February 27, 2010
After six months in the harsh desert, becoming so skinny (she can't resist the pitiful eyes begging for food, so she often goes without hers) that few of her old clothes fit anymore, Cairo is a mirage of flashing lights and tall buildings and she used to live in New York but the bustle of a city after so long is still overwhelming.
After a brief look at the towering golden pyramids and the crowded streets of the lower city, she sits with her friends, martini in hand, as they wait for their plane. The alcohol feels refined against her lips, different from that that they make from fruit in the village, or the cheap beer occasionally imported. She hasn't forgotten how to be Addison Forbes Montgomery, but she's still staring at her plastic spoon a little as she dips it in her sundae before practically having a mouth orgasm.
"You sure you want to stay here?" Sam calls out, laughing at her expression. "Cause you and that ice cream look a little personal, there, and it wouldn't last two minutes out in the desert."
She wrinkles her nose at Sam before turning her eyes to Naomi and seeking reassurance in the familiar face of her old friend. "I've never done it on my own before," Addison whispers, afraid, because Charlotte and Cooper are gathering up their bags, Violet is pulling Lucas, the small African boy she and Pete adopted, toward the gate, and they're all leaving her.
"Addie, you can do it. You've dealt with it on your own before …"
"But you've always been there, when I thought I couldn't do it anymore, when I needed help or someone to tell me was gonna be okay. I've always had help, even if I was technically alone. But Nae …"
Naomi embraces her, pulling her close, and she inhales the vanilla scent of her best friend's raven curls before pulling away. She hasn't lived without Naomi since she moved to LA. She hasn't lived without anyone since she met Derek. And now she's alone. Well, not completely alone. But still.
"I can't."
"You can, and you know it. You don't have to be perfect, Adds. It's okay to ask for help, if you need it."
"I know."
"You sure you don't want to come? The flight isn't fully booked," Naomi offers, but she shakes her head and bites her lip, because hard as it is to let go of her figurative security blanket, she senses that she needs to. Still, her fingers shake around her martini glass, rattling it against the wooden arm of the chair facing the window as their plane (her eyes followed it all the way through the twisting maze of the runway) launches itself into the clear blue sky.
Dear Derek,
How would you like me to label it? 'Derek and Addison's sex toys?' 'X-rated bedroom?' Not that it matters, because us having to label something like that again, together, would be a cause for alarm.
When have I ever threatened to kill you? Except when I threw that flowerpot at your head. And when you dropped my new nail polish in the toilet. Okay, maybe I have. Maybe I'll even make good on it someday.
Callie hasn't written in a while, and I'm worried. Remind Mark that sex can't be the only coping method – okay, I know that's mean, and I should give Mark more credit, but … Callie's been through a lot. Just make sure she's okay, that they're both okay.
After the divorce, it was hard for me too- hard to let go of all the memories, the third of my life that I shared with you. I didn't know how to share it with anyone else, or how to lean on anyone else. But you've gotta learn, Der. I put you in a box, to deal with it. You may have suppressed it until now, being happy with Meredith, but please, don't bring this back up. Don't regret it now, because it's too late.
If we can't let each other go and stop going over our mistakes like this … then maybe yes, we can't be friends for a while. I care about you, and you'll always be a part of my life, but if we're friends like you and Meredith were friends … that's an emotional affair, Derek, and that would be unspeakably wrong. So you tell me what this is.
And if Meredith's upset … I know how much you love her. So, um, you don't have to write anymore. I won't hold it against you, I promise. But this is your second chance – don't make the same mistakes. Put her first. The gossip isn't what I'm worried about – God knows I've endured enough of it not to care. But if you let her get away again, Derek, if you put us through all that for nothing, well, I'll kind of hate you.
I didn't want to leave you, I wanted you to pay attention to me and notice me and come home more than once every week and a half. It was sad that I had to sleep with your best friend to get a reaction out of you, and honestly, that's not how I planned on it happening. I just … Mark cared, and he was there when you weren't, and it just happened. I hoped, however briefly, that you would fight for us, but you left. You got to leave, not me. I should have dealt with it differently, but like I told you, Derek, by that time I wasn't thinking at all.
I didn't really think in the beginning that Karev would ever go for neonatal, I intended it as a punishment, but I guess he had it in him all along. I saw that, but then again, I thought I saw other things too, so … well, I'm glad he's still in neonatal. At least I did my job right while in Seattle.
Thanks for saying sorry, Derek. I'm sorry too. Sorry that our marriage came to this, I always thought we'd be the old, wrinkly couple who bickers over ridiculous things. But we're both happy now, or on our way to happy, so I'm glad we can forgive each other.
I suppose I should also mention – Derek, I know you wanted me to come to Seattle for a visit before I went back to LA, but the thing is, um, I'm not coming back. W-I'm staying here. It's been good for me. Sam and Nae – everyone else is coming back, but I don't know when I am. I need more time to think, more time to figure out what the hell I'm doing. I'm sorry.
Addie
P.S. We have been talking about it! What else is there to say? It's in the past now, Derek, can we please let it go?
P.P.S. We've been able to hear grenades going off in the distance for the last three days. The whining before they hit keeps me from sleeping.
He shouldn't be here. No one knows he's here.
The burning of Ivar's clam chowder against the inside of his wrist could be considered penance, he supposes, because he's definitely not supposed to be here. Not in this terminal, where Addie's flight will arrive from JFK any minute. (He'd looked it up and her flight was supposed to leave Cairo, land in New York, and then come to Seattle.)
This isn't right.
Her unopened letter is in his hand, but his eyes are trained on the misty glacier sky of February, as planes land from destinations unknown and deposit their passengers here, in this small, rainy terminal. His heart probably shouldn't be beating this fast.
Meredith is, right at this moment, in a bakery only a few blocks from Seattle Grace, pacing through pastries piled high in icing, probably wondering whether he likes white or chocolate or even strawberry cake, and what filling, and whether to put a tiny plastic couple on the top of it. He can see her, harried and awkward, with Cristina as her companion, who is probably poisoning his fiancée with her dark views of weddings in general.
He should be there. He's getting married in May, just a few months away now, and there's so much to do, so many details to work through, like the knots he used to tease out of scarlet curls when they showered together …
The number of his flight is called (he had to buy a ticket to get in here, because of new security protocols set in place after 9/11, but he doesn't mind, not only because he has plenty of money but because he was there that day. All three of them were) but he ignores it and instead watches Addison's plane pull slowly into the correct terminal. It takes nearly twenty minutes for the first person to disembark, and he becomes worried as those who are clearly first class exit first, toting expensive carry-ons; he would have expected her to be among them because he's almost positive Addison has never flown coach in her life.
The last passenger exits, a woman pulling three little kids along, all of who are screaming at her in a foreign language Derek is too distracted to identify at the moment. Surely … surely nothing could have happened to her, right? He'd know … somehow, he's not sure how, but if something happened to Addison in the war-ransacked desert of Sudan …
Finally he cracks open her letter, and upon finishing it, sinks down in the nearest chair. She's alive and well, albeit now in direct danger (thinking about her anywhere close to fiery explosions makes him sick to his stomach) and Sam and Nae and everyone are safe, but she's not.
She didn't come back.
His cell phone rings six times in the next hour, but he doesn't move, simply sits in the terminal and watches the streamlined air traffic.
