Meredith Webber still had the bite of tequila on her tongue when she told her boss the residents' nickname for him. "McDreary," she said, "We call you McDreary."
He laughed, smiled, tipped his half-empty glass of scotch and took another sip. He looked tired, the darkness around his eyes standing out in the soft barroom light. She couldn't be sure she hadn't seen him laugh before, but the way the skin around his eyes bunched and the lines of his mouth stretched wide were certainly unfamiliar.
"Do you think that's funny?" she asked.
He was turning the glass on the bar in slow revolutions between his fingers, precise motions that spun it on a membrane of condensation. His smile was gone, his face the same placid surface that she had grown accustomed to when he appeared for the occasional Neurology consult. He considered his drink like he considered a screen of brain scans, his fingers gliding around the glass with the same kind of grace as if he had a scalpel in his hand.
"No," he said, more to the scotch than her. "It's apt. McDreary." He tapped the rim of the glass. "That's my life."
Meredith watched a woman sit down at a table at the back of the bar, her head bobbing in conversation behind his shoulder. To her left a table of nearly-retired oncologists drank cocktails and spoke in complaining tones. Nurses played pool in the corner. The hospital staff unwound in their off hours around her, laughing, shouting. Meredith watched as he stared down through his scotch. His eyebrows fidgeted and a muscle in his jaw jumped like he was swallowing tears. She imagined him in this bar each night, trying to unravel whatever had drove him here in the first place.
She thought of when he had smiled, that one moment when his white teeth had peeked from beneath his lips. His eyes were blue. She had never noticed before, she never had reason. He looked down so often.
"So how about tonight you're not McDreary. You're just," she said, and he was looking at her. "You're just a guy in a bar."
His mouth picked up with a twitch of hope. "And you're just a girl in a bar."
"I am." she said. "And I drink tequila." She thought of when Alex, confronted with his betrayal, had said that Cristina was a lunatic. Despite the ache in her chest she still smiled.
He called the bartender over and ordered her another drink. She sat straight, trying her best to look like she had any experience in this at all.
"Cheers," he said.
She poured the shot down her throat slowly. A girl who drinks tequila, she told herself. In some near future she would confidently order herself shot after shot, downing them expertly, cheered on by the bar patrons around her. She would be like those girls in college who never seemed to study, who didn't even own a bookshelf, who had to organize their earrings by color so they had a hope of finding the right ones.
April would never go for it. Meredith and April were inseparable, the two of them struggling through residency, experiencing everything together. Now Meredith knew that Alex was one more thing they had in common. He would be the last of them, though. Meredith kept the smile on her face as her boss looked at her again. She was a girl with tequila; April wasn't, never would be.
She might have been adrift, afloat, hopelessly lost in an ocean, but she just felt free.
McDreary leaned on the bar with both elbows, his head cocked, the corner of his mouth tipped up. "New at this?" he asked. "The drinking."
"Turning over a new leaf," she said.
"Was the old one so bad?" he asked. He was spinning the glass again, but instead of watching his hands he looked at her.
"I didn't used to think so," she said. After all she had agreed to marry it yesterday. "I didn't, but it was so wrong. All wrong." She pushed stray grains of salt along the bar top with her fingernail, the color of smeared blood, the shiny lacquer smudged with elbow prints.
"Funny how that works," he said, punctuating the statement with a wince.
The more she looked at him the more she saw herself. The pain in his eyes even when he smiled, the undercurrent of dark thoughts below the conversation. If this was how he felt then McDreary certainly was apt. She imagined being ten years older and still feeling this pain, still drudging away at life. She could see why he was the person her mother was always after to improve, to strive for greatness. With this sort of baggage who would want to push more than absolutely necessary?
Meredith waved her hand in the air to try to catch the bartender's attention. The man kept wiping down bottles, his back turned. McDreary laughed next to her, and she narrowed her eyes at him. He clamped his mouth shut dramatically, his cheeks twitching with more soft chuckles.
"Hey!" she shouted, and the bartender turned to her. "Two more," she said, pointing to the empty shot glass in front of her. "With limes. And him," she gestured to her boss.
"Top me off, Tom," he told the bartender.
"We should drink to something," she said.
"We do that?" he asked.
