See disclaimer in Part I. Thanks Jo for the quick (and late) beta!
Love, Play, Eat
Part III – Eat
By the end of the second course, Sara finally felt at ease with her mother-in-law. The food couldn't have been better, the wine had accomplished its expected task of relaxing her, and Mancini on the stereo was filling in the quiet spaces in conversation while they ate, as speaking required the use of both hands.
And now, with dessert and coffee on the table, Sara put her fork down to compliment Betty on her three-layer, red velvet cake.
"I've been making it for over fifty years," Betty signed slowly for her benefit. "When Gil was three, I made the mistake of telling him that it was red chocolate cake. He told me it couldn't be chocolate if it was red. When he was four, he asked me what made it red, and as soon as he could read, he explained how I could make the red food coloring with beets, but even without it, the cake would still be a little red because of the chemical reaction caused by the acid in the butter cream and the red pigments in the cocoa."
Sara chuckled. "After all these years, and I never knew that red velvet cake inspired you to become a scientist."
"I doubt it did. I'm pretty sure I was dissecting something before then."
Betty closed her eyes and gave an exaggerated shudder. "He was. And we won't talk about that at the dinner table." She took a dainty bite of cake then returned her fork to the plate. "How did you two meet? I assumed it was at work, but Gil told me he knew you before you went to work at the lab."
Sara nodded. "We met at a conference in San Francisco thirteen years ago."
Betty's eyes widened and settled on Gil. "So, it wasn't love at first sight?"
"Well, if it wasn't love at first sight, by the end of that week, it was...something."
"Yeah, I remember you saying something along those lines at the time," Sara reminded him, although she recalled precisely what he had said, and what she had said that morning as she was leaving his hotel room. "And then I didn't hear from you again for weeks when you'd promised to send me your article on blood spatter artifact caused by flies."
"I still have it. Would you like a copy?"
"Gil," his mother said with her hands, but her smile held a gentle reprimand. "Seriously."
This proved that to a parent, a child remained a child, no matter his age. As Sara watched mother and son interact, she felt a pang of...something. Envy, maybe; regret for never having known what it was like to have a mother there to love you, comfort you; guide you when you needed it. Her formative years were marked by indifference and neglect at the hands of a mother whose illness made her emotionally unstable and withdrawn, and a father who had turned to alcohol to cope, a substance that had made him violent and eventually caused his death.
As a child, Sara's way of coping was to make herself as small as possible. If she didn't get in the way, then maybe she would make it through the next battle unscathed. Most of the time, she did.
Given the violent horror of her childhood, she was often surprised at how normal she had turned out when so many kids in that situation grew up to emulate their parents. Perhaps it was her innate sense of right and wrong that had guided her. Or maybe it was her strong will. Either way, what mattered was how far she had come, and how much she had accomplished. Not that any of it had come easily.
Least of all, her husband.
She looked at him over the rim of her coffee cup. She loved the way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled; loved the sparkle in them that told her he was happy.
His eyes crinkled a lot lately.
"Okay, mom," he was saying. "Seriously, at first sight I was captivated by her legs."
Sara choked a little on her coffee and set the cup down. "You were not."
"It's true. I saw them first; before I saw...your face, even."
Betty's eyes crinkled much like her son's. "It's possible. Gil always was a leg man and you do have great legs."
It was an especially nice compliment coming from her mother-in-law, but it pretty much rolled off Sara like water off a duck's back at the more surprising news that her husband, who had never officially declared himself as such, was a leg man. Not that she had any problem believing it. For one, mothers tended to know these things, and two, she couldn't recall ever having attracted a boob man.
Still... "Your first memory may be of my legs, hun, but you couldn't possibly have seen them before my face in that crowded bar."
"He picked you up in a bar?" Betty managed to express both surprise and disapproval in one swift hand gesture.
Gil chuckled. "In a sense, I did, mom, however, not in the way you think."
