The Final Goodbye
AN/Disclaimer: Par usual, don't own anything Psych and no infringement intended.
Kirsten Nelson, who directed 1967: A Psych Odyssey, called the episode as a whole and more specifically, the scene between Juliet and Carlton, "The Big Goodbye." That scene was absolutely gorgeous and harkened back to the show I first fell in love with so long ago, prompting me to put my own spin on it—also harkening back to how I first fell into writing Psych fanfic, which is to say, a tag or missing scene that could conceivably fit within show canon.
She watched him approach as he had so many times in the past eight years—confident stride, venti in each hand, not a strand of hair out of place, and those remarkable blue eyes shielded behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. Unlike almost every other time, however, he sported a day-old scruff and wasn't wearing one of his patented dark suits, but rather faded well-worn jeans and a blue plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the casual look befitting the ungodly hour and the fact that it was a Saturday.
Both of which would have given him every reason to lob off her request to meet. But she'd known he wouldn't. Which was why she'd texted him at an even ungodlier hour, asking him to meet at this remote wooded rest stop ninety minutes outside of Santa Barbara.
"Where's Spencer?"
She took the venti in his left hand, knowing it to be hers. As it had been, every time, for the last eight years.
"Still asleep, I expect."
He eased himself down to sit alongside her on the low wall overlooking the creek bordering the parking lot. "I seem to recall him burbling proudly how he was going to wake up early and accompany you to San Francisco."
"That would have required three alarm clocks, my shaking him awake, and a triple-sugared pineapple smoothie."
"None of which happened."
She shrugged and took a sip of coffee, sighing with pleasure as the caffeine hit her system. "I arrived in Santa Barbara by myself. Seemed right I should leave the same way."
After a lengthy beat he quietly said, "But you're not."
She knew, in that way she knew him, that he didn't simply mean the fact she'd called him to meet her before she got too far away. Before she left for good.
"I know."
They sipped their coffee in companionable silence for a while, accompanied only by the sounds of the water rushing over the rocks and the occasional distant hum of a car speeding past on its way to or from… whatever. Sort of how she herself felt. Leaving and going, familiar and well-known giving way to different and mysterious in one fell swoop. Old and new wrapped with a delicate bow of the unknown tying it inextricably together.
Only twice before had she felt such a combined sense of anticipation and trepidation and certainty—on her first drive into Santa Barbara and in the first weeks after starting her relationship with Shawn. Everything had been new and terrifying and what she absolutely had to do.
Like this move.
But unlike those other times, she also had a sense of unfinished business. Which was ridiculous really. They'd said everything they needed to in Vick's—his—office. When it had hit her once again, the absolute depths of what he was willing to do for her. Everything he was willing to sacrifice for her—even now, even after all that had transpired both to them and between them.
Maybe especially now.
His offer, in the light of everything, meant so much more than the words themselves. It carried with it the weight of a thousand emotions—some of which had gone unacknowledged for far too long.
As if able to sense the path down which her thoughts had wandered, he chose that moment to ask, "Why am I here?"
"I wanted to say goodbye."
"I thought we had."
"We did—to our partnership."
"And our friendship."
"Oh no." She shook her head. "We'll never say goodbye to that."
"But it's never going to be the same," he said in his typically blunt manner. "We're two fundamentally different people and our lives are going in completely different directions."
Not untrue. But not completely accurate either. They weren't quite as different as he might like to fool himself into thinking. She knew he knew that. It was simply an excuse he'd used for years as a shield. She knew he was aware of that as well.
"Let me ask you something."
"Shoot."
"Five, ten years down the line, even if for some unforeseen reason we haven't spoken for a very long time, yet I still call and ask for your help, would you come?"
Her only reply was that single expressive eyebrow rising above the rim of his sunglasses, prompting her to add, "That's what I thought." Setting her cup aside, she took his hand in hers. "Our friendship, no matter how different we are, no matter what direction our lives take, will never really be over, Carlton."
A slight inclination of his head was his only response, but it was all she needed, especially accompanied as it was by the slight tightening of his fingers around hers.
After another several long moments of silence during which the air around them took on a subtle charge, he spoke again.
"Why am I here, Juliet?"
His use of her given name indicated that he was finally ready to acknowledge the real reason she'd asked him to meet her—and the reason he'd acquiesced without hesitation.
Even so, she started to respond as she had before—that it was to say goodbye—but at the last possible second caught herself, knowing that wouldn't suffice. Not now.
"Why didn't it ever happen, Carlton?"
