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After dinner, Alicia pulls her feet underneath her, books, briefings, and glass of wine on the table to the right, and sighs. Zach’s playing video games in his room, Grace is watching TV in hers and despite the hum of both popping in her ears she can still make out the sound of the sirens on the street below.
Some things never change and she breathes in the consistency.
“Hey, you.”
She looks up to see Peter tugging at his tie, watches as he slides onto the couch next to her. Alicia takes a steady breath, preparatory almost, and tries not to think about how this is what they have become. Soft greetings and polite overtures filling the vast distance between them. They haven’t aged as gracefully as they had hoped. Grew apart when they were suppose to grow together and it is still a difficult thing to swallow – the fact that it might just be as much her fault as it his.
“Hey.”
Peter smiles, left corner of his mouth twisting upwards and it is reminiscent of the man she fell in love with, almost. It makes her smile, too. His fingers twist into a fist and release simultaneously by his side for a few seconds before he finally reaches for her, fingers trailing over the jut of bone at her ankle. Her eyes fall closed and she sighs, lips parting for a short breath. It’s nice, for a moment, to be here with him like this, to feel his touch on her skin, soft and tender, his fingers smooth as they trace the line from muscle to ankle.
Finally, she pulls away, a consolatory smile playing on her lips. The memories always ruin the reality.
“I have to study.”
Peter’s mouth is tight around his quiet okay.
“You should talk to him,” Kalinda says, passing her a cup of coffee as they exit the morning staff meeting. It’s the norm now, these meetings, all of the vultures in the same room, sizing each other up, trying to wrap their heads around the best way to move farther up the never-ending corporate ladder. She finds it is the most amusing part of her day.
“I really shouldn’t.”
Kalinda follows Alicia into her office, falling into the seat near her desk. She’s giving her that look, the one that simply says I know best and Alicia rolls her eyes because this conversation is getting old fast.
“Whatever you say,” Kalinda sing-songs, fingers tapping the plastic rim of her coffee cup as she grins.
Alicia just laughs.
“I went back for you,” she thinks about telling Will sometimes.
They will be in his office, or hers, takeout on the floor between them as they go over briefings like they used to. The silence of the office would pound in her head as he stares at her, beer bottle dangling between his thin fingers. He will smile, just slightly, head cocking to the side as he regards her carefully, hopefully.
“After we kissed,” she will clarify and then look down and away, shy almost, before turning her head to look at him again. “I came back here for you,” she continues, clearing her throat and picking at the hem of her skirt, rubbing fabric between her thumb and forefinger as she stares at the edge that is beginning to unravel.
“I wanted…” she will start, then stop, the words getting caught somewhere in her throat.
He will cough in a way that let her know he is as nervous as she is. “You wanted what?” He will ask so quietly she has to strain to hear him.
When she would looks up again he Will be staring at her and she will be all too aware, her skin flushing, maybe, just a little.
Alicia will laugh at herself.
“I don’t even know.”
Peter hovers in the mornings. Alicia always catches him out of the corner of her eye, takes in the small, appreciative smile that twists on his lips with a tint of pride and continues on her way like she doesn't notice. They play these games now – constantly tiptoeing around each other, always careful with what they say or do, designing conversations days before they actually have them.
It leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.
One particular morning, Peter is sitting on the edge of her bed when she comes out of the bathroom. He's watching her and she pauses, finger to her ear as she places her earring through the hole and raises an eyebrow in his direction. He closes his mouth once or twice before speaking and the blatant insecurity in his actions makes her nervous.
"You're never going to forgive me are you?" he asks plainly, hands in his lap and he sounds as tired as she feels.
"I forgave you a long time ago, Peter," she answers quietly, switching to the other ear without missing a beat. Maybe it's the truth, maybe it's not. Alicia can't see the line between the two clearly anymore.
"Forgiveness isn't everything though, right?" he says, more of a statement than a question and they stare at each other for a moment that stretches on too long before he looks away.
After breakfast with the kids he leans in for a small kiss goodbye, lips brushing against her cheek and they have done this at least a thousand times before.
Alicia still flinches out of habit.
