Disclaimer- I don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does. Please don't sue me for writing this story! Just having fun playing in the Castle Sandbox! Errors corrected, but I do not have a beta reader, so there's probably typos and dropped words (my apologies). I am not getting into the fandom and making friends for a reason; all my experiences with fandom in the past have brought me friends and some great charity work, but at the same time, incredibly gross and unappealing drama (like having my account hacked. Nice job, right?). I actually had my life threatened by someone once (are you kidding me? It's only fanfiction!). I am never going to fall into that trap again. It's not worth it at all. But the nice people who've reviewed the prequel to this story, I do appreciate you! Thank you!
"Here we are; a two-foot closet!" the landlord said, drawing back the door. It was the high-point of this place; it was just barely the size of my slum apartment in Queens, although slightly cleaner, and three times the price.
It just wasn't the same.
"It's... you said it was twenty-four hundred?" I asked.
"This is an excellent part of Brooklyn!" she said enthusiastically. Damn those hipsters.
"I don't know if my cat would like it," I said. It was in the basement, too, easy to get into for burglars.
"Oh you have a cat?"
"Yes, she's litterbox trained and completely indoors," I said.
"That'll be an extra eight hundred on your deposit."
I sighed and my phone rang; it was Mom.
"Let me get this," I said, getting my phone out. "Hi, Mom."
"Alexis, please tell me you've been working on your speech for the fundraiser."
"You know I'm looking at a new apartment right now," I said. "I'll call you later and tell you how it went."
"Wait a second! You have to go and pick up the speakers for dinner at our house tonight!"
I groaned.
"Hey, you volunteered, no complaining!" she cried. "I picked up your dress, the make-up and hair people are coming by at two-thirty and-"
"I'm not complaining. Gotta go, 'bye." I hung up on her.
"Let me know if you're interested. I've got a two-o'clock with the super," the Landlord said.
I caught the subway back to Ben and my apartment building to find Grace Kelly sitting in the window, enjoying the afternoon sun. "I'm supposed to work on my speech," I told her. "Do you mind?"
She yawned. I packed my overnight bag before I got out my note cards. I had tried to write it out. "The best thing I can tell you about my restored weight is that I finally have boobs," I said. Grace Kelly yawned again and started licking her butt. "Okay, it's not funny. But you're a crappy audience, cat."
The door to our apartment opened. "Hey, Allie," Ben said, tossing down his laptop bag, a grocery bag, and his motorcycle helmet on the couch. "What'cha doing?"
"I'm trying to rehearse my speech for the fundraiser tomorrow night," I said, "before I go pick up the out-of-town girls for dinner at Mom and Dad's."
"Why don't you go and get them a little early? I've got an editing letter to tend to- oh! And the rent's due in a four days."
I swallowed. "Um, Ben?" I needed to tell him what was happening. "I'm looking at new apartments. An apartment of my own."
He stopped and turned to me. "Oh?... I didn't know you were looking."
I bit my lips together. "Look, I can't stay here forever. I'm sleeping in the living room and I don't have a lot of privacy, and I know you want some privacy-"
"Alexis, I don't know if you remember, but I've seen you naked..." he joked. It made me smile, but only for a moment.
But you never make a move on me. I've been sleeping in the room next to yours for six months and you haven't come to my bed... I saw you with her... whoever she is... My head felt light. I couldn't tell him that I had seen him out with someone else. "It's been a few years," I said. "And... Ben, I've waited so long for you and it's never going to happen, so... I need to move on. I can't wait anymore. I'm sorry. I'll go back to my parent's house for a few more days until I move out, okay?"
He looked crestfallen.
I picked up Grace Kelly and put her in the cat carrier before walking out with my rolling overnight bag.
I went to the Ramada Hotel in Times Square to pick up my internet friends from the Alexis Foundation that we had flown in to speak at the event. Chelly, Paris, and Taylor were in the lobby having drinks when I arrived. I recognized them immediately. Chelly stood up and squealed when she saw me; I knew her from our Skype chats. She was the one from Singer, Iowa. Paris was right behind her; she was from Austin, Texas, and Taylor was from Meridian, Mississippi. We all hugged and sat down to catch up. I tried to forget about what I had just said to Ben. These girls were so much like me; they were recovering codependent perfectionists. I was surprised at how much we had to talk about. They all wanted me to sign their copy of the Foxes' Den and they wanted to know what happened in the sequel.
