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[gotacigarette]

For one reason or another, she's been putting off talking to Alice about it. She wears the ring every day, never takes it off, in fact, and she can see through both eyes again, and her and Babe have been getting more careless about using protection and she doesn't know, entirely, what she thinks about that, either, but there it is. Still, she

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[resident_alice]

Alice was. She'd just gotten back from a run, actually. The sweat was still cooling on her brow when she looked up from stretching out a sore hamstring, heard the knock and Eden's voice.

"It's open." Careless of her, Alice knew - for a long while she had kept a plank of wood across the door, for security. These days it leaned against the wall, mostly ignored. One day it would be firewood. Not yet, though.

[gotacigarette]

Major Eden Sinclair was not a woman given to nerves, and yet she felt a flutter of them as she crossed her friend's threshold. When she sees Alice stretchcing out, she grins. There's still a scfu on her knucles from boxing earlier.

"You smell terrible."

[resident_alice]

"You should have been here earlier when I took off my shoes," Alice said, smiling. She got up, grabbing a towel from its spot hanging on the back of a chair, one of the few pieces of furniture in the hut. It wasn't exactly bare, but it was also obvious that the owner of the room didn't like cluttering it up with useless junk.

Which didn't explain the set of golf clubs in the corner.

[gotacigarette]

Eden registers the golfclubs, and she can hazard a guess at who they belonged to, too.

If one day, she woke up and Babe was gone, who knows what she'd hold on to.

"I'm glad I missed it," she says, pushing her hair back from her face, silver ring, for one, intact.

[resident_alice]

"I'll bet." Alice had always been good at noticing small details. If she hadn't been, she'd probably be dead by now. So her gaze flicked fairly quickly to the ring. As far as she knew, Eden wasn't the jewelery type, apart from her watch, but that was more of a tool than decoration. And the ring looked like decoration.

But the significance of which finger it was on didn't strike her immediately, so she didn't mention it. Yet.

"What's up?" she asked instead, swiping the towel over the back of her neck.

[gotacigarette]

"There has to be something up for me to come visiting?" she asks, eyebrow raised. "Alice, I'm hurt. I'm fucking wounded."

[resident_alice]

She shook her head, smiling a little. "No. You know that's not what I meant." She just naturally assumed the worst. Another habit.

"If I'd known you were coming I would have cleaned up, that's all," she added. Despite the fact there was no sign of a mess except for the sneakers neatly lined up by the door.

[gotacigarette]

"Yeah, I know."

Eden takes a moment to look around the hut, making a show of it. "Remind me not to let you into our hut ever now Babe's living there. With the mess Phyllis and Nelson make, I'm never having kids."

She looks down at her hand again.

"Look, Alice..."

[resident_alice]

"I can't picture you as a mom anyway," said Alice. "Unless bootcamp was involved."

Uh-oh. Now Eden sounded serious. Alice sat down and gestured at the only other chair in the hut. "Am I gonna have to ask what's up again or are you gonna sit down and tell me?" She could feel an inkling of anxiety in her gut but she didn't know why. Then she noticed Eden looking at her hand again, and all at once, it clicked.

"Oh, shit," she exclaimed. "Don't tell me you're getting married." She was glad she was already sitting down or she might have fallen over.

[gotacigarette]

"Jesus, don't bloody say it like that," says Eden, all but throwing her hands up. "I'm getting married. There's no need to make it sound like Babe shot me in the bloody foot."

[resident_alice]

"That wouldn't be as big a deal," Alice told her. "Jesus!" She wasn't sure what to think. On the one hand, marriage, on the other, Eden...she should've guessed when she mentioned Babe moving in with her. It was how relationships normally progressed. But Eden and a normal relationship just didn't connect well in Alice's mind.

She was probably putting her own onus on her, which wasn't fair. Why shouldn't she have a normal relationship? Why shouldn't she be happy? There wasn't a single reason Alice could think of. Eden deserved happiness.

In Alice's fairly limited experience, though, marriages were rarely all that happy. Hers had been a sham. In more ways than one.

She swiped the towel over her face and pushed her hair back behind her ears before she spoke again, still looking a little shell shocked. "Well...congratulations."

[gotacigarette]

Eden tilts her head and stares at her friend for a moment, both eyebrows firmly raised.

"You know, I genuinely can't tell if you're actually bloody pleased for me or not."

[resident_alice]

"Me neither," Alice admitted, her gaze flicking from the ring to Eden's face.

"How long?"

[gotacigarette]

"A couple of weeks," says Eden, looking down at the ring on her finger. "Not even a month. It's not like we've set a bloody date, Alice. Don't panic."

[resident_alice]

Alice was silent for a moment.

"And you're just telling me this now," she said slowly, not looking at Eden now.

[gotacigarette]

"Call me fucking stupid, but I didn't know if you'd be thrilled for me."

She studies her friend for a long moment. "I'm not exactly shouting it from the rooftops, Alice. I..." She looks down at her ring. "It's barely sunk in for me."