Chapter Eighteen #2
“Great,” she says, sounding a little breathless. Alice tries not to focus on how this is exactly what she’d sounded like after kissing Alice to within an inch of her life in the hospital bathroom. “It was pretty slippery up there, but we managed to get it all nailed down hard.”
Is it just Alice, or does that sound impossibly dirty? Probably her mind is in the gutter because Van is so hot and Alice is such a mess, but, like, really? Nailing something down? Being slippery? Come on, Vanessa Altman, cut out the porn talk in front of your mother!
“Van, taste this,” Marie says, holding out the bowl of chocolate icing she’s mixing up. “Does it need more vanilla?”
Alice turns away in an act of self-preservation, resolutely not watching Van lick chocolate off her finger. But this means that she doesn’t realize Van is coming toward her until she feels a warm, looming presence behind her, smells rain and wet grass and the familiar spice of her cologne.
“Nice apron,” Van says, soft and low, right into Alice’s ear, and Alice takes in a big breath through her nose, trying to keep herself from leaning back and melting into Van’s body, letting Van pick her up and abscond with her into a bedroom.
“Thank you,” she manages to murmur. She’s wedged in the corner, a wall on her right, and on her left, Marie, who is currently turned away, arguing animatedly with Babs about cookie cutters.
Van slides her right hand forward to rest on Alice’s hip, and Alice sucks in another breath, this time clearly loud enough for Van to hear it.
All Alice can think about is how Van’s hands felt on her body for those blissful five minutes before Nolan woke up—warm and strong and demanding in all the best ways.
“I do too, for the record,” Van whispers, and it takes Alice a second to come back to the present enough to figure out what she means.
They’d been talking about the apron, and oh.
It says “I Like Big Buns,” and Van said, I do too, and she’s extremely close to Alice’s quite sizable buns at the moment, and fuck.
God, Alice is going to hell for this, but she lets herself press backward, just for a second. The merest brush of the back of her pants against the front of Van’s, but it’s enough.
It’s Van who makes a sound this time, a sharp breath, and Van’s fingers that twitch against Alice’s hip, like she’s barely able to stop herself from grabbing hold and pulling Alice fully into herself.
But that little twitch is enough for Alice to remember the other thing about Van’s hands, how she opens and closes them when she’s tired, how Alice read in one of her anxious fits of research that having pins and needles in your hands is a common MS symptom.
That’s enough for the horny filter in her brain to dissipate, and for her to remember why she’s not allowed to give in to this.
Right. Van has MS, and Alice simply cannot sign herself up for another decade or two or four of caretaking, of watching the one person she loves slowly die in front of her.
She presses her hips forward until the counter is digging into the flesh of her stomach. “I, um, I have to roll these out before the dough gets too warm,” she says, and Van backs off.
“Can’t have that,” she says, but her voice sounds tight, and Alice knows she clocked the rejection. She hates herself for being so inconsistent, so unable to keep her hands—and ass, apparently—to herself. She knows she’s giving mixed signals, that Van doesn’t deserve any of this.
Alice needs to get it together, stat. That’s easier said than done, though, because she’s under constant scrutiny here.
Babs keeps checking in on her cookies, giving her unsolicited but helpful advice, Marie keeps leaning into her shoulder—Alice’s heart certainly isn’t exploding, she’s fine—even the men are popping in and out of the kitchen to grab more snacks or high-five everyone about football-related things Alice doesn’t care to understand.
Even worse, it turns out that Aunt Sheila is not only one of the chefs, she’s apparently also the official photographer.
All afternoon, she snaps picture after picture on her iPad, and Alice is sure most of them must be horribly unflattering.
Sideways shots from below of Alice frowning down at an icing bag, Alice and Marie mid-bite, Van halfway through clipping Frank’s leash on.
Alice just hopes she isn’t getting any of Van staring sadly at Alice, of Alice looking like she desperately wants to wrap herself around Van like an octopus and never let go.
