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Alicia is immobile, nowadays. It wasn't always so – she remembers, like watching a home movie about someone you don't know, she remembers playing baseball every chance she got. Peter didn't, he'd come and watch sometimes if he wasn't working, but she did. Will came every time, even though he was the college baseball hotshot and she was a rank amateur. She sees it in her mind's eye, him standing behind her, manipulating her grip until she was in the ideal position. She knew even back then that he was full of crap, but she'd liked his warmth behind her, and the grin he gave her when he claimed she'd got it just right. It had never added up to anything; she had never wanted it to. There was Peter.
There was Peter, and now there isn't any more.
Well, in point of fact, there is. There will continue to be a Peter. He covers every part of her life, wrapping round her like a second skin. For fifteen years she looked at the world through his eyes, not even his sidekick, but his puppet. His dummy, for all intents and purposes. Her stillness is cultivated, with the careful patience of the rose-grower.
Alicia thinks of Will behind her, his heat at her back, and the memory begins to feel real again.
She takes up jogging in the mornings.
It's not until that visit, with Peter so tense and sharp, that she even considers it. It's strange when she comes to think about it afterwards; you'd think that it would have occurred to her before. But Alicia, so quiet and thoughtful, is not naturally given to vengeance (when it's her children – that's a different matter). That, and she was humiliatingly unsure that he'd care. Given proof that he would –
Given proof that he would, Alicia shuts the thought up in a little box somewhere in the back of her mind. She is not the sort of person who stoops to that.
Her thoughts are unusually scattered, nowadays.
It's not that she has any interest in Cary, despite the apparent approval of every other woman she – or rather he – meets. Even Kalinda, and this makes Alicia thin her lips, because Cary already hogs Courtney every chance he gets. She won't let him take Kalinda, too.
He's really very young and callow, though his smile tries to imply different. He has the fleeting eternal freshness of youth, and probably in ten years he will be resorting to Botox and face lifts in order to maintain it. He'll be able to afford it, too, and Alicia digs her nails into her palm trying not to think about the junior associate position. She catches herself and it doesn't leave a mark.
At the office Christmas party, everybody drinks far too much to avoid the dreariness of actually being at an office Christmas party. The experience is almost a novelty. Every party Alicia has either attended or held in the last ten years has been populated by people who drink very little in order to catch off-guard those people who drink a lot, except for the people who are pretending to be drunker than they are in order to catch off-guard those who are sober. No one ever got honestly, truly drunk, and if they did everyone else thought they were putting it on for a nefarious purpose.
"The thing is," Cary says, his cheek pressed to the dark wool of Alicia's shoulder. "I don't get it."
"Get what?" Alicia asks, resisting the urge to brush his blond hair back from his forehead. It's lovely and thick.
"Why a hooker?" Cary yawns wetly against her sleeve, too drunk to notice her stiffen. "You're a total MILF."
Alicia's extensive experience in being a politician's wife has not prepared her for a compliment like that. If it is a compliment. It sounds like something you'd hear on one of those terrible teen dramas; she hadn't realised people talked like that in real life. "Thank you?" she offers after a moment, still uncertain.
"I wish," Cary says, gearing up for something which is clearly a huge revelation to him. "I wish – we both could get the pozi – pozish – job."
"So do I," Alicia tells him, not least because having a guaranteed position would make her feel a great deal more secure in life.
Cary smiles at her beatifically, and attempts to kiss her cheek. It lands on the corner of her mouth and the touch sends a frisson of shock through Alicia. Peter has been in prison for eight months; it has been longer than that since they last had sex. She squeezes his arm as a gesture of solidarity; he takes it as an invitation to loll against her. Human warmth feels new all over again.
She looks up from his full mouth, his long-lashed eyes, and sees Will, with devastating precision, deprive the buffet of a bowl of nuts. Kalinda seems unamused, even disgusted, although Will's temper tantrums usually just make her roll her eyes.
When she glances back at Cary, he's downing another beer. She can see the pulse in his throat, the slow slide of his fingers over the bottle. He finishes it; tilts his head and smiles at her.
Alicia goes home early that night and in the small hours, when she should sensibly be sleeping, she lies awake and lets her fingers drift downwards and traces circles over her breast. She thinks of Cary's fair hair tickling her throat, thinks of his mouth trailing down her body, and wants it with a desperation that nearly chokes her, makes her clench a fist in her pillow and sob out a longing breath into the darkness.
It's not even Cary, particularly. In the days after the dam has broken, she watches everyone. She doesn't care if Peter knows; it's not remotely about him, though the fact that he would think it was still has the power to irritate her. It's about the late nights in Will's office, when his eyes are heavy-lidded and his words are murmured as if someone might try to overhear. It's about lunches with Cary, who wavers between trying to charm and trying to smarm, like a schoolboy with a crush. It's about Courtney, who despite Cary's best efforts smiles at Alicia more, like they have a shared secret.
It's about Kalinda, too. She alternates between kindness and brusqueness, sour and sweet, and sometimes she looks at Alicia sidelong, appraising, and her voice lowers.
