A non-AU possible future, a look back, a shameless revisitation of Addison and Derek. Seems appropriate to write and post so close to Christmas - it's their season, after all.
The Day Before
The day before her wedding, Addison stands before the marble vanity in her suite at the Plaza and holds one necklace after another up to her bare throat. She's just about to say to heck with it and go to the rehearsal dinner without jewelry - Bizzy'd have a fit - when the door swings open.
"Derek!"
"What?" He lifts both hands as he lets the door swing shut behind him. "I'm allowed to see you today. Just not tomorrow."
"That's true," she allows, giggling a little as he pulls her into his arms. He always smells so good. Even after hours on their feet at the hospital - they're interns, grunts, bottom of the surgical food chain - he still seems fresh. Outdoorsy. Or what passes for outdoorsy here in the city, as he likes to tease her.
"You look beautiful," he says now, and she sees pink color the cheeks of her reflection. For once she actually feels beautiful, and she doesn't correct him.
"But I need a necklace."
"Mm, I think you need something, but I'm not sure it's a necklace," and his hands wander until she squeals and slaps them away.
"Addie, this is my very best seduction technique here..."
"I don't need to be seduced. I need to find a necklace."
He turns until they're both facing the mirror and she sees her reflected eyes go hazy with desire as his lips trail down the side of her neck. "Still need a necklace?"
"And a cold shower."
His reflection grins at her. "So I haven't lost my skills after all."
"Derek-"
"Wear this one," he says, and her reflection holds very still as Derek fastens a simple string of pearls around her neck. He kisses her where the two gold arms of the clasp connect.
"Thank you," she says, conciliatory, and leans back to kiss him one last time. "But you need to go so I can finish getting ready. Everyone's going to be here in-" she checks her watch "-Derek!"
"Okay, okay," He nuzzles her neck. "But you know we can very quick ... when we want to be..."
"It's not okay!" Addison pushes lightly at his chest, giggling. "We don't have time."
The day before their first anniversary, Derek surprises her in the fourth-floor hallway outside the NICU, tugging her into an on-call room.
"What's wrong?"
"Does something have to be wrong for me to want to talk to my wife?"
A little shiver runs through her - she can't help it, she just loves the way wife sounds coming from his lips. "Absolutely not," she reassures him. "But Derek, I have a patient who - oh!" she cries out as his mouth covers hers, and then her hands are sliding into his hair and her back is hitting the stiff mattress of the lower bunk. They're both breathing heavily when it's over, her head resting on his still-bare chest as he cards his fingers through her hair.
"I have a present for you," he murmurs against her temple.
"Oh, Derek, I don't have yours-" she starts to sit up.
He puts a finger over her lips. "Doesn't matter. I just - want to give it to you now. Okay?"
She nods tremulously and he pulls something from the pocket of his lab coat, tossed over the headboard. It looks like a ring - it is a ring but nothing like the diamond solitaire he placed on her finger two years ago or the slim gold band he added almost a year ago. It's a clunky metal thing shaped like -
"Is that - the Empire State Building?"
"From the finest tourist vendor in Union Square, no less."
"Oh, Derek." She holds it out for a moment. The clunky souvenir is making her throat feel tight. She closes her eyes and they're on the observation deck again, wind whipping her hair, and Derek is getting down on one knee and saying I know how much you love this view and I guess I'm hoping maybe the only thing you love more is ... well, me, and holding out a velvet box. When she opens her eyes again a tear slips down her cheek; his thumb swipes it gently.
"I didn't mean to make you cry."
"I can't help it." She kisses him. "Shut up, it's beautiful. The prettiest ring I've ever seen." And she sticks it on her finger.
"You really like it? Mark said it looks like a phallus," Derek admits.
"Mark doesn't have a romantic bone in his body," Addison retorts. "And that's why he's still single, and we -"
"We're Derek and Addison," he says, and she's relishing how wonderful that sounds when a thought occurs to her.
"Derek! Did you even lock the door?"
"God, I hope so." He kisses her deeply. "That's not really the impression I want to make our first week as actual residents."
"You have four more years to show them you're more than just a pretty face," she says with mock-seriousness, then giggles as he runs a finger down her ribs. "They'll figure it out in time."
The day before her miscarriage, she's sitting at her desk wondering when to tell her husband that she's pregnant. It's only seven weeks, but she's regular as clockwork, so she went ahead and tested herself. Professional privilege and all that. She wonders if there's actually something to be said for magical thinking because it was just a few months ago, at Christmas, that Derek was cuddling Kath's new baby under the tree, and he gazed up at Addison with that look.
