What was worse was that that made Dana felt so alone in this. She knew that, just like her, Alice was scared of the relationship ending too. But anytime Dana would try to tell Alice that she wasn’t alone in feeling that way, the writer would pretend that she had no idea what Dana was talking about. The first time she had ever brought it up, just to try to get a feel for how Alice felt about the future, she had told her girlfriend that she was glad they were friends first and she hopes that no matter what, that would always be true. Initially Alice just smiled at her and agreed…but within 30 seconds she was convinced that Dana was just trying to break it gently to her that she considered their relationship to be a dead end. Dana of course explained that this wasn’t the case, and that she just worried from time to time that she would lose her completely if the relationship did break up. She asked Alice if she had any similar fears and explained that it’s perfectly normal to have doubts about something that has thus far gone so well. At this Alice laughed and looked at Dana like she had 10 heads. And the tennis player knew that her girlfriend did have those insecurities, but she was too afraid to admit it. So the easy thing for Alice to do was to poke fun at it and make Dana feel like an idiot for even thinking about that stuff. The tennis player recognized this classic “Alice” behavior as a defense mechanism, seeing the writer use sarcasm and witty retorts countless times over the years, as a shield to any fears or pain brought on by other people or things in her life. But Dana was used to being on the inside of that, knowing that this was the way Alice dealt with any friction or challenges to the appearance that Alice had her life “together”. And now, for the first time since she met the woman all those years ago, Dana realized that Alice was using it to defend herself against her.  

And then Lara started working at The Planet. To put it mildly, Alice’s behavior became extremely…un-Alice like. First it was the dependency on Dana, followed by the dependency on the pills. And now it seemed like nothing Dana could say or do made a difference to Alice at all. She was so fucking stuck in her own warped reality and was determined to believe that Dana was cheating on her, or would cheat on her, or just up and leave her alone. And trying to convince Alice of the contrary was as productive as speaking to her in German. So while 5, 4, even 3 months ago, Dana would have never even considered leaving the woman she loved, here she was doing just that.