But it’s sweet, honestly, that Aunt Sheila wants to capture the mundane moments with her family. And if Nolan happens to be in more than his fair share, well, who can blame her, really? He’s home, he’s alive, and you can’t tell from the pictures that he has amnesia.
“Alice,” Aunt Sheila says after taking a whole series of the three men on the couch that Alice has silently named The Patriarchy Is Alive and Well, “go sit with Nolie.”
“Uh, sorry?” Alice pretends she didn’t hear, that she’s absorbed in her work piping white icing onto cookies with Marie at the dining room table, but Aunt Sheila is, of course, unperturbed.
“Go sit with your boyfriend, honey,” she says, grabbing Alice’s arm and practically throwing her at the couch.
Alice manages to get her apron off but it gets caught in her hair, and she can see the way Nolan’s eyes linger on her frizzy tangles.
She tosses the apron to Marie to hold for her, and she tries not to wonder if Nolan likes big buns the way Van does.
She tries not to think about how she has a great view of Van’s buns right now, because Van is turning away from her, hurt clear in the set of her head, the way her shoulders are creeping up to her chin.
Alice sits next to Nolan, who pushes the blanket off his legs.
“Nolan, put your arm around her,” Aunt Sheila directs. “Isn’t this lovely, your first official portrait as a couple!”
Alice hopes her smile doesn’t look like a grimace as Nolan obediently drapes his arm around her shoulders.
He seems to be touching her as little as possible, but his arm is still heavy.
Alice tilts toward him so the picture doesn’t look tremendously awkward, but she’s pretty sure whatever Aunt Sheila manages to get will look more like a hostage photo than a happy couple celebrating their first Christmas together.
Although she’s honestly not sure which of them will look like the hostage and which like the hostage taker.
“Now how about a kiss?”
Alice blanches. “Oh no, no, no.”
“Just on the cheek, dear,” Aunt Sheila says, flapping her hands at them in a get on with it motion.
Alice looks desperately around for backup, but Babs is standing next to Aunt Sheila, her hands clasped under her chin, beaming at Nolan like watching him kiss Alice is all she’s ever wanted for Christmas.
Even Marie is grinning, holding her own phone up now.
Steve and Uncle Joe seem unmoved, largely fixated on the football game, and Alice can’t see Van but she can feel her presence—distressed, disapproving. Disappointed.
She turns to look at Nolan. She’s never been this close to him before.
She tries to call up her feelings from three weeks ago, when she’d have given anything for the chance to be here under his arm, to get this close to his face, to have a picture of them together that she could stare at for the rest of her life.
She’d been in love with him, as much as it’s possible to be in love with someone who barely knows that you exist. She’d written Alice Altman in the margins of more than one piece of paper, and she may have even practiced a signature.
This whole fucked-up situation is because she thought he was pretty and then she wanted to make his family happy.
He’s still pretty, and right now his family is nearly crying tears of joy at the thought of him pressing his chapped lips to her cheek for half a second.
And she did give him mouth-to-mouth, so it’s not like they haven’t almost made out before, right?
She nods at him, and he doesn’t look thrilled about it but he leans in too, and Alice turns her face, closes her eyes.
It’s a barely-there press of lips to skin, and it’s over in a second.
She hopes the Altmans all think she kept it chaste—her hands in her own lap, her failure to kiss his cheek back, no coy smiles or flirtatious whispers—because making out with him in front of his mom and aunt and baby sister and their Instagram audiences is weird, instead of the truth, which is that the idea of his tongue in her mouth is kind of turning her stomach.
She decides not to dwell on why he gave it so little energy and enthusiasm himself; her self-esteem probably can’t take the hit of knowing precisely how revolting he finds her.
She tries so hard not to think about how she’d have kissed Van in this situation, how she’d have turned her head back at the last second to find Van’s lips with her own, how her body would have sunk into Van’s without a thought, how Marie would’ve had to smack them with a spatula to get them to stop kissing.
How Van would have leaned in, smiled into Alice’s lips, grasped her waist like she never wanted to let go.
