn’t it all just a facade? He was there for the health insurance. Having sex with her was just a bonus.
Alana let out a slow sigh and got off the couch. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of the evening complaining to herself that her fake husband didn’t want to be her real husband. Just because she was catching feelings for him didn’t mean he was obligated to be catching feelings for her, too.
Post-surgery, she told herself, once she was recuperated, she’d go back on the apps. Get back on the proverbial horse, try to find someone who would want to date her for real.
Until then, though, she was going to enjoy having a live in sex partner. And she was going to try her hardest to keep her feelings out of the bedroom.
Two endless days after he left, Hudson came back home, smelling like the woods and like everything she ever wanted, and it took every ounce of her self-control not to jump him the minute he walked in.
“No permanent damage from bear wrestling?”
“Only some internal bleeding,” Hudson replied, putting down his duffel bag and walking over to her. “Don’t worry. I definitely won’t need to be tenderly nursed back to health.”
“Good, because I just gave away my sexy nurse uniform to someone from the Buy Nothing Group. The person I gave it to has a lot of plans for it, and I would hate to have to message her and tell her I needed it back.” Alana grinned up at him, not able to help herself. “Also, I’m pretty sure if you’re bleeding internally, they don’t let you have sex. I’d have to ask Jamie.”
“I will beg ignorance through that whole phone call,” Hudson replied, wrapping his arms around Alana. “Damn. It’s good to be home.”
She was not going to think too much into that statement, she was going to brush it off and pretend it never existed, she was going to remember that he meant temperature control and food deliveries and all other things one could get in Manhattan that one did not have access to in wherever the hell he had gone near the Catskills.
“Did it help?” Alana asked, resting against his chest. She was only going to casually inhale. No exuberant sniffing, even if she would have paid an upsetting amount of money for a candle that smelled like him now. Man and trees. There was a reason that shit was a fatal combination. Probably some leftover DNA things from cave people or whatever.
“Can’t tell,” Hudson replied. “I guess I’ll find out tomorrow. Oh shit. Valentine’s Day is in two days.”
“So?”
“Should we do something?”
“What, so Dr. Bradford knows we’re married? Neither of us have posted anything about our relationship, and I don’t think he’s snooping on our social media profiles. That might be a HIPAA violation. I have no idea.”
“No, I meant tomorrow. For Mistress Day.”
“Mistress Day?” Alana wasn’t just jumping to conclusions, she was swan diving straight into them. Michael Phelps would be proud. “Is that what you think I am?”
“Jesus, no!” Hudson exclaimed. “You’ve never heard of Mistress Day?”
“Literally never?”
“It’s a food service thing, I think,” Hudson explained, tugging her down onto the couch next to him. “Any guys who have multiple Valentine’s Day dates to juggle need more than one day to take them all out for dinner. It’s great for people watching.”
“Well, if we’re going to go out, it should be something that’s not just a dinner,” Alana said.
“Like what?”
Alana pursed her lips and thought. “I dunno. Wonder what we can get a Groupon for.”
“Oh, no.”
“You opened this can of worms, babes. What did you think was going to happen?”
“I can honestly say I hadn’t.” He rested his chin on her shoulder, looking down at her phone as she scrolled through the coupon options for Pre-Valentine’s Day celebrations.
“How do you think guys explain how they’re never around for Valentine”s Day?” Alana asked, trying not to fixate on the comforting weight of Hudson bracketing her body.
“You’re assuming this is all long term,” he replied. “Depends on the guy, I’d assume. Any guy who travels for business will absolutely use that as an excuse. The ones who are money-conscious will play that card. I dunno. I have faith in men who are thinking entirely with their dicks.”
“Wooowwww.” Alana drawled.
“Not that I approve of them, babe. Just that sometimes they discover a few extra brain cells hiding down there, but those are the kinds that can only be used for nefarious reasons. Ooh, wait. How about the dinner cruise on the Hudson?”
