“Ooh, a response that was longer than two words! Keep that up, and you’ll have a paragraph soon!” Alice exclaimed, donning a stunned smile. She squeezed Dana’s hand to show her she was genuinely happy about it. Dana smiled back.

“Ooh, a sarcastic remark! There’s the snarky Alice I’ve missed for so long,” Dana said, glad the pain was subsiding. Alice raised her eyebrows, grinning widely. That was the first time either had brought up the huge girth in their relationship in a long time. Progress, right?

“I missed this too. This is like, my favorite thing, and you’re my favorite person to do things with, too,” Alice said cheekily.

“If I could punch you, I totally would, but it hurts to move right now," Dana informed her with mock-anger. "You just undermined all the genuine, heartfelt, nice stuff I’ve said and done for you in a year with two sentences."

"Jeez, that didn’t take much effort to do, shows how much you care, huh?” Alice retorted. She laughed at Dana’s attempt to look mad at her, rolling her eyes. “Shit, if you weren’t such a bad actor, I’d feel bad right now.”

Dana sat up a bit, reaching out to hit Alice’s arm. Her emaciated fist didn’t cause much damage, but Alice looked outraged. Her jaw dropped open and she made a big show of nursing her arm, clutching it and making shifty eyes at Dana. “What the fuck, Dana? What happened to ‘it hurts to move right now’?” Alice huffed indignantly.

“I overestimated the pain,” Dana said with a large grin, now sitting up fully. She took Alice’s arm in her hand and brought the part she’d hit to her lips, kissing it sweetly. “Better?”

“Much. So what’s been going on, Dane? Why you been staring at me? What’s with this whole no-talking thing?” Alice mumbled, uncomfortable with Dana’s sudden show of affection. “You haven’t said this little to me since we broke up,” she added a bit spitefully. So much for progress.

Dana grimaced, slowly dropping the arm and sinking back into the bed. She looked around the room, avoiding Alice’s gaze while she tried to think of suitable answers to her questions. Alice sighed at this. “Are you spooked about the scare we had? Cause you heard the doctors, you’re doing much better, you’ll be out in a week.”