Chapter Seventeen #2
She can’t help but picture the roles reversed, now, with Van lying in the bed, being asked to lift her knee and open her fingers and touch her nose.
Van in a hospital gown, Van staggering up the walkway to her duplex, Van insisting that she’s fine when she’s clearly not.
Van being smothered by her mother’s anxious affection, Van gritting her teeth and pretending she’s not in agony.
“I refuse to live with them,” Nolan says, relaxing back onto his pillows. “That would be awful. Mom wouldn’t let me take a piss without her supervision.”
Although Alice can’t think of a nicer place to recuperate, he’s probably not wrong about how Babs would hover.
Van seems to agree, nodding at Nolan. “I know,” she says.
“You could…” She pauses, busying herself with tucking the stool back where it goes under the little sink in the corner of the room.
She takes a breath, and then says, “You could stay with me instead.”
Nolan blinks. Alice tries to picture him in Van’s house, on her worn brown couch that’s covered in a thick layer of Frank’s hair.
No sweeping views of the city, no balcony, no garage for what is surely a fancy car.
Just a cozy two-bedroom unit on the ground floor with succulents on every surface and dog toys scattered across the rug.
“Maybe you could stay with me at my condo?” he offers. “Apparently it’s very nice.”
“It is very nice,” Van says, her voice steady and calm like she’s still in doctor mode. “But I have a dog, and it would be absolute ass to take him down nineteen stories every time he has to pee. Plus, he’d destroy all your nice shit.”
It isn’t until Nolan says, “Well, maybe someone else could take care of him,” that Alice remembers her suspicions that maybe he’s not a very nice person, that maybe he’s kind of selfish.
The rest of the family is so kind and loving that it’s easy to forget, but right.
Yeah. Sometimes wonderful families happen to spawn jerks, she guesses.
Alice thinks about the venom in Van’s voice when she’d said Since you’ve done fuck all for me and the fucking MS, about the drawer in his apartment with hair ties in every color for what must be his parade of one-night stands.
About how, from the couple of snide comments Van’s made, Alice is pretty sure he’s not contributing to Marie’s tuition or his parents’ mortgage, even though he’s living in one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in Portland.
Van seems to be remembering all of this too, because her face is tightening up and her voice is harder when she says, “No, they couldn’t. You’re welcome with me at my house with my dog, Nolan, or you can stay with Mom and Dad. Let us know what you decide.”
She finally catches sight of Alice in the doorway and nods at her.
“Nolan, you remember Alice from the other day?”
He looks over at her, and there’s nothing at all in his face when he says, “Yeah, sure. Hello.”
Alice wonders if that counts, if it should be five times he’s said hello now, or if she should start over. New brain, clean slate.
“Hi,” she says. “How are you feeling?”
He shrugs, and she can see him wiggling his toes under the sheet Van’s pulled up to his waist. “A little better, I guess.” He takes a moment then and really stares at her, and Alice feels entirely naked.
He’s looking her up and down, clearly trying to find what he must have seen in her, and coming up empty.
“They said…” He pauses for a beat. “They said you were my girlfriend?” Alice tries not to grimace at the confusion in his voice, the disappointment.
The way there’s nothing even close to resembling happiness at the idea of having been with her.
“Don’t worry about that,” Alice says quickly. Too quickly. “It doesn’t matter.” Van makes a sound, and Alice tries to reel it in, to act even the tiniest bit like their relationship mattered to her. “You don’t remember it, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to fake it.”
One of them shouldn’t have to anyway.
“So…you’re not my girlfriend anymore? If more memories don’t come back?”
“Let’s not push it right now, while you’re still recovering,” Alice says, seizing the easy out while Aunt Sheila isn’t around to yell at her about it.
“You can think of me as, I don’t know…a weird new family friend who happens to be around a lot.
” Or, maybe, not around a lot, if Alice can manage to extract herself.
He clearly doesn’t want her, she doesn’t particularly want him, being around Van is the kind of torture the Geneva Conventions tend to frown upon, and Alice truly isn’t sure what she’s still doing here, other than basking in the care of Babs, Aunt Sheila, and Marie.
Why did his family have to be so fucking wonderful?
Why couldn’t he have come from a normal family that begrudgingly sees one another on holidays and pretends like they have stuff in common?
Alice could have bounced out of that scenario on day one.
“Okay,” Nolan says slowly. “Um, sure. Fine. Good.” There’s a quiet beat and then, “Could you get me some coffee?”
Alice blinks. He doesn’t know about her job, but damn. Dude can spot a receptionist at twenty paces even with a traumatic brain injury. “Uh, sure. I’ll be, um, right back. I guess.”
“Tea,” Van says quickly, her eyes full of the apology Nolan doesn’t realize is warranted. “He’s only allowed decaf tea.”
Nolan grumbles, but Alice nods. “Want anything?” she asks the wall behind Van’s head.
It’s too hard to look at Van right now, to see the hurt and confusion in her eyes.
As far as Van knows, Alice threw her into a bathroom and kissed her senseless nearly a week ago and has done everything in her power to avoid looking at her or speaking to her since.
Van has to be horribly confused, whiplashed by Alice’s abrupt one-eighty from Fuck it, I want you to It would be easier for me if you didn’t exist, and it’s not like Alice can explain it.
Not like she can say, Hey, so the problem isn’t that your brother is awake, exactly; it’s that I’m a piece of shit who is refusing to even entertain the notion of being with you because you’re sick and that freaks me out.
Those are thoughts better left unsaid, better left buried with all of the potential they’ll never fulfill, all of the love and care that Alice refuses to acknowledge.
“No,” Van says softly. “Nothing from the cafeteria.”
Right. Because she does want something and they both know it, and it’s not a cup of fucking decaf tea. Alice almost laughs at how obvious Van is, how brave. How truly horrible Alice is for hurting her like this.
Alice wishes she could set it all aside and wrap herself around Van again, that she could fix the scars in Van’s brain, could make her as healthy and strong as she seems. Or maybe that she could make herself brave enough and kind enough for it not to matter, to be able to say—and mean—that she’s willing to risk it, that she wants Van more than she’s afraid of the MS.
But she can’t. She’s not.
Nolan isn’t the only selfish person in this hospital.
She leaves the room, but doesn’t walk away quite yet.
She leans against the wall outside, trying to breathe through how hard it is to be near Van, how painful it is to see what has quickly become her favorite face in the world and only be able to think about her slowly and painfully disintegrating, shrinking down to nothing under a hospital gown.
“I don’t get it,” she hears Nolan say. “I really dated her?”
“Yup,” Van says, a little gruffly, like maybe she’s trying to swallow down a big feeling.
“She’s not…my type,” Nolan says slowly. “Like, at all. Is she?”
Alice hears what he doesn’t say, and she knows it’s true—has known it for her whole life and for the last two weeks especially—but it still hurts.
“No.” Van’s voice is soft now, and for some reason Alice wants to cry. “She’s not.” There’s a beat, and then Alice can almost hear the smile in her voice. “And that, brother, is proof that you’ve always had fucking terrible taste in women.”