“God, that sounds awful.”
“Isn’t that what we were going for?”
Alana paused. “You know what, that is exactly what we’re going for.” She clicked the link. “And there are still a few tickets left. Ooh, this is gonna suck. I’m excited.” She scanned the description. “Each ticket also comes with two drink vouchers. This shit’s gonna be messy.” She clicked into the registration page, and began to fill out the forms for them. She was about to add in her credit card information when Hudson stopped her.
“Let me pay for this.”
“Pfft, we’re married,” Alana teased. “What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.”
“That’s not what the pre-nup says,” Hudson replied with a grin. “Come one. Let me lean into gender norms for this one.”
“Fine,” Alana said, not all that upset with the thought of Hudson paying for a Valentine’s Day activity, even if it was just a joke.
If this was as close as she was going to get…well, she’d take the crumbs.
The Biggest Apple was a boat that looked like it had been last decorated by a college girl in 2012 and had not been remade in the years since. That was to say, the amount of chevron and mustache prints were alarming.
The enthusiasm levels in the serving staff was also a little concerning.
“Nobody who works on a boat that looks like this should be that enthusiastic,” Alana whispered to Hudson as they climbed downstairs to check out what had been advertised as a ‘sexy dance floor!!!’.
“Do you think any of that enthusiasm is genuine?” he asked.
“Absolutely not,” she replied. “But it feels a little manic, and I don’t want to spend the rest of this evening worrying that the boat captain is on coke or something, and is gonna crash the boat into the Intrepid or something.”
“Well, if it does look like it’s gonna crash into the Intrepid, at least we’d be close enough to the docks to jump and swim.”
“In what world do you think I would go swimming in the Hudson River?” Alana asked, accepting an unnaturally colored liquid in a plastic tumbler. “I don’t want to get evil superpowers or anything.”
“Maybe it would make your uterus fold into itself or something,” Hudson said, smiling at the waiter who was offering him a drink. “No, thank you. I’d take some water if you have, please.”
The waiter shrugged, and walked off to offer drinks to a couple that was currently grinding on what was apparently the dance floor.
“I don’t think that’s how mutant powers develop,” Alana replied, taking the smallest sip of the drink, and immediately regretted it. “Actually, never mind. Drinking this entire cup of whatever this is would be worse than swimming laps in the Hudson.”
“That bad?”
“It’s like if you took the five worst drinks people tried to serve me in college, and combined them into something exponentially worse.”
“Delightful.”
The boat jerked a little as they pulled away, and headed up the river, chugging slowly, and suddenly, the stuffiness of the room hit her like a ton of bricks.
“You okay?”
“Need some fresh air,” Alana said, twining her hand with Hudson. “Don’t want to harsh the vibe by barfing on the dance floor.”
“Definitely too early in the evening for that,” Hudson agreed, and led her outside. The combination of the weather and the bracing wind not only cleared out all of Alana’s sinuses, but settled her stomach.
“This is a lot nicer,” she said with a shiver.
Hudson bracketed himself around her, tucking his head onto her shoulder so he could watch New Jersey go by. “You should have said you got seasick, honey. We could have done something else.”
“I’m usually not,” Alana said. “But sometimes it gets too stuffy.” She rubbed her cheek against his head. “And imagine us missing this!”
“I would sleep peacefully, not knowing there were still things besides 20-something women’s childhood bedrooms that are still decorated with chevron?”
“You know that you’re wondering how you can incorporate some into the apartment,” Alana teased.
“And ruin the masterpiece that is the current setup? I would never.” Hudson replied. “Now, the owls…”
“Go to hell,” Alana said, laughing.
“Maybe we should add a picture of a finger with a mustache tattooed onto it.”
“You talk a big game for someone who definitely thought that was cool when they were younger.”
“Not cool enough to get a tattoo of it,” Hudson argued.
“You don’t have tattoos of anything.”
“Just scars.”