We went on a walk through Times Square, and once we had gotten to the lowest portion of it, we took a cab to TriBeCa. When we got to the top floor, I could smell the roast beef and roasted vegetables Mom and Dad had been making for dinner when we got off the elevator.
"Mom? Dad?" I called, as I opened the door to the apartment. We were met by Jace and Jo-jo. They still screamed and ran to me in excitement whenever I came over. Noel was now trying to be cool, and didn't greet me any more.
"Hi," Mom said, coming through to the foyer. "I'm Kate Beckett, I'm so happy you girls are here! Just call me Kate." She hugged each of the girls and introduced herself to them.
"Where's Noel?" I asked.
"He locked himself in the bathroom after school," she whispered in my ear. I tried not to laugh at that. Noel was starting to enter that phase of pre-puberty that wasn't pretty.
"What's so funny?" Jo-jo asked me.
"You'll find out," I said, picking her up. Jace had already run off with the cat.
"Hi, nice to meet you all, I'm Richard Castle," Dad said, walking in. "I hope you all eat beef, that's what we're having."
"I do," Chelly said.
"Me too," Paris chimed in.
"I'm a carnivore, now," Taylor added in.
"Does anybody want a drink?" Dad asked. "We've got beer, red wine, white wine, basically a full bar. I can make you girls anything."
"Where's Grams?" I asked.
"She's making dessert in her apartment," Mom said. "Wanna go get her?"
I went across the hall to find Grams. She was getting older; she had stopped dying her hair red, so it was now streaked with silver. I was starting to see her age in the way she walked, but her mind was still there. I knocked on the door. "Grams?" I called, opening the door.
"Oh hello, sweetheart," Grams said. She was in her kitchen, pouring some chocolate cake batter into cupcake pans. I kissed her. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said.
"I know you," she said. "Did something happen?"
I shrugged. "I don't want it being a dinner subject, alright? But I broke it to Ben that I'm moving out soon."
"Oh my," she said. "How did he take it?"
I shook my head. I could bear to tell anyone that Ben was moving on without me and that I had sacrificed an entire year of my life waiting on him. "I didn't stick around to find out. Please, don't tell anybody at dinner, okay?"
"I won't. Can you help me out the door with these?"
"Of course."
In the main apartment, Dad had served our guests some drinks and they were getting comfortable in the living room, talking. Tara, Hamich, and her mother had arrived (her mother had been a Family Nurse Practitioner before she got married, that was why we had asked her to be on the committee). We went out for drinks at our favorite bar after dinner.
At one point, over my bacon marini, Dad slipped an arm around my shoulders and guided me away from the crowd. "Alexis, I need you to see this," he muttered into my ear. His grasp was firm, rigid almost, and I got the vibe that Dad was trying to force me to do something.
"Dad, stop it," I whispered, wringing out his grasp. "What are you trying to make me do?"
Then, I spotted a familiar head of hair and shoulders sitting in a booth.
"No!" I hissed. "You can't make me do this!'
Meredith turned around in the booth. She wasn't wearing all the make-up she used to, just enough to make her prettier. She looked a little older, and her hair had been dyed a reddish-brown. She looked a little heavier, too. Her eyes filled with tears when she saw me.
"I'm not doing this!" I cried, walking away from Dad. He tried to grab my arm, but I pulled away, furious. People were looking, now. "I don't want anything to do with her!" Conversation stopped. I walked out of the bar and into the street.
"Alexis, come back here!" Dad shouted.
"I can't! You can just spring her on me like that- I wasn't prepared!"
"Because she wanted to see you," he said.
"She's getting married and she wants you there at Christmastime," Mom said, coming out of the bar. "She bought a ticket to the event, tomorrow. She wants to see you speak. It's not going to make things any better if you keep putting this off."
I shook my head. "I'm not doing this," I said.
"Then don't speak at the fundraiser tomorrow, this makes you a giant hypocrite," Mom snapped, spinning on her heels to go back into the bar. Shit. I had set her off.
"Kate's right," Dad said. "I don't want you speaking, either, if you're still this angry with Meredith."
He went back into the bar and I wanted to die; I was exposed as a hypocrite in front of everybody. I wasn't as forgiving and humble as I wanted to be, and I kept on searching in my mind as to how to justify it. I took a seat at the bench, and rested my head in my hands. I didn't like this. My heart pounded in my chest. I wasn't sure what to do.