It's a look that makes her cringe, because she loves him and she wants to have a baby, she does - she just doesn't want to have a baby right now. Didn't Naomi call her just last week to tell her she had to give up a fellowship at UCSF because it was too far from the childcare they desperately needed Sam's parents to provide? Babies change things. They complicate things.
Derek doesn't understand. He watches her with their nieces and nephews - because they've been married nearly five years now and it's not his family, it's their family - and he doesn't understand how she can play endless games of Candyland, braid hair and fix skinned knees but not want a child of their own.
I do want one, I do, she told him in the car on the way home, traffic barely crawling on the Mass Pike, tearful even though he told her there was nothing to cry about, I just want more time first. He said he understood. But seven weeks - she doesn't have to whip out her calendar to know where they were that day. The weekend mini-break they stole at the rambling Newport Inn, the one with the sailboats docked just for hotel guests. They were halfway out Narrangansett Bay when she looked up at the bridge overhead and felt the waves lapping at her, and had to have him right now.
So stupid.
Not like he had complained, but a vacation after a month of two-on, one-off 48-hour shifts had apparently played havoc with her pill. Either that, or she's super fertile. She touches her stomach carefully, thinks about her options. But it's only a second before she realizes there's no way she can do anything but have this baby. It's half of her and half of Derek, and all the rest of it will work itself out. Nai may not have a fellowship but she has a beautiful little girl. And she and Sam are so happy. Addison allows herself a moment of fantasy, thinks about names - she likes strong ones like her own, the kind that work for a girl or a boy - Bradford, maybe, a family name. Or Carson. Or Gray.
Her own hand twitches on her stomach, as if moved by a baby's kick. Tomorrow - she'll tell him tomorrow. She'll wait until just the right time.
The day before her affair begins, Addison emails Derek to remind him of their dinner plans with Savvy and Weiss - the dinner they'd postponed three times in four months to accommodate Derek's schedule, she adds with barely concealed passive aggression. Briefly she thinks of her parents and the way they used to send messages to each other, uncomfortably, using either their children or their staff. She'd thought badly of them then, yet here she was sending email to the man who shares not just her bed but her workplace. It's modern technology, but is it any different? She hates the implications of comparing herself to her mother, so when Mark raps on her office door she's only too happy for the interaction.
"I'm not turning into my mother, am I?" she asks without preamble.
"Bizzy?" Mark rubs his jaw. "No. Definitely not. Why, did you just fire someone?"
She smiles slightly. "No. Just wondering. Mark, do - do you ever feel old?"
"Never." He swings her guest chair around and sits down backwards, making himself comfortable. "But I'm a rare physical specimin, Addie, you know that."
She rolls her eyes. "We're going to be forty next year," she reminds him.
"Speak for yourself."
"You're two months older than I am!"
"The only thing that matters is how old you feel," he says, and with the stress he puts on the word feel it's suggestive instead of sentimental, and she can't help grinning.
"You mean how old the nurse is that you're ... feeling ... in an on-call room, right?"
"Now you're talking." And even though she doesn't say anything else maybe he recognizes how she's feeling because he gives her half his cheshire cat grin and offers to stop by tonight.
"Yankees are playing tonight," he says. "I can swing by to remind you and your old woman of a husband how young you really are. Nothing like baseball to bring it out. Derek can tell us about his college glory days and you can try to hide the fact that still can't tell a grounder from a fly ball."
"Derek and I have plans," she says, a little surprised to see him looking disappointed, when she figured he was humoring her. "Another time."
The day before the abortion, she stalks away from him so fast that her shoes squeak on the hospital linoleum. She ignores the sound of her name as he calls after her. She doesn't want to hear him right now. Or see him, because all she'll see is his back, the ropy muscles she knows so well, and underneath him the curl of a long, tanned leg -
"Mark!" He's pushing on the door when she tries to close it; he's stronger so she capitulates, and then she turns away from him. "Don't speak to me."
"Addison, it didn't mean anything, listen to me-" he grabs her arms, but his fingers are reminiscent of something she doesn't want to remember; she pulls back, hard.
"Don't touch me."
He drops her arms but seizes her wrist, pulling her left hand up to eye level until she can't ignore the glare of her rings. "Remember these?"
His grip isn't hard; she shakes him free easily. "I remember more than you do. She's my nurse, Mark, what were you thinking?" What Addison's thinking is that she will have nothing left when this is over. That the slash and burn end of her marriage will leave her with no husband, no Mark - whatever he is - and now her favorite nurse?
"She was just here." He sounds embarrassed but not regretful, and a little part of her dies at his tone. "It didn't mean anything."
"That's all you have to say?" Her voice rises. "That she was here? Mark," and she hates it when her voice cracks, "Mark, I'm pregnant."
"I know," he tries to pull her into his arms and she pushes him back again. "Addie, I know, and that's why you shouldn't get so upset, it's not good for the baby-"
"You cheating hypocrite."
His voice changes then, sharp instead of cajoling. "And the rings, Addison?" His voice is tired too now; they've said it all before. "You're still married, Addison. You are married. If anyone's a cheater here - and a hypocrite - it's you."
She slaps his face, surprising herself, then covers her hand with her mouth. She's never slapped anyone before. She's been on the receiving end though, and her face floods with heat at the horror of what she's done.
"I'm sorry. I can't believe I - I'm sorry." She reaches for his face, then pulls her fingers back before she can make contact, sick of hurting everything she loves.
"It's okay." He moves his jaw back and forth carefully. "No harm done," he offers, and it sounds like the lie that it is.
With one hand on the door, tears welling in her eyes, she bleats: "I would have taken them off, you know." Somehow it seems very important that he know this. "I would have taken them off, when it was time."
The day before the prom, she stands in front of the three-way mirror at a Queen Anne boutique wondering whether chiffon or silk is more appropriate for ... whatever this is that Richard is making them do tonight. Not that she can judge; she's buying a new dress for the occasion. Her excuse is that she didn't bring any formalwear with her to Seattle - the reality, that much of it was ruined in the rain on the steps of their brownstone, is an image she's worked hard to forget.
And there's nothing like trying on a prom dress - you can charge three thousand dollars and call it evening wear but they're just prom dresses for grown ups, everyone knows that - to make her feel extra self-conscious. She's told Derek about the one prom she attended as a teenager, some kind of deal struck at a Junior League meeting. Years of single-sex education had left her as awkward as she was gawky, still growing into her height and long legs, and Skippy had been none too pleased to squire her. Derek shook his head when he heard about him. "That lucky bastard," Derek had said. "I bet he's living in his mother's basement now," he added when he heard that Addison never received so much as a follow-up phone call.
"Actually, I think he's a Silicon Valley millionaire," Addison sighed. "Invented some kind of software or something. His wife is probably a model."
"Mine's a surgeon. I win," Derek had said simply, even though she was just a second-year resident, like him. And she had pretended to be offended, not flattered that he said win.
Now she turns slowly in front of the mirror, gawky adolescent long since grown into statuesque woman. The dress follows the lines of her body, low enough on her back for Derek to get a view of her shoulder blades, of the dip where they meet, that spot he loves to kiss. Or at least he used to love to kiss it.
She turns to the waiting clerk. "I'll take it."
"Great choice." She beams. "I'm sure it will be perfect for your ... event."
Addison ... will you go to the prom with me?
She smiles at the memory of his invitation as she changes. When the clerk hands Addison her black card with gusto, heady with commission, she says: "Red's a great color on you, with your hair - you're lucky."
Addison smiles, actually feels lucky for once, because she finally knows that she and Derek are going to be okay. They're going to be okay this time.
The day before she leaves for Los Angeles, she uses her key card to open Mark's hotel room door, not bothering to knock.
"Addison, what if I had ... company?" he leers with no malice and she tosses down her briefcase, not ready to let him win.
"You'd ask me to join in, I'm sure," she snaps. "Or are you not into threesomes?"
He opens his mouth to respond and she holds up a hand. "Don't."
"What?" He spreads his hands, apparently trying to look innocent, and she realizes that he's naked.
"You're disgusting," she says, not really meaning it.
"Well, you've always had questionable taste in men."
"Who was it, Mark?" She's not angry, really, but she's curious. The teenaged girl she's never really left behind wants to comfort herself by taking the interloper apart. So she hopes it's not the psych resident whose shoes are even-
"No way, no details. That wasn't part of the deal."
"You know about Alex!"
"Yeah, you should be embarrassed about that," he says without irony. "He's a kid."
"Says the man who thinks candy-stripers are fair game."
"That was one time."
She looks away from his body - it still has power over her, after all these years, she's annoyed to admit - and around the room. There are running shoes and gym clothes slung over the easy chair in the corner, a couple of damp towels on the floor, and she sees one of those ridiculously complicated Japanese razors he's always favored on the marble vanity. The room screams bachelor and nothing else, from the slightly scruffy post-workday shadow on his jaw to the fact that he's stark naked with the remote dangerously close to his right hand, denies it. He may be the only person in Seattle as lonely as she is, and her stomach clenches.