"I do." She lined the two tiny glasses up in front of her, followed by the salt shaker, the tumbler with lime wedges neatly centered in front of them. She licked the supple stretch of skin between her thumb and finger of her right hand and sprinkled it with salt. "To freedom."
"Freedom," he repeated and took a sip of his drink.
Meredith scowled at him, a wedge of lime between her teeth.
"What?" he asked, his eyebrows shooting up.
She spat the piece of fruit into her hand. "That's it?" she asked. "One little sip for freedom?"
"That's how you drink scotch." he said.
"Look," she said and tossed the lime rind on the bar, "if that's all you can muster for freedom I can find another drinking partner."
He lifted the glass and tipped the glass of scotch down his throat. "Terrible," he said, shaking his head.
Only once before had Meredith's fingertips tingled like they did then. Twelve years ago a cousin had fed her glasses of wine at a wake, and she had ended up retching in late Nana's azaleas. Her mother would not stop talking to her father about her great aunt's botched colostomy on the drive back to the hotel and Meredith thought she was going to lose it all over the floor mats. But before that, before the talk of fecal waste and the dry heaves she had perched on the floral couch in the sitting room and pressed her fingertips together, marveling at the pin pricks of numbness.
McDreary's eyes were a little clearer, though that might have been the scotch. His mouth had relaxed, spread and smoothed, not happy but not as pained as before. She could hardly see the man she avoided morning rounds with. She couldn't remember why they had drawn straws in Alex's Chief Resident office to see who would have to endure another week on his service.
"No more McDreary," she said suddenly.
He blinked his eyes and tilted his head. "No?"
She tossed her hair over her shoulder. "It doesn't suit you."
He held out his hand. "Derek, then."
"Meredith." She took his hand and it wrapped neatly around her own, the long, steady fingers hugging hers. His hands were warm. She liked knowing that.
"Nice to meet you, Meredith," he said, still holding her hand.
Her head spun a little. A couple was dancing near the jukebox, their bodies pressed tight, dusty peanut shells crunching under their shoes. He was looking at her, his eyes steady, as if he was trying to figure out who she really was. Or was that just projection, and he stared instead at a bit of food she was suddenly certain was caught in her teeth while she tried to place the person she had become. Everywhere she looked there were people she recognized from the hospital; the guy from the lab that she always argued with had just joined the nurses' pool game. Being a Webber meant her whole life had revolved around this hospital. She imagined their eyes on her, imagined them talking about the chief's daughter chatting up the married attending. Her mother would eat him alive.
"Let's go somewhere," she said, the words sluggish in her mouth, the sticky consonants collecting in her cheeks.
He hesitated a moment, his eyes on her. "I can drive," he said, dropping her hand.
"I'll meet you outside," she told him as he grabbed his coat.
The frosted glass in the restroom door was dark. No one lingered outside it, not a hint of the fabled long lines to the women's room she had always heard about. She slipped down from her stool and tripped as quickly as she could to the cool, dark little closet of a room. She felt on the wall for a switch, and when the lights came on she pulled her hand back quickly from the mottled plastic. For a place that made its money off hospital staff she thought they could stand a more rigorous cleaning regimen.
She looked at the sink. They could, at the very least, supply a bottle of hand sanitizer.
She unceremoniously took care of her needs, washed her hands, then examined herself in the mirror. She pulled her fingers through her hair, ruffled the roots, and checked again. Her hair looked just the same as always, straight and sandy and cleanly trimmed. She saw the same oval face, the pale skin, the conservative haircut she had grown used to her entire life, but there was no comfort in it anymore.
She leaned close to the mirror. The skin around her eyes was still a little puffy, the rims of her eyelids were raw from rubbing. Her cheeks were flushed with the beginnings of drunkenness, or perhaps from the handsome doctor flirting with her at the bar. The handsome married attending.
She sighed and smoothed the front of her pink button down shirt. She loved this shirt. She had the lower half of her dark pink cardigan fastened over it when she stopped, her hands hovering over the black button on her chest, when she reconsidered and undid it again. She had worn her favorite outfit today. She knew she was going to be announcing her engagement and showing off the perfect princess cut diamond ring Alex had bought her. She had stayed up late last night just to wash it and press it, giddy with nerves, reliving the night in her head. She picked out each component, the jeans that fit just right, the pink-banded watch her father bought her when she passed her intern exam, and her favorite shirt crisp and smelling of fabric softener, all hung together in her closet.
She was a fool, she thought. She was a fool and Alex was a cheating bastard and tomorrow the whole hospital would know about it as they exchanged small talk over desks and operating tables and gurneys. Tomorrow she would have to figure out what to do with the damage that was her life, but that was tomorrow. She opened the door to the bathroom and slipped across the bar, her eyes straight ahead. Tonight she was going to do exactly what she wanted to do.
Derek was sitting in a boxy monster of a vehicle, the dim dome light making his perfectly styled hair shine. She knocked on the window lightly, opened the door, and pulled herself up.
"I imagined something more," she said, pausing to let her vocabulary catch up to her, "sporty."
"Sporty would never make it up my driveway," he said with a grin.
They pulled onto the ferry just as its crew was preparing to pull away from shore. Derek's truck, as he called it, was parked safely below deck. They climbed together, their footsteps ringing hollow on the wide steel stairs, to the open air and yards of white railing.
"I didn't realize the commute you have," Meredith said, her hands on the rail in front of her, looking out at the stretch of shore beginning to slip behind them.
"I don't do this every day, but I also don't mind," he said. "I love where I live. It was part of why I stayed."
"You're from New York, right?" she said.
"Manhattan, the best place in the world," he said with a smile.
"Then why did you leave?" She could almost imagine him there, in a tailored suit, coming home and ordering Thai from a little place down the block, hailing cabs and cursing the traffic. Derek with this whole other life that must have suited him so well.
"What I had back east, well, it wasn't something I wanted anymore."
She stopped watching the waves to look at him, his hair ruffled in the wind, staring hard into the distance.
"But then it followed me here," he said. "Running didn't work. And where would I go now?"
His fists were clenched tight, his eyes on the dark horizon. His attempt at apathy had fooled most of the hospital –it had certainly fooled her mother– but she could see that this was a person waiting to explode.
"I got engaged last night," she said quietly.
"What?" he asked.
"Alex asked me to marry him." Meredith swallowed, her throat constricting painfully. "I said yes, wore the ring, the whole deal. And today Cristina walks in on him having sex with April."
"Oh, Meredith," he said, her name a long exhalation.
"She was my best friend, my person, you know? Who does that?" She looked into his worried eyes and liked him a bit more.
"You didn't marry him," he said. "It doesn't sound very comforting, but it's something."
"Yeah," she said quietly. "Instead I'm free. Just like that."
His eyes, blue like the night sky in the city, showed so much caring that it hurt to look at him. The ferry was far out into the water now and the sky was deep black and dotted with constellations. She watched the flickering of satellites as they followed in the slow rotation of the Earth.
"It really is beautiful out here," she said.
"It is." She could see him smile out of the corner of her eye. "Of course, I love a good ride on a ferryboat."
"Ferryboats," she stated flatly. "That's your thing?"
He turned toward her and leaned on the railing. "Is that weird?"
"Seattle is surrounded on three sides by water. There are ferryboats everywhere, it's a fact of life." She laughed as his smile widened. "I guess it's just so normal to me. I've lived here my whole life."
"Lucky," he said. He was closer now, close enough that she could have reached out and touched the creases in his button down shirt, rolled the soft red fabric between her fingertips. The wind was growing colder and his nearness warmed her. She looked up at him, wondered at his chin darkened with a few days of stubble, how it would feel on her skin. Alex always stayed clean-shaven, even on his days off.
His hand glided along the line of her jaw and the light touch made her shiver. His mouth was warm and firm against her cool lips. His fanned fingers found the back of her neck, and pulled her gently closer. Everywhere he touched her was solid, firm, a rock to moor herself on as she drifted.
She gripped the collar of his shirt and when he pulled away it took her a moment to remember to let go of him.
Her cell phone began to buzz with jangling chirps. Before she thought about how in this moment outside communication was unneeded, how right now she was absolutely justified in ignoring one little phone call when there wasn't a single person who could be on the other end that she would want to talk to, before any of that registered the call was accepted and the phone was pressed to her flushed cheek. Her first thought, instead, was one of absolute certainty that she was making a mistake kissing Derek Shepherd, Head of Neurosurgery.
