ii. Impossible Things

I snore.

Dear Lord, I might as well have told him that I was afraid if I stayed at his place, we'd end up having impromptu sex on his kitchen floor.

I mean, that would've been a lame – no, an outright, ridiculous – excuse, but it at least sounded more plausible than, "Sorry Mac, I don't do sleepovers. Darn nasal cavities."

I tried to swallow that unsettling feeling in my throat, and threw myself into a crowd of matinee-goers. I looked up at a bright green sign, surrounded by a ring of lights: Wicked.

"I should've known better," I said, pushing my way through the sea of Broadway enthusiasts and trying not to throw my hands up in the air in defeat.

Only then did I realize how utterly and entirely sick I was of this city. It seemed so magical, so wondrous, at one time. I kept hearing about it, kept seeing it on television, and I'd never seen this disappointment coming. I'd grown up mostly on the steps of the orphanage, watching the people on the streets. The struggling businessmen, the hasty women in their Versace glasses, the tourists that were infinitely more amusing, and perhaps almost endearing, when I was a child.

Then some uptight nun would drag me by the collar back into St. Basil's. Haul me into the mess hall for a dinner of beef broth and dry corn bread. The nuns, I suspect, were good people at heart, but they'd built walls around those hearts, distanced themselves from us orphans. They didn't eat with us, seldom did they play with us, and slept on a different floor. Every morning Sister Ann would tear a wooden comb through my hair and mutter to herself about the unruliness of it. But then, just before she'd finish, she would gingerly pull a curl from behind my ear and let it bounce down my cheek.

For as long as I could remember, until I was finally twelve and deemed old enough to comb my own hair (which, as a result, usually frizzed into a spherical shape around my head like an aging dandelion), those moments were the only amount of affection I was allowed. I was fifteen before I understood the reason.

I'll admit I was lucky. Luckier than most orphans anyways. The sisters were reluctant to give out information to us about how we'd been "given up" or, you know, found. On the steps of the church, the hospital, or in a garbage can, whatever. I never found out where I came from, although I earned many slaps in trying to figure it out. I realize now, that I'm glad that I don't know. I'm glad that throughout my entire childhood, the only tenderness I knew was like some kind of privilege.

Four years of biochemistry at NYU, surrounded by all sorts of tomorrow's geniuses, nearly fifteen years working for New York's finest, and those nuns remained the smartest people I'd ever known.

There would always be an unsettling silence over the orphanage whenever a girl just... left. It wasn't anything too dramatic. There were no announcements, no well-wishing, nothing like that. Just one day, she'd be there at the table, in the classroom, in the bunk above mine, and the next day she'd be gone. Just like that.

There was no time for tears. Life just moved on, and no one would ever speak of that girl again. "That girl" was never me. I saw families - I've seen more families than I care to remember, but I remember them nonetheless. Every single one. And in this city of eight million, I've still managed to come across some of them, ten, twenty, thirty years after they'd said "no" to a scrawny Greek-Italian girl with corkscrew hair.

The nuns, they never felt sad, or at least, they never looked it. Not even when they're favourite girl left with a family, not even when I'd voiced the possibility of joining the convent myself, because the sisters had no one but the other sisters, and since I'd never had anyone there for me but the sisters, I figured that I was already halfway there.

But it was more difficult then that.

Outside of the orphanage, just beyond the front steps where I spent many an afternoon, I imagined there was some magic kingdom, this mystical New York City that everyone kept talking about. The Big Apple, the City that Never Sleeps. I dreamed of being Alice in Wonderland, and it occurred to me as a child, that someday, that dream might actually come true.

I was horribly mistaken.

New York City could have been the magic place I'd always imagined it to be, but I would never be Alice. I would always be Stella Bonasera. Inside of the orphanage, with forty other girls and our caretakers, I was all alone. Outside, with eight million others people, I was shocked to find that I was even more isolated than before. Outside, there was just more people for me to not know, yet be surrounded by every day.

Then, one month after my eighteenth birthday, while I was living in some government-paid dorm room, eating, sleeping and breathing a forensics textbook, Sister Ann died.

But as I stood in the church the day of the funeral, surrounded by so many faces that I recognized but could not name, I could not shed a tear. Sister Ann would have been damn proud.

--

St. Basil's still stood in the same spot it had when I'd lived there. If you could call it living.

I'd tried to avoid it as much as possible in the past, but the nostalgia was making me sick, and I felt that if I revisited the place, it would quell the disconcerting knot at the pit of my stomach. Kind of like an awful wave of nausea that doesn't go away until you heave partially-digested food and stomach acid into a toilet.

