Over It

"There you are!" Meredith exclaimed as her eyes landed on her longtime friend. "I've been looking for you all over."

"Sorry," Alex replied, his eyes shifting to her before staring at the floor once more. He clasped his hands between his knees, his mind reeling.

Meredith looked around the quiet hiding spot, memories of her intern year flooding her mind. "It's been a long time since I've been here."

"We don't have to come here anymore. We don't have to hide from attendings. We are the attendings."

The woman quirked her head, looking her friend over before quietly sitting next to him. "What happened?" It was clear to her that Alex was in the middle of some sort of crisis. "Is it your mom? Aaron?"

"It's Jo."

"Oh." Meredith pursed her lips, not exactly sure how to proceed. Things had been weird with the former lovers. There had never been an official break up, the two had just drifted away without saying a word. It seemed unwritten that they were no longer together, but... "She wants to get back together?"

"She slept with someone else."

His friend's eyes widened slightly, but she quickly recovered. "What...do you...think...about that?" Meredith knew it was a psychological question, but she wasn't exactly sure what to say. Her knee jerk reaction was anger, but what if he didn't feel the same way?

Alex sat quietly a few moments, pondering his friend's question. He had been sort of stunned since Jo's confession. He really thought they had something, something real, something that would go the distance, but the intern had thrown it away so easily.

On the flipside, the attending was trying to remember what his internship had been like. He'd slept with plenty of women, but now...now he was past that. Alex was past the bullshit hooking up. He wanted something real, something substantial. He thought he'd found that in Jo. How many times had he told her that he was in this for the long haul? That it was supposed to be the two of them, forever?

"I can't do this," the surgeon finally sighed, rubbing his hand over his head. "If it was just this one thing, maybe, but..."

"She's still married," Meredith finished his sentence as he looked back to the floor.

"Yeah," Alex nearly choked on the word. "She's lied to me all this time, then sleeps with another guy? I didn't even sleep with anyone else. I w-waited for her..." He shook his head and clinched his fists.

"You've grown up," she covered his fist with her hand. "She hasn't. You remember what we were like."

"Whores on tequila."

"Right."

Alex chuckled, shaking his head as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "It's always been us at the end of the day, hasn't it?"

"And it always will be," Meredith replied as she snuggled her head against his shoulder.