Chapter Eleven #2
Marie makes a confused sound from behind her. “Uh, isn’t this the guest room?”
Shit. Alice mentally retracts her application to the CIA. She’s never been on an airplane and only speaks English, so honestly she’s probably not their top choice of recruit. That’s fine. Apparently being a receptionist has more subterfuge than she can handle anyway.
“Yes,” she says, laughing way too nervously. “Obviously. I just wanted to, um, make sure there wasn’t anything in here we wanted to grab. You know. On the way to the real bedroom. The one I’ve, um, you know. The big one.”
Marie gives her a strange look, and Alice needs to fucking get it together. Marie is really, really not stupid, and Alice is being really, really weird right now.
Alice turns on her heel, back into the hallway. She tries to use her peripheral vision to take in her options, and, aha! Bingo.
She strides forward through an open door, and almost trips over herself when the first thing she encounters is a closet literally bigger than her childhood bedroom.
It doesn’t have doors or anything, it’s just there.
This is clearly what people mean when they say “suite”; Alice had thought it meant a bathroom attached to the bedroom, but no.
Apparently for rich people it means three entire huge rooms, one for sleeping, one for dressing, and one for pooping.
The closet is rows and rows of suits and dress shoes, shirts and pants hung crisply on fancy hangers, ties rolled up in little dividers like this is a fucking department store.
It’s completely full, even though Alice knows her entire wardrobe, including winter coats, scarves, boots, and all, would take up maybe a fifth of it.
“Ugh,” Marie says from behind her. “I’d kill for this closet.”
Alice wonders if maybe Nolan did, in fact, kill for this closet. Like, how does a human even get this rich without making a bargain with the devil?
The bedroom is past the closet, and Alice tries not to look at the big bed with the unfriendly white duvet and white pillows propped up on the headboard. There are two nightstands, one on each side, and a TV mounted on the opposite wall.
Alice doesn’t know what side of the bed Nolan sleeps on. Ugh, crap. Which one will have the condoms? She needs to save Marie from seeing that, but also…who will save her from seeing it?
Alice pokes her head into the bathroom—holy enormous shower, Batman—and conclusively decides that this is an absolutely terrible way to get to know someone.
She wonders why there’s never been a dating show with this premise, where the two strangers explore each other’s bedrooms before going on a blind date.
It would be a disaster, which probably means it would get seven or eight seasons at least.
“Why don’t you take the bathroom,” Alice suggests to Marie, mostly to get her out of eyesight, “and I’ll start in here.”
“Cool,” Marie says, and Alice takes in a deep breath, squaring her shoulders.
Here we go.
Into the nightstand of a stranger.
She starts with the one closer to the window.
She wouldn’t want to sleep on that side of the bed herself, because it might feel like she was going to roll out of bed and down nineteen stories.
She prefers to imagine a sturdy body between herself and the window.
She tries to picture Nolan there, but in her mind he’s lying flat on his back, hands at his side, his skin a sickly gray.
Nope. No sleeping next to what is functionally a corpse, no thank you.
Although, of course, then her brain unhelpfully puts Van there instead. Alive, vibrant, looking over at Alice and grinning in a way Alice has never seen, something predatory and hungry, like she’s going to reach over, pull Alice into herself, and absolutely ravish her.
“Nope,” Alice says out loud, trying to force that vision out of her mind. “Absolutely not.”
“What?” Marie calls from the bathroom.
“Nothing,” Alice says quickly. Fucking get it together!
She opens the top drawer, and it’s…weird.
A couple chargers for different kinds of phones, four kinds of ChapStick, some travel-sized lotions, sets of hair ties and bobby pins in different sizes and colors.
Face wipes, gum, a box of tissues. It’s all weirdly generic, like it doesn’t belong to the same person. It’s almost like…
Alice slams the drawer quickly, shutting her eyes and breathing rapidly through her nose.
It’s okay. He’s not really her boyfriend.
None of this is real, so it doesn’t matter that he has an entire pharmacy available for the random girls he sleeps with on the regular, with a variety of ChapSticks and hair ties for them to choose from.
She’s not sure if the drawer is the most considerate or most skeezy thing she’s ever seen in her life.
She doesn’t bother to open the drawer below it. This is clearly not the side he sleeps on.
She walks around the bed, careful not to touch it for some reason she’s deciding not to interrogate at this particular moment, and aha.
This top drawer is clearly his. A notebook and some pens, a few expensive-looking watches, the remote for the TV, mints, what Alice is pretty sure is a wireless charge pad for his phone, a small flashlight, rewards cards for Starbucks and Whole Foods, a bottle opener shaped like a naked lady, a biography of some old white man CEO who is smiling up at Alice from the cover with dead eyes and a prominently receding hairline.
She pulls out the notebook, a watch, and the creepy book, setting them on the bed.
She can bring this successful plunder back to Babs.
She closes that drawer and moves to the bottom one, letting out a big breath before she opens it.
It’s—yep. Okay. It’s the sex drawer. It’s not that she wants to look at it—she’s all for sex and stuff, but eww at wading through a stranger’s sex drawer—but she needs to know if there’s something she needs to know.
Luckily, it seems pretty vanilla, all things considered.
Condoms—lots of condoms—lube, tissues. A little vibrator and what Alice is pretty sure is a butt plug, a set of leather handcuffs.
Nothing weird. Nothing Alice would have to do a lot of research to figure out anyway.
Great.
Honestly, best-case scenario.
And anyway, it’s not like she needs to bring any of that to the hospital.
She walks away from the bed, hugely relieved, and finds Marie in the closet, staring dumbly at all of his clothes.
“Overwhelmed?” Alice asks, and Marie nods, her jaw still slack. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how big this is,” Alice says honestly, and Marie laughs.
“Me neither. Maybe let’s aim for, like, pajamas and a bathrobe? I don’t think he’s going to be needing work stuff right away.”
Alice considers saying something. Considers taking Marie’s hand in hers and softly saying, “Sweetheart, you need to start preparing for what happens if he doesn’t wake up,” but she doesn’t.
Van wants Marie to still be a kid, to grow up slowly. To keep sleeping with that blanket her mama made her, to stay innocent for as long as she can. So if she thinks her brother is going to need pajamas and a bathrobe because he’s about to wake up, well. That’s okay.
Alice can try to find some pajamas.