"Even the worst of the worst people in your life are still human," said a familiar voice. I looked up to see Grandpa Jim standing in front of me. "Katie told me that you were still pretty mad at your mother. May I sit down?"
I sighed and nodded. I wished I could call Ben, but I wasn't ready to deal with the aftermath of telling him I was moving out. Grandpa Jim handed me a handkerchief from his jacket's breast pocket and I dried my eyes.
"I know you've been through the twelve steps of addiction. So have I. And I know that Katie told you about my bad behavior when I was drinking."
"Another guilt trip?" I asked.
"No, that's not what this is," he said.
"That's what it feels like," I muttered.
"Katie probably didn't even tell you the half of how abusive and cruel I was to her when I was drinking."
"She told me about the time you punched her and called her a whore."
He grimaced.
"I'm sorry."
"I didn't like the choices she was making. But it was her life, not mine. I had to learn that I couldn't manipulate her. My wife was getting ready to leave me the weekend she was murdered, did you know that?"
I shook my head.
"My God, I tried. I wanted Joey and Katie to bend to me. I wanted Katie to move back to New York, be a lawyer, and get married and have ten kids to put in Catholic school before she was thirty so I could brag about it to everyone. I wanted my wife to submit to me, because I was the man in the house, it was in the Bible, and I was Mister Big Shit. I was the man, I had so much to brag about because everything was a pissing contest. I had so many people to one-up, even before my wife was murdered. Joey was sleeping in a different room once Katie moved out to college. Joey getting murdered only exacerbated my problems, that wasn't the cause. Before I knew it, I was in the hospital on an IV with alcohol poisoning, my checking account was cleaned out, and my rent checks were bouncing. I lied so much to so many people. And it all came crashing down when I thought I could handle it all. The worst part was when I tried to call Katie and the person on the other end didn't even speak English. I had no one to pick me up from the hospital, nobody to rely on. All that masculine pride and bravado had backfired on me and I had lost everything. Pride goeth before the fall. I'd have learned that if I hadn't been cherry-picking from the Bible like a giant asshole."
"Are you trying to tell me this is how Meredith ended up?" I snorted.
"No, I'm trying to tell you where you're going to end up if you don't have some humility, Alexis. I've walked away from my Lord on more than one occasion. And I know that Katie and Richard don't really follow any religion, and that's partially my fault for spanking her as a child to force her to go to mass, but I need to tell you this-"
"Oh God, don't try to convert me, Jim!" I whined.
"I'm not trying to convert you, sweetheart. All I'm going to tell you is that I have a real relationship with the Holy Trinity, now. God has always forgiven me and was always the first there for me when I had nothing. I literally had nothing when I was in that hospital. And you know what? All the times I've pushed Katie away by trying to control her, that's a bigger sin against God than anything I could ever do to make it up to Him. If God can forgive me for the mountain of sins I have against Him, I can forgive everything anybody's ever done against me. And only hope it'll be returned to me. I don't deserve anything in response. I'm blessed that Katie's let me back in her life. And her life has turned out so much better than anything I could have planned out for her. I almost missed it. If you don't go back in there and forgive your mother, you're only hurting yourself. I talked to her earlier tonight, and she seems to be doing a lot of good things. She's starting a recovery center for women in Orange County with her fiance, and they want to help others into sobriety from drugs and alcohol."
"But I didn't do anything wrong!" I cried.
"No, as a kid you didn't. But now that you're an adult, do you actually think you're helping to do anything good by punishing Meredith? Even when she's sorry and had served the worst sentence any parent can, asides from their kid being dead?"
He had me stumped there. I had punished Meredith enough when she had talked to Hello! Magazine almost six years ago. I had reasoned that she was toxic and I needed to cut her out of my life in order to get well. Was she still toxic and codependent, now? If Dad and Mom were talking to her, mostly likely not. "No," I finally mumbled. "She doesn't deserve that."
"Come on, let's go back inside," he said, taking my hand. When we arrived inside, Meredith was gone. She had gone back to her hotel in mid-town. I took a cab to get back to the W Hotel, thinking about Grandpa Jim's words to me. I walked in to see her talking to the concierge.
"Mom?" I asked.
It took her a moment to register that it was me. I guess nobody else called her 'mom.' "Alexis?" she asked, turning around. "Oh, honey- I'm sorry, I haven't seen you in over five years, I probably shouldn't call you 'honey.'" She fiddled with her necklace. "Can we sit down?"
I nodded.