He sees her start to capitulate; he always does. "Sit down, Addison. Take a load off." He pulls a corner of the duvet back obligingly.
"Sixty days, Mark." She shakes her head. "Remember when you said I was worth it?" She means to be flippant but is irritated to hear that her voice sounds thin, even vulnerable.
Mark either doesn't notice or pretends not to. "Yeah, I hope that intern knows how lucky he is."
"He's not - " she breaks off because it's not worth it. Don't get me wrong, last night was awesome, Alex had said. Now she looks at Mark spread out in the same stark white hotel bed waiting for her down the hall. He's naked, literally of course, but maybe there's something more there too. Addison feels the physical tug of him from across the room. She's not really sure why she came here, except that she and Mark have never known how to say good-bye, with or without words, so she steels herself and says nothing about the flight she's booked. She wants to say I'm sorry but admitting regret is even scarier than feeling it so she just says: "Enjoy the pay channels, Mark. They're probably more stimulating than your last encounter."
"Don't bet on it."
"Not after our last bet," she can't help snapping, and he lets her have the last word, just calling out see you tomorrow? as she walks to the door. Like that, with a question mark.
"Yeah." She pauses, one hand on the knob. "Sure, if there's time."
The day before Mark's funeral, she calls Derek to tell him she can't reschedule the fetal surgery for which her patient was flown a thousand miles, and she makes it almost halfway through her first sentence before the tears start. Derek, tactfully, doesn't interrupt.
"It...still doesn't feel true," she says finally, when she's gotten some control of her still-shaking voice.
"It feels true here," he says grimly.
"I'm sorry," she chokes out, thinking of the accident that stole so many lives from the hospital that hasn't been hers in half a decade.
"It's easier when you're not there," Derek observes, calm again, and Addison thinks he could be talking about any number of things, including the end of their marriage. Checking out of Mark's death makes her feel small and guilty, but she doesn't think she could have done it: flown to Seattle, sat a vigil at his unresponsive bedside. Not that she was invited - at the end of the day, Addison got all of AddisonAndDerek's marital property except for their most valuable asset.
"I'm sorry," she says again. "I'm sorry I wasn't there." Her voice cracks.
"He never woke up," Derek reminds her. "You wouldn't have been able to speak to him anyway." He sounds resigned, even cold, but Addison knows him well enough he's firmly in doctor mode. To become a surgeon, you have to be able to set emotions aside. You have to be able to turn off your best friend's life support. Derek was born for it, really: no one walks away like he does.
"But I could have said good-bye."
Derek doesn't answer and Addison thinks about the last time she spoke to Mark. She wants to remember something meaningful, some bit of wisdom they shared, some recollection of their mutual history, but she remembers that it was a routine check-in about Sofia. Yes - it was after the pediatric ophthalmologist did her third-range test. Mark called to tell her the results. "33-10," he'd said down the line. "Not too bad for the artist formerly known as a micropreemie!" Addison had laughed because Mark could make anything into a competition. "She's a champ," Addison had agreed. "Think we can get her to 33-12 by round four?" he asked and Addison, who had a patient waiting, just said: "It's possible." She's not even sure if she said bye or gotta go or just nothing at all, the way she did on casual calls. She didn't know it was their last conversation.
"I wish I could come for the-" she can't say funeral - "service, but-" and she tells Derek about the high-risk mother whose fragile 27-week fetus is waiting for the surgery only Addison can perform.
"Mark would understand," Derek says.
She knows he's right, and that's and when she breaks down, again; she's crying for all of them this time.
The day before her daughter comes home, she sits Henry down to remind him, one more time, of his place in their hearts.
"You know Daddy and I will always love you, no matter what. Love gets bigger, not smaller, so we'll have even more love for both of you."
Henry's little brow furrows, as if the concept of running out of love had never occurred to him. If it's true, if she's taught him this, it's not because anyone taught her.
His father's son, Henry is more concerned with logistics. "Baby will sleep in her crib," he reminds Addison firmly.
"That's right. She'll sleep in her crib, and you have your big boy bed." It's shaped like a giant crayon, made of bright red-painted wood, and when Jake finished putting it together he'd looked at Addison and said one day this kid will be taller than us and she'd had to choke back tears.
"She can play with my blocks," he says magnanimously, "but she can't drive my beach car, it's not for babies."
