On the bad days Danny loses sight of them.
Fighting is different now. Not better. Not worse. Different. Now she has the option to end the fight with sex, distract him with a little flick of pink tongue between parted lips, dull his senses with measured strokes and the inevitable release. Yesterday it was a hair thing that could have burnt the place down. Today it's a full DVR. The fight will end, but it's not finished, and he knows no one can fight like this forever.
"Danny, there's not enough space to record the VMAs." Mindy is curled on his sofa wearing scrubs and glasses, her hair pulled into a loose ponytail.
"I don't know what that means." He's towelling his hair dry as he walks through the living room, fresh from the gym and feeling loose and relaxed.
"Nevermind, I just deleted your suspension bridge thing."
"Are you kidding me? You have like every episode of Ellen recorded and you don't even watch them. Delete your own stuff." She does this all the time and he doesn't know why tonight it feels like he's been blindsided, but her complete lack of respect for his things is almost stunning.
She didn't even look up as she scrolled through the menus. "It had been on there for like a week."
He can feel all of the tension returning to his shoulders as he stares at the back of her head. He doesn't even know why he expected a real response. "Yeah, because I worked all week and I was gonna watch it later. I can't believe I'm justifying myself to you, it's my fucking TV."
She turns and stares. "You don't have to talk to me like that."
He knows. He knows he shouldn't say things like that, but she always makes him feel like he isn't allowed to get mad. Like the balance is too delicate. So he just holds his tongue. Or on a night like tonight he doesn't hold his tongue, and she looks at him like she's looking at him right now. Disgust. She looks disgusted with him.
"Record whatever you want at your place, Mindy. Leave my stuff alone."
"You want me to leave? I'll go." She is standing now, her chin tilted up and there it is, the ever-present threat that if he gets mad and says something, she'll get mad and say something and it will spiral out of control and disintegrate before his eyes.
"I don't want you to leave." He bites back the rest of the words before they trip right off his tongue, and it works. She doesn't leave. She gets closer. As she's sucking his bottom lip between her own he wonders if Mindy thinks he doesn't know what she's doing, or if she just doesn't care if he knows. Admittedly once her fingers slip beneath his shirt he cares a little less, but he won't forget.
When they're tangled and spent in his bed he finds himself unable to sleep as thoughts chase each other through his head. What would have actually happened if he'd just pushed her away this time and finished the fight? Would she have really left? Whose fault is it if she starts the fight and he ends it?
He buries his nose in her hair as she murmurs in her sleep and decides it doesn't matter as long as she doesn't leave.
On a good day he can see forever. On a good day he thinks maybe he can be what she needs, because she's more than enough for him.
They tag team a difficult delivery, twins arriving at 28 weeks, and he prays every second of the delivery, knowing that he can only take this so far and the rest is in God's hands. They walk away from the OR together, and he hears a little prayer leave her lips too. Even though he knows they're not praying to the same God, he feels like in a way they really are, and it fills him with a quiet joy.
She's flushed with wine and laughter when she excuses herself the first time. She'd surprised him with reservations at a restaurant he'd have never picked, not with prices like these. Except she's paying, and the wine is good and they haven't laughed like this in weeks. Her eyes are bright when she returns, and she squirms a little as she sits back down, close to him.
"You have something..." she murmurs, reaching for his face and tracing his bottom lip with two fingers, leaving the distinctive taste of her right there on his mouth. He grabs her hand to hold those fingers close to his face as his body stirs to life and he locks eyes with her. She nods almost imperceptibly before excusing herself again and he follows her.
They have it down to a science, this quiet lovemaking. Then the door to the ladies' room opens and they freeze until the coast is clear again. She giggles into his mouth as the door closes again. "Shhh..." He'd never done something as risky as this with anyone, but he finds himself unable to resist her. It's exciting and strange and possibly the best thing that has ever happened to him. This is what trust feels like, he's sure of it.
That night he tells her about the last fight his parents had.
He'd smelled the beer on his dad's breath when he strolled in that afternoon. They'd eaten cold fries straight from greasy paper bags as they waited for his mom to get home. The fight happened the same way it did every night. Why'd you get off work early? Would it have killed you to cook real food? Danny is getting bigger and bigger and you keep feeding him that junk. She'd screamed as his dad had stared with dull eyes at a too-loud TV as though the fight wouldn't happen if he just didn't respond. Danny had quietly picked Richie up and carried him through to the bedroom where he'd read to him in a clear loud voice to drown them out.
When the fight ended, he'd put Richie to bed and then himself. As he lay there listening to the TV through the walls Danny had promised himself that when his dad came home the next night he'd offer to help cook. He didn't want Richie to turn out fat like him. None of this was Richie's fault, and if he just tried a little harder to lose weight they wouldn't fight so much.
The next day his mom had met him after school and explained that his dad was going to move out for a while. Alan never came back.
Sometimes Danny's afraid he's become his father all over, drinking when things get too sharp to bear. Sometimes he's afraid he's become his mother too, unforgiving and hard to love. He's never said any of these things out loud to anyone, but every secret spills into the quiet room as she listens intently, her eyes shining with love and patience and understanding. As a man, Danny understands that the fights hadn't been about his disappointing body or his lack of willpower or his failure to be the son either of them wanted. However the echoes of all of those things still ring clear on dark nights.
She holds him until the sun comes up and both of them cry for a little boy who was not enough for anyone, not even himself.
"Terry, just let me off at your next stop, I'll grab a cab home."
"Dan, we're halfway to Huntington."
"Why you taking this guy all the way to Long Island, anyway?" Danny looks behind him at the guy passed out in the seat at the very back. Street lights flicker across the guy's sleep-softened face, giving him the angelic look of a person without a care in the world. Of course, a guy without a care in the world probably wouldn't be this drunk on a Wednesday night.
Terry meets Danny's eyes briefly, then returns his gaze to the road. "He asked me to."
"You know him?"
"Nope."
"He's probably got a family, Ter. He's someone else's problem."
"If you say so."
Terry has that quiet thing real big guys have sometimes. He's been sober almost 12 years, but he doesn't talk about that unless you ask. Danny's not asking, but he can feel it in the silence pressing against his skin as Terry drives through the city, picking up and putting down drunks who might have otherwise have gotten behind the wheel. It's the first time Danny's been in the bus, but he's not drunk.
They ride in silence for what feels like forever and the rhythm of the gently rocking vehicle, combined with the drone of BBC World News on the stereo lull Danny into a trancelike state.
He knows as he takes the glass out of her hand that it's a mistake, but he just can't stop himself. The very idea that she has to drink just to talk to him plucks at something wound tight in his gut and the next thing he knows he's making the mistake anyway and she's walking away from him. He knows too, that she's not really leaving, but the way it twists in his stomach sure feels real, and the only thing realer is the way the impact travels right down his arm as he punches the heavybag. His shoulders shake as he goes harder and harder, grunts of pain echoing in an otherwise empty room. He's bent over, watching sweat pour off his face and drip onto the mat below. He remembers getting to the gym, but he doesn't know how long he's been hitting this bag and as the rushing in his ears dies back a little a desperate little laugh escapes. Tears and sweat taste almost exactly the same. Why don't people talk about that?
He feels, rather than hears, Terry enter the room. A clean towel hits the side of Danny's neck and Terry's voice brings him back to reality. "You got a bus to catch."
The sky is tinged pink as they deliver the last of their beer-soaked cargo and they ride back to Manhattan in a pinched silence. As they pull up in front of Danny's building Terry finally asks. "What happened?"
Danny feels a lump in his throat and the words won't come. He just shakes his head.
"Dan, I've known you a long time now. I can't say we're close, but we don't have to be close for me to recognize a drowning man."
Danny stares at this little burn mark in the floormat, and it occurs to him that he hadn't even wanted a cigarette in months. It seems significant. He sucks in a big breath. "I'm not an idiot. I knew it would be hard work to make her happy, but I think the harder I try the more miserable she is."
"Are you happy?"
