Perhaps, if you'd paid attention the first time you met him, you might have learned something, or at least been a little prepared.
"Hi." He smiled, stuck out his hand. "I'm Derek Shepherd."
"Addison . . . Montgomery." You stammered as you remembered to omit the cumbersome Forbes from your name: nobody at med school wanted to know about that and you didn't want them to know. Then you played with your pencil, eyes stealing glances at him, hoping the lecture would begin and curtail all the awkwardness between you.
You weren't used to connections; you didn't understand honesty; they were not commodities your family especially valued. So he unsettled you.
His eyes smiled, propelling the Hi way past social requirements and into the realm of actual friendliness. His eyes, you later learned, did all kinds of things that usually need the augmentation of words and touch. But that day, they just smiled – blue, crinkly, truly looking at you. Smiling.
You sat next to him in the auditorium, for the first time in your life not really listening to the professor, because biochemistry seemed, for that moment, unimportant compared to the way he made you feel.
He was Derek Shepherd. You were Addison Montgomery. You met by coincidence in a lecture, that's all.
But the way he made you feel? He made you feel present, real, as though, until now, you had only been penciled in and someone had found the ink.
Then the lecture ended, some guy waved at him from across the wooden seats and he stood up and smiled a different, quicker smile. "That's Mark," he said. "Bye, Addison." And he left you back in the world where you were just . . . well, you, and suddenly, stupidly lonely.
So you gathered your books, stood up, found a friend and got on with your day and, of course, it was just an hour's lecture; and, of course, you got over it.
But perhaps, if you'd paid attention the first time you met him, you might have been prepared for how it felt to be alone – just you, when, after years of love, years of the presence he gave you and then slowly leached away, he said Goodbye for the very last time.