"That's right." She tugs him onto her lap and feels him nestle into her. Her first baby. "You'll have a lot of things to teach her. Just like my big brother taught me a lot of things." But hopefully not the same things, she thinks privately, and buries a smile in the top of her son's sweetly-scented head.
"Mommy?"
"Yeah, sweetie." Her words are muffled by his silky dark hair, the smell of baby shampoo enveloping her.
"Can I get a brother next time?"
The day before she leaves her husband, she's half backed up against the cool glass of her desk in the new, modern office that always feels a bit too sleek. The geneticist consulting on her partner's case has an English accent and a bow tie and the way he's looked at her, the past couple of days, has made her feel ten years younger.
Swallowing hard, she thinks about consequences, she thinks about the past, she thinks about how nervous it made her to turn fifty. What it's like to go from good-looking to looks great for your age.
Then she thinks about how hard it is to say I'm not satisfied or I need more or I don't think this is working outin words and she thinks that she's outgrown letting her body do the talking for her. Finally, she thinks maybe this is growth because she doesn't sleep with him. She tells him it's not going to happen. She tells him she's married to a good man. She apologizes - to him but not about him, and goes back to work.
Her next patient, a woman she saw a few months ago, frowns when Addison diagnoses the same infection again. "But the symptoms went away," she said. "I didn't know they would come back."
"Sometimes it happens like that." Addison adjusts the speculum gently. "You think the symptoms have gone away, but it's something else that's changed." She thinks of Jake, waiting for her at home. "It will just happen again if you don't treat what was actually wrong the first time."
The day before Meredith's death, Derek calls her and says, amidst staticky crackle, that they're in Montana and the altitude is messing with his cellular connection.
"I hear you," she assures him.
"She wanted to get out of Seattle for a bit," he says. Addison knows Derek is the window to what Meredith wants now, but knows from the contact she still has with Seattle that he has grown skilled in reading it. Derek sounds tired but resolved, and she realizes she is one of many phone calls. That Derek is saying the good-byes that Meredith can't.
The thought is painful so she just asks after the kids, knowing there is little to say about two children who know they will soon lose their mother - who have already lost the parts of her that remember them. There's a twisting sensation in her chest as she thinks about Henry and Della, asleep upstairs. About what it would be like to know her time with them was limited, her days numbered. None of them deserves this: not Meredith and not Derek and certainly not the two children she doesn't know very well, but whose pictures age each year on Christmas cards and in emails.
He's not hanging up yet so Addison asks the safest things she can, like why Montana - Meredith chose it - how's the weather - cold but sunny - and can you see the mountains - yes, you can see them everywhere. They're all around.
She apologizes for asking so many questions, feeling self-conscious, and his answer makes her twist her lips to keep the tears away: "I answer questions all day, Addison. I'm used to it."
"I'm sorry - "
"I'm not."
"Derek - " Then even though it's what everyone says, even though it's what always gets said, there's a reason so she utters the words and hopes he knows she means them: "This really isn't fair."
He's silent for a few moments, breathing down the line. Then he says, "We just ... haven't had enough time."
The day before the AMA honors Miranda Bailey, Addison catches a ferry to see for the first time the house Derek and Meredith built on the lakefront Bainbridge land. It's as different from the trailer as their Central Park brownstone, all rough-hewn wood with a well-worn, homey air. The trailer had always felt like the bluntest marking of space, the black ink lines they draw on patients to remember where to cut. A warning: something will happen here.
This place is different: it's a home, not just a house. Derek shows her around with some workmanship pride and she admires it appropriately. You're a flannel-wearing, wood-chopping fisherman now. "It's beautiful," she says honestly, awash in lake light through the big windows.
"Dad, can I go - oh, hi."
Addison smiles at the little boy. He's going on 12, not hit his growth spurt yet. Baby softness keeps his face round, but she can see the beginnings of Meredith's prominent cheekbones, the feline shape of her pale eyes. Derek introduces them.
"You look like your mother," Addison says, without thinking.
Derek, Jr. - they call him D.B., she knows, B for Bailey - smiles pleasantly, but impersonally, at her. "Did you know my mother?" he asks.
"I did. I worked with her, a long time ago." Addison looks around one more time at the broad pine beams, the little touches she realizes Derek didn't select, and she thinks about Montana and Meredith wanting to go somewhere else. Now, nearly two years on, this house holds only memories of her life, and not her death. Addison thinks again about the phone call the day before, maybe equal parts alibi as good-bye. Montana. She thinks about the superhuman strength it takes, sometimes, to protect the people you love. "I ... admire her," she says, as she realizes how true it is. "I have for a long time."