She hates that she thinks about how Babs might have turned away, her face tinged with discomfort at the sight of her daughter kissing a woman, instead of the rapt bliss she has right now watching her son do it.
—
It’s less than half an hour later that Alice’s phone buzzes in her pocket during a quick breather before caroling.
The boomer men are napping, Marie and the boomer women are digging through the costume closet for “special bobbles,” whatever that means, and Van is tucked in the corner of the living room, as far away from both Nolan and Alice as she can possibly be without raising suspicion.
Alice pulls her phone out and sees a text from Isabella. She quickly tilts her phone, making sure Van and Nolan can’t see her screen.
Um, what the heck is this? the message reads.
Alice clicks on it and sees that Isabella has sent her a screenshot from Marie’s Instagram account.
It’s two pictures of her and Nolan—one where they’re both smiling awkwardly at the camera, and the other of him kissing her cheek.
Alice zooms in. The kiss looks about as uncomfortable as it felt, not particularly warm or intimate, and you can see Steve’s knee in the corner.
But the caption is what really makes Alice’s heart sink: My Christmas miracle of a big brother and my brand-new almost-sister.
There are a couple emojis, both of the Christmas and joyful variety, and Alice simultaneously wants to die and to scoop Marie up in her arms and hug her for a hundred years.
Shit, Alice writes back.
He kissed you?
His aunt made us for the picture, Alice types quickly. It was awkward.
Yeah I can tell. But still. What about the plan?
Funny story about that. Alice presses her lips together, trying not to laugh at the absolute mess she’s made of her life. I gave them the whole speech, and they were like, lol no.
Isabella sends three question marks before she writes, What does that mean?
Alice sends a shrugging emoji. They basically rejected my rejection of them. Literally came to my apartment today and kidnapped me to spend Christmas with them.
Oh, Alice adds, remind me that I have presents for you guys!
Isabella’s quick reply, DO NOT TRY TO DISTRACT ME, makes Alice laugh, and Van looks over at her. They’re all ostensibly watching football but mostly trying not to touch each other.
“Isabella,” Alice offers, lifting her phone a little bit. “Being her usual ridiculous self.”
“I liked her,” Van says, almost smiling.
“She liked you,” Alice says without thinking. “She asks about you, like, every day.”
Van swallows, and Alice wishes she could take it back. She really doesn’t need Van knowing how much Alice and Isabella talk about her, what Alice says. Who Isabella is rooting for, in all of this.
“Tell her ‘Merry Christmas’ for me,” Van says after a long beat, and Alice nods, grateful for the excuse to duck her eyes back to her phone and read the messages that have piled up.
So are you back together with him?
Well I guess not “back”
Are you with him?
What about Van?
Are you smooching both of them?
RUE RUE WHAT IS GOING ON IN YOUR LIFE RIGHT NOW
Ksdskdhfo!*!^#*)($0
Okay that was Hazel but honestly I agree with her
DUDE
Alice laughs. Sorry. I had to have a human conversation for a second.
I don’t know what I’m doing
I don’t know if I’m with him or not
Like neither of us really want that I don’t think
But his entire family wants us together and we both seem to be playing along with that?
I mean, except for Van
Obviously
Isabella doesn’t write back immediately. It’s almost two minutes before the next text comes through. Alice wonders if Hazel grabbed her phone again, or if Bella was carefully deciding how to phrase what she wanted to say.
Just make sure you’re doing whatever you do for the right reasons, Bella sends. And I think we both know that making his mom and aunt happy aren’t it.
Okay, The Bachelor, Alice types, but she knows Bella is right. I promise I’ll be here for the right reasons.
Isabella sends her a GIF of a rose ceremony, and Alice tucks her phone back into her pocket.
Bella’s right, but it’s more complicated than she knows.
“Alice, Van, it’s time to get the cookies out of the oven!” Babs shouts down the stairs, and Alice gratefully stands up, scurrying into the kitchen.
It’s Christmas Eve. That means cookies now, existential dread later.