Alana watched the flickering lights of Jersey City pass by. “I like your scars,” she said quietly.
“Because they all say, ‘I survived, bitch’?” Hudson joked.
Alana laughed, happy that Hudson didn’t make it weird. “Yes,” she said. “That’s my favorite part of them. Kinda hard to read because it’s in the surgeon’s handwriting, but I do my best.”
“That you do,” Hudson replied. The door to the dance floor opened, a cacophony of a terrible remix of Crank That (Soulja Boy) and a roomful of people starting to get drunk, some of them realizing that this may not have been the romantic getaway they thought it was.
“Attention passengers!” a crackling voice came over the loudspeaker that they were accidentally standing right under, making both of them jump. “Dinner will be served in five minutes, so please make your way upstairs to the salon.”
Alana and Hudson exchanged glances. “We’ll stop somewhere on the way home?” Hudson offered.
“Deal.”
The dining room was thankfully on the top floor of the boat, and there were enough windows open that Alana could breathe without feeling like she was going to barf up the dinner she hadn’t eaten yet. They definitely should have pregamed, but that would have involved giving this adventure any forethought past ‘don’t wear big heels because someone’s gonna get hurt’ and ‘we can meet at the harbor after work, so maybe don’t bring the big work bag today’. Even just a granola bar or something would have been beneficial.
The floor was clustered with little tables, each with a singular electric candle and a little vase with one elderly plastic rose.
“So romantic,” Alana whispered to Hudson.
“Do you think anyone will propose tonight?”
“I hope so, and I hope they’re so drunk when it happens.” Alana glanced at the chairs by the table, trying to gauge how paranoid she was going to be about sitting on one for the next hour or so. They looked sturdy, but she wasn’t going to know until she gingerly placed her body down, all but hovering and holding her breath until she was more certain that she wasn’t going to break it.
At least it wasn’t one of those terrible little rickety cafe chairs that could not possibly be comfortable to anyone, even teeny tiny French waiflike models who were the ones perpetually posed on them.
“Everyone, please take your seats, the first course is going to be served momentarily,” someone announced over a megaphone.
Hudson pulled out a chair for Alana, and helped her into it.
None of this was real, she reminded herself for what felt like the one millionth time. This was all just a bit that had gone a little too far.
It was a good thing they were on a shitty boat, and not somewhere where Alana would actually read romance into their activities. It was bad enough.
And wasn’t that the bitch of all of this? They were on a weird boat the night before Valentine’s Day and she was sure they were about to eat some truly atrocious food while a sullen-looking early twenty-something played DJ by shuffling through songs on Spotify, and there was nowhere else she would rather be, because Hudson was here.
Maybe she should tell Lane. Because how was she going to explain the heartbreak when the divorce went through?
“You okay?” Hudson asked, startling her out of her spiral.
“I’m fine,” she said, plastering a smile on. “Super peachy.”
“You have never in your life used that phrase before.”
“How do you know that? We haven’t known each other our whole lives.”
Hudson smiled. “Just a hint. I can text Shannon and confirm.”
“Contrary to popular belief, I have not known Shannon since the day I was born. We met on the first day of college in– hold the fuck on. Hudson. Don’t be super obvious.”
Hudson froze. “I am being so normal,” he replied. “What happened?”
“Do you remember what Stewart looks like? Stewart from my work, who I hate?”
“Short, like an evil bowling ball?”
“Dear God, I’m never going to be able to unsee him like that,” Alana said, trying (and failing) not to laugh.
“You’re welcome?” Hudson replied. “What about him?”
“I think he’s sitting behind you. And he’s with someone who does not look like his wife, a woman who definitely deserves better than him even though she is also a deeply unpleasant person.”
“Pretend to take a picture of me, and zoom in on them,” Hudson offered.
“Hudson Asher Miller, I have never found you more attractive then I find you right now.”
Maybe it was the lighting, but Alana could have sworn Hudson blushed.
