Stopping off at Joe's on her way to the airport was becoming something of a tradition, Addison mused as she took a seat at the bar with Bailey and ordered a drink. "So when are you coming down to L.A. again?" she asked her friend.
"The next time you find yourself in need of my expertise." Bailey nodded at Joe as he set a drink in front of her.
"How about just to spend some time on the beach? It's a waste to have a friend with a beach house and not take advantage of it."
"You mean like a vacation?" Bailey gave a snort. "I'd be so bored I'd be doing appendectomies on sand crabs."
Addison chuckled. "You have to wonder if something's wrong when relaxing takes more effort than work does."
Bailey's pager went off. She glanced at it and then gave Addison an apologetic smile. "That's what I was afraid of." She tapped the Coke she'd ordered. "I have to go back to the hospital. Give me a call sometime soon, you hear? Even if you don't need my expertise." With a quick half hug for her friend, she left.
Addison glanced at her watch. She had a while before her plane left, but there was really no reason to keep hanging out here. Callie was on duty, and now that Miranda had left, there was no one she really wanted to see.
She took a sip of her drink, glancing around. And then she saw Alex Karev staring at her. He didn't look away when their eyes met, but she did. She and Alex worked well together, and she was glad to have him on her cases whenever she came up to Seattle, but she'd prefer not to see him outside the hospital. She'd kissed him once and jumped him once, only to be rejected afterwards, so keeping it professional was the only way to keep the humiliation from surfacing.
She saw him stand, his eyes still on her. Hastily she put a bill on the counter, slid off her stool, and headed for the door. She'd barely made it outside before she heard, "Dr. Montgomery, wait!"
Swallowing, she fixed a determined smile on her face and turned around. "Karev. I'm on my way to the airport."
"Do you have a minute? Just a minute," he added when he saw her hesitate.
"OK. What's up?"
"I-there's something I . . ." He paused. "Come over here." He led her around the corner, where there were fewer people and less noise from the traffic.
Addison stood before him, bracing herself for whatever he had to say. Hopefully it wasn't anything more complicated than a request for a letter of recommendation.
"I-I guess you heard about Izzie."
"Yeah. I'm sorry."
"The last time you were here, I asked you if you were glad you'd run—walked—away because, well, because things were getting pretty heavy with Izzie. My first instinct was to run, but I didn't. I stuck by her, and I married her, and she didn't die . . . and she left me."
"I know. I'm sorry, Alex," Addison said, wondering why he was telling her what she'd already told him she knew.
"Yeah. She left me, and it hurt. Yeah, I know, big surprise, right? But it made me think about a lot of things." He glanced into her eyes for a moment before lowering his own again. "I know I hurt you. I knew it at the time, when-when I told you you weren't my girlfriend. I—"
"Please, Alex—we don't need to go there." In fact, she didn't know if she could bear it.
"No--I need to tell you. Not just that I'm sorry—that would be easy. Well, easier than what I need to tell you." He licked his lips, glancing at her again. "From day one, I thought, well, you're hot, right? Really hot. And of course, being the red-blooded man I am . . . well, you get the picture. And then you put me on gynie work. Definitely not what I wanted. The last thing I wanted, actually. So I fought you. No news to you, right? But you were so good at what you did. I mean, beyond good. Beyond great. And you were an incredible teacher. You made me love something I'd hated."
A genuine smile lit her face. "I'm glad, Alex. You're very good at neo-natal. I'm proud of the surgeon you've become."
He beamed at her. "Thanks. But anyway, that changed the whole picture. You were still hot, and I thought about that, like, more than ever. But-but you were my teacher. My mentor. And the most incredible surgeon I've ever seen. I could do this hot woman who was always chewing me out, but-but this incredible surgeon I respected so much—you were out of my league."
His speech had started sounding patronizing. She should just keep her mouth shut, let him finish, and then leave, but she'd never been good at doing what she should do. "You knew I wanted you, Alex. Callie as much as said that I looked at you like a starving animal looks at a piece of meat."
"Yeah, I knew that. But I figured you'd be slumming."
Her eyes widened in outrage. "Karev—"
"Wait, wait. That's part of what I'm trying to tell you. Dr. Montgomery, I had you way, way up here." He held his hand above his head. "And I'm way, way down here." He held the other hand as low as he could. "I wasn't good enough for you. For me, I wasn't good enough for you." He drew in a deep breath and then released it slowly. "You can't imagine how ecstatic I was when you pushed me into that supply closet. No—don't. Don't be embarrassed." He reached out to take her hand, squeezing it lightly. "I wanted you every bit as much as you wanted me. If I hadn't worked with you and grown to admire you and-and almost . . . idolize you, I would have been putting moves on you long before that. If I'd kept hating gynie, I would have caught you alone in an elevator and stopped it or pulled you into a stairwell and pinned you to the wall or followed you into an on call room and crept into bed with you—Yeah." He gave her a rueful smile as her eyes grew ever wider. "I'd thought about it a lot. But then . . . I don't know. You let me scrub in on all your surgeries, and you taught me how to do things no one else in the hospital could do. And somehow you even taught me to care about the babies. I just-I just couldn't hit on the woman who'd done all that. I couldn't act on my fantasies."
She opened her mouth, but he took a step closer to her, telling her, "No, wait—let me finish. So after you pushed me into that supply closet, I was on cloud nine for hours. All I could think about was seeing you again. But then Rebecca told me what you'd said about wanting a guy to barbecue and play catch." He drew in a deep breath. "I was terrified. I didn't want to think about barbecuing with anyone, but with you it was even worse. No, wait—I'm not going to mess this up. What I mean is that I couldn't face blowing it with you. I mean, if it were anybody else and it didn't work out, it would have been just one of those things. But with you—I couldn't have stood it if I'd disappointed you. I couldn't have stood it if we'd ended up hating each other. More than anything in the world I wanted a chance to be with you, but I just-I knew I'd screw it up. How could I risk doing that to the woman who'd changed the direction of my life? Who'd given me a passion for something, a desire to do something besides live for myself?" He shook his head. "And I knew I was hurting you when I told you I wasn't interested after that first kiss and when I told you you weren't my girlfriend and pushed you away, because I'm a clod, and I'm not someone who's up front with other people or himself. I was scared, not just because you were looking for something serious but mostly because it was you. Because-because you've made more of a difference in my life than anyone in the world. I know it's crazy that that's something that ended up making me hurt you, and I know I hurt you badly, and I'm so sorry, Addison, and-and I can't stand for you to think I didn't want you or care about you or that I've ever bragged about you dragging me into a closet or that I look at you and think, I had her and then turned her down." He stopped, out of breath. Stepping a bit closer, he rested his hands on her hips and looked into her eyes. "When I look at you, I think about what I didn't have the courage to pursue. I think about how much I hurt you in my effort to protect myself, and I cringe. I know you probably sort of cringe when you see me, feeling like I kind of have the upper hand because I rejected you, but that isn't true at all. I'm sorry I hurt you, Addison, and I don't ever want you to feel humiliated because you gave me, for just a little while, something I wanted badly and didn't have the nerve or self-confidence to go after."
Tears sparkled in her eyes. "Thank you, Alex. I—you . . . thank you." She swallowed, blinking, but her tears spilled over anyway.
Alex reached up and cupped her face, wiping her tears away with his thumbs. Looking into her eyes, he slowly lowered his head. When she didn't pull away, he touched his lips to hers. Sliding his arms around her, he kissed her slowly, with a tenderness that made Addison ache inside. She returned his kiss, relishing its sweetness, loving the way his arms felt around her.
But she was leaving and . . . and . . . The tenderness became too much to bear, and she ended the kiss, turning away from him.
But Alex wrapped his arms around her, murmuring in her ear, "Please—just let me hold you for a minute."
Tears flowed down her cheeks as she leaned back into him.