Alana & Hudson’s Very Real And Totally Legitimate Anniversary
The Ardsley Resortlooked the same as it did one year ago today, the first time Alana and Hudson drove up here. This time, instead of their friends renting them a limo, they’d taken Metro North and then Ubered the rest of the way. Maybe not as fancy and romantic, Alana thought as the Uber pulled up to the circular drive-in front of the hotel, but it was more reasonable. And since she and Hudson were paying for the room themselves, they hadn’t booked the honeymoon suite. They’d thought about it, for shits and giggles, and then had looked up how much a room would be, and both nearly swallowed their tongues.
“Damn,” Alana had said after a few minutes of silently gaping at the four-digit number. “Maybe I should have actually taken a bath there. If they’re charging that much money per night, they must replace the bathtub after every visit.”
Hudson had called JP and put him on speaker. “What the fuck, man?”
“What the fuck what?”
“The Ardsley Resort!!”
“Are you guys going back for your anniversary?” JP sounded delighted.
“Don’t avoid the question, John.”
“Ugh, why do you insist on calling me that? We didn’t pay full price for the room for you. Feel better now?”
“No,” Alana replied. “You’re acting too weasley. What aren’t you telling us?”
“Hudson, I love you, man, but I do not love that your wife does not believe me.”
Hudson snorted. “We both know she’s right, though.”
“Thanks, baby.”
JP gagged. “Gross.”
“Dude.”
“We had gotten you a regular room, and then I got a phone call from the hotel saying your room had been upgraded to the honeymoon suite by a friend,” JP admitted. “Which, weird, but I wasn’t going to turn down an upgrade for you two, especially since all of us were hoping that maybe some time alone in a nice hotel would mean the two of you could actually have a conversation or I dunno, actually have sex instead of the extended flirting thing that had been going on since forever.”
Alana groaned. “Everyone really knew, didn’t they?”
“Why do you think we were so nervous about you lying to a doctor?” JP responded. “Jaz says that every song she’s ever written about two people pining after each other is about the two of you.”
“Liar.”
“Fine, only the horny ones.”
“I’m flattered.” Hudson reached over to Alana and started playing with her hair. “But who paid for it?”
“I asked, under the guise of you guys wanting to write a thank you card or some shit, and they wouldn’t tell me, just that it was a man whose hospitality we’d all enjoyed routinely who was invested in your happy ending.”
Alana scrambled up. “John Paul Sanderson, the Nest guy upgraded our room and you waited a whole fucking year before saying anything??”
“I was only supposed to tell you if you actually stayed married.”
“And we told you guys we were planning on staying married months ago,” Hudson pointed out.
“I forgot.”
“Oh my god, JP, the girls are going to murder you.” Alana said.
“The girls? Jordan’s gonna shit their pants.”
“My bad?” JP offered, not sounding that apologetic at all. “Drinks on me next time we’re at Nest.”
“Deal,” Alana said. “But we’re gonna tell everyone about this there. In person reactions and everything.”
“You suck.”
Hudson grinned, and Alana swatted at him. “Behave,” she mouthed.
After they hung up with JP, Hudson turned to her. “You didn’t actually mean that.”
“Mean what?”
“That I should behave.”
“For the short term, yes. Yes, I did.”
Hudson rolled and braced himself over her body. “Short term over yet?”
“Absolutely.”
A concierge was waiting for them when they got out of the Uber. “Mr. Miller, Ms. Bruckner. What a pleasure to have you back.”
Alana and Hudson exchanged glances. “Thanks?” Hudson offered.
They were led to the front desk, where they were checked in, and given the keys to their rooms. Except the woman behind the counter called it the suite.
“Maybe they just call all of them suites,” Alana whispered to Hudson as they were escorted to the elevator. They had booked just a regular room, and even that had been a splurge.
Hudson shrugged.
And then the doors opened on the top floor of the hotel, and the concierge escorted them to the honeymoon suite.
“I think there has been some sort of mix-up,” Hudson said as the concierge unlocked the double doors. “We didn’t book this room.”
“You were upgraded,” the concierge replied. “Happy anniversary.”
If it was the Nest guy again, Alana wasn’t sure what she was going to do. The girls were going to lose their minds.
“Upgrading usually means the room is a little nicer, not that we sleep in the nicest room in the hotel.”
The concierge shrugged. “Must be your lucky day, then.”
Alana and Hudson exchanged skeptical glances and headed into the suite.
Maybe it was that time had passed, or maybe things really had gotten more lavish than they had been last time Alana had been there. Everything seemed bigger, newer, cleaner.
“How in the hell did we manage to start on opposite sides of that bed and end up together?” Alana asked as she rolled her suitcase to a stop, looking at the cruise-ship-sized bed.
“Subconsciously wanting to prove Lauren wrong,” Hudson said, walking over to the bed. “I don’t remember the basket being this big.”
“This is enormous.” Alana joined him. “Also, there definitely were not that many sex toys in the last one.”
“Well, they’re all Orbiting Venus, so at least we know they’re good ones.”
“Would taking them home be like stealing a hotel robe?” Alana wondered, wandering over to the bathtub.
“I…have no idea.” Hudson sat at the edge of the bed, crushing some of the strewn rose petals. “We packed your cleaning supplies for the bathtub just in case.”
“You may have to distract me after I clean it,” Alana said, peering in, “so that I can just enjoy the swimming pool-sized bathtub and not think about how other people may have had sex in it.”
“This hotel room is perfectly virginal,” Hudson deadpanned.
“And my Kindle is waterproof.”
“That wasn’t what I thought you meant when you said you wanted me to distract you, but that works, too, I guess.” Hudson toed off his shoes and stretched back. “Are you reading another monster book? I didn’t realize that the post-apocalyptic monster romance author had a new book in the series out.”
“Nah, she decided she wanted to try out scifi.”
“Aren’t the monsters technically aliens, which would make the books scifi anyway?”
“I mean, I guess kind of? But these books would take place on a different planet, and possibly with a different species of alien, so that wouldn’t be the same thing.”
“Huh. Interesting.” Hudson hummed to himself. “Sketchbook. Where is my sketchbook?” He reached for his bag, rifled through, and pulled it out.
The other shoe dropped. “Wait, why do you know that she doesn’t have any new monster books out?”
“Not important.”
“Hudson.”
“Listen, you were very enthusiastic about them,” he protested. “So maybe I bought the first book after our not-honeymoon last year.”
Alana almost fell over. “And you read it?”
“I did.”
“Oh my god.”
“What? Am I not allowed to expand my reading horizons?”
“Did you like it?”
“We do not have enough time for me to currently unpack all my complicated feelings about the community dynamics,” Hudson said. “Also, Kendrick can be shoved into a vat of lava, or whatever the monster equivalent is. I know that she’s setting it up for him to have some sort of redemption arc, but unless that redemption arc involves him sacrificing himself to the greater good by exploding into a million tiny pieces, I don’t know if I’m into it.”
(Shannon was going to die. Alana was possibly going to die, too. This was the best accidental honeymoon present of her life.)
“Is that why you’re going to have to explain to people that after your last project, which won, like, four thousand things, that you’re pivoting to romance novel monsters?”
“Yes,” Hudson said, starting to sketch. “Absolutely.”
“Your agent is gonna murder me.”
“Pfft. Hasn’t yet.”
The difference between Hudson last year and Hudson now was startling, especially with them being back in the exact same place as they had been. If nothing else, the fact that by tipsily proposing to Hudson had led down the weird rollercoaster of a path that landed them here, obnoxiously in love with each other, but having Hudson just have the art spigot turned all the way on? It was the best sort of magic Alana could have asked for. There were days when she wondered if asking him to marry her had been the most selfish thing she could have done, and at the end of the day, the answer was yes.
But Hudson marrying her had been the most selfish thing he could have done for himself, too. Everything really did work out in the end. Minus menopause. That was not her favorite, but the fact that this was all she had to worry about? She’d do menopause forever.
Hudson would sketch for a while, until whatever he needed to transfer out of his brain and onto paper was done, and then, they’d go back to the conversation.
Maybe she should start cleaning the bathtub now.
She had a bath to take, and maybe she could coerce Hudson into joining her this time.
Cleaning gloves on, Alana turned on her cleaning the apartment playlist, and got to work.
The bathtub was halfway full, and Alana had just started to strip when Hudson put his pencil down. “The next one’s gonna be even weirder,” he said, getting off the bed.
“Oh, good. Those are my favorite ones.” Alana shimmied out of her skirt and watched Hudson’s eyes flare. “Catch up, Miller. You’re behind.”
“I like the view from here,” he said.
“But I would like it better if you were wearing less clothing. You promised to distract me.” She shrugged off her bra straps, reached behind, and unhooked her bra. “Fuck me, that never stops being the best feeling.”
“The best feeling?”
“You’re so easy.”
“Only for you, Lan.”
“Yes.” Alana watched as Hudson stalked toward her, shedding his clothing along the way. This was her favorite part. The part where she pushed him just far enough.
“We are going to desecrate the hell out of this bathtub,” Hudson said as he reached her. “And hopefully not flood this place.”
“From your lips to God’s ears.” Alana stood at the edge of the bathtub, entirely naked. Hudson reached down and kissed the scar on her stomach, the only outwardly physical reminder of her surgery. “My lucky scar,” he said.
“Why is that both weird and sexy?” Alana wondered as he nibbled down her body.
“Talent.”
“Yes,” Alana panted as he gently pushed her to sit on the lip of the tub. “Very. Talented.”
“I did mouth exercises on the way over here special for this,” Hudson said, getting to his knees.
“Liar.”
“You’ll never know.”
Whether Hudson had actually done mouth exercises, Alana would never know, but damn, whatever he had done had worked. The same way it worked every time.
Alana was just cresting through a life-affirming orgasm and was ready to push off having bathtub sex for bed sex first (and then followed by potentially bathtub sex, or possibly just bathtub recuperation), when someone rang the doorbell of the suite.
“No,” Hudson growled.
The doorbell rang again.
“Maybe they realized they made a mistake?” Alana offered.
Hudson raked his hands through his hair, reached out and grabbed a towel, and passed another one to Alana. “It’s very hard to think about unsexy things when I can still taste you,” he said as the doorbell continued to ring.
Alana blinked silently up at him, possibly going through a residual orgasm.
Hudson dropped a quick kiss (and now she tasted herself too, whoever was at the door needed to leave now) and went to go see who was at the door.
He peered through the peephole and groaned. “Fuck me.”
“I would love to.”
“We brought things for that, didn’t we?” Hudson asked, distracted by whatever was at the door.
“Yes.”
The doorbell rang again.
Hudson opened the door just a crack. “Hi. Laurie?”
“Lauren,” someone replied.
Oh, no.
“Lauren. I’m really sorry. Now’s not a great time. Maybe come back later?” He looked to the side. “Great. Wonderful. Yes, I do see you’ve upgraded your anatomically correct vagina. It looks…nice? Sure. See you later.”
Hudson shut the door and looked around wildly. “Where’s the Do Not Disturb sign, honey?”
Alana was too busy laughing to answer.
“Fuck it, I’m putting a sock on the handle. A woman who upgrades her anatomically correct vagina yearly will know what the sock on the door handle means.” Hudson mumbled as he made his way across the room, in search of the socks he had flung off.
“It’s gross how much I love you,” Alana said, finally calming down enough to talk.
“Same,” Hudson replied. He looked at Alana, who had dropped the towel, and then to the front doors of the suite, which he had locked. “She probably won’t come right back.”
“No. Definitely enough time to fuck me silly first. Or am I fucking you?”
“Both,” Hudson replied, picking up Alana and tossing her gently onto the bed. “We have time.”
“Nothing but it, baby.”
Hudson leaned down, his breath ghosting her ear. “There’s glitter lube in the sex basket.”
“You liar. Lauren would never.” Alana grinned at him. “Look at you, being thwarted by reasonable gynecological information.”
“Your commitment to good gynecological health is my favorite thing about you,” Hudson said as he began to play with her piercings. Opals, to match her ring. He had surprised her with them the week before, and she had cried, and changed them out immediately. “Favorite,” he kissed one, “favorite,” and kissed the other.
“How about we bust out the glitter lube for our five-year anniversary?” Alana offered.
“Liar.”
“Absolutely.”
“If we do glitter lube for five, what are we gonna do for ten?”
“We’ll figure out something,” Hudson said. “We always do.”
Several hours later, they lay curled up on the balcony, dressed in hotel robes, enjoying the unseasonably warm evening.
“You know, one day when you have rich artist people money, we should get an apartment with a porch,” Alana said.
“Or we can keep staying in the current apartment, and just rent houses in the middle of nowhere with porches more often,” Hudson replied.
“That makes more sense.” Alana sighed. “I like living near all our friends. Just wish we didn’t have to pay that much money to do it.”
“Want to start a commune somewhere?”
“No.” Alana laughed. “Actually, maybe. Especially when Baby Dahlia gets older. Matilda’s already stressed about childcare shit for her. But I don’t think we all have buying an empty plot commune money.”
“Maybe we don’t now, but we might later.”
“I’d have to get a new job. Maybe I can convince Patrick to start some tech consulting firm with me so we’d still be able to get the good health insurance.”
“And then Dahlia can have some more grandparents.”
“Barbara would truly lose her shit.” Alana grinned up at him. “That’s a good plan.”
“We have them, every once in a while.”
“True. But I think that this one will probably cause less stress to my therapist.”
“I never asked you about that,” Hudson said. “What did your therapist say about us getting married?”
“Oh, I didn’t tell him for months and months.”
“You didn’t?” Hudson was shocked. “I told mine right after you proposed.”
“You did?” Alana was probably more shocked than Hudson was. “Weren’t you scared it wasn’t legal and your therapist was gonna have to report you to someone?”
“Not particularly. I was more concerned about him finding out it was you, especially after the whole Connecticut thing.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
Hudson gave her a quick kiss. “It’s okay. Everything worked out in the end.”
“Yeah, but maybe things wouldn’t have been so complicated if I hadn’t been so focused on not getting hurt.”
“And maybe things wouldn’t have worked out. Maybe we needed this set of circumstances to make sure that when we fell in love with each other, it stuck.”
“That a therapist thing?”
“A Lane Sutherland special.”
Alana nearly fell out of her chair. “Hold the fuck on.”
“What?”
“What’s your therapist’s name?”
“Lane Sutherland.” Hudson looked at her, perplexed. “I’ve definitely mentioned Lane to you before.”
“Not by name!” Alana started to laugh. “Holy shit, he has been going through it the past few years.”
“What do you mean?”
“Baby. Do you know what my therapist’s name is?”
“...No?”
“Fucking Lane Sutherland.”
Hudson stared at her for a full minute before bursting into laughter. “HIPAA really is that bitch, isn’t she. He’s been sitting on this for years.”
“How does one offer hazard pay to one’s therapist?”
“I have no idea, but I think we should look into it,” Hudson said. “And actually. This kind of works out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we were talking about maybe setting up sessions with one of our therapists together, but couldn’t figure out if it would be weird with them really having a thorough background on only one of us. Fixes that issue.”
“And they all lived Happily Ever After, the end?”
“Especially their poor, stressed out therapist.”
“Perfect.”
Thank you so much for reading ALANA HUDSON. If you enjoyed this book, please feel free to tell a friend, or share your opinion on Beyonce’s Internet.
Wondering what’s going on with Shannon? Same. All I can say is this- Shannon Noah are definitely not in a PR relationship.