It was nearly seven, the sun hung low in the sky. With a number of skyscrapers blocking the horizon, I could only barely see the last hints of daylight staining the sky, deepening into a sapphire blue. I tried to force myself to look in through the window, which was silly because the windows at St. Basil's had been frosted over since I'd lived there, as a constant reminder of the seclusion specially reserved for wards of the state.

The real reason I was out roaming the streets of the city, hit me when I was halfway to nowhere, three hours later. And I only say "halfway to nowhere" because it was truth. Sheldon had offered to cover the rest of my shift when he'd seen me at five, juggling a coffee and a pile of paperwork. I was momentarily irked by his concern. Everyone was so goddamn concerned about me these days, it patronized me just thinking about it. I was alone. I'd always been alone. As if their concern made me any less alone than I was. At the end of the day, it was back to my empty apartment.

Except that tonight, I had no apartment. Empty or otherwise.

My credit card, one of the few things I'd been able to retrieve from the apartment after the unit had finished collecting samples, felt heavy in my pocket. It was late. I had to be at work the next morning for an early shift, an extra one that I'd taken on to try and forget about the fire, and also to find the person behind it, and sleep (if I could manage it) would have been a good idea.

Except that well, I still needed a hotel.

And it had been five hours since the end of my shift, and-

I jumped in surprise at the shrill ring tone that ripped through the humid air. I didn't think to test my voice before glancing at the caller ID and then answering.

"Hi Mac..." I said, shakily, wanting to kick myself for not realizing that it had been hours since I'd said anything to anyone, and that I'd spent too much of that time thinking utterly depressing thoughts.

"Stella? Are you alright?" I couldn't hear him properly, so I couldn't judge how to respond.

"I'm fine."

"You'll have to do better than that."

Concern, ugh. As if I hadn't had enough of that for one day.

"Really Mac, it's no big deal."

"Stella, your apartment burned down."

A muscle in my forehead twitched, "My apartment didn't burn down. Its insides were simply incinerated from the inside out."

"A world of a difference there."

I stopped midstride, shocked if not angered by his careless demeanor. Apparently he was in the mood for some danger.

I wasn't, "Listen Mac, I'm really-"

"Tired? Why is that Stella? Aren't you in bed yet? It's past seven."

I said nothing.

"Oh and by the way, which hotel are you in?"

My heart sank. He knew.

"I could stop by quickly? Or if you're not in the mood, how about we go for coffee tomorrow morning?"

"I... " I stammered, struggling for words, which was pointless because this kind of charade I was desperately trying to uphold was the exactly the kind of bullshit that Mac was trained to see right through, "1535 Broadway, the uh, the Marriot..."

Silence.

"Oh I see."

I squinted. His voice had suddenly become much clearer, much more gravelly, much more like himself. But there was a hint of mystery dancing on the edge of the sound, and being the ever so inquisitive detective I was, I did my best to investigate.

I ran through all the possible scenarios, thought of all the 'evidence', picked apart everything he'd said to me during our five-minute conversation, which had been a lot for him. There was only one reasonable conclusion.

I slid the phone back into my pocket, "How long have you been following me?"

"Oh, from about... 1535 Broadway, " came his voice again.

He was closer than I thought. Right behind me. His breath came in calm, nearly-soundless, puffs against my bare neck. I lamented that I hadn't thought to grab something a little warmer than the spare blazer I had retrieved from the drawer in my office.

I was expecting a lecture. A long, professional lecture. Except that there wasn't many professional things that he could have possibly been planning to say at this very moment, at 9:!2 pm, while I was halfway to nowhere and beginning to realize how much colder it had gotten since the sun had gone down.

"Let's go," he said, walking away.

I was, again, at a complete loss for words. He didn't appear to care whether or not I was following him, since, even as he turned a corner, he didn't turn to look over his shoulder. I wanted to kick myself for deciding to follow anyways. I walked briskly towards him, until I was close enough that all he had to do was just position his head a little to the right to see me. It made me feel vulnerable to walk beside him. I did so all the time at work, but it was different now. I was always in one piece at work, and at that very moment, I was having trouble finding the pieces of me, let alone having the strength to put them back together.

"You didn't want a hotel," he said quietly, sensing that I'd caught up with him, "I guess I can understand that?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, trying not to be sharp. When had I become so predictable?

"Well they're pretty expensive," he said, attempting to sidestep my impending fury.

"I can afford a hotel Mac," I grumbled, only vaguely recognizing his purpose for being here, walking down some obscure street and how I was supporting it.

"Then?"

"Then what?"