She raised a brow and waited for Gil's explanation.
"The annual Forensics Academy conference was at Hotel California in San Francisco that year. I got there in a record heat wave, and to make matters worse, the reservation system at the hotel was down and they couldn't check anyone in. I was a late replacement for the keynote speaker and needed to finish my speech, so I went to the bar to work."
Betty watched with rapt attention as Gil signed his version of how they met, which should have been the same as Sara's version, except that, apparently, there was a part involving her legs that he had never mentioned before.
She remembered wearing a short skirt that day because of the heat. It was shorter than what she would normally wear to a business function, but she had packed a light jacket to dress it up for the mixer later. She wouldn't have been staying at the hotel at all except that she had to move out of her apartment for a few days while her hardwood floors were being redone.
"Before long, the bar was very crowded and much too loud for concentration," Gil continued. "I was reconsidering a colleague's invitation to dinner—"
"From a Dr. Ann Longton," Sara interrupted. "An anthropologist. Gil has a thing for them." And because she enjoyed teasing her husband, she was accustomed to his mock glares; she returned this one with a cheeky smile.
"Anyway, I dropped her phone number on the floor and when I reached down to pick it up, this pair of very long, very exquisite legs walked past my table right in front of my nose."
"Really? So you didn't just happen to be standing in line behind me at the bar?"
"I wanted to see your face."
Sara laughed. "And 'Miss, do you have the time?' was the best you could come up with to make me turn around?"
Gil shrugged. "It worked."
Sara remembered glancing at her watch, fully intending to give him the time, when she turned around and looked up into the most arresting blue eyes she had ever seen. For a moment, she forgot all about the time, which was just as well, because she wasn't sure she remembered how to speak. She had felt an immediate pull of attraction towards him; the sensuous curve of his mouth; the dimple in his chin, which she found totally adorable. His polo shirt was unbuttoned, giving her a teasing glimpse of a muscular chest, which would have made her mouth water if it hadn't already been too parched to form saliva. Next she noticed his arms, strong and smooth—and he was wearing a watch!
The tired pick-up line disappointed her, but he was so gorgeous that she decided to cut him a break and answered 'yes'. After a moment passed without further information, his brow went up and he asked whether she intended to share it with him.
"I could be persuaded," she almost purred in a blatant flirt that seemed to surprise him, and with good reason, she thought. It was after all a very bad pick-up line.
One corner of his mouth twitched, and she suddenly wondered what those lips would feel like on hers…
"All right. What time is it?"
"So you really want to know?"
"Why else would I ask?"
"Maybe, so you can tell me that you want to remember the exact moment we met, or something just as lame." He gave her this genuinely perplexed look that should have clued her in that she was making a colossal mistake, but her mouth, as usual, was running ahead of her brain. "It's the oldest pick-up line in the book."
His mouth dropped open and he blushed—which only made him look more adorable—but just as quickly he seemed to regain his composure. "You misunderstand, Miss. I really am only asking for the time, and I think the oldest pick-up line in the book is, 'What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?'"
If she could have crawled under a bar stool right then, she would have. She felt a rush of heat rise to her face, which only added to her embarrassment. "And there's no mistaking that one," she managed to say before glancing at his left wrist. "You're wearing a watch, so I assumed—"
"That the battery hadn't died on my way in from the airport, and that it's too hot outside to go looking for a new one? You know what they say about assuming?"
Sara nodded. "Honest mistake. I should have known…"
"What?"
"That you weren't trying to pick me up."
He bit the inside of his lip, but didn't quite manage to hide his amusement. And then, he tapped her arm gently and motioned behind her. "Your turn."
The bartender quickly masked an impatient scowl with a smile. "Oh. Sorry," she said. "I'll have a Ricard's Red, please."
"Make that a pitcher and two mugs," Blue Eyes said, and Sara threw him a look over her shoulder. He gave her an angelic smile. "Never assume."