April was saying her name.
"Where are you?" April asked. Her words tipped over each other, rushed, the diction emphatically clipped like she had taken debate team practice a little too seriously.
"It doesn't matter," Meredith said. She gripped the chipped white railing with her free hand.
"Cristina said she took you to some bar, but you weren't there." April said.
Meredith closed her eyes. Thank you, tequila. Thank you, stupid decisions, for getting me out of there.
"I need to talk to you, Mere. I need to tell you how sorry I am." There was a pause, a moment where Meredith could hear April suck in breath and then she was off again. "God, Mere, I am so sorry. I don't know how I, but I did, and Alex said you were so busy, and your mother–"
"That's enough." Meredith said. "I don't need to hear this. I'm not going to listen to this just so you feel better." The anger that had begun to fade, temporarily at least, with the pleasant distraction of booze and a boy came back fiercer than before. To love them, April and Alex, and for them to betray it. For what? Sex? Or was her love one-sided, a delusion, a fairy tale that only she subscribed to. She, who had believed that she had found a good man inside a crass one, cleaned him up, made them into a perfect team and waited patiently until he asked her the right question at just the right time. He waited all of a day, probably less, before he was sticking it in her best friend. April, who was there for her, who was looking for her own good man, who was waiting until her wedding night.
All of it, everything Meredith knew about these two people she loved, was a lie.
April was crying softly into the phone. Meredith thought about how she had heard that sound before, late nights just talking, pacing out the night with the phone and April on the other end mourning a relationship that wasn't, or never was, or should have been. Her heart had broken those nights. Meredith wondered if her heart would ever break like that again, or if the scars from today would lock it in fibrous bands.
"All I want," Meredith said quietly, "is to get away from you. I don't want to see you, I don't want to hear you. I want to pretend you never existed." She stared out to the black water. Moonlight flickered on the drifting planes of briny surf. "Just leave me alone."
Her phone was in her fist. Before she could change her mind she stuffed it deep into her pants pocket. She clenched her hands together in front of her, one over another, until they hurt. As much as she wanted to throw her phone into the water and imagine it sinking into the cold unknown she was still Meredith Webber, fifth year resident. She couldn't bear the thought of losing contact with the entire world, the hospital, the potential cataclysmic traumas, ex-fiancés and ex-persons be damned.
"Meredith?" Derek said softly.
She had forgotten he was next to her.
"We're almost to shore," he said.
She was absolutely there in that moment: on a ferryboat, with a man who she shouldn't have given a second thought to, in the night with its bright stars and cold, salty wind. Every instinct that she had, all her years listening to the certain, unwavering advice of her father that so far had always been perfectly reasonable and resolutely practical, it told her that she should watch Derek get off that ferryboat, say goodbye to him and whatever his problems were, listen to the chug of the engines as she motored back to shore, call a cab, and fall gratefully into her perfectly dependable bed. She could avoid her mother; that much was easy. She could assure her father that she would be alright. She could spend her day off reading a book or doing laundry, something practical and boring. Meredith's entire life crowded in and told her that her path led home. Her path had worked so far.
Except when it kept her small instead.
They sat quietly inside the car, their breath misting the windows. Meredith touched her finger where the engagement ring had been, smooth and lightly tanned, just the same as the rest of her hand. She hadn't worn it long enough for it to leave even a faint trace on her skin. She had slipped it off easily, tucked it inside a medical journal at the bottom of her locker in the resident's lounge. After a good cry on her father's shoulder she couldn't bear to wear it another minute. Her plan was to give it back. She would have to wait if she wanted that plan to remain non-violent.
Derek navigated onto a little two lane highway from the ferryboat's parking lot, his hands moving automatically on the steering wheel. The moon was rising out over the water, a bright bulb. Clouds scuffed along the rim of the sky, edges glowing, the winds mixing, the clear skies traded for more rain.
"Is it always this beautiful out here?" she asked him.
"Just wait," he said. "This is the highway, very utilitarian. I sometimes think my land was made just for the view."