We took a seat in the cafe chairs in the lobby. The tea lights on the stairs had been lit, and people were sitting at other tables, chatting like nothing had happened.
"Can I buy you a drink?" she asked.
"Non-alcoholic," I said.
"How do some virgin banana-mango dacquiris sound?"
I nodded.
She ordered from the waiter and I sat there, awkwardly. "I don't know what to say," I admitted.
"If you're angry with me, I understand," she said. "You have every reason in the world. I'm not asking you to like me, just understand that."
"This is so hard," I admitted.
"It is for me, too. Trust me," she ran her finger along the wood grain of the table. "You really destroyed me with that blog on your dad's website."
"Are you expecting me to be sorry for that?" I asked, offended.
Her tearful expression turned into a slightly surprised smile. "No. I needed it. I think of it as the reality check that put me on the track to finally bottoming out. Look, I have to deal with the whole world knowing what a shitty, thoughtless, self-absorbed mother I was to you. Bipolar disorder isn't an excuse. There are plenty of women out there that are bipolar and have raised families, untreated. Granted their kids probably hate them just as much as you hate me-"
"Mom," I interrupted. "I don't hate you. I just... I don't understand you. I didn't understand you. I tried for so long, because I thought I could find a way to make you love me."
"And I didn't. Just because I had a terrible mother doesn't give me an excuse for what I did to you. But it makes sense. I'm glad Kate's your mother, now. She's doing a much better job than me. I hope it'll stop the long line of crappy mothers."
I shrugged. "I don't know if I'm having children."
"This is news for me," she said. Our drinks arrived. I took a sip through the straw. Good enough. My phone dinged, and I saw Dad had texted me to ask me where I was and to just come the hell home.
"Just a moment, it's Dad," I said.
"Okay."
I'm having virgin banana dacquiris with Meredith. At her hotel. I texted back.
"Sorry about that," I said.
"No, it's fine. So what's this about you not having children?"
"Oh nothing. I'm living with my ex-boyfriend right now, and he's a former Marine with PTSD and a drinking problem, and he's been in recovery for the last year... I'm moving out. Soon. I've wasted too much of my life on him, most of my twenties. I don't think I'll never get married. And I don't want kids alone and my uterus is probably dried up by now. Dad had a hard enough time trying to remember to feed me," I snorted, taking another gulp of my drink. My phone dinged again.
Come home as late as you want. I'm proud of you. Dad texted back. Just don't wake the kids.
"You know my Aunt Rhea had eight children? And she didn't get married until she was thirty-three. She was Catholic, you know, didn't believe in birth control. Didn't have her last child until she was forty-four and had a hysterectomy. I think you're from that line."
"Grams says I get my red hair from her, I probably got her uterus, too."
Meredith snorted. "Of course she says that. Before I infuriated her with cheating on your father, she actually liked me for a short time. And she told me that she was on the pill the night she conceived your father."
"Ew," I said.
"She was nice to me for a little while," she said. "I know she'll never like me, and she has all the reason in the world not to. But you're from a long line of fertile women on both sides. Don't underestimate yourself."
"So... she doesn't like you now, even though you're not an actress anymore?"
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "You know the worst part of recovery? Realizing that you made career choices to validate yourself, not seeing your own worth from the inside. And turning the people close to you to get that love and validation from others. Like what I did to your father. Yes, I got into acting to make people love me. I've turned my back on a lot of lovers, including your father for the love of adoring fans. Nobody ever thinks those fans will turn on you. They very easily do. You turned most of them with that blog. I had that coming, I admit it. But the nice part? Realizing you've done bad things, but they don't define you as a person. But I did a ton of emotional damage. I was like a bull in a china shop, I admit it."
"You did cheat on Dad, then?"
She nodded. "I just wanted his attention. I wanted the world the love me because I didn't know how to love myself."
"You're speaking my language," I admitted.
"It's funny how much alike we are," she said.
"I am not like you-" I stopped. "No, I am. I'm so much like you."
"I only hope you never made the mistakes I made when you're my age," she said. "I honestly thought that your father would want me more if I had someone else coming after me. He didn't want me enough, I thought. When I got that 5150 put on me, I finally realized I wanted more than any one human being could give me. I honestly thought that was love. It's not; it's obsession."
I realized I had, too. "I did that," I said. "During the height of my eating disorder, I wanted somebody to carry me through, but I needed to do it myself."
"Oh, my beautiful girl... Funny how patterns repeat unintentionally."
We talked until about three in the morning. I was tