My Last Goodbye
Trading Yesterday
My latest contribution to the Maddison revolution. Haha that rhymes. Anyway. I could do my cutesy little decoration things I do for oneshots, but I didn't feel like it, so just read. And revel in the Maddison.
Plink.
Sweaty limbs tangled in cotton sweets squirm at the soft sound, becoming more disheveled as the redhead rolls onto her stomach, silky nightgown pulling up over long, creamy thighs. But otherwise, she sleeps, perhaps not peacefully, but soundly.
Plink.
This time her twitching limbs collide with the blonde lawyer beside her, who emits a small moan and tumbles into ball of covers that is a chocolate-skinned fertility doctor. Four other dark-haired women slumber with fluttering eyelashes and open lips, courtesy of the many empty bottles of tequila surrounding them, intermixed with chocolate and pre-wedding gifts.
Plink.
The resonance interrupts the dreams that spin their way under scarlet curls, full lips, and high cheekbones. In her dream she sprints through drooping limbs of ancient trees, caressed by moss hung boughs and prematurely falling leaves. Then she looks back, as is usual in such dreams, to see what exactly she is running from. A red haired child in an overlarge wedding dress follows, tripping over the chiffon layers. Her eyes are wide and beseeching, as children's often are when saying but you promised. Each plink is a crack in the mirror between her and her former self.
Plink.
Finally she is roused as the fourth stone bounces off the window and she rises to weave her way between her sleeping friends to the window of their hotel room. Derek, her fiancé, planned for the girls to stay near the spa while the boys opted for what she affectionately dubs 'a bunch of idiots running around with guns.' Her final night of bachelorette-dom has been disappointingly uneventful, but she can't say she's one for gyrating male strippers or anything so any complaints are her own fault.
She peels back the heavy glass and lets misty, pine-scented air wash in over her scantily clad figure before peering down, expecting to see her fiancé standing below the window. But she should have known, Derek wasn't the high school quarterback with scholarship offers.
"Finally," Mark calls up, baring his irresistible boyish grin. "You sleep like the dead, Addie."
Their subtle courtship has spanned over the last two months, as she was increasingly left to deal with wedding details alone, or with Derek with his phone in his hand or his head in the clouds of glorious procedures. At first, it was innocent. A little flirting, a few Mark innuendoes, but before long feeling the brush of his precise surgeon fingertips against her knee as she flipped through catering menus and flower arrangements was the only thing that carried her through the day. He's been caring, he knows what types of flowers are at the wedding and what types are at the reception, he has discovered exactly where to dig his thumbs in after a stressful day. He's everything she thought Mark Sloan wasn't.
She expected, at first, that Derek would notice the pink blush that suffused her cheeks whenever she met the eyes of the best man, that Mark had taken to sitting so the soft denim of his distressed jeans was pressed softly but firmly against the expensive material of her designer skirts, that her breath caught whenever he looped a friendly arm around her shoulders. But Derek merely smiled trustingly at them, glad the two most important people in his life had decided to get along.
Mark never pushed her, though, and she doesn't know what it feels like to have his stubble brush her chin as he kisses her, she can't fathom what merging their bodies into one would bring about.
Nancy is coiled almost protectively under the door, presumably to keep Addison from a rendezvous with Derek. Shame effuses her – it's not her brother Nancy has to worry about. Her veins are still pulsing with alcohol not converted to a hangover yet and he has undoubtedly gotten himself as drunk as he her fiancé, as is his duty.
"Climb down," he calls, eyes lingering on her moonlit skin.
"Don't be ridiculous, Mark."
"Climb down, Addison." Funny how her limbs obey his will instead of her own. Preposterous doesn't even begin to describe that her hands tug the window open further, trying to avoid the squeaks and moans that will awaken her friends, or how her feet search for purchase on the outside of the lodge, becoming entangled in ivy as her drunkenness emerges as clumsiness. Mark is laughing and trying to help her and although she falls only from the second story, her collapse onto him knocks them both over and into the mist kissed grass.
