Chapter Three #2
Alice is an expert at people watching—there’s not a lot to do, otherwise, when you’re a receptionist with no friends and no one to actually talk to.
She prides herself on her ability to read people and relationships at a glance, and she wouldn’t have needed the ugh tip-off from Marie to clock them as exes.
From the way they’re standing weirdly far apart, Sarah with her arms crossed over her chest like a shield, the tension thick in the air between them, they might as well be shouting that they used to see each other naked, but they haven’t done so recently enough to make dogsitting normal.
Alice wants to ask, but it’s none of her business.
Although if she’s pretending to be, like, Van’s future sister-in-law, maybe it’s exactly her business?
Fuck, but this is the kind of messy confusion that makes her need to confess everything immediately.
As soon as Sarah closes the front door, Van turns and leads the prancing dog/pony toward Alice. “Alice, allow me to introduce you to Frank,” Van says, and Alice can’t help but grin at the formal introduction. She decides the name is charming.
“Hello, Frank,” she says. “Nice to meet you.” She holds out a hand and Frank wiggles himself into a sit and then offers her a paw. Alice’s heart explodes as she bends down to shake it. “Oh my god.”
“Good boy, Franko,” Van says with a grin, patting his head. “Very nice manners.”
“Quite a gentleman,” Alice agrees, and Van laughs.
“We’ll see if you say that the next time you’re over at Mom’s and he tries to sit on your lap. He thinks he’s a lapdog but he has the boniest ass on earth.”
Alice laughs, trying to ignore the part about being over at Babs’s house. She’s really not ready for that.
Van gets Frank into the car, letting his muddy feet stomp all over the towel draped across the backseat, while Alice returns to her spot up front.
Van hands over her phone, Alice types her address into the map, and Van wordlessly drives her a little north and a lot east. They pass by Alice’s favorite food truck after a few minutes, and Alice points it out to have something to say in the slightly awkward silence, even though it’s not open yet.
“That truck has the best bao.” She gestures at it, and Van dutifully slows down to look.
“I’ve never been to it.”
“Oh,” Alice says, not quite sure how to keep this conversation going. “Well, add it to your list.”
“Noted,” Van says, and Alice lets it go. She tries not to think about bao. She should probably be hungry, but she’s too tired for that.
Alice sinks deeper into herself as they turn in to her neighborhood. It’s not a bad place to live—there’s nothing particularly wrong with it—but it’s certainly nothing like Sarah’s neighborhood of cute little traditional Portland Craftsman houses. It’s nothing like where Nolan must live.
“I know it’s probably not what you were expecting,” she starts as they pull up in front of Alice’s apartment building, one of many out here on Division between Eightieth and Ninetieth, but then she trails off.
Her eyes skate over the peeling paint on the side of the building and the overflowing dumpsters in the wet parking lot before dropping down to her hands, clenched hard in her lap.
“It’s nicer than it looks,” she says to her hands.
It’s not, really.
It’s quiet, and Alice looks over to see Van staring at her like she’s trying to see through her.
Alice shrinks a little, trying not to get consumed by her dark eyes.
There’s a long quiet beat, and then Van runs a hand through her hair.
It looks thick and straight, and Alice wonders how much heavier it must be than her own thin frizz.
“I don’t know what Nolan told you about the family,” Van finally says, her voice so soft Alice can barely hear it. “But he’s the only one…we’re not all rich. Just…just him.”
“Oh.” Alice hadn’t considered that. There hadn’t been time to consider anything, of course, but no, she’d definitely assumed that his whole family was top-floor-financial-firm people. Though this nineties-style station wagon certainly isn’t giving off custom-tailored-suit vibes.
“I mean, we’re all fine, but Nolan is, uh…I don’t know. Dad calls him the retirement fund.”
Alice wonders just how rich Nolan is, how recently he got that way.
She wonders where he lives, what his lifestyle is like.
What car he drives. If he helps his parents out with their mortgage or rent or whatever.
She’s guessing, from the twist of Van’s mouth, that she might not like the answers to those questions.
She wonders, for what is definitely the first time since he dropped onto the pristine floor of her lobby, and quite possibly the first time since she saw him 751 days ago and fell in love, if he’s a nice person.
If she would have liked him, if they’d ever had the chance to talk to each other. If he’d like her.
He said how’s it going to her twice but he never waited for her to answer.
“I think I might know less about you all than you think I do,” Alice says carefully.
She’s trying really hard not to lie, even though she knows it won’t matter.
Betrayal is betrayal is betrayal, and none of them are going to remember her exact words when the truth smacks them in the face, but something about knowing she hasn’t said the lie outright makes deceiving them five percent easier for Alice to live with.
At this point, she’ll take what she can get.
“Okay,” Van says, her face easing again. She smiles, and Alice tries not to be captivated. “We can work on that.”
Alice gets out of the car, planning to lean down and wave goodbye, but Van is getting out too. “We’ll walk you up,” she says, opening Frank’s door.