Once upon a time he might have scrabbled away from her, eyes startled and wide, the deep blue reflecting fear and denial as he fumbled for an answer so blatantly false, a high schooler could have seen through it.
But no longer.
"Which reason do you want?" he answered evenly.
"How many are there?"
He laughed quietly before softly reciting, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."
"I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight ." A breathless laugh escaped. "Wow. I had no idea I even recalled any of that sonnet beyond the first line."
"Most people don't."
While his hand remained clasped around hers, his posture stiffened—the shadow of the man he'd been so long ago falling over him.
"There are so many reasons, Juliet, beyond the fact that professionally, it would have been suicide. For both of us."
"Why do I suspect that would have been the least of it?"
The edges of his mouth twitched.
"Not initially—however, by the time it would no longer have mattered, other… considerations—" his voice took on a familiar dry edge, "had taken its place."
"Shawn."
"Yeah. And Seaver and Rand and my having to come to terms with Victoria and hell, just life in general." He shrugged easily—the motion that of a man who'd thought this through and was both comfortable and at peace with what life had handed him. "The time was just never right. And then Marlowe came along and she let me love her. Freely. Without reservation or conditions." He paused. "Well, other than the prison sentence."
She absorbed that for a moment, understanding it to be true and understanding even more deeply, how very badly he'd needed that sort of love. Both to give it and to be on the receiving end of. The sort of love she hadn't been capable of giving him other than under the guise of friendship. And even that had been sketchy for a while.
She wondered, not for the first time, what she might have missed.
"But you did love me, didn't you?"
For the first time, he turned to face her, slipping his glasses off as he did, so that she was hit with the full force of his penetrating gaze.
"I still do, Juliet. I always will." He stated it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Just because I can't love you the way I wanted doesn't mean I ever stopped loving you." His brows drew together in that blessedly familiar scowl. "I don't know how it works for other people, but that's not how I operate. I'll always love you."
She absorbed the intensity of not simply the words but the emotion with which he'd uttered them and felt, down to her bones, just how true they resonated. And knew she could say what she was about to say with absolute safety and certainty. Knew she had to say it.
"You're not wrong that the time was never right for us. Maybe the time will never be right for us. Or maybe… our time just hasn't come yet." Taking his cup, she set it beside hers before grasping his newly free hand, feeling the metal of his wedding band, smooth and warm, beneath her skin.
"This is going to sound incredibly macabre and I honestly don't mean for it to, especially in light of everything going on in right now, especially in your life, but—"
The flood of words came to a halt as his fingers pressed against her lips.
"Don't say it, Juliet. You'll hate yourself afterwards."
Her heart broke a little as both his quiet words and the utter selfishness of her intent washed over her.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, shivering as she felt the slight drag of his fingers against her lips. She shivered again as she registered the faint saltiness of his skin overlaid with a subtle sweetness that had to have come from the sugar he'd added to their coffee.
So evocative of the man himself, really.
"You don't have to be. I just don't want you regretting anything. Especially when it would be such an unnecessary regret."
His hand fell to rest on his thigh as he turned his gaze back over the creek. "You think I haven't thought the same? That maybe… someday…" His voice trailed off.
She added his words and all their implications to the stores of knowledge filed under the heading of Carlton Lassiter that she'd kept hidden deep in the recesses of her heart for far longer than she might have wanted to acknowledge.
"Even now?"
"Even now." Drawing one leg up, he rested his arm across his knee. "If there's any life's lesson that's made a lasting impression on me is that there's very little that's ever absolutely certain."
But that what was certain, he'd already assured her of. Which meant that the rest, she had to let go. At least for now.
"So you're saying that it's possible one day, we might bump into each other in the Old Cop's Home—"
"And the sparks will fly and we'll be the most hot to trot damned seniors the joint's ever seen."
Their shared laughter drifted up to join the wind rustling the trees and the birds singing their early morning songs. Everything that had needed saying had been said—almost.
"You know I love you, right?"
His hand dropped to grasp hers once again. "I do now."
She wasn't surprised when, standing beside her car, he pulled her close, his head lowering until his mouth touched hers. In his kiss, deep and thorough and more than she might have ever imagined, she felt not just the past eight years—all the laughter and aggravation and terror and frustration and pain and love—but the promise of what might have been.
What might still be.
Or not.
She had to accept that as a very real—actually, very likely—possibility.
But now, as she pointed her car north and drove into the new day, she finally felt at peace.
She'd said the goodbye that mattered most.
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
~Sonnet 43
Elizabeth Barrett Browning