“Now?” He said, recovering. “Not when I–”
“Whatever you’re about to say, I would like to remind you that we are, shockingly, in public,” Alana said.
“I was going to say not when I married you?”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
Hudson grinned. “Takes one to know one, babes. Now, take the picture. I want to see who Stewart’s with.”
“Smile and pretend you love me,” Alana said, pointing her phone at him.
An expression she couldn’t read flitted across his face for a moment before he smiled, and held up his left hand, wedding band firmly in place.
And sure, Alana took a handful of photos fully zoomed onto Stewart and whoever he was with, but before she did that, she took a few pictures of Hudson that she knew one day she would have to delete when she tried and failed to get over him.
“Let me see,” Hudson said, leaning forward.
Alana turned the phone around to show him. “That’s not his wife,” she whispered.
“Was she at the holiday party with him?”
“Yeah, the drunk one who told you that both you and she could do better when it came to spouses and insinuated you should leave me for her.”
“Ohhh. Damn.” Hudson winced. “I felt bad for her then, and that was before I knew she was married to him.” He leaned forward. “How chaotic are you feeling?”
“I don’t know where your train of thought is going, but I am invested.”
One of the waitresses came over with their first course, a mysterious something on a plate with a swirl of sauce, and a sprig of greenery on top.
Alana thanked the waitress, and waited until she walked away before poking at it. “Did they announce what the food was when we weren’t paying attention?”
Hudson shrugged. “No idea.”
“So what’s the plan?”
But a plan wasn’t necessary, because almost immediately, someone shrieked.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!!” a woman had gotten out of her chair. “I can’t believe you’re proposing to me!”
“What?” the man she was with gasped. “No I wasn’t!”
“Of course I’ll marry you!” she threw herself onto him, plastering his face with kisses. “Oh my Godddd, my mom is gonna be over the moon!”
“I’m not proposing!” the man protested. “I didn’t buy that ugly-ass ring!”
The woman had already shoved the ring onto her finger, and was admiring it, paused. “Your mom told me that she had your grandma’s ring for when you were ready to propose to me.”
“Bianca, I was never going to propose to you,” the man argued. “My mom is lying to you, because she wants me to leave my wife for you, which I will not be doing.”
The man at the table next to them leaned over. “Can I see the ring?” he asked.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Bianca burbled, clearly a little drunk.
“Yes,” he gritted. “And I think that because I picked it out.”
“You know Kevvy?”
“No,” he said, “but that ring is supposed to be for my girlfriend.”
The woman at the table with him stared at him in shock. “Babe. No. You cannot possibly be proposing now.”
“We talked about this,” he argued. “This is a great compromise.”
“Wanting to be proposed to near the water is one thing, but being proposed to by hiding a ring in a plate of food on what is basically a glorified tugboat, no offense, is not exactly what I had in mind.”
“It’s my ring!” Bianca shouted. “Kevvy, tell them!”
“Well, that makes a lot more sense,” Kevvy said with relief. “For a second I thought someone had gotten bribed.”
“Well, they had, but it was from me,” the other man said. “May I please have the ring back?”
“It’s MY ring!”
The other woman sighed. “Let her keep it.”
“Babe. It was fifteen grand. I’m not letting some random chick on a tugboat keep your ring.”
Alana glanced at Hudson. “Ohhh, I’m so excited to mention this to Stewart tomorrow in the meeting we have. With other people there.”
Hudson grinned. “I mean, I was going to tell you that like a good coworker, you should say something about not wanting to interrupt his dinner with his wife, but this is so much better.”
And then Bianca slapped the other woman, and the dinner devolved into chaos.
“You know,” Alana said later, as she and Hudson ate slices of pizza outside one of the dollar spots in midtown, “that dinner went better than I thought it would. And I had pretty high expectations.”
“Happy almost Valentine’s Day, wife.”
“Thanks, husband.”