"Don't be ridiculous," she's telling Cary right now, and Alicia tries not to let her mouth quirk up. Any sign of partiality is a mistake, but sometimes it's difficult. "There's no way that's going to happen before Monday. They close at three on Friday, don't open at the weekend. Kind of like a crap lawyer."
Cary left work on Friday at three o'clock once; not because he wanted to but because of a family emergency. Kalinda has never let him forget it. Everyone in the firm knows about it now, so presumably Kalinda will cease at some point, her objective achieved.
Cary having been appropriately crushed, Kalinda wrinkles her nose at Alicia. "Shouldn't be playing in the grown-ups' pool," she says. "I've got a copy of the contract Helen O'Malley signed for Delefax last year, do you want it or should I put it up for auction?"
Alicia takes it before anyone else can grab it and Kalinda nods briefly to her before turning on her heel and leaving. Alicia watches her go; her straight shoulders, her swift walk. The others, high-powered lawyers in Hugo Boss suits, get out of her way.
Kalinda has secrets; Alicia is perfectly aware of this. One visit, Peter decides to tell her what Kalinda did, in sharp, terse bursts.
"I'm not proud of it," he says. Alicia makes a sudden movement and Peter actually flinches, but she's certain her expression is controlled, so it can't be that.
"I shouldn't think she is, either," she says.
"I didn't want you to get close to her," Peter says, his eyes full of disarming sympathy. "She's a snake in the grass, Alicia."
Alicia is silent. After a while, she says, "Well, I know you've told me one true thing today."
"What?"
"You don't want me to get close to Kalinda," she says, and her chest aches as she says goodbye.
"So," Kalinda says the next time she sees her. She hesitates – Alicia has never seen Kalinda hesitate – and then shrugs her shoulders almost violently. "That's that, then. You have my number if you need any business taking care of."
"Wait," Alicia says, and Kalinda does.
It's not okay, what Kalinda did, but Alicia's swallowed a lot worse for people she likes a lot less.
One night, Kalinda comes over to watch movies with Alicia and the kids. Grace adores her – thinks she's the coolest lady ever – because Kalinda rolls her eyes at Jackie and talks Alicia into letting her stay up an hour later than normal. Alicia eventually capitulates because it's a weekend, she says, and Kalinda's dark eyes going darker and her beautiful mouth turning up at one side has nothing to do with it. Alicia's never really experienced the full effect of Kalinda's flirting, but she recalls later the first time they worked together, and the shadow of Kalinda's cleavage.
During the film, Kalinda leans against Alicia's arm and Alicia thinks of moving closer, of pressing herself against Kalinda's side. She's not sure it would be welcomed, and a moment later Kalinda turns stiff, shifts to the other side of the couch. So it wouldn't have been.
Alicia knows that Kalinda is bisexual, after Donna, Elaine and Keiko, all of whom Kalinda steadfastly refused to explain, she eventually got the picture. It's not that this makes Kalinda more accessible, but Alicia feels less cautious, less like she's making a fool of herself yet again. She is still Mrs Peter Florrick, as far as anyone else cares, a stain on her sensible silk shirts that she can't get out.
She wonders if Kalinda cares.
The Delefax case swallows a week of Alicia's life, with Cary guzzling coffee like a grad student the night before he's due to present his thesis and Will's office progressively losing ornaments, picture frames and, on one memorable occasion, a computer monitor. Even Diane looks comparatively frazzled; one day she walks into a meeting with toilet paper stuck to her shoe. Alicia, who did that once and received a death glare for her trouble, feels vindicated.
On the second Thursday, even Kalinda is going above and beyond the call of her duty and she flops down into the comfy chair in Alicia's office – incidentally, the only comfy chair in Alicia's office – and holds her hand out for a file.
"Hit me," she says, "or you'll never get home tonight."
Alicia, who has already begged Jackie for far too much babysitting duty, hovers with the pile in her arms. "Are you sure?" she asks. "You said you had plans – "
"She's not that great," Kalinda says, which Alicia takes to mean that Kalinda is blowing off a date for – what? To sit here and read through papers they've gone through a hundred times? She leans over to give Kalinda the file and sees Kalinda's eyes drop, just slightly, very subtly, so that instead of looking at Alicia's face, like she normally does, she's observing the curve of Alicia's breasts. She knows that look. She leans over a little further.
Kalinda glances down at the file. "If O'Malley wants to go to trial, Delefax are going to – "
"I know," says Alicia, and she feels like an agoraphobic leaving the house for the first time in years. There's not enough air, her stomach is tying itself in knots, but she kisses Kalinda anyway. She never liked Sleeping Beauty all that much, but she thinks she might appreciate it more now.
When she pulls back, Kalinda blinks at her. "Huh," she says, and then her hand tightens in Alicia's hair and they're kissing again. Alicia slides her hand down to Kalinda's hip and Kalinda pulls her closer.
They leave early, that night. Kalinda's hands are warm between Alicia's thighs, her mouth hot on Alicia's throat and Alicia is moving to the sound of her own heartbeat, moving, moving and she can hear herself breathe again.
The next day, Alicia files for divorce.