“Oh, you don’t have to—” Alice starts, but Van is already striding toward the front door of the building.
What is it with these Altman women and walking so damned quickly? Alice has to nearly jog to keep up. “You and Frank seem well suited,” she says as she fumbles for her keys. “Long-ass legs.”
Van makes a quiet sound in her chest that Alice can’t quite parse, and then Alice is pushing the door open.
She feels incredibly awkward as Van and Frank follow her up the two flights of stairs to her third-floor apartment.
What exactly is the protocol for when your fake-boyfriend’s hot sister and her dog walk you to your door after you leave his hospital room?
Alice obsessively reads advice columns but somehow this particular scenario has never come up.
“Um, this is me,” she says when they finally reach her door. She’s not sure what to do with her hands so she ends up weirdly tapping her knuckles against the doorframe.
“Okay,” Van says, but she’s not turning to go.
Maybe she’s literally waiting for Alice to get inside. Excessive, but kind of nice. Alice sticks her key into the lock and jiggles it back and forth, rocking the knob in a very choreographed move that she does every day but hasn’t thought about in years.
“Wow.” Alice can hear the smile in Van’s voice. “You really need to make love to that thing, huh?”
The laugh that throws itself out of her chest feels almost hysterical. Today has been so much. Too much. Alice is one sex joke away from a complete and total meltdown.
The key sex works, and the lock slides open. Alice turns the knob before looking back at Van in triumph. “Door orgasm achieved.” She wrinkles up her forehead as she thinks. “Doorgasm?”
“Doorgasm,” Van says, nodding seriously like they’ve settled an important point at the UN General Assembly.
Alice bites her lip, looking down to stare at how Van’s scuffed sneakers stand out against the stained brown hallway carpet. “Well, um…thank you. For the ride. And, uh. Everything.”
“Of course.”
There’s a beat, and Alice looks up into Van’s eyes.
Big mistake.
Van is looking at her like she’s fragile, a breath away from shattering into a million pieces. Van is right.
“Are you okay to be alone?” she asks, her voice softer than it’s been all day.
Alice can’t help the way a laugh turns into a hiccupping sob somewhere behind her vocal cords. Van has no fucking idea how good at being alone Alice is.
Van takes a step forward, clearly interpreting Alice’s wet eyes and erratic emotional state as a no.
“I’m fine,” Alice gasps. “Just overtired, I think.”
“Okay,” Van says slowly, clearly not believing her for a second.
“Well, it’s been a rough day for Frank too.
” Alice stares at her, confusion cutting neatly through the swirls of darkness in her chest. The dog seems to be the only one who had a nice, non-traumatic morning.
She supposes hanging out with your mom’s ex could be triggering for a dog of a certain emotional intelligence, although the way Frank’s tongue is currently lolling out the side of his mouth doesn’t exactly make him seem like a candidate for Mensa.
But then Van says, “I think he might need a hug,” and, oh.
Alice is horrified to feel tears slipping down her cheeks.
She hasn’t openly cried in front of another human being in thirteen years and she’d hoped to never do so again, but here she is, fucking weeping in front of a total stranger.
She brushes them off, pretending it’s not happening.
She focuses on the dog, trying to convince herself that Van isn’t there.
“Is that so, Frankie? Do you need some affection?”
Van must signal to him, because he sits and then lifts both front paws off the ground, for all the world like he’s offering her a hug.
This is the most confusing and complicated day of Alice’s life. She saved someone who might die anyway, gained a fake-boyfriend who might be a jerk, and is now lying to a half dozen of the nicest people she’s ever met, including someone who might possibly be her dream woman.
She drops to her knees and wraps her arms around Frank.
He rests his paws on her shoulders and nuzzles his face into her hair, somehow managing to lick the inside of her ear on the first try.
It makes her laugh and squirm, but she doesn’t let go of the hug for a few long breaths.
Frank smells surprisingly good, and he’s warm and soft under her hands.
When she pulls back enough to scratch him behind the ears, he closes his eyes in bliss and his tongue falls out the side of his mouth again.
She doesn’t even care if he’s leaving muddy paw prints on her shoulders.
“Thanks, baby,” she says to him, and it’s only when Van makes another little sound that Alice remembers that she’s there. That Van is watching her cry into her very tall dog’s neck.
Alice hauls herself to her feet, swaying a little until she catches herself on the doorframe. She doesn’t miss the way Van’s hands twitch, like she was ready to spring into action to catch Alice like some action hero.
God, they should make butch action heroes.
“Here,” Van says, pulling something out of her pocket and handing it to Alice with what might possibly be a tinge of shyness. “My cell is on there. Call or text when you wake up, or if you need a ride back to the hospital or anything.”
Alice nods, sliding the card into her own pocket. It’s still warm from the heat of Van’s body, and it burns against Alice’s thigh.
Alice watches as Van and Frank turn to go, as Van pauses at the top of the stairwell with slightly pink cheeks to say, “Um…sweet dreams, Alice.”