Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
Alice groans at a horrific beeping sound in her ear.
It takes a while to realize it’s her alarm, and longer for her flailing arm to find her blaring phone on an unfamiliar nightstand.
It isn’t until Van grumbles next to her that Alice remembers where she is, who she’s with.
She bolts upright as the belated spike of adrenaline hits her nervous system.
She’s in Van’s bed. She spent the night with Van, tucked up under the same comforter, bare ankles rubbing together.
She’s in bed with Van, and a few hours ago Alice touched her on her perfect face and told her way too many truths.
Jesus fucking Christ, she’s the worst fake-girlfriend of all time. Not only a liar, but a cheat at that.
She gets up as quietly as she can, pulling on her clothes with the sinking realization that she’s doing a true walk of shame today.
She, like everyone else showing up to work in yesterday’s clothes, certainly made a questionable romantic decision last night.
She just didn’t get to enjoy it as much as Delilah will hope.
She leaves the bedroom, intending to tiptoe out the front door without waking anyone—it’s only six in the morning and they were up past midnight—but before she’s gotten her boots on, Van pads sleepily into the living room, rubbing her eyes.
She’s pulled on dark blue sweats and a faded OSU sweatshirt, and Alice is immediately tempted to fling herself at Van, to pull them both back into the soft darkness of the bedroom, to do something that would turn this from a sad, relatively chaste walk of shame into an X-rated one.
She’s saved from doing something that monumentally stupid only by a heavy tread on the stairs above her head. A breath later, Steve lumbers out of the hallway in a bathrobe.
“Good morning,” Van says.
“Morning, Van. Alice.”
“Sorry if I woke you,” Alice says, but Steve shakes his head.
“Always up this early,” he says, and Alice isn’t sure if the sentence fragment is because he’s tired or if that’s just kind of his vibe. “Gotta start on the latke sammies.”
Van looks askance at the boots hanging limply from Alice’s fingers. “What are you doing?” she asks. “Latkes. Breakfast. Coffee. Warm.”
Okay, maybe the sentence fragments in the morning are hereditary, but Alice can’t argue with the logic. Cold hungry bus has absolutely no appeal over latkes breakfast coffee warm. And Van.
Alice, completely charmed and utterly overwhelmed by her feelings, can only nod, set her shoes back down, and follow Van into the kitchen.
They wordlessly help Steve, and soon the delicious smells of brewing coffee, reheated latkes, and sizzling thick-cut ham have lured all the other Altmans out of their bedrooms, even though it’s horrifically early.
Marie gives Alice the sleepiest, warmest hug, and Alice doesn’t hesitate to pull out her phone and text Delilah that she’s sorry but she’ll be in a little late today.
She’s simply not ready to leave yet. She can’t quite believe she’s this lucky; not only to have been invited—or kidnapped, as the case may be—to celebrate Chanukah with the family, but to have these people that would haul themselves out of their comfortable beds to eat breakfast with her at the crack of dawn, simply because they want to be with her one last time before work.
She’d maybe cry about it, if she were the type of person to let herself do that.
The latke, ham, and egg sandwiches turn out to be even better than advertised.
Van sits across the breakfast table from Alice, like last night, and her cheeks turn an adorable light pink every time they make eye contact.
Alice is finally sent off to work with a full thermos of steaming coffee and sticky cheek kisses from Babs and Aunt Sheila.
Alice doesn’t hug Van goodbye—they’d barely made it through the night unscathed, and the impulse to accidentally lean in for a makeout might have become overwhelming—but Alice gives her a goodbye arm squeeze during some profoundly meaningful eye contact that feels enough like sex that Alice isn’t sure if she needs a cold shower or wants to never wash her hand again.
But the day takes a steep nosedive from there.
The streets are so slick with ice that the buses are super delayed, and Alice feels the warmth of breakfast and last night congealing into a cold knot of regret deep in her stomach as she inches across the river.
There’s going along with a falsehood and then there’s taking advantage, and the hard ball of anxiety in her gut is telling Alice that she’s tipped into the latter.
She doesn’t get to work until close to eight, which Delilah is slightly grumpy about, so Alice doesn’t take a lunch break, offering Delilah a full hour off.
It’s only right, and plus, Alice feels like she might be due for some penance, to dig her fingers deep into her bruises, to punish herself for getting so close to blowing everything up last night.
She’s already doing a horrible thing by (essentially) lying to Nolan’s entire family, and last night she pretty much made a move on his fucking sister, god. She doesn’t deserve to eat lunch.
She tries to bury her thoughts in work, gritting her teeth and telling herself that this is what being responsible looks like: visitor passes and security logs and smiling at douchebags, not cuddling with hot girls and recklessly endangering their place in their own goddamned families.
By the time her shift is over and she’s taken the bus to the hospital, she’s frozen and cranky.
The sugar and carb rush from the latke breakfast wore off hours ago, leaving her jittery and starving underneath her slight nausea, and she feels disgusting in yesterday’s clothes.
She wants to stop in the cafeteria for food and some chamomile tea, but she figures she didn’t come this far to ignore the Altmans.
Penance doesn’t deserve chamomile tea, a settled stomach, or clean underwear.
She trudges her way through the lobby, leaning her head against the wall of the elevator as it takes her up to the fourth floor.
She hadn’t slept well, too aware of Van’s body next to her, of how close they’d come to slipping up and ruining everything, and she’s feeling it in every muscle fiber of her body.
She had some deodorant in her purse, but even that, the fresh eyeliner, and staticky side braid she’s pulled her hair into aren’t doing anything to hide her exhaustion.