"Land?" Meredith asked. She would have rather heard "house," or perhaps "living room." She imagined a stone fireplace, a wall of glass looking out to the water.
"You'll see," he said as he glanced over and smiled.
Land was the appropriate word, it turned out. At the end of the driveway at the top of the hill, where Derek pulled his truck into a compacted patch of dirt, land was almost all there was to see. Acres of grass bordered by beautiful old timber, and right in the middle, just beyond the dirt and the truck, was a small aluminum trailer. It was such a permanent fixture here that there was even a porch in front of it, nearly as wide as the trailer itself.
"You live in there?" Meredith asked.
"Most of the time, yes," he said, his smile broadening. "When I'm not at the hospital, or–"
Or when he was with his wife, she finished.
"You prefer the solitude? It doesn't bother you?" She approached the porch. It seemed sturdy enough.
"After being in the hospital for days? Not at all." He hopped up on the porch, bypassing the stairs Meredith was testing with the toe of her shoe. "Come in," he said, "if you want to."
The inside of the trailer was cramped, that much she expected, but it was far less barren than she imagined. The light Derek flicked on over the sink made the place seem warm, despite the lack of heating. The curtains were simple and neat, the kitchen table folded away, the bathroom tiny but well stocked.
Then there was the matter of the bed. By Meredith's estimate it took up a third of the trailer. The sheets looked like they would have been right at home in Derek's Manhattan life. The comforter looked like something out of a design magazine. She smirked as she thought that there should be puppies tumbling across it, too good to be true, that those puppies should have come along in the box with his bedding.
"I thought," Derek said, close behind her, "that we could work out some sort of sleeping arrangement."
"That's an interesting way of putting it," Meredith said. As she looked at that bed, blood red sheets folded back, while Derek stood just close enough, she imagined her father. This was the least appropriate time to think of him, but part of having him always there was that he led her even when she didn't ask. Her father was telling her to go, that this was a terrible idea. She crossed her arms over her chest. He thought she was throwing away her career. She frowned. He knew just what she should do, had it planned since she had gotten in the truck. Surely Derek was enough of a gentleman to give her a ride back to that ferryboat.
The problem with her father's advice, she thought, was that it always delayed pleasure. Stop crying, get back on that bike and finish what you started. Earn good grades to get into a good high school, earn good SAT scores to get into a good college, focus and ignore everything and everyone. On and on until she was at Seattle Grace Hospital living for her career and her parents and the applause at awards ceremonies rather than herself.
"I don't know what I was thinking," Derek whispered, still close enough behind her that she could feel his slow, steady breaths moving her hair.
Meredith turned. He was shaking his head.
"I thought we were past it, that we could fix things." He ran a hand through his hair, which settled into the same controlled chaos as before. "I thought it was my fault."
"Your wife?" she asked quietly.
"I told her I wanted a baby, that baby. And I did. Seven months and I was ready." He paced, taking a couple steps away from her, then closer again, then back. "She kept asking, kept pushing me, and then she just took it away." He placed his hands on either side of the door and locked his arms, leaning against the curved metal wall. "The baby isn't mine. Did you know that?" The veins in his arms pulsed.
"I–" Meredith began, but there was no good way to finish that. It was common knowledge in the hospital that the Shepherds were going through a rough patch, had been for months, but she didn't know any of this. She suspected that no one did, not yet. She thought about Percy complaining about the pair earlier, how she didn't want her relationship to be the next Shepherds. She ended up with something like it anyway.
"This is my life?" he asked her, his eyes shining. "Flirting with you in a bar was the highlight of my day, my week. What does that mean?"
The trailer was so tiny she only had two steps to take before she could reach for his hands, pulling him away from the door. He looked at the floor, just like she saw every day in the hospital, the defeat closing in.
"It means," she said, pausing, collecting her thoughts, trying to get her father's advice to do her some good tonight, "that you're free."
"Free," he said. "If I'm free then what do I do?"
"You just have to breathe," she said, putting her hands on the sides of his face, the stubble tickling her palms. "Just be."
His mouth was warm, soft, his lips trembling slightly as she kissed him, light caresses one after another. His lips parted and he leaned into her, his hands in her hair. She threaded her fingers in his tie, loosening the knot, tossing it into the darkness beyond their electric bodies. His hands were in her hair again, tugging at the roots. She tipped her head back and his mouth warmed her neck. She looked out the skylight just above her head, the night stars bright through the dirty acrylic dome. She sighed as his lips pressed to her collarbone.