I was mostly irritated because he knew exactly why I didn't want a hotel, and instead of going ahead and making the assumption that his deduction was correction, and that the real reason I was wandering around the streets of New York City, was because I'd always been a firm believer in the concept of home¸ and right now that visionary dwelling was disconcertingly nonexistent.

But he didn't have to rub it in.

Stubborn as I was, and stubborn as he was being as we reached 6th Avenue without another word, I couldn't ignore the fact that 7:30 had come and gone, and that we'd been walking for nearly forty minutes and that my knees were starting to shake.

The cold was almost disorienting. I struggled to put one foot in front of the other while contemplating this 'home' that I was currently lacking. Immediately, Homer and his epic Odyssey came to mind. Some fallen hero, struggling to find his way back to a land called Ithaca, flashed across my eyes. It was a lovely mirage. Neptune's waves crashed gleefully against my center of balance. Or that might have been the nausea.

It didn't subside for another fifteen minutes. For fifteen minutes – I discovered when we reached a familiar place that I might have been able to name had I felt more alive – I'd been wearing Mac's jacket. I looked to him questioningly and received only a shrug in response. For a brief moment I found it faintly amusing that somewhere along the line, he had done the unimaginable and placed his jacket on my shoulders, and I had been so adamant in my decision to sail off to Ithaca that I had missed the entire experience. A shame really. I'd being lying if I said I wasn't a romantic.

"You're hopeless, Stella," he said suddenly, as though he had been a part of my inner-commentary.

Then he sat down.

No really, he sat down.

I took a moment to take in my surroundings. Upper West Side apartment... 7:55 pm... Mac Taylor seated on a small wooden bench. There was only one possibility. I was overtaken by the sudden urge to bawl my eyes out. I clutched the credit card in my pocket, feeling the overused edges scrape against the dry skin of my palm.

There I was.

He looked at me, trying to be neutral and encouraging all at the same time. I tried a smile, if only to sway him to one side of the argument, because uncertainty didn't look good on him. I was unsuccessful.

Depression turned to denial, and denial into moroseness and then finally, the day came to a full circle and I strode towards him angrily, "You don't know when to quit. I don't need this okay? I don't need you and the others constantly hovering around me like I'll implode the second you look away."

In all the time that I'd known him, I'd never imagined walking away from him. I no longer had to.

"Stella," he chased, which was something I had not anticipated, "Wait."

But my mind was set. I was done.

"Stella, come on."

"No," I turned sharply so I could look him in the eye, "No... just, no."

"No, what?" he arched an eyebrow.

"Stop it, stop pretending like you know me so damn well. I'm going to live okay? Yes my apartment burned down, why do you care so much?"

A brief look of hurt crossed his stern features, "How can you say that?"

"I acknowledge the truth for starters, stop fooling myself, open my mouth and would you believe that the rest just happens?"

"I care about-"

"Whatever is convenient for you to care about."

I felt stupid. Stupid and angry. Stupid and angry at myself mostly, because I knew that none of what I was saying made any sense, and what was worse was that he knew that I knew that entire argument was ridiculous.

Mostly, I felt revolted. Revolted that I was still this sensitive, that I still cared enough about what he'd said the day I'd gotten out of the hospital after Frankie had assaulted me in the old apartment to be upset by it. I was so angry about what he hadn't said then, that I was choosing to ignore what he was offering now. He didn't have to know that.

Didn't have to know, but he knew anyways. He knew. He knows. Knows everything, and if it wasn't so damn attractive on him, than it would have been infuriating.

"How do we fix this," he said as though it wasn't a question, "Why won't you talk to me?"

I wasn't sure. Why couldn't I talk to him? We'd been partners and friends for so long, and there had been many times that I'd gone beyond the call of duty, beyond the call of friendship for him. Had nothing changed at all because of that?

"You know what," I said, trying to come to terms with myself, "Just forget I said anything."

"But-"

"No, no really. This is entirely my fault I'm just being stupid. I guess it's just, just... well, my apartment, burned down this morning and-" I sighed, exhausted by the truth.

"There, you said it, was it that hard?" he arched an eyebrow, but accompanied the gesture with a smile.

I couldn't help but smile back, and realized at once that his jacket was still around my shoulders. There was still something missing, something that would have made the moment absolutely perfect. And I waited beneath a street lamp, smiling like an idiot, until it came to me, "Why don't we start over?"

"Okay."

"Stella Bonasera," I held out my hand.

This time he raised both of his eyebrows.

"Oh come on, Mac, it's how they do it in the movies."

The slight smile he'd been wearing broke into a larger grin, "Mac Taylor."

"So."

"So?"

"So what?"

"So I got an extra room."

"But we just met."

"It's okay. I've got a good feeling about you."

TBC