Alex Stern

They're lying at either end of the couch, watching a movie. George has a gig and Alex isn't working so Lee came over to watch a movie which...okay...the movie is fine, but Alex isn't really into it. She lost the thread a little while ago, and she's been watching Lee's profile in the flickering light of the TV. They're in the apartment, which is way smaller than Black Elm, and Edie's asleep in her room, but once she's out, white noise playing on her nightstand, she sleeps like the dead, anyway.

Without joining at him, Alex shifts on the couch, trailing her foot against the inside of one of her thighs.

Her phone vibrates on the desk next to her and, without looking, she reaches out to pick it up. Midweek, the club is almost dead, and Alex is just hanging out in her coffee, reading a pulp Sci-Fi and keeping on eye on the feeds. The girls who are dancing tonight are pretty experienced; she barely needs to be here.

What's tonight's outfit?

She grins. She can also trust Lee to come through when she's bored. She shifts, boots still up on the desk and shoves her sweatshirt and t-shirt up. She isn't wearing a bra, so she arranges her book spread across her chest so that it just about covers her nipples. She lifts her phone and takes a photo.

Hope you're not disappointed, she writes, and hits send.

She's not even sure whose party it is, but she's standing in the corner of the kitchen, drinking lukewarm beer from a red cup and listening to some frat bro asshole talk to her about his MBA. She stifles a yawn against the inside of her wrist, and looks around the room, doesn't see anyone that she knows at first glance. She's going to have to figure out a way to extricate herself from this shitty, shitty conversation. If only she had a bit of Lethe magic in her pocket to help her.

"So," she says. "Anyway..."

If Alex has a best friend in Darrow these days, someone who's seen her through losing Danny and the loneliness that came after it, it's Chrissy. They go through periods of not seeing each other enough, but they always text and, lately, Chrissy sounds like she's going through it enough that Alex is worried. Finally, she picks up her phone and sends a message.

Come over to Black Elm tonight. I'll make popcorn and cocktails. You can sleep over x

By eight, Edie is in bed dead to the world and Alex is in the kitchen, prepping drinks and snacks, waiting for Chrissy to knock.

It's shit, but life goes on. Alex goes through the motions -- she hands Edie over to the nanny, she goes to work, she thinks about drugs, she comes home. The work she does at the club varies; most of the time she's in the office, sometimes she's behind the bar and, sometimes, she's up on the stage or weaving in between the booths and couches. Tonight, one of her dancers hasn't turned up, so she does her makeup over the sink in her bathroom, fluffs her hair, hoists her tits into a sequined bra. She dances, her skin sheened with sweat and glitter and, whenever someone offers her a drink, she takes it.

It's after midnight when she leaves the club, t-shirt and sweats pulled on over the gear she was dancing in, feet shoved into her loosely laced boots. She doesn't want to go home -- not to the apartment at Dimera, and definitely not back to Black Elm, where her little girl lies sleeping. She's pretty limited on where she can go, honestly, her circle shrunk, but then she has an idea, and she pivots on her heel, heading in the opposite direction.

A few minutes later, having slipped in to the building as a delivery driver left, Alex finds herself leaning her forehead against his front door, knocking with her whole fist.

"C'mon, Steve," she says, through gritted teeth. "Be home, buddy."

Her hands are trembling, a little, when she takes her phone out of her pocket. Kavinsky's altoids tin is still stuffed in the back pocket of her jeans, and she's still thinking about getting high. Eddie had refused to smoke a joint with her and, at the time, she'd been pissed but, now, she actually thinks she likes him more because of it. It would have been really easy, she figures. Kavinsky's dream weed is easily the best she's ever smoked.

She keeps thinking about the pills. She doesn't even know what all of them are, but she keeps picturing him rolling them between his fingers, all shapes and sizes and colours of the rainbow, any one of them enough to make her fly. She thinks Danny would probably let her get away with a joint - she doesn't think he'd be as quick to forgive the pills, though.

She fires off a text as she walks.

Need help. Coming over.

She doesn't wait for him to reply before she sets off in the direction of the town house, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her coat. If he's not home, she'll just sit on the stoop and wait.

Mostly, what she does is stare. She holds Edie in her arms and she feeds her or she sleeps and she just...stares at her. Mostly, she's trying to figure out how something so utterly perfect can have come from her. Danny, she can believe it of, but her? What she do to deserve something like this. A few days after Edie is born, Alex lets Danny start texting people, letting them know that they can come and visit, if they want to. She installs herself in the sunroom with Edie wrapped in a blanket in her arms and she rocks, slowly, and she feels, for the first time in her life, like she's something entirely new.

Nearly at the end of her second trimester, Alex finally concedes that they need to do some preparing for the increasingly imminent arrival. They've picked out a bedroom to turn into the nursery and Alex has spent days staring at various swatches on the wall until she'd finally settled on a dove grey colour for the walls. It's neutral, she figures, more palatable than the pastels that the girl in the DIY store had recommended. Even if she decides that she hates it, there's not a lot she can do about it, with all of the natives in Darrow gone like they were never even there.

"How long does it take you to change into things you don't mind getting paint on, Arlington?" she calls down the hall.

It's been a weird few days. Pregnant doesn't honestly feel like not pregnant, really - she's been told that, for most women, the sickness and shit kicks in around week six, so she's got a few weeks to go. It's early days yet, and Alex knows that a lot could go wrong between now and the end, so she's trying not to think about it as a thing that's too permenant. With her belly still flat under her hoodie, it's easy enough to ignore.

When Hopper texts her to ask her how she is, she asks him over to Black Elm. He hasn't been out to the house yet, and Danny's at the museum all day, so it feels like a good time to catch up. The sun hits the back of the house just right at this time of the day, and there's a tonne of pleasant places to sit.

Honestly, she could do with the company.

Alex is still getting used to having a car at her disposal every time she wants to go somewhere. It definitely makes living out at Black Elm easier. Today, she's sitting behind the wheel, idly drumming with her fingertips as she waits for Caleb. It's not much to look at, boxy and kind of a piece of shit, but it's her first car, one that she brought with her own money that she earned (albeit doing something that Darlington's still not entirely happy about), and she's kind of proud of that.

She grabs her phone off the dash and shoots off another text to Caleb.

It's okay. Take your time. I've got nowhere to be but here, bud x