"I've loved you for a long time," Will tells her one night. It is months later, after the conversation they never speak about and Alicia assumes he's drunk, his voice thick over the line. She sighs and leans her head against the back of the couch, briefings and books sprawled out next to her. She's too tired for this. She's always tired lately, days bleeding together, defined by court dates and staff meetings. It's exhausting and she doesn’t remember feeling this old before. This bone tired.
There's a pause, long and poignant and she counts his breaths, the sound of the clock ticking from the kitchen prickling at her skin.
Peter moves in the other room, the bed creaking under his weight as he shifts, and she winces.
"Will," she starts, then stops, and pinches the bridge of her nose.
"Do with that what you want," he says, clearing his throat. "I just... hell, I don't know, Alicia. I think you should know that. I think you need to know that."
"Will."
He sighs something heavy, and if she closes her eyes, she can picture him, probably in his office, coffee mug full of something expensive between his fingers, feet propped up on his desk. It almost makes her smile.
"You're a better person than I am."
Alicia doesn't know what to say to that, so she says nothing at all.
Alicia had found out from Peter first, which would surprise most people if they knew.
Most assume that it was that one reporter that got famous off the scandal – Alicia doesn’t care to remember his name. But it wasn’t, it was Peter, with his head between his hands and his shoulders tight when she ran her palm across them, her touch tender and loving and blissfully unaware of what was coming her way.
He’d said quietly, you’re going to hear some things, Alicia and she had closed her eyes tightly and felt everything she knew, every ounce of security she had built over the years come crashing down around her in a single second.
Most everybody assumes that she had absolutely no idea, too. They’re wrong. The wife always knows. Maybe she didn’t know everything and maybe she still doesn’t know everything, but there were signs scattered along the way and Alicia has always been a very smart woman. Looking back, she knows she probably should have left. Probably should have confronted him and made more of an effort to save their ailing marriage. But there was Grace and Zach and the stability and security and Alicia has never been one of those women who relate love with fairy tales and happily ever afters. She will always be far too practical for that.
“We’ll beat this though, right?” he’d asked, his voice choking on the question.
“Yeah,” she had smiled, like the good wife she was, and nodded while refusing to look at him. “Of course.”
Deep down, they both knew it was a lie.
In the end, it doesn't matter how much they once loved each other, how happy they were once upon a time even though she had spent the better part of the last two years of her life trying to convince herself otherwise. There's no argument, no lie told or final act of betrayal that was the final straw, no epiphany to be had.
One day Alicia just wakes up and she is exhausted and her reserves are exhausted and the fight just doesn't seem worth it anymore. Always, she has been a practical woman. Pragmatic to a fault and every single part of her gives way to the fact that it is ridiculously impractical to stay in a marriage that is never going to work again.
"I'll always love you, Peter," she tells him that night after Grace and Zach have gone to bed. He doesn't look at her, but he does lean into her touch when her fingers brush his cheek, his eyes falling closed as he inhales and exhales shakily. Her stomach turns and she chokes on her words when she says, "I just don't know how to do this anymore."
They don't say anything for a long while, and she watches him carefully, the way his jaw sets and releases. The way his fingers are tight around the edge of the counter top. It seems like an eternity before one of them moves to speak again and she finds herself remembering the beginning, how good and easy things were then. The smile they shared across a crowded bar a week into her first year at Georgetown and how she had kept it with her for years, decades even. Looked back on it in her weaker moments, when the memories felt too far away and she would hang every ounce of hope she had on that single smile, that single moment of promise.
It is difficult, the remembering, seeing the stark contrast of who they were then and who they are now.
Growing older isn't meant to be easy, she muses, but it shouldn't be this hard, either.
"Is there any way I can change your mind?" he asks, and she doesn't remember him looking this old before.
She merely shakes her head and the sigh that results from him is so full of resignation and guilt that it is clear that they have both have known this was coming for a long time.
Will chats with her about the weather now.
Sometimes it is a case, and sometimes there is some sort of insightful advice that is meant to make her a better lawyer, but most of the time he starts a conversation with, nice day today, isn't it? and that is the extent of their entire relationship now.
