Page 67 of Pyg

12

FULLY FUNCTIONAL ADULT

Ash had seen Alice at her worst. Despite that, the intriguing doctor still wanted to spend her first work-free night since they’d met in Alice’s company.

For some reason, this incredibly generous, caring, funny…very cutedoctor wanted to be Alice’s friend. As such, Alice wanted hernew friendto see that she was a fully functional adult. She wanted to show her that she lived a tidy, ordered life, which only by exception involved panda-eyes, stray thongs, broken-down cars, lost phones, job quitting, and general chaos. In the short time they’d known each other, it was entirely possible Ash had got the wrong impression of her, but more likely that she’d glimpsed the real Alice because she hadn’t had a chance to put her guard up yet.

Waking early Wednesday morning, after a coffee in bed — made with fresh milk from her fully stocked fridge — Alice threw open the curtains and windows. She ached like a bitch from that workout, but sore muscles aside, now seemed like the ideal time to spring clean her flat. The space wasn’t big by any stretch, but the high ceilings needed de-cobwebbing, and everything needed dusting. She vacuumed the entire flat, bleached the kitchen, and washed the floors.

Momentary panic gripped her when she stripped the bedsheets — would Ash realise she’d changed them? And if so, would she think Alice was being presumptuous?Promiscuous, even?

Wait, if Ash made it to the bedroom and got close enough to the bedsheets to realise they’d been changed, then surely Alice had a right to be presumptuous —stop overthinking, your sheets are dirty so change them like a normal person.

Her tummy flipped at the thought of them between the covers together, but she blinked it away.

This isn’t that kind of date — friends, Alice. Just friends!

The problem was, aside from Maggie, who was under sororal obligation to be her friend, Alice didn’t have many female friends.

…Anyfemale friends.

…Any friends.

It was partly by choice, partly by circumstance. A few had come and gone over the years — mostly gay men who were, in her experience, flaky as fuck. Just like her past relationships — fun while it lasted, but nothing had endured. Alice was okay with that; it suited her personality not to be stuck with the same people for too long. They either annoyed her or she annoyed them and so they all moved on with their lives.

Before Fran, Alice’s longest relationship had been with a jar of mayonnaise in her fridge. Of course, after a while, even that turned sour. And it wasn’t until Fran had planted the seed that Alice had hoped for anything more than the arrangement they had. Before that, the idea of waking up next to the same person day in, day out, struck her as tedious. Yet Fran’s suggestion of something more had unlocked a desire for domesticity — mornings dancing around each other in the bathroom, a smiling face to come home to at the end of a difficult day, rainy Sunday afternoons curled up on the couch, legs entangled… and the most basic yearning of all; someone to bring her a cuppa in bed without having to ask how she liked it.

And whilst Alice would miss the heat and the feeling of being desired by a woman with the gravitational pull of Francesca Dalton, she realised it wasn’t the loss of Fran specifically that stung; it was the loss of the possibilities of a future with someone.

When Alice finished scrubbing the bathroom, the bathtub beckoned. After all the exertion, her muscles were screaming for a soak and a cheeky glass of wine to help stop her over-thinking the whole Ash thing.

Alice reclined in the deep tub, where she lay for nearly an hour, inhaling the zesty scent of the steam infused with the lemongrass oil she’d added to the water. When the water went cold, she added more hot, twisting the tap on and off with her toes. She’d long since finished her wine — a glass of the nice white she’d shared with Maggie — but she couldn’t bear to leave the sanctuary of the bathroom to dash along the hallway in a towel. And besides, she didn’t want to spoil her clean floors with drip marks.

A faint knocking noise pulled Alice from her meditative state.

She wasn’t expecting anyone or anything; perhaps she’d been soaking for longer than she’d realised. Alice sat up and leaned over the side of the bath to dry her hands on a fluffy towel. As she picked up her phone to check for messages, the faint knock became an obnoxious hammering at the door. Alice tutted.Bloody delivery drivers.

If it were Maggie, she’d have called, and Ash wasn’t due for hours yet. In the time it would take to get out of the bath and dry herself, the unexpected visitor would have left, anyway.

“Just leave it outside,” Alice yelled, although it was unlikely they’d hear her through two closed doors. The banging continued. Alice groaned and re-submerged herself, relishing the hot water enveloping her entirely. As her ears filled, the hammering morphed into a distant thudding. A warbling sound filtered through the water, muffled and far-off —

“Alice! Alice!”

Alice gasped and bolted upright, splashing through the surface.

“I know you’re in there. You can’t keep avoiding me like this.” Fran’s voice sounded strained and desperate.

Fuck, why is she here?

“Alice, please open the door. I just want to speak with you.”

Alice’s stomach clenched into a tight ball.

“Well, I’m not leaving. You’ll have to come out at some point.” The letterbox snapped shut.

Bollocks.Alice pulled the plug and reached for her towel. When getting to her feet, she slipped, stumbling, and grasped for something, anything — the shower curtain. The metal rings gave way as she tumbled out of the tub, twisting in the material and bashing her knee on the side of the bath. She landed with a thud on the cold floor tiles and her wrist bent painfully underneath her.

“Fucking oils,” she screamed and winced as she tried to move her arm. After drying the soles of her feet, Alice tentatively stood, blood pounding in her ears. Swelling bloomed over her knee already and she yelped when she tried to apply pressure to it.

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