“Then who came up with Peeper?” Alice interjected with a sarcastic smile and grabbed her pants to make an obscene gesture. She hadn’t noticed the apprehensive glances from Shane and Carmen, but she did see the look of panic wash over Dana’s face until the tennis player scoffed and turned away embarrassed.

“Peeper! Peeper, peeper, peeper!” the writer continued, alienating Dana further and making the rest feel as uncomfortable as they seemed.  

As Alice continued her “peeper” rant, Dana looked down hoping that if she ignored her, she would just stop. But when her eyes locked with Lara’s, Dana’s discomfort doubled, and she was now even more embarrassed for Alice than for herself.

Alice listened to the words spewing out of her mouth and recognized that there was a tremendous dichotomy between how she had hoped this would go and what was actually happening. Yet, as inappropriate as she knew she sounded, she found herself unable to stop until Dana felt at least half as uncomfortable as Alice felt when forced to watch her with Lara. So she bent down, rested her elbows on the backs of their chairs, and looked directly at the apprehensive tennis player and her new girlfriend. ”Touch my peeper, Al. Nobody touches my peeper like you do. Oh, look what happens to my peeper when it touches your peeper? It’s a wet peeper! It’s a wet, wet peeper.”

And that as all it took. “You win, Al,” Dana mumbled as she fled from the scene with Lara lagging behind. Alice watched them leave, Dana kiss Lara goodbye, and Lara return to the kitchen. She sat down in the newly occupied chair and noticed the awkward, and somewhat scolding, looks she got from her friends. It was then that Alice turned away from the table to steal a quick glance outside, noticing that Dana was still out there, shaking her head in frustration. This shook Alice back into reality as she realized how fucking crazy she had just been.

Dana stood there for a moment, wanting to go back in and scream at Alice for embarrassing them both like that. But she knew it would just cause an even bigger scene. After the way Alice just sped off yesterday, Dana knew how much work they had to do to get any semblance of a friendship back. But how could she try to be Alice’s friend when the writer seemed to want nothing but the opposite? She understood that Alice was hurt, and rightfully so. But Dana never tried to purposely hurt her the way Alice seemed to want to do in return. She couldn’t understand how the caring, selfless woman she fell in love with could be buried so deep below the surface of the virtual stranger she had become. And just when she was beginning to doubt whether or not she made the right decision by ending the relationship, Alice would pull a stunt like that and reaffirm all of Dana’s rationalizations as to why it just had to end between them. And while this made Dana feel slightly better about the decision she made, she knew deep down that secretly, without being able to even admit it out loud, she wished Alice would start doing things to make her doubt the breakup even more.