The day before she cuts into Derek's 16-year-old daughter, he calls her on her e-cell and she can tell from his first Addison that something is wrong.
"Derek, slow down-"
She hasn't heard him like this in years. She manages to get the details, and finds herself wincing in joint sympathy for Derek and Zola as he describes the fright of her sudden collapse on the soccer field.
"Derek, if it's emergent-"
"No, they said it's not." She hears him take a ragged breath, trying to get control. At her desk, she reviews the films as he sends them, projecting them onto the lightboard that takes up an entire wall of her office.
"Oh, Derek." Addison doesn't say what they're both thinking. That it's unfairness added to unfairness, for Zola to go through this without a mother to hold her hand. "How ... how is she?"
"Resting. They put her on demerol." He pauses. "She asked me if this meant she couldn't have kids. I - Addison, I can't-"
"It doesn't mean that." Addison's voice is firm. "I've done hundreds of these, Derek. The scans are clean and the twist is identifiable. Look, I'll get on a plane tonight. She can definitely wait until morning, if that's what you want."
"She's my daughter," he says, his voice shaking slightly. "If she needs surgery, she needs the best. Addison..."
You never promise a patient or their family anything, she learned that as an intern just like everyone else, but there are people to whom you do make promises and she makes one now, interrupting him: "I'll be there in time."
The day before Sofia's wedding, Addison flies to Seattle with both kids and holds the bride-to-be out at arms length to admire her. "How is this tall, beautiful young woman the tiny baby I delivered?"
"Aunt Addie, I'm not trying to be self-deprecating here, but I'm only five-four."
"Well, you look taller."
"That's why she married me," her fiance, whose broad smile and proud gazes at Sofia endeared him to Addison immediately. "To look taller."
Derek and his kids are there too - it's more of a barbecue than a traditional rehearsal dinner, with plenty of room on Callie and Arizona's property for the guests to spread out. Addison sees that Derek's son is starting to look more like father as puberty fills him out, but his cat's eyes still all his mother's. Zola surprised no one by turning out strikingly beautiful, with a musical laugh that rings out as she jokes with Sofia about the idea of marriage. "Better you than me," she jokes.
Tomorrow's ceremony, on a boat, will be lavish. When Addison admires the choice of venue, Callie smiles with misty eyes. "Mark wouldn't have it any other way. He left actual instructions, remember?"
Hearing his name makes Addison's throat tighten and she recognizes the flutter in Derek's throat, just above the careful knot of his tie, that means he's feeling the same thing. Callie gestures with her chin: "Hey, check it out: little Addie and little Derek."
They both look and even though they always call Adelaide Della and she knows Derek, Jr. has been D.B. practically since birth, she can't help smiling. The kids - not kids, teenagers now - are laughing together at something on Henry's handheld device, balancing plates of food. It smells like summer and mist and barbecue char, and Addison inhales deeply.
Sofia breaks the silence, pulling Addison aside to show her a picture on her portable device of the flowers she's selected. "I'm so glad you came."
"Sofe, I wouldn't miss it."
"I wouldn't let you." Sofia smiles at her, that cheshire cat grin that could only come from her father. "I mean, you're the one who gave me my first birth control pills. My first pelvic. You've practically earned a spot on our honeymoon."
Addison laughs, can't help blushing a bit although she knows from Henry and Della that this generation says things out loud that would have gotten her kicked out of finishing school. And that's okay.
"So," Addison puts her arm around Sofia. "Which of your moms do you think is going to cry first tomorrow?"
"They can take turns," Sofia laughs. "We have the boat all night; there'll be time."
The day before her ex-husband marries again, she opens the front door to find him holding out his arms to her. "Sorry," he says.
Addison reaches for the purple duffel bag he's holding. "What did she forget this time?"
Della has been moving back and forth the quarter mile between her parents' beach house for years; it's a family joke that she can't make it a single night without leaving something behind at one parent's house, like a bird decorating with crumbs the paths where it's been and where it's going.
"Guess," Jake says cheerfully.
The bag is heavy, so - "Shoes?"
"She's your kid, all right."
She really is. Della's features might reflect her birth mother, but her gestures, her posture, is all this mother. Everyone says it. Other adoptive parents have noted this phenomenon too; she thinks of it every time Henry calls her from college, taking that signature pause between words he wants to emphasize, just like Jake.