The elevator dings, and Alice steps out.
She’s halfway to Nolan’s room when she’s intercepted by Van.
She’s wearing dark brown cords, her scuffed work boots, and a green half-zip sweater, and she looks so beautiful that Alice is momentarily breathless.
Her brown eyes are warm and bright, her jaw so square and sharp, her hair tousled from running her fingers through it.
“Hey,” Van says, as Alice sways from the concussive force of seeing her after last night. She’s holding something out, and it takes Alice a second to realize the paper cup and brown bag in Van’s hands are for her. “Thought you might be hungry.”
Alice wordlessly takes the cup, which warms her fingers instantly, the smell of mint wafting up through the lid. But it isn’t until she takes the bag and opens it that the world tilts under her.
It’s bao. Bao, from that food truck Alice had aimlessly pointed out as her favorite the first time Van had driven her home.
Van remembered. Van drove from her mom’s house down to the food truck this afternoon on the off chance Alice hadn’t eaten lunch, on the slim chance that what Alice wanted so many hours after latkes and donuts was bao and mint tea.
Alice is horrified to find tears in her eyes, to have the image of the bao suddenly blurred.
“Hey,” Van’s voice says, suddenly very, very close by. “Hey, it’s okay, you don’t have to eat it. I’m sorry—I didn’t—”
But Alice shakes her head, cutting Van off without a word. She’s not sure why this is the thing, why of all of the times Van has taken care of her, has gone out of her way for her, this is the one to put Alice over the edge, but it is.
It’s like Alice was only supplied with a finite number of times she could say no to Van, and, without realizing, she’d used up the final stash last night.
In that bed, closing her eyes against Van’s face, letting Van caress her cheek but somehow keeping herself from leaning forward and kissing her… that was the last one.
She said no yesterday over and over again in the most tempting circumstances of her life—alone in the costume closet, on the couch, in the bed, after breakfast—and today she’s absolutely defenseless against even the gentlest feeling of desire.
Last night she’d been able to stop herself from kissing Van in the darkness of her bedroom, their hands on each other’s bodies, only Frank as their witness, but today a simple bag of street food in the hospital hallway is breaking her.
Alice sets the food and drink down on the windowsill next to her and grabs Van’s wrist, pulling her along.
“What are—Alice, where…”
But Alice doesn’t speak. She can’t. She opens the door to a single-occupancy bathroom and nearly throws Van inside.
Van is still sputtering, but Alice simply walks in after her, flicks the lock closed, crosses the distance between them, takes Van’s face in her hands, and finally, finally fucking kisses her.
Van is motionless under her for only a second.
Only one second for Alice to start overthinking before something flips inside of Van, and suddenly it’s everything Alice has ever wanted.
Van both melts and grows against her, softening to let Alice slide inside the space of her body, and somehow getting so large that Alice is entirely enveloped in her warm, strong arms. Her hands are everywhere, twisting in Alice’s hair, fisting the back of her sweater, gripping her neck, sliding up and down Alice’s spine, grasping her jaw to hold her close.
Her mouth is overwhelming in the best way, hot and greedy without being messy.
Her lips are soft but she’s insistent and demanding, leaving no room for doubt about her intentions, her desire.
Alice licks inside Van’s mouth, and the little sound Van makes against her, the way her fingers dig into Alice’s skin—Alice knows she’ll remember that for the rest of her life.
They’re in a hospital bathroom but all Alice can smell is Van, all she can hear is the sound of their kiss, of Van’s breaths puffed against her cheek.
Alice dips one hand under Van’s sweater, finding the warm, soft flesh of her hip that is better than she could have dreamed.
After a moment, she slides her hand around, feeling the muscles of Van’s back flexing at the cold shock of her fingers.
Alice pulls her lips away just enough to look at Van, to take in the sharp angles and soft planes of her face, her lips open, her cheeks pink.
Her brown gaze flitting between Alice’s mouth and her eyes.
“You’re so fucking gorgeous,” Alice hears herself whisper, and she watches as a hot, pleased blush creeps up from Van’s neck into her already flushed cheeks.
“So are you,” Van says, her hands tight on Alice, and then they’re kissing again.
Van is all wet suction and thick lips, and Alice is quickly lost in her.
The texture of her tongue, the feeling of her long fingers on Alice’s neck, the way breaths seem to keep getting caught in her throat.
Van adjusts her stance to pull Alice even closer to herself, to hold both of them up even when Alice almost loses her balance, too distracted by Van’s mouth to worry about things like gravity.
Alice feels something like buzzing near her hand under Van’s sweater, and it takes her way too long to realize that it’s the phone in Van’s back pocket. Someone is calling. They both ignore it in favor of continuing to devour each other, but it doesn’t stop.
With a groan of frustration, Van pulls back from Alice, just a few inches. “Hold that thought,” she breathes, wrapping one arm low around Alice’s waist, like she’s ready to keep Alice pressed against her no matter what.
Alice finds the very thought of pulling away absurd.
She drops her head onto Van’s shoulder, pressing a soft kiss to the hinge of the jaw that she’s been staring at for so long.
She snakes her other hand up under Van’s sweater as Van pulls out her phone and stares at it.
“It’s Marie,” she mutters, which is weird, because Alice is pretty sure Marie’s a few feet away, in Nolan’s room.
Van presses the green button and holds it up to her ear. “Marie?”
It’s not on speaker, but Alice can hear it plain as day.
“VAN, WHERE ARE YOU? NOLAN’S AWAKE!”