His fingers loosened their hold on her scalp. She caught his mouth with hers again, and as he straightened she caught the waistband of his pants. Her heart thudded in her ears as she stepped back, pulled him with her until the backs of her knees felt the gentle give of the comforter spread across his bed. He looked at her, his pupils wide with desire, and pushed her gently back.
His weight pressed her into the mattress, his warmth surrounded her, his mouth opened hers and his tongue plunged deep. He shifted, his hands on either side of her head, and his fingertips stroked her cheeks. She ran her hands down his sides, the bands of muscle under her palms flexing, bending, his body in lustful agitation. She tilted her hips toward him and he pressed the ridge of his erection against her. Her throat buzzed with a low, feral moan.
He was everywhere, his body covered hers insistently even as he supported his weight above her. The friction of his clothed body against hers didn't allow for anything but sensation, her mind overflowed with the heated messages of nerve endings instead of thought. She bowed under him, wanting more of this anesthetic, hungry for the high of bare skin.
Buttons were no impediment to her hands, even as Meredith trembled with adrenaline. The dark hairs furring the top of his chest were soft under her fingertips, the dip of his clavicle damp with sweat. He tugged at her tight jeans as he kissed around her navel, she lifted her hips and he pulled off the last of her clothing, tossing them into the kitchen behind him.
"Meredith," he said, her name a gust of breath from between his flushed lips.
"Don't stop," she said.
He stood, silhouetted, and she wished she could see all of him. He leaned into the bathroom and she saw the shape of the condom in his fingers. She memorized the triangles of light that gleamed between his forearms and the subtle tuck of his waist. He crawled toward her, covered her again, and she put her hands where the light had been.
"Meredith," he said again, his eyes locked with hers.
She hooked her knees on his hips, her ankles crossing behind him. "I want this," she said.
"You do?" he asked.
"So much," she said, and she kissed him again.
She closed her eyes as she felt the warm pressure of his skin on hers, the thump of his heart against hers, the push of his urgent inhalations fighting against hers. The air in her lungs hummed joyously out as she expanded for his entrance, her body adjusting to his, her clit grinding against his hard pelvis. He stayed close, moved in short bursts, let her nerves light up.
Derek's hands were threaded through her hair when she convulsed, groaned, and pushed against him in her climax. He kept very still as she contracted around him, and began to slowly stroke the skin of her shoulders with his thumbs as she quieted. She smiled up at him, her eyelids heavy.
"More?" he asked. She nodded and pushed against his chest with her palms.
He rolled onto his back and she tucked herself into his side. He ran a hand over her breast, cupping it and she closed her eyes as he toyed with her sensitive flesh, rousing her sated nerves. She pushed herself up and over him, straddling him with her knees, brushing the twitching tip of his erection with the slick lips of her labia. He put his hands on her hips and closed his eyes, his smile disappearing into concentration. She leaned forward and slid onto him, taking all of him, gripping him hard. She watched as he inhaled through his clenched teeth, his fingers pressing into the flesh of her hips, and his desire moved her, up and down, her eyes never leaving his face as she watched him give over to his own needs.
He opened his eyes, pupils large and dark, and she could see worship there, worship of what she could give or deny him as she chose. She sat up straight, stretched her spine as she towered high above him. Her pleasure tonight was hers to own, to control absolutely. She moved faster, the friction building, spreading inside her like hot oil, fire concentrated around him, her body painfully aware of every point where they pulled together. She put her hands on his chest and he moaned, a long, luxurious noise in the back of his throat, and his hips jerked under her. They moved together, both chasing their desire relentlessly, until she tossed her head back and rode the wave of orgasm. Meredith contracted fiercely and he thrust upwards, once. Her body arched back in response and he groaned his release loudly into the night.
She curled her body against his side, her hair splayed across the pillow behind her. Derek closed his eyes, made a low, purring hum of pleasure in the back of his throat. He rested his cheek against her forehead, their damp skin cooling together, and she let his deep, even breaths lull her to sleep.