"I don't know."
"Listen, I had a hole in me once, and I tried to fill it up with a lot of things. Mostly booze, but sometimes other things too. Sometimes people. You can't do that. If you treat her like she is the thing that gonna patch you up and make you whole you are gonna destroy yourself, and you're going to destroy her in the process. You're always gonna have that hole in you and you can't fill it up with anything but you, and until you learn how to do that you're gonna keep hurting her." Terry unbuckled his seatbelt to get to his wallet and rifles through business cards. They look like those little slips of paper you find in fortune cookies in his huge hands.
"Terry..."
"I don't think you're ready right now, but when you are give me a call. Maybe I can't help, but I can probably point you in the direction of someone who can." Terry holds out one of the cards from the gym with another number scrawled on the back in blue pen. Danny slips off the passenger seat and slams the door shut, watching from the curb as Terry drives away.
He's had a shower and two cups of coffee already by the time she walks in the door. They both say their piece, but all he really hears is that she won't walk away again. She won't walk away again.
In the end he saves her the trouble. You can't walk out on someone who won't let you stay.
It's different from the first time he called it off, this time he knows that this is love.
And this is losing.
"Danny, why don't you just take a week and think about it?"
"I'm not moving to Florida, Rich." He feels like they're having this conversation every week lately. It's like having a low-grade headache that nothing will put to rest.
"Why not? What's New York ever done for you? You complain about the subway, the weather, the people. In fact the only thing you never complained about was work, until you and Mindy blew up, and now you won't shut up about it."
"We're just going through a rough patch. We'll figure out how to be friends again. And I'm a partner in the practice. I can't just walk away from my responsibilities."
"The practice makes you miserable."
"No, everyone telling me how I feel makes me miserable."
"You're so bull-headed. You're just like Ma. Except she's already talking about moving down here for real next winter."
Richie makes this exasperated sound. Mindy used to make that sound. So did Christina now that Danny really thinks about it. He wants to drop the phone and grind it under his heel like a cigarette butt. Instead Danny says the cruelest thing he's ever said to his little brother, and as the words come spitting out he realizes that he even means it. "And you're just like Dad. Real men don't run away when things get hard."
"You know what? Fuck you. I'm trying to help and you gotta say shit like that? Fuck you." Danny hears Ramon in the background, his voice laced with concern.
He didn't even know until that moment how jealous he was of his brother's happiness. How much of his knee-jerk reaction to Florida was about the fact that he'd have to face that every day, all those little things in Richie's life added up to remind him of everything he didn't have. "I'm sorry, Rich."
"Don't be sorry, get help. If you won't let me help you, will you just let someone try? You can't push away everyone then get self-righteous because they can't live up to these impossible standards you've made up for yourself."
Danny hangs up.
The next day she announces what Jeremy and Peter already knew, if the way they can't meet Danny's eyes is any indication. It's stupid, but he briefly wonders if she's chosen California to try again with Casey. Would it be worse if she was running from him, or running to Casey? He can't even bring himself to ask, and he takes it out on her in a thousand tiny little ways.
That tight feeling in his gut has returned. His whole body vibrates with it as he watches her pack her office, as he traces his fingertip over her signature on the reassigned patient records that slowly make their way to his desk. As he hears her say goodbye over and over to patients and vendors and hospital staff. Everyone but him. It's too late now, and he knows it as he follows her into the hot pipe room and watches her slot another box on the shelf, a little piece of New York filed away forever. He wants to say a lot of things and he wants her to hear what he means because the words will come out wrong the way they always do.
I need you comes out as "Hey," and history repeats itself. A whole lifetime of need poured into the time between a kiss and an "I'm sorry."
"It is what it is," she says as they put their clothes right and fail to say goodbye, and then she's gone.
Somewhere along the line people stop abruptly ending the conversation when he enters a room. They carry on with a light comment or two; her practice is expanding, she met John Mayer, then they drift apart and leave him to wonder what wasn't said. Danny catches himself holding his breath as he passes Peter's office and hears her name.
