The Best Man

A Private Practice fic by Gigi

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 7: Me, Too

A/N: Enough votes said otherwise! The Best Man has officially been changed, not that you were going to know until the wedding anyway, but just so you know. So right now, it has been changed, but oftentimes my fingers don't really pay attention to my brain so we'll see how it goes.

On Friday morning, Addison sat in the atrium of LAX, swirling a martini in its glass and tapping her fingers on the bar counter. Checking her watch with an exasperated sigh, Addison placed the glass on the counter and looked to her former sister-in-law. "Nancy, I thought she was supposed to be here an hour ago," she complained.

"Addie, calm down," Nancy urged, reaching out and squeezing the redhead's arm. "Kathleen called me before she boarded and said that there had been a two-hour delay due to bad weather."

Addison's blue eyes widened with incredulity. "Nancy Lynn Shepherd-Branson, you did not lie to me and make me come here two hours earlier than I had to," she hissed venomously.

Nancy winced at the use of her full name. She felt like she was being lectured by her mother, and that was never a good feeling to have. "I knew I'd have to convince you all over again to come, and quite honestly, I didn't have the energy to do that," she admitted sheepishly.

"Oh, because this is definitely less of a hassle," Addison retorted sarcastically, gesturing around them. "The rehearsal dinner is tonight, and I have tons of things I could have done to prepare during these two lost hours."

"Oh, stop being such a drama queen," Nancy dismissed. She took a sip of her own martini and checked the flight tracking on her BlackBerry. "Her flight will be landing in half an hour, so there's no use in whining."

"I was not whining!" Addison protested.

"You totally were," Nancy teased over her martini glass in such a way that, after a few seconds of glaring at her fellow OB/GYN, Addison couldn't stop the smile from sneaking its way onto her face.

"I've missed having you as a sister," she confided softly.

"Me, too, Addie. Me, too," Nancy whispered back with a sense of nostalgia. The two doctors turned back to their martinis and waited for the half-hour to pass until Kathleen's plane arrived.

8D

By the time Addison had dropped Nancy and Kathleen off at the hotel to get situated, she completely remembered why she dreaded the other sister's arrival. She all but stormed into her office and started pacing, trying to work off some of the frustration and anger before she encountered anyone else and went off on them.

On her warpath to her office, Addison passed Derek, who definitely noticed her sour expression and followed her in. "Addison?" he asked, poking his head through the doorway before allowing his body to completely enter her office. "What's wrong?"

Red hair flew in the air as Addison whipped around in response to his voice. She paused just for a second before resuming her pacing. "What's wrong?" she repeated angrily. "What's wrong is your sister."

"Ah, so I take it Kathleen arrived safely?" Derek tried his hardest to hide the amused smile that threatened to break out on his face. He knew that if Addison saw him laughing at her pain, she wouldn't hesitate before slapping him upside the head.

"Yes, Derek, your sister is safe and sound in her hotel suite, something you should be grateful to me for, because I was this close—" she held up a hand that revealed two fingers a centimeter apart –"to taking Nancy and 'forgetting' to swing by and get her once I'd picked up the car!" Addison was in full-on rant mode now, and Derek knew better than to interfere so he just waited for her to continue. "That woman just finds pleasure in making me feel like a good-for-nothing whore who just randomly decided to cheat on her brother with his best friend out of the blue!"

Derek did a double take at the last sentence. "Did she really bring that up?" he pressed incredulously.

"You know your sister, Derek," Addison stated furiously as she continued her pacing. "Kathleen, the ever-perfect psychiatrist, would never say something that could directly be taken as an insult. You may have called me the Queen of Passive Aggresiva, but your sister has passive aggressive down to an art. She is way worse than I was, and quite frankly, I'm insulted that you ever thought I was worse." Addison stopped pacing and bit out every word of that last sentence in her ex-husband's face. "She's the queen of subtext and implications. Your sister would have made Busy very proud."

As much as Derek felt a duty to his sister to defend her, he found himself nodding along, half out of fear and half out of agreement. "I'm sorry about Kathleen. She can't seem to get past that night, even though I have. I'll talk to her if that helps at all," he said calmly. He brought his hands to her arms and pulled her in for a comforting, soothing hug. She must have been genuinely upset, because she let herself relax into him, and she didn't comment when he rubbed circles in her back to calm her down.

Five minutes later, Addison finally extricated herself from Derek's arms and sent him a small, unsure smile. "Thanks for, you know, putting up with me and my ranting," she muttered.

"Anytime," Derek smiled.

8D

The rehearsal dinner was going according to schedule, and so far, nothing horrible or humiliating had happened as of yet. Naomi and Sam were nauseatingly happy in each other's arms as they greeted their guests and thanked them for coming. Addison, who channeled Audrey Hepburn in a little knee-length black dress with a high neck and virtually no back but for two crossing stripes of fabric, tucked a strand of stray hair back into her sleek bun as she circulated around the dinner, making sure the hors d'oeuvres were distributed on time, among other things.

Addison, being the amazing party-planning genius that she was, very cleverly decided to make the seating chart for the rehearsal dinner to be according to sides. One half of the room was the bride's side, and the other half was for the groom's guests. That made it so that Addison sat to Naomi's right and Derek sat to Sam's left. That way, Addison wouldn't be forced to make awkward small talk with her ex-husband, and Naomi wouldn't be dying to know what was going on.

Of course, in her efforts to avoid sitting next to her ex-husband, she failed to realize that someone—she was going to kill Naomi—had seated none other than Alex Karev on her other side. Once everybody had taken his or her seat, Addison almost jumped right back out when she looked to her right and saw her former intern's face smirking at her. She almost asked him what the hell he was doing sitting there when she saw the small place card in front of him. Snatching it up, Addison examined the card and read "Alex Karev" in flowing, cursive script.

Replacing the card in front of Alex, Addison nudged Naomi in the ribs and returned Alex's smirk with a smile of her own. "Hello, Karev," she greeted, as if they hadn't made out and played on the beach just three nights earlier.

Alex's smirk only grew at hearing her nickname for him and responded in kind. "Dr. Montgomery," he nodded.

Callie, who was walking past the seated pair on her way to the bathroom, paused at the formality in their voices. She bent down and whispered exasperatedly in the space between the pair's heads, "Please tell me you're not being professional after what I caught you two doing."

"Callie Torres!" Addison hissed. Her cheeks started to flush in embarrassment when she felt Naomi lean in closer to eavesdrop. Callie was never really good at the whole whispering thing. "You'd better leave before I decide you're no longer a vital part of this wedding."

"But I'm not," Callie murmured back triumphantly, but the look Addison gave her still sent her running.

"Sorry about that," Addison apologized, turning back around and placing her napkin on her lap.

"Is that how you guys always talk to each other?" Alex questioned, doing the same.

Shaking her head, Addison fidgeted with her place setting. "No, only when we are teased when we really don't want to be," she answered.

"Would you rather we forgot about what happened on the beach?" he offered. He really didn't want to – he hadn't laughed like that in ages – but if it was making her uncomfortable…

After thinking for a minute, Addison once again shook her head. "No, I'd rather not forget that," she admitted. "I had fun, and I haven't had fun in a very long time."

Alex smiled. "Good," he said. "Me, too."

A/N: I'm short on time, otherwise I would have continued to write this chapter, but I wanted to get it out. Hopefully it won't take me five months to update this again, but you'll never find out if you don't REVIEW!