He paid the bartender, grabbed the two mugs in one hand and the pitcher of beer in the other, and motioned to a table behind them.
"Will you join me?"
How could she refuse?
"She was the most adorable girl I'd ever met," Gil told his mother.
"I was not. Betty, he's exaggerating. He never told me that before."
"Didn't I? I married you so you could have assumed it."
Sara smiled at him and didn't remind him that it had taken him eight years to propose. She pushed her empty dessert plate away. "All these years, you let me believe that our meeting was coincidental."
"Well, now you know, in the interest of full disclosure, of course."
What Gil didn't tell her, was how disappointed he was when he saw her face for the first time. She was pretty, perhaps prettier than he had hoped, or expected, but he hadn't expected her to be so young. Much too young for him. Still, there was something about her, something intangible that kept him near her when he knew he should walk away.
On his last night in San Francisco, after a week of conference hall food, and quick bites at local diners and coffee shops, he took her out to an upscale restaurant on the waterfront. Sara always had a million questions, so they never ran out of conversation. It made her very easy to be with. That night, on a terrace by the bay with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, they discussed the value of a mentor. As he was telling her about Dr. Phillip Gerard, the man who had been his, it suddenly occurred to Gil that, while he was letting her get under his skin, her interest in him may have only been as a potential mentor.
And then he thought: what if it was? It wasn't as if he could have an affair with her. He had already decided that she was too young; besides, they lived four hundred miles apart.
That sound reasoning, however, didn't do him a bit of good when they returned to the hotel and he couldn't bring himself to say goodbye to her. So, he asked her to join him at the bar for a nightcap, and when the bar closed, he told her he had a well-stocked mini-bar in his room.
They talked into the wee hours of the morning, until Sara dozed off on his couch, mid-conversation. He knew he should wake her up and see her to her room. Instead, he slipped a pillow under her head and covered her up with a blanket, and then drew on every ounce of restraint he could muster to stop himself from kissing her awake and seducing her into bed.
He was bewitched.
He spent the rest of the night sitting in a chair, watching her sleep. And the next morning, when it was time to leave, it was with as much sorrow as relief that he saw her off.
He remembered her hesitating at his door and timidly asking if she had imagined things or if he— She hadn't finished the question; she didn't have to. He knew what she meant and he told her that she hadn't imagined anything. Then, to prove it, and because he really wanted to, he kissed her. It wasn't the kind of kiss that could be mistaken for friendly. It lasted too long for that. Yet, it wasn't a lover's kiss, either, although with Sara's response, it very nearly became one. He couldn't handle anything more, so he stepped back and told her that they were much farther apart than mere geography. She didn't ask him to elaborate; she knew he meant their age difference. Besides, he didn't do romantic relationships well, he told her, 'but I do make an excellent friend.' So they parted as friends. They exchanged business cards and promised to keep in touch, and he carried the memory of her dimpled smile and dark eyes for over a year.
And it would be many more years before he got that the feelings he had for her wouldn't magically go away just because he thought they should.
When Sara chuckled at something his mother was saying, he realized he'd let his mind wander. He picked up his mom's hand signs mid-conversation. "—so when I saw how young you were, I thought, perfect! My Gil will finally give me a grandchild."
Oh, mom! Not that...
A twinkle entered Sara's eyes. "Well, in the interest of full disclosure..."
Gil dropped his dessert fork.
"Joking," Sara said quickly. She laid a hand on his arm. Then, noticing his mother's open-mouth, startled look, she signed, "Sorry, it was a joke."
He let out a long breath, and his reaction seemed to amuse Sara, but until the pounding in his chest stopped, he wasn't inclined to find her joke funny.
They had talked about children once, but in very general terms. Not as an option for them. He might have liked a son or daughter when he was younger, but that time had passed. He was much too old to start a family now. Sara, on the other hand, had never imagined herself a mother. She had even joked at the time about how she must have been out climbing a tree the day the mothering instinct was being handed out.
Now Gil wondered if that was what she really felt, or what she thought he wanted to hear?
"Gil told me that you're originally from San Francisco. Does your family still live there?"
He forced himself to pay attention as the conversation switched to Sara's family, which made him just slightly less edgy than talking about grandchildren.
"Yes. I mean my mother still does," Sara replied.
"I'm surprised that she wasn't at your wedding. San Francisco is not that far away."
"Her mother still lives in San Francisco, mom, but her father passed away—"
Sara touched his hand. "It's okay. Let me."
They had expected the questions to come eventually, but in retrospect, Gil wished he had already told his mother the horrific details of Sara's past and spared her the awkwardness of having to explain it herself.
"My mother is ill. She was diagnosed with—" When she broke off, Gil started signing for her. "—schizophrenia in her early twenties. She and my father had a very…tumultuous relationship, and when he drank, he became violent. One day, she'd had enough and stabbed him to death." His mother gasped, and Sara's lips twisted. "I know. My mother spent most of her life in and out of mental health facilities. I was raised in foster care, so I never saw much of her. She's hardly aware of who I am anymore, so you see, Gil is my family now."
His mother leaned over and gripped Sara's hand. "I am so sorry."
"It's okay. It was a long time ago."
"Still, it couldn't have been easy growing up without a mother."
Let it go, mom. Gil willed his mother to look at him, to see that he wanted her to change the subject. She didn't.
"I have always wished for a second child," she continued, "a daughter, but it wasn't meant to be. You and I have not had an easy relationship, and that's my fault. But I do hope that eventually you will also think of me as your family."
"I already do." Emotion trembled in Sara's voice. She blinked then hastily got up and started clearing the table. While she carried the plates to the kitchen, his mom briefly laid a hand over his.
"She's a lovely woman, son. You chose very well."
"I know. Thanks, mom."
"I will go, now. Give you two some time alone."
Gil nodded and they got up from the table. When Sara turned from the sink, he was handing his mother her handbag.
"Are you going already?" she signed. "It's still early."
"You and Gil don't spend enough time together as it is. I don't want to intrude any longer."
Sara shot Gil a glance and he gave her an imperceptible nod. "We meant to tell you. Gil's coming home for good in a few weeks. He's planning to teach locally—"
The next thing he knew, his mother had him in a fierce hug. He laughed a little and gave Sara a helpless look before casually easing himself out of her persistent grip. "The really good news, mom, is that you won't have to worry about my sex life anymore."
She gave him a playful slap on the arm then held on to it as he took her up the stairs to the door.
Sara got her wrap from the hall closet and handed it to her.
"Thank you, dear. And don't be a stranger. We don't have to wait for Gil to get together."
"I'll call you," she said, and then kissed her cheek.
Gil did the same. "Bye, mom."
"Bye," his mother waved, and as soon as the door closed, Gil drew Sara into his arms and gave her a resounding kiss.
"Now that went very well, don't you think?"
"Very."
Gil took her hand and started for the living room. "Let's sit for a while."
"Now? Have you forgotten the state of the kitchen?"
"It can wait. Come on. I want us to talk."
Sara smiled at him as he led her to the couch. "You're uncommonly talkative this trip, hun."
Gil sat beside her and stretched his legs out on the coffee table. He put his arm around her. "I don't want to lose you."
She looked startled. "Okay. Where is this coming from?"
"I want you to be happy. If that means having a baby, well, we can do that."
Sara laughed. "I'm sorry about that crack earlier. I was just kidding around—" She broke off, frowned. "Do you want a baby?"
Gil shook his head. "I'll admit that if I were younger, I'd love to have a child with you." What he wouldn't admit to was the twinge of natural excitement he had momentarily felt at the thought of having impregnated her. It was purely biological and paled in significance to his simultaneous, and equally natural, near-panic attack when she joked about it.
But it was also natural for Sara to want to be a mother, and he didn't think it would be fair to deny her that opportunity if she had decided she wanted it after all.
"You're still young enough to have a baby, Sara, and I wouldn't want to deprive you of that—"
She touched his hand. "You're not. Maybe it's because of my upbringing, but honestly, I never wanted kids. Thanks for offering, though. It means a lot."
Gil drew her closer and they sat quietly for a while. Hank came up and stretched out in his favorite corner. A boxer's eyes always looked sad, Gil thought, and at that moment, they seemed to reflect his own emotions. He knew it would pass, but for now, Gil allowed himself a moment of grief over missed opportunities.
At the same time, he was relieved that they had finally put the matter of children to rest.
He dropped a kiss on Sara's temple. "So, if that wasn't your third secret…"
"Ah…so that's what this is about," she said lightly. "You know, we don't have to do this all in one day."
"Your reluctance, Mrs. Grissom, tells me that this one is more serious than my tastes in music."
Sara sighed. "It's nothing. It's just… A few years ago, when you were having your thing with Sofia—"
"I never had a thing with Sofia."
"Okay, a flirtation or whatever it was—"
"All for your benefit, my dear."
"Yeah, well…" Sara was suddenly on her feet. Hank reacted, got up, watched her as she maundered, looked out the window.
Scared him.
"Honey?"
As though resigning herself to the inevitable, she let out a long breath, came back, and slouched down on the couch. "I probably should have told you this before, but it had nothing to do with you." She snickered. "That's not true. It had everything to do with you. I was so sick of watching you flirt with her. Sofia. The years I waited for you to do something about us and then in she walks and it didn't matter that she was also much younger than you or that she was your subordinate. I was pissed off and I'd had enough of putting my life on hold for you, so when Greg asked me out, I said yes."
The fact that Gil had already suspected as much didn't make the news any easier to swallow. Greg. He possessed so many qualities Gil never had or never could have anymore. Hip. Carefree. Young.
He had always known that Greg had a thing for Sara, but it never worried him until…
"Was that before or after you checked him out in the decontamination shower?" Gil winced at his tone, and so did Sara.
"So you know about that."
"I overhead you two talking about it. You sounded quite impressed with what you saw."
Chuckling, she said, "You're not going to be jealous of Greg now."
"I was always jealous of Greg."
She smiled. "You know, I think I knew that."
"Did you, uh… sleep with him?"
Sara shook her head, and Gil let out a lungful of air. "I think we both knew before we even went out that we could never be more than friends."
"So, that was it?"
"Pretty much. Don't get me wrong. I like Greg, and I think he's quite attractive in his way, but my heart was never mine to give to him."
Gil caught her chin between his fingers, tipped her face up, and tenderly kissed her. Several guys at work had flirted with her over the years, but Greg was the only one he had ever considered a threat. Without realizing it, maybe he had never stopped, although he trusted Sara. He trusted Greg.
"So, are we done with the full disclosure portion of the evening?" Sara asked teasingly.
"We are, unless there are more guys you haven't slept with you need to tell me about…"
Sara laughed and got to her feet. "Come on," she said, grabbing his hand. They went down the stairs to the kitchen, and then she stopped, looked around and let out a long sigh.
Gil opened the dishwasher. "You're tired. Why don't you go get ready for bed while I clean up?"
"You're a prince among men."
He shrugged. "It's only fair. You let me sleep earlier while you got most of the food ready."
Sara reached around him, took two clean plates out of the cupboard, a couple of forks from a drawer and grabbed the cake bell from the counter. He gave her a look.
"What? This is seriously good cake and I'm still hungry." She dropped a quick kiss on his lips. "Don't be long," she said as she strutted off to the master bedroom with dessert.
Gil smiled. "Keep the garter on," he called after her. He was still hungry, too, but not for cake.
THE END
A/N: Another story comes to an end. Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Vplas.