He makes it a point not to be alone with her, too, and she understands, really, the need for self preservation. He'd cornered her after the two AM phone call, embarrassed and flustered, making a promise of never again and obviously meaning it. She understands even if she doesn't care for the changes that have come with it.
She misses her friend.
Today they are in the elevator, her fingers tight around the handle of her briefcase, his hands buried in his pockets, files firmly placed under his arm. She looks at him and catches him looking at her and both of them smile awkwardly for a second before turning to face forward again. They do this now, too.
"It is suppose to rain this entire week," he comments, too nonchalant to actually be nonchalant and she would laugh if the entire situation was not so ridiculous. "Did you know that?"
"I asked Peter for a divorce.”
Alicia just sort of blurts it out, eyes widening in abject horror before the words even finish leaving her mouth, and there is an awkward silence where she counts the floors along with elevator and waits for him to say something. He doesn't. He is the first person she has told besides Jackie and the kids and he says nothing. The laughter that bubbles in her throat is borderline incredulous at best. "I thought you should know. I thought you would want to know."
The elevator dings, the doors sliding open on cue and she steps out onto their floor without saying another word.
His mouth is spreading into a smile when she looks back.
"Is it because of Will?"
Peter presses his hips back against the island in the kitchen, shirt wrinkled as he looks right at her when he asks the question. He has a beer in his hand, knuckles pearl white as he prepares himself for her answer and a memory flows through her then, vivid in tacky technicolor. They had dinner once, the three of them, years ago when they were still too young to know better, right after they had all moved back from DC, trading in cold winters for bitter ones.
They were friends once, even if just for a little while after Georgetown and Alicia remembers the beer and laughter fondly. How they were all buried under the heavy weight of debt and all they could afford was pizza and Budweiser and how that was okay then, poetic even. Some days she still isn't completely sure of how they are so far from those people now. Most days she can't even fathom it. Time changes people, though. It's just one of those universal truths you can’t ignore.
Grace slams her door shut – angry at Alicia for wanting to leave, at the world for being so ridiculously unfair – and Alicia snaps back into reality and smiles something sad towards Peter.
"Would that make it easier for you?"
"Would it be the truth?"
It's hypocrisy at its worst, she thinks, but she gives him this. Remembers the man he used to be and the people they once were both together and apart and allows him to be self-righteous and condescending in this moment and this moment alone.
"No."
Peter is quiet then. Alicia closes her eyes against the silence.
A month after the election is over and Peter takes victory over Childs in the battle for State's Attorney, she moves out, taking Zach and Grace with her. She thought she owed him at least that much.
Eli sends his half-sincere thank-you via email that same week.
"I'm sorry," Kalinda says, but it rings false, and Alicia knows she is trying. It's the thing she has always liked about Kalinda. She is who she is, no questions asked, at any time and in any place. She doesn't placate or bullshit, and most days, Alicia respects her for it.
Divorce papers signed, settlements agreed upon, and all Alicia can muster is a soft yeah in response.
"You win some, you lose some, right?"
Kalinda is smiling in that way of hers, lips twisting genuinely, like she understands, and Alicia thinks maybe she might. The list of things she knows about her friend could barely fill a notebook page, and yet it works. It's the only thing in her life that is still works properly these days and Alicia has never been more thankful for their inexplicable friendship than she is right now.
She pushes the shot glass towards Alicia. "To the next one?"
The tequila burns on the way down and Alicia laughs in spite of herself, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
"To the next one," she nods, and the irony is not lost, the bitter taste of all those broken promises of for better, for worse coiling with the alcohol in the back of her throat.
She raises her hand to signal the bartender for another drink. Kalinda is smiling appreciatively when she says, "That's my girl."
The adjustment period is slow to start.
Alicia and the kids move into a new apartment on a Sunday and by Tuesday Grace is threatening to leave at every turn and go live with Peter. Alicia just laughs at the ridiculousness of the suggestion and chalks it up to teenage angst and anger because really what else can she do? Zach is better, albeit not by much. He starts dating the blonde that asks too many questions again, shopping her around during family dinners just to spite his mother. Alicia says nothing, to either, and prays to whatever God she believes in these days that she and Peter haven't screwed them up permanently. That this too shall pass. She is a mother first and foremost, above all else, and failure always leaves her mouth dry with its bitter essence stuck on the back of her tongue.
