That night, in the bar, had been a revelation as far as Olivia was concerned. Not a sexual revelation, that wasn't what it had been about at all, but she learnt that sometimes, in the right situation, she could let go. She could talk.
Admittedly, she'd done it with Elliot, but that came around in one of two ways, through anger at him, or just because she couldn't cope any more, and then usually ended abruptly when she realised exactly what she'd done and regretted it. The evening with Melinda, it hadn't been like that.
To begin with, there had been no anger. Nor had she been close to breaking point. She was sad, very sad about the angels, all of them, especially Hope; and she was fighting her own personal demons too but she wasn't on the edge. On the brink. It didn't all come out in a flood of emotion.
She literally, simply, and without the usual related drama, just talked; before she even realised what she was doing.
They were on their second bottle of wine, and she'd just apologised for keeping Melinda out so late. That was when Melinda had told her she had nothing to go home to because her husband was away and her daughter had just gone off to college.
They talked about how hard it was to be a mother. How heart breaking it was to have to cut the apron strings. And then Melinda asked the question.
"Wouldn't you like kids?"
Any other time, she'd have laughed the question off. Would have said she had enough on her plate partnering Elliot without adding any more mayhem and chaos to her world. But not that night; that night she answered without even thinking.
"I would. I nearly did. But I miscarried."
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"What the hell? You miscarried? When?" Elliot sounded close to exploding, and as tempted as Olivia was to point out that if he stopped interrupting he might find the story easier to follow, she understood his anger; knew that it was born of his frustration at no longer knowing or understanding someone he thought he was so close to. If the situation had been reversed, she would have been feeling exactly the same.
She took a deep breath, trying to steady her emotions, not wanting to burst into tears although it was becoming a perilously close thing.
"During the Little Angels case."
Her partner closed his eyes and there was a long silence in which she could only sit and wait for his response, whether anger or otherwise.
In the end, it was otherwise.
"Liv." He reached out, touching her hand gently, "Why am I only hearing this now?"
She stared down at his hand on hers, glad to see it there, but at the same time knowing that the only answer she could give him would probably result in him moving it, as he got angry with her all over again. All the same she had no choice. She owed him her honesty now, more than anything else in the world.
"Because I'm trying to justify my own very sinful," she chose the word deliberately, not because she believed it particularly, but because she knew he did, "behaviour to you. Because I want you to know I didn't set out to break up a family, a home. I didn't go looking for a lesbian relationship. I was just scared and alone and I needed someone; needed something. "
There was a beat, mere seconds, and then, he did it.
He took his hand away.
"That wasn't question Liv, and you know it. It's god damn obvious why you're telling me now. What I want to know is why you didn't tell me then."
She wrapped her arms around herself trying to protect herself from the metaphorical chill in his voice that seemed completely and utterly literal at that moment. And she hated it because she knew she only had herself to blame. "Melinda asked me that, when I told her. She asked why I hadn't told you."
"And?" he said bluntly, the frostiness in her voice not letting up for a minute, "What exactly did you tell Melinda in response to that all important question?"
She took a deep breath, psyching herself up, ready to go again; another minute, another revelation, and this time she couldn't even bring herself to look at him.
"I told her I didn't tell you because I was too embarrassed, because I was so desperate to get pregnant that I went out and got laid by a stranger in the bar, just because it was the right time of the month and because I could."
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Elliot felt like he'd been hit by a truck. It was like the world was playing a practical joke on him, that he really didn't understand and was completely failing to find funny. He looked over at Olivia and it felt like he was sharing a car with a stranger. Gay had been bad enough, the miscarriage even worse, but this... it wasn't bad, it wasn't good, it was just nonsensical, farcical.
"Have you lost your mind?" He spat, too angry to hold back now, "What the Hell is wrong with you Olivia? None of this makes sense, so if this is some lousy stupid lie you're spinning me to make me feel sorry for you so your disgusting affair doesn't seem so bad, forget it. I'm not a fucking idiot."
He waited for her response but she just looked at him numbly, his words apparently bouncing off of her like water off a ducks back. And then, she spoke, in a voice that he didn't recognise any more than he did the woman in front of him, "You're not the idiot. I am."
Her bottom lip wobbled then, and she started to cry, another particularly un-Olivia like act. It was more than he could take, he didn't want to spend another minute in her completely unfamiliar presence and so he yanked the keys out of the ignition and threw them at her.
"I'm going home. I'll radio Fin, ask him to take over."
He reached for the door and went to open it, but before he could he felt her hand on his arm.
"Elliot… please…" she whimpered sounding so pathetic that it just compounded everything he was already feeling. He shook her hand away violently,
"Leave me alone Olivia. "
And then he left the car without another word.
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She knew why he'd left, but that didn't stop it hurting. Not least because she knew it was entirely her own fault. She'd pushed him too far, too fast. She'd become a stranger to him, just as she had to herself but he'd had only minutes to digest it, to come to terms with it, not like the weeks and months that she'd had.
When her tears had slowed she reached for her cell phone and dialled, reaching out to the only person that she could rely on for sympathy at that moment.
"Hey lady, how's the stakeout?"
Just hearing Melinda's term of endearment for her was enough to push her over the edge, and the tears that had so recently come to an end, started to flow all over again, pretty quickly culminating in some serious sobbing as she tried to tell her miserable tale of woe.
When she was done, she heard Melinda sigh on the other end of the line, and a sense of fear gripped her as a thought suddenly occurred to her, "Are you pissed at me for telling him?" It seemed like the only thing that could make a bad situation worse, and she couldn't believe that she'd not stopped to think about it before. Luckily, Melinda was quick to reassure her.
"No. Not pissed you. I knew this would happen, sooner rather than later. I know what you two are like. Pissed at him though." She added, "Although again not surprised. Macho men tend to be big on lesbians until they become reality."
While she appreciated hearing that Elliot was in the wrong, Olivia couldn't really bring herself to believe it. His reaction had been nothing other than completely understandable, and knowing him like she did, she didn't believe for one minute that Elliot being a 'big macho man' had anything to do with it.
"He just doesn't understand. He doesn't understand you and I, or the baby, or how the baby came to be but," she swallowed hard, choking back another set of tears, "most of all he doesn't understand why I didn't tell him any of it before."
"Yeah, maybe." Melinda said, conceding the point, "But that's not gonna stop it upsetting you is it? Look lady," That term of endearment again, so she couldn't help but manage a smile, albeit a weak one, "Why don't you come over? You sound like you need some tender loving care, and I'd like to be the one giving it to you."
It was tempting. Very tempting. But she was on the job, she couldn't just walk away from that. And so, although it pained her to do so, she declined, although she put a caveat on it. "I get off at ten if the offer still stands then?"
She could almost picture Melinda smiling down the phone at her, "You bet it does. I'll have the wine chilled and bath run ok? I'll see you later."
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