"Who do you think you are, Prince Charming?" she snaps, unsure why she chose tonight of all nights to give into Mark Sloan. She tells herself she doesn't know what she's doing but the truth is that she does, and what she wants more than anything is something she should not be tempting Mark to give her. But it doesn't matter. The concept of right never has mattered with him.
"Of course, Sleeping Beauty." He grins crookedly.
She says nothing more, just follows instinct's pulse, a coy smile painted across her lips, the thin nightgown clinging to her curves. This assured temptress isn't her but tomorrow she'll be married and morals withstanding, the opportunity won't rise again. She loves Derek, but Mark … Mark entrances her.
Nervousness sits like squirming, fluttering insects in her belly, and yet she walks on, grass tickling the bottoms of her feet, away from the resort and through the trees.
Her footsteps follow the exact trajectory of the path, and she knows this is wrong and so many other conflicting things, but she can't stop herself. She's always wanted to know. Soon delicate foliage gives away to sediment and the murky azure depths of the lake. Her nightgown flutters to the ground, followed by lacey panties. And, surprised by her own daring, she slides her feet into the lapping turquoise waves and glances back at him.
To his credit, Mark epitomizes hesitation for a span of time longer than a second, but he is Mark Sloan and his cargos and black boxer briefs puddle to the ground within seconds. She turns, strands of moonlight wrapping greedy fingers around her skin, and they see each other fully for the first time. Mark's arrogance, although unwanted, is perhaps justified, he puts Michelangelo's David to shame and his carved chest and muscular thighs exude such virile masculinity that a hot flush permeates her entire body. Still, she cannot bring herself to look away.
Her bare body parts the water, seeking an escape from the feral want in eyes dark blue with lust, and he follows. Skinny dipping with her soon-to-be husband's best friend is a fantasy held by most women who behold him but she has always been careful not to place herself in such an imagining, making it ironic that it is occurring in actuality on the eve of her wedding.
Two slick wet bodies, invigorated in the heady summer warmth, roll onto the sand of the small island in the midst of the lake. Instinctively, Addison curls up against Mark, eager to create more heat, and he trails fingers over the ridges of her spine. The gesture is so gentle that tears spring to her eyes.
Mark is remarkably quick on the uptake. "Addie, why are you marrying him?"
"He's, well," she chokes, "… he's the kind of guy you marry. We care about each other, and we work well together, and for the first time I feel … like I'm part of something. He won't hurt me, Mark."
"He doesn't care about you like I do. It might take months, years, probably, but he'll get bored, Addison," Mark warns, casting his eyes over the distant depths of the lake. "He always does."
"Please don't say that," she begs. It's bad enough that she's here, drunk, and naked beside his best friend.
"It's just the truth."
"You don't know that."
"You don't marry for safety, Addison."
"What would you know about it?"
"Not much, I guess," he admits with a shrug that tugs at her heart. "I just … if I was the one marrying you, it wouldn't be like this. I would help you plan every detail, we'd start our honeymoon early, and I'd be so excited to see you in that white dress. I'd watch every surgery I could, just so I could see you, and we'd go to the Hamptons every weekend. We'd have kids, at least four, and I'd want to name one Mark Jr. but you wouldn't let me. We'd be together, for every soccer game and school play and graduation until we're old and wrinkly and I'd still think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
"I can't talk about this," she whispers brokenly.
"Maybe you need to."
"It's not only Derek, Mark … it's everything I've been waiting my whole life for. White picket fence, 2.5 kids … I get the family I always wanted. And us …" She has spoken it, their most taboo, unmentionable dream, brought into being, verbalized into the sprite-like undulations of the surrounding mist. "We wouldn't be like that."
This confession exhausts her, she slumps onto her knees, facing away from his still form but peeking almost seductively out of the corner of her eye, testing the ambiance. "Tell me something you've never told anyone." She throws it out as a drunken dare, all lingering propriety washed away by moonlit droplets of lake water. She needs to know if he hates her for telling him they wouldn't be good together.