She can tell just by Jake's expression that they're thinking the same thing at the same time, now. They are the most civilized exes she knows, genuinely friends, and she's proud of both of them, to be honest. They swore the kids had to come first, and so they have. It is, she thinks, her greatest accomplishment, this end of a marriage that has also been the beginning of something.
And Marjorie, tomorrow's bride, is nice enough, a good choice for him. Jake wasn't happy either, at the end, not as happy as he could be, not surprised when she sat him down to tell him. Marjorie's been good for him, and she's been kind to Addison from the start, even warm, never seems threatened by the easy relationship Addison and Jake still share. She seems genuinely to recognize that Henry and Della come first - she's brought her own children into the relationship, two girls a few years younger than their future stepsibilings. Addison is pleased about this; after many years she's learned that the more people who love a child the better for that child, and she wants her own children surrounded by love.
Then Jake wrinkles his brow. "Is this weird?" he asks, not having to say the wedding. "I don't want it to be weird for you."
Actually, it feels perfectly natural, and she tells him so. "I'm happy for you," she says, honestly, and before she can add that she knows nothing will change between them, nothing important anyway, Della is summoning them to the landing to show them the dress she's chosen for the rehearsal dinner - a satin number that leaves nothing to the imagination - and Addison and Jake are chorusing absolutely not in perfect unison.
"The party's in like three hours!" their daughter moans. "I don't have time to find anything else."
Addison rolls her eyes, because they all know Della has inherited her desire to accumulate clothes along with her natural talent for the sciences, and says: "Make time."
The day before her son graduates college, she stops perusing the delicious-looking menu to check her buzzing device - breaking her own rule just in case it's a patient - and sees a message from Callie that just says Help! Our kids are adults!
When she laughs, Della says: "I thought devices were banned from the table?"
"It's an email from Callie," she defends herself.
"Mother, I wish you'd stop calling it that," Henry sighs. "It's not the 2010s anymore."
Addison pretends to be offended. "Are you calling me old? Jake," and she turns to her ex-husband, who's studying the menu. "Are we going to stand for that?"
"Don't involve me in this," he, for his part, feigns innocence. "I know perfectly well it's a dash. Addie, get with the program," he teases.
"You know, when I was in college, we didn't have email, or texts, or dashes," Addison frowns. "We had to communicate with smoke signals like normal people. And yet we still managed to graduate."
"It was probably easier to graduate when you weren't distracted all the time - hey, put that down," Jake gestures to Hannah, the younger of Marjorie's girls, who's sneaking a look at the oblong pink slab of metal that never seems to leave her hand. "No electronic whatever-you-call-its at the table."
"Old people," Henry smiles sympathetically at Hannah. "They're just mad they didn't get all this cool stuff when they were our age."
A murmur of assent passes through the younger side of the table. "It's all of them against us," Addison tells Jake and Marjorie.
To all the kids she says, not really able to hide her smile: "Just wait. You'll get old too, in time."
The day before she operates for the last time, she's dusting blush on her cheekbones to make up for a shorter night's sleep than she'd prefer and the hand holding the brush shakes, just slightly. She stares for a moment at her reflection, at the slash of pink angled all wrong, and uses her other hand to fix it. It's nothing, really. She's tired, with two surgeries and a lecture yesterday, filling in the gaps with caffeine. She's nursing her second cup this morning already, and it's not even six-thirty yet. Milky and strong, it's sending gently wafts of steam up from her wicker vanity table. This is one of the benefits of living alone, one child halfway across the country and the other out of it entirely: coffee wherever and whenever she wants it. No one to scold her for her lack of sleep or her espresso intake.
She studies her reflection, thinks not for the first time about getting a little work done. She knows she looks good - for her age - but she has to admit she's a bit surprised every time she sees her reflection at the way her face has changed through the years. She touches her fingers, steady now, to the hollows of her cheeks, to the way her skin is faintly loose along her jaw. When she smiles the web of fine lines around her lips becomes more prominent. She used to dislike her mouth, its thin lips and mobile shape. Derek was the first one to make her think it might be beautiful. Sexy, that's what he called it, and she was still young and naive enough at 22 to blush. It's so long ago they could be other people, so when she smiles it's with fondness for both those young people, now younger than both of her children.
She takes one last swipe at her cheek. There, now it looks perfect. But as she walks carefully down the stairs - she'll never give up her beloved heels, but she has to take it a bit more slowly now, if she's honest - there's just one problem with living alone: there's no one there every day to see the slight changes in you that can herald a problem. What doctors think of as the before.
Not wanting to be neurotic, she pushes it down, tells herself she'll worry about it next time. If there even is a next time.
