Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Van has to jiggle the key in the lock a little because everything contracts in the cold, and Alice can’t help herself. “Doorgasm,” she whispers, and Van laughs.
Frank bounds inside and Alice follows him, kicking off her shoes and trailing Van into the living room.
Alice has only been here the one time, but something about it already feels like home.
Maybe it’s how easily Van moves through the space, for once like she’s not worried about being too big or knocking into something.
Maybe it’s how everything Alice sees is something she would have picked out for herself—the comfortable couch, the mismatched collection of round-bellied mugs with weird sayings on them like Happy Birthday Grandpa, the pictures of family and friends and landscapes on the walls.
Or maybe it’s just Van. Maybe if they spent more time at Alice’s apartment, the place she’s lived since she was nineteen and alone for the first time, it would feel more like home too.
Van makes them both tea before they go to the couch, and Alice gets to curl up into Van like she’d wanted to at Chanukah and every moment since, tucking her knees up to her chest and leaning her whole body into Van’s.
Van’s arm is tight around her waist, and the kiss she presses to Alice’s hair feels so good that Alice’s eyes almost roll back into her head.
Frank curls up next to Alice, his back warm against her hip, and something behind her heart that’s been pinched and terrified since she was eight years old slowly relaxes, melting like it’s finally in the sunshine.
“What about your next five years?” Alice asks after a while, trying to keep herself from falling asleep in case this is all a cruel dream, and she’ll wake up alone in her cold bed. “What do you want?”
“This,” Van says softly, the hand on Alice’s thigh squeezing slightly. “You and me, here. I want—I don’t want a flashy life, you know? I want to…take you on trips and cook dinner with you and see our families, and spend most nights just like this.”
Alice drops her head onto Van’s shoulder. “Trips, hmm? Where are you taking me?”
“I dunno,” Van says, and Alice can hear that she’s still smiling, even as she kisses Alice’s head again. “Anywhere you want to go. Especially if I can see you in a bikini.”
Alice snorts, burying her face in Van’s chest, but she’s suddenly seized by a vision of Van in a sports bra and trunks, sunglasses and trucker hat in the sunshine, and her throat immediately goes dry. She swallows thickly. Beach vacation is definitely an urgent priority.
“Do you think your mom’s going to be okay with this?
” Alice asks after a few minutes. “This” being Van not only bringing home a woman, of course, but Van bringing home the very woman who lied to all of them for months.
She presses her palm to Van’s chest, hard, as if to say, I’m not going anywhere, no matter what she says.
“I hope so,” Van says, settling Alice a little more comfortably against herself.
“She loves you, so that’ll help, I think.
Aunt Sheila’s on board and she’s kind of a force of nature, as you might have noticed.
” Alice laughs. She has, in fact, noticed.
“And Marie’s going to be insufferable, so I’m not sure Mom will have much of a choice, unless she wants every holiday to feature, like, a full-ass PowerPoint lecture about it. ”
Alice laughs. She can picture it perfectly.
Marie cosplaying as a gender studies professor, smacking a ruler on her palm and pacing back and forth, quizzing Babs on queer terminology, they/them pronouns, and forcing her to admit that Van being happy is more important than Babs’s vague, quiet homophobia.
“She’s perfect,” Alice says. She nuzzles her nose into Van.
“You’re perfect.” She knows she’s the one who brought it up, but she’s suddenly very aware of the feeling of Van’s hands on her body, her chest under Alice’s palm, and she’s ready to stop talking about Van’s mother and baby sister now.
She sets her tea down on the coffee table and then swings a leg over, straddling Van’s lap.
“Hi,” Van says, her hands automatically going to Alice’s thighs, high enough up to be a promise.
“Hi,” Alice says, already dipping her head down and letting Van take absolutely everything she has.
They move to the bed when Frank gets a bit too involved.
Alice should have been asleep for hours now, but she’s pretty sure she’s never going back to her job.
Not when it would keep her away from Van, would mean spending days alone in this bed and nights alone behind that desk, instead of nights here like this, with Van’s lips pressed to hers, Van’s hips pinning her down on the bed, Van’s fingers slipping inside her.
No, she’ll find another job. She’ll put all of this behind her—the night shift, that lobby, Nolan, the enormous lie—and she’ll stay right here.
On her back, in this bed, listening to Van whisper encouragement in her ear and then slowly falling asleep with her legs still wrapped around Van’s, Frank quietly snoring in the corner.