ALICE Ch 105

Alice slips away and heads back to the hotel. She leaves her phone in her room so that Glynda can’t reach her and tracks down Kylie, who is in the fitness center, running on a treadmill. She’s been working herself harder and pushing more since the breakup. She’s coping. Alice just hopes that Kylie doesn’t overdo it. The Australian blonde has a tight body, but Alice really likes what little body fat Kylie does have. She’d hate for her to lose it. Maybe she can convince her to eat some cheesecake or something, but that’ll be a problem for tomorrow. Alice is determined to be classy and not try to make moves on a girl who has just gone through something so difficult. As much as she would like to.

She finds Faye in her room, as expected. It’s so rare for Faye to go anywhere. The short redhead answers the door with her phone in her hand, and there are voices. She looks surprised to see Alice and mutes it.

“Am I interrupting?” Alice asks.

“No. It’s just my friends on Discord.” Faye quickly throws the phone back into the room and smiles up at Alice. “Hello.”

“Hi.” Alice lets herself in with a yawn. It’s not late yet, but she’s exhausted. That’s a good thing with a race tomorrow. She’ll need her rest.

Faye wears running shorts and a FUTA tee. She smells like… ice cream and chocolate. Alice, keen detective that she is, spots the empty sundae glass on the dresser. There’s no judgment; ice cream is not the worst way to cope with pressure. Although it is interesting that Faye and Kylie cope in the exact opposite ways, both of which are probably healthier than Alice’s own habit of trying to get laid to take her mind off things.

“Were you looking for me earlier?”

“I was,” she replies, a little pink.

“What’s up?”

She becomes self-conscious and edges backward. “Well… you know. It’s a race tomorrow. I wanted to do something that wasn’t looking online at all the gobshites slagging us on X.”

Alice takes that in; she sort of likes the way ‘X’ sounds with Faye’s voice, although she still thinks of it as Twitter. It’s very like Faye to take the dumbass name change at face value. Alice didn’t catch all of it because Faye talks faster when she’s nervous and she’s not the easiest to understand in the first place, but it sounds like she just wants some company so that she doesn’t melt down with nerves. That’s reasonable.

“I think I got you. You got any good comics this time? I mean, X-Men is cool and all, but they don’t get their boobs out and I don’t have a PhD to follow all the stupid weird confusing shit.”

Faye raises a finger. “I did! Just for you.”