She finds herself constantly trying to swallow it away these days.
"One day, Grace," Alicia starts one morning as her daughter moves effortlessly around her, her painted fingernails curled constantly into a fists at her sides. "One day," Alicia starts again, voice thin and quiet, "you will understand."
Her daughter sets her jaw like Peter, ridding her face of any and all emotion as she stares hard at Alicia and Alicia's heart can be heard breaking slowly and quietly in the background.
Outside, the rain drips against the window.
There are things, Alicia assumes, you are meant to grow accustomed to. People like to talk to her about these things now. Make uncomfortable conversation about how sorry they are and add personal anecdotes that Alicia doesn't need nor want. She thinks sometimes that maybe it was better when they all talked about her not to her. She certainly prefers the looks and quiet whispers to the awkward conversations and too-bright smiles. Alicia has never been one for trite pleasantries.
The truth is she is always going to be Alicia Florrick to anyone that mattered, but she is no longer Peter's wife.
This, oddly enough, is where she finds a beautiful amount of peace.
Two weeks into the new year and she and Will stand outside court, shifting weight from left to right during jury deliberation. There has been a shift, palpable and inevitable between the two of them and as much as she welcomes the change, she is still having difficulty finding her footing. It's almost like before, years ago, when he picked her up from the bottom she would never admit she was at and took a chance on her. It's almost like Georgetown, too, with the looks and glances and the subtle hint of something whispering between them.
It unnerves her. He unnerves her. Alicia isn't exactly sure what this means.
"You look good," he comments, looking at her while looking right past her and she sees the sides of his neck flush bright red immediately as the words leave his mouth. She likes this about him. The way he is all boyish good looks and innocence wrapped into a man that appears as anything but. She likes that deep down, under the exterior he puts on for show, he is everything Peter always tried so hard to be. "Have I told you that lately?"
She laughs and looks away as she shakes her head, the sound pressing on her shoulders as she tries to find something other than him to look at. She finds herself looking at his feet instead, a memory playing in the background, and his toes are still pointed directly at her after all this time. She hides her smile behind soft laughter.
The jury comes back a few minutes later in their favor. Will buys her a celebratory lunch on their way back to the office.
Kalinda laughs when Alicia tells her the story a few days later.
"You do," she says, finger running along the rim of her margarita, picking up the salt with it. She licks it off before continuing. "Look good I mean," she clarifies with a trademark smile. "Happy. It suits you, Alicia." Alicia laughs and palms her beer, fingers picking at the edges of the label when Kalinda starts talking again. "I think you should go for it with Will. You deserve to be happy. I think Will would – “
"Make me happy?"
There is a moment where Kalinda regards her carefully in that subtle way of hers, eyes sweeping over her face for a second before turning back to her drink. "Yes. You disagree?"
"Not exactly."
She thinks about it more than she used to – the two of them. She would be lying if she said she wasn't already half way to being in love with Will. Would be lying if she said she didn't know that he felt the same way. The signs are there. The moments are there. The progression would be nothing but natural and she thinks about what it would be like to be with him, to fall in love with a man that still looked at her the same way he did fifteen years ago – like she was the only person that ever mattered. The only person that would ever matter.
But they aren't twenty years old anymore. This isn't Georgetown and they aren't those people.
"It was me and Peter for a long time, Kalinda," Alicia comments softly. "I don’t think I really know who I am separate from that."
Kalinda nods absently. "I get that, I think. But I also think eventually you're going to realize that you already do."
Most mornings Alicia is usually the first one in the office.
Since the divorce, she has started bringing her work home with her instead of staying late at the office because there are certain things that become more important in the post-divorce world she is steadily growing accustomed to – things like family dinners and time with your children that may or may not ever forgive you for leaving their father. Jackie takes care of Zach and Grace in the morning and Alicia takes care of them at night and to compensate she comes in before dawn most mornings and flips on most of the lights in the office and starts the coffee – three pots of regular, no decaf.
Alicia is always first and Will is almost always second, lips pressed into the thinnest line until he pours himself a cup of coffee and takes a long sip. Then, finally, he smiles at her. Both corners of his mouth twitch upwards and reach his eyes and something gets caught in her throat for a moment before she uses her coffee to swallow it away.
This is how most of her mornings start – with her and Will in the breakroom, her back against the counter and Will right next to her, too close to be just friendly, so intimate that it makes her palms sweat. He pushes the line she’s drawn between them as they drink their coffee, fingers tight around their matching firm mugs. In the mornings, when nobody is looking they talk about work and the weather and her kids and anything else they can come up with in the time it takes them to drink their first cup of coffee.
Some days it takes longer than others.
Some days they talk until the next person arrives, reaching between them for a mug and sugar, and this is when Will almost always nods, his lips curling into a smile around his parting have a good day, Alicia.
Alicia always watches him walk away.
Every other Friday, she takes Zach and Grace to Peter’s for the weekend. It’s awkward, still, even a year and a half later and Peter always does his half-wave from the doorway, still in his suit and tie, gray hair spiderwebbing around his temples. After the kids are inside, they will share a moment, a glance full of sad smiles and fidgeting and Alicia will always be the first to look away.
Take care of yourself he always says, his version of I miss you and Alicia will close her eyes at the sound and remember the way they used to be and the way they ended up in the same breath. It always makes it easier to walk away, those memories, and she slides into her car without looking back.
After, she will return to her empty apartment, start the laundry and pour herself a glass of wine as she spreads out briefings and case files on the coffee table in front of her. Most nights she has to turn on Letterman to drown out the silence, and the gentle buzz of the TV will hum in her ears, putting her at ease.
Sometimes she calls Will. Sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes Will calls her and sometimes he doesn’t.
Alicia works very hard at convincing herself it doesn’t matter either way.
It is a Wednesday night when they have the conversation.
There is dinner (finally he’ll breathe with a smile when he reaches forward to steal a piece of broccoli off her plate, a private joke of sorts and she will smile back out of pure habit) consisting of take-out and beer that lingers for hours between the briefings they have spread out between them on the floor. They talk about the case first – their client is most surely a murderer and it is their job to prove otherwise and Alicia spends the better part of the night trying to adjust to that fact, trying to reconcile with herself this part of the job. Years in, and it’s no easier than it was in the beginning.
They talk about the case first, and the two of them second, Will starting in somewhere after his second beer, looking at her as he taps the bottle in his hand against his knee a few times out of lack of anything else to do. His mouth opens, then closes and then opens again and it always amazes her how he can be so confident one minute and completely self-conscious the next. It humanizes him, she thinks. Makes him a little less Chicago and a little more like the Will she knew all those years ago. She finds it endearing.
“I want to make sure that I’m being clear,” he says carefully, and then continues with a soft, “about what I want.”
Alicia nods once, having known this was coming, and that it has been coming for weeks, and adjusts herself so she’s leaning her weight on her left hand, palm pressing into the carpet.
“What exactly is it that you want from me, Will?”
He grins effortlessly. “I want to know what you are thinking, right now, in this moment.”
Her mouth twists into a frown around the bottle as she takes a sip. “I’m thinking that it’s not as simple as you make it out to be.”
“It really is.”
“It really isn’t,” she laughs tightly as she says it, the sound eventually dying off as she sighs. “You are my boss. I work for you and contrary to popular belief I do not enjoy being the topic of water cooler gossip.”
Will waves his hand. “We’re discrete. We’ll continue to be discrete. We are two highly intelligent people, we can make it work. And as for the other, I’m sorry, but that is never going to change.”
“Okay,” Alicia replies, sounding out the word with click of her tongue. “How about the fact that I have two children. Two teenage children and an ex-husband and you like to date coeds. Explain to me, please, in what universe you see this working?”
Will finishes his beer before continuing. “She was in law school and I didn’t date her.”
“My point exactly.”
“Not exactly a point, counselor,” he corrects. “I think if one looked closely one would see that dating is exactly what we have been doing for the past, oh, I don’t know, year?”
His grin is cheeky at best and she rolls her eyes. She hates it when he plays cute with her, and she hates that he has a point, so she sits up straighter, pulling her feet underneath her as she sets her beer to the side.
“Okay, you want to do this, Counselor, we’ll do this. We’re practical people so let’s talk logistics, shall we? I don’t think I ever want to get married again, how about that? I did it once and it didn’t work out and I don’t think I’m cut out for another go round, Will.” He starts to say something, but she cuts him off. “And say we do this and it works, I think you should know that I’m done having kids. I have already raised two children and I am way too old and way too tired to do it all over again. Do you think you’ll be able to give up those things?” Alicia pauses then, to allow him to say what he wanted to say, and when he doesn’t she continues, “Or say we do this and it doesn’t work. We go all in and it fails miserably. Do you honestly think we’ll be able to come back from that? Because I don’t, Will.”
There is silence then, so thick it makes her ears ring and when she looks at him, Will refuses to look at her. She thinks, in that moment, that it would be so easy to just lean into him, let her lips work against his, let herself fall just that last little bit in love with him. Her fingers pick at his carpet, pulling at the piece of string unraveling somewhere near her feet. When she looks up again, he’s finally looking at her, all longing and full of love and her heart hurts something fierce.
“Don’t you want to wake up at eighty and be able to say we at least tried? To not have regret over what we did or didn’t do?” he asks quietly.
Alicia’s eyes turn towards the carpet again.
“Honestly?” She breathes, “I think most days I just want to wake up at eighty and be happy.”
“Just take a few days,” she says sometime later that night. He’s walking her through the garage to her car and pauses when she speaks, when he’s leaning forward, past her to grab the car door for her. “Just take a few days and re-evaluate what you think you feel and what you think you want because I can see that you have this grand idea in your head of what we could be and I want you to realize that it isn’t always that simple.”
Will nods, just once, and opens the door for her. She sighs and so does he, a long moment stretching between them that wears her thin. He starts to back away from her, then pauses and before she can protest he leans in, his lips a breath away from hers, pausing as if to ask can I? Alicia nods in spite of herself, eyelashes slipping against her cheeks as his lips slide over hers easily, slowly, ever-so-lovingly and she moans quietly into his mouth, palm flat against his chest for support as he kisses her and kisses her and keeps kissing her until she can no longer breathe.
When he pulls away she sighs at the loss of contact, her eyes sliding open slowly. Will’s grin is wide as he watches her and he leans in one more time, his lips grazing her cheek as he whispers goodnight somewhere near her ear.
He brings her coffee on Saturday.
It’s early and she meets him downstairs, sees him first through the glass door of her apartment building – baseball cap on his head, jacket tight across his shoulders and she pulls her sweater more tightly around herself on reflex, bracing herself for the cold. He looks up when the door opens, smirk tugging at his lips without even trying and offers her one of the cups in his hands.
“Cream and two sugars, right?” he asks and she nods, muttering a quiet thanks as she slides into place next to where he’s perched on the steps. The cement is cold on the back of her legs and she rolls the coffee cup between her palms, back and forth for warmth.
They sort of stare at each other then, Will’s smirk fades slightly, the corners of his mouth uneasy as he looks at her. He reaches a hand to rub the back of his neck, a nervous habit, and she twists her neck to get the kink out. They’re sizing each other up, she thinks, waiting for the other to make the first move so she sips her coffee as she waits.
“Alicia,” Will finally starts, her name falling off his tongue and cutting deep and her shoulders tense on reflex, in preparation, her smile fading. “Look,” he breathes and she watches as his fingers tighten around his coffee and then release and then tighten again. “I don’t… you’re right. I don’t know if this will work. I don’t know if this is forever. But I think you need to accept the fact that nobody ever does.”
“Will,” she says, her attempt at interrupting him even though she has absolutely no idea as to what she wants to say. He just shakes his head, though, laughter falling out of his mouth softly.
“All I know is that I have loved you in some way since I was twenty-two years old,” he smiles when he says it, but it’s too tight, too sad and she has to look away. “It’s obviously not going anywhere.”
There’s nothing really to say to that, nothing she knows how to say so she says nothing. Just looks at him, eyes wide and bright and watches as he shrugs his shoulders softly as if to say it’s okay and that he knew his declaration would be met by silence because he knows her better than she gives him credit for. Alicia says nothing and neither does he and these are the moments that make it difficult for her to not fall completely in love with him.
These moments where it is just him and her and all the things they have between them. These moments where he says things like that, makes these grand declarations or looks at her that way and something will coil and twist gloriously in the pit of her stomach.
Sighing, she catches his free hand with her own, fingers interlacing and squeezing for a second or two and she stares at them for a moment before letting go completely. Alicia doesn’t know what else to do, so she does that, and there is a smile, maybe, soft and wistful as she stands, as she lets her fingers linger on his left shoulder. She thinks about saying I love you, too because she does and maybe it hasn’t been there since she was twenty-two, but it’s there now, always present and pulling at her heart every single time she looks at him. She thinks about saying it, but doesn’t. Alicia has never been very good with declarations.
“See you later at the office?” she asks softly and he nods and somewhere to the right a street light flickers on and off.
She kisses him then, just once, her lips soft and fleeting at the corner of his mouth and there is a moment, after, that lasts an eternity where he presses his lips together into a thin line and she can’t pull her eyes away from him.
Something sticks in her throat when she walks away.
When it happens (and it will happen, mind you, because the two of them spell out inevitable no matter which way you try to spin it) they are in Georgetown.
Alicia notes the irony in the back of mind, in-between guest lectures and recruitment fairs and when they stay up too late reminiscing over too many beers in the hotel bar.
When it happens, Alicia is nearly drunk but not quite, teetering on the edge of sobriety, skin humming from the scotch and having him too close. It’s late, ESPN on in the background because it’s his hotel room, not hers, and he’ll lean in as he asks softly, “You remember the first time we met?”
She is almost absolutely certain that they’ve had this conversation before, but she still lets herself indulge in the memory, smiling something kind when she nods and says, “Pool party. Orientation. You were wearing white swim trunks with pink palm trees on them.”
Will smiles, wistful and nostalgic in the way he looks at her. "You were wearing jeans, a Bulls sweatshirt, and bright purple chucks," he laughs. "So naturally, you were the first person I noticed."
And suddenly he is looking at her the way he always looks at her, like his heart is in her hands and always has been and the tiny amount of control that was keeping her from falling one-hundred percent in love with him just sort of frays at the end and starts to unravel completely.
So she kisses him.
Alicia kisses him without any apprehension or hesitation, her heart full and in her throat. She kisses him and he kisses her back, tongue teasing her mouth open, his hands tangling in her hair, hers fisting in his shirt and releasing, moving under cotton to the warm flesh underneath.
It's better now, she thinks through the haze. Better now with his fingers on her face and in her hair, his sigh in her mouth than years ago in his office, behind closed doors with her wedding band still on her finger. Better now than decades ago at Georgetown when they were too young to know better, too young to understand how to get it right. Now that the kids are a little bit older and she and Will are a tad bit wiser, too. Better now that she’s not with Peter, his presence in her life defining every moment and every move she makes.
Definitely better now that she is absolutely sure that this is what she wants, Alicia thinks as his fingers trace the gentle curve of her jaw, her neck, the subtle line of her collarbone. When she opens her eyes, Will is watching her quietly, fingers still tracing bone, and all she can see is the sight of his mouth pressed into a thin line as she tries to set her world straight again.
“You know this changes everything, right?”
Alicia nods without pause, fully aware of what this means now and will still mean tomorrow. She leans forward to kiss him anyway.
Her mouth is firm against his, certain in every way, and she smiles when she feels his grin in her teeth.
In the morning, they have breakfast, CSPAN on in the background, the tails of his dress shirt slipping up past her thigh when she adjusts in her seat. Will is smiling, wide and gorgeous, baring his teeth behind the Post, and she picks at her eggs, trying to make sense of the jumbled mess in her head.
“You alright?” He asks after a moment, his mouth resisting the urge to press into a frown.
Alicia nods, just once, her smile slow but wide when she looks at him.