Mark huffs, hurt leaving through lips cracked from the brackish, but their spell of mutual irresistibility pulls forth an answer. "The moment I decided I wanted to be a doctor was when my father said I would turn out just like him, a screw-up, and I swore I'd be anything but like that bastard."
Tidbits about Mark's family are about as rare as calm days in the hospital, so she responds with an equally damaging secret. "While I was being born, my father was screwing potential nanny candidates."
"My lucky number is eleven." She gives him an odd look. "Eleven was my football number, I was eleven the first time I made out with a girl, my birthday is April 11th, the zoo used to be eleven blocks from my house, for Christmas I always got eleven presents. We met on November 11th, but Derek had already known you for eleven weeks." The last is a mere wisp of speech.
"Eleven is my unlucky number," she counters. "I always get my period on the eleventh of each month," she says, and he wrinkles his nose at the uncalled for information. "My father has had eleven affairs. My dog died when I was eleven. When I got ran over by that gurney in the ER that one time as an intern I had eleven stitches. The first patient I ever saw die was eleven years old. I met the wrong man on November 11th."
When she's with him, she can be herself, flaws and all, and know that he'll accept every part, but with Derek she's constantly amassing her semblance of perfection. "I'm in love with the woman marrying my best friend."
"Ever since I was a kid, I promised myself I'd have the big white wedding with a fairytale prince, but I never factored in my knight in shining armor." Her hand unfolds against his heart.
"I've never slept with a married woman," he whispers. Here it is, the illicit suggestion, and it weighs on her now to decide. She should leave, run back, not do this enticingly dark thing, but she's been the good girl all her life and she's sick of it.
"You record would still technically be clean, you know, if we …" She hovers over him, wet, rose-colored lips an invitation, lake water a rainfall of temptation dripping down her body. He takes it, joining their lips, sparks of passion alighting the summer midnight, and the feeling of their tongues colliding is something new, something different, something so riddled with passion that she cannot think.
Grains of sand are pressed into her bare back as he rolls her, heated flesh connected as he lowers himself on top of her and joins their lips again. It's the little things that will stay imprinted in her brain throughout her marriage, like the grass cushioning her head against the fervency of Mark's kisses, the way her toes skim the lake when he sucks her collarbone, sending reverberations of nearly unbearable desire through her.
She will later wonder about the magnitude of implied feelings for her fiancé's best friend, feelings that go beyond lust and begin to imply the other related but impossible word. But now, Mark's head is between her thighs and she's propped up on her elbows, watching water droplets collect in her bellybutton as he presses lingering kisses to the insides of her thighs.
Her own wetness pools beneath her, as a contrast to the drops that decorate their joined forms. The moan that escapes through her carnation pink lips is nearly as loud as it is desperate – it's not like she and Derek never do it but it's sure as hell never felt like this.
She's on the brink of ecstasy when he pulls away to kiss her again, and as he does, their bodies slips over each other and he slides inside her. She releases a shuddering breath and their toes brush the still lake again as their bodies move together. Together on the bank of the lake, under ill-fated moonlight, they explore each other until they are consumed by pleasure.
No words are spoken afterward. They have committed the illicit, the forbidden, between the bride and the best man, and this piece of happiness doesn't belong to them. Mark pulls Addison gently to her feet, their naked forms colliding and producing a light orchid-pink blush across her cheeks.
Mark pushes a lily pad aside as they wade back through the cool water; the journey back is surreal, as if they are unraveling a dream. Her hand flutters as they walk, brushing against his and the damp cotton of his boxer briefs, prolonging it for as long as she can. She isn't meant to be with Mark, and although this night is killing her she will always be glad she had it.
She refuses to shower the next day; a smudge of dirt the only visible proof of how she spent her night. Mark is so drunk at the reception it's a wonder he can speak at all, and she is sure no one else catches the mocking tone of his voice as he wishes happiness on her and Derek. And they both settle in, unknowingly waiting for number eleven, proving luck and misfortune in one future stormy night.