The day before she flies to Seattle, Derek calls her to ask her to confirm her travel plans. This, of everything else that's happened over the last few weeks, signals gravity.
You're the best, that's what she'd said to him, when she asked for his help. It's what everyone always says to him. She hadn't really thought until now of whether it might have taken a toll on him too. He had teased her back, takes one to know one, but there was a crack in his voice.
"Do you need me to bring-"
"Levinson sent the scans. They'll need to run fresh labs when you get here, but you know that." He sounds intent, focused, the way he always has when he talks about a treatment plan. The way he used to sound, forty years ago now, when he got going on a lab problem set. Forty years. She thinks about that for a moment, then says:
"I know that. Derek," she swallows hard. For just a minute she indulges in the fear she's been keeping at bay: the thought of the simple gestures that will become more and more difficult. "Thank you."
"You don't have to thank me." he says roughly.
"Well." She steadies her hand on the soft fabric of the couch, feels under her fingers as she watches the muscles move. "Thank you anyway."
"You're welcome." He pauses, then: "I'll pick you up at the airport," he says. "Remind me when your flight gets in?"
"Derek, I can take a taxi."
"I'll be there." His voice is firm. "Just tell me the time."
The day before the experimental treatment begins, she meets Derek's eyes from the white sea of hospital sheets and before he can say it, she says it first: I'm sorry.
"Why are you sorry?"
She's not sure what to say. For being here? For seeking his help? For the way he is looking at her now, the soft shade of his eyes that signals something she hasn't seen in so very long?
When she doesn't answer, he takes her hand and she sees that he's taken off his ring. Lightly, she touches the band of paler skin around his fourth finger. When she looks up his pupils are dilated; the color of his eyes strikes her hard, somewhere she'd almost forgotten. His fingers fold into hers and, with wonder, she realizes they still fit.
"Are you still sorry?" he asks, very gently.
"Derek, I can't -" she stops and tries again, because the way he's looking at her is making her breath do something strange. "You don't want to go through this again," she says at last.
He shakes his head. "No, Addison. It's not again."
"Derek..."
He looks away for a minute. Then he says, quietly, "I loved every day I had with her, Addie. I'm grateful for every day." His voice shakes faintly, but it's strong. Her hand, within his, trembles slightly in return. "So don't tell me I don't want to go through this again." He looks back at her now, meets her eyes. "What I want," he says fiercely, finally, "is not to waste any more time."
The day before her wedding, Addison gathers everyone on the pale patch of sand behind the Hamptons house, beach grass ticking their ankles in the low September sun.
Derek had been surprised when he found out she never sold it: "But you gave me half the proceeds," he said, confused.
Addison just shrugged: "I estimated."
Truth is, she couldn't bear to sell the modest clapboard house on its rolling green acres. With private beach access and that magnificent shaded garden, she knew all too well the next owners would want to tear down the house the realtor had described decades ago as "cozy" to build some hedge-fund eyesore mansion.
Now Zola jiggles her baby, Grey, on her hip, eyeing the view. "It's beautiful," she admits. "But it's so cold here!" Her husband nods with agreement. Derek shakes his head, wind moving more-salt-than-pepper locks off his face. "We have a bunch of west coast kids."
"You raised us on the beach!" Della points it out like an accusation, laughing, the only one of them who's ended up in medical school. Someone had to do it, she shrugged when she told them.
"It's too cold out here. I'm going in." Addison's daughter leads the charge, and the rest follow: D.B., looking more like his father as he ages, with Derek's soft curls in Meredith's shade of sandy-brown; Henry, arm linked through his partner's; Zola and her husband, their bodies hunched protectively over their baby as they walk toward the wind.
"You guys coming?" Henry calls from the flagstone steps. His partner, taller and blond, is holding the back door open for the others.
"In a minute," Addison assures them.
When the door closes behind their children she turns back to Derek. Carefully, she loops both arms around his neck. With that motion she does two things: remembers what it feels like to touch him this way, and memorizes how it feels now, in this moment, letting the strong solid flesh under his shoulders steady the slight tremor in her wrists. Against the soft cotton of his summer shirt she sees her new ring. It's far smaller and more modest than the one he slipped on her finger nearly four decades ago. Cozy, like the house. New and familiar at the same time and, somehow, even more beautiful than what came before.
"Addie." Derek brushes her cheek lightly with his fingers, gesturing at the mist rolling in off the horizon. Rain is coming soon. "We can go inside," he suggests. But Addison shakes her head.
"It's okay." Lightly she presses her forehead to his. "We have time."
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