"She calls me out on my bullshit, Min. It's like you're still here, only she lets me motorboat her...I am being serious, she's got these tig ol' bitties..."
Danny smiles, he can hear a familiar tinny squawk, Mindy's worked-up, I-don't-have-time-for-this voice cutting Peter off. He starts to walk away when he catches the tail end of a sentence. "You should call him."
Danny keeps walking.
Spring comes to New York in fits and starts. He only rarely lets himself wonder if she misses the snow, grubby as it is, and lets himself consider Florida again. The sun returns to the city though, and on that first day when it's warm enough to open the windows, he throws one open and breathes in the city air.
He'll never leave New York.
Morgan starts the spring cleaning in the hot pipe room, and it's not until he hears a tentative "Dr C?" float across the office that he remembers that they never found her underwear that last time. Danny's face is already red when he pushes the door wider. "What, Morgan?"
"Is this yours?"
It isn't underwear. It's a little shoebox with his name printed neatly on each end. He snatches it away from Morgan and carries it into his own office before prying it open. He recognizes most of the bits and pieces, but not everything. It makes him wonder how much he's forgotten about that time, or how much he never knew at all. The things here could easily have fit in an envelope, why did she waste a whole box on these small things?
That night at his kitchen table he tries to put the pieces together, then tucks them into the smallest envelope he can find. She had taken up so much space in his life, how could it pack down into something so small it could easily slip behind a bookshelf never to be seen again? His hands shake as he dials a number he meant to delete a long time ago, but that might be the alcohol as much as the fear.
Terry picks up on the first ring.
"Take Pete."
Jeremy makes that little exasperated sound, but Danny doesn't flinch from it now. It has been really hard to learn how to let someone else express themselves without reacting as though it was a deliberate attack, but he's working on it. "Danny, I did ask, but Peter has plans. Besides, don't you have a dad and a sister in California? Why don't you take a couple of extra days and go see your family?"
"We're seeing them at Easter."
Jeremy's eyebrows arch in surprise. "We? You're taking Alicia?"
"And Ben."
"Well, good for you, mate. I like Alicia." Jeremy claps him on the back. "Has Ben ever been on a plane before?"
"His dad took him to Disney World last year. I promised him I'd take him to Disneyland when we go see my family so he can compare."
"Is that getting any easier?"
"Yeah. I think he's still suspicious of me, but I'm not trying to be his dad. I remember how shitty that felt, so I try to give him some space."
"Good luck with that."
Danny feels a shy smile creep across his face and suddenly California doesn't feel like a big deal. "Give me the program, I get first pick of seminars."
He finds himself deliberating over what to wear, and he doesn't even have to read the text from Jeremy to know what it says. She's here.
Jeremy abandons him early in the evening and Danny's peeling the label off his third beer when she arrives. It's not quite the smile he remembers, but his breath catches all the same. She's wearing her hair short, and somehow it makes her eyes look that much bigger. The awkward gives way to ease and he finds his hand on her wrist before he remembers she isn't that Mindy anymore, and he's not that Danny. Withdrawing it quickly he talks her into another drink, and another before Jeremy finds them and regales them with a tale that makes them both titter nervously. They blush too easy, but that's just alcohol, and when Jeremy turns away she catches his eye and rolls her own.
It's after midnight and they are probably a bit drunker than either would admit, but a walk to clear their heads seems innocuous enough.
Her phone rings and it reminds him he should have called Alicia to say goodnight, but Alicia knows he'll call in the morning and she'll forgive him. They've learned how to make space for each other.
He waits patiently in the warm night air and tries not to listen as Mindy sings softly into her phone. He wants to tell her about Terry and how he knew a guy who knew about anger. He wants to tell her he's sorry he couldn't change for her. He wants to tell her that he's happy now.
When she calls herself Mama the word plucks again at the too-tight center of him, a feeling he'd locked away a long time ago, and he knows it's time to say good night.
Alicia asks just once about the empty box that says 'Danny' in careful script on each end, but his answer is enough for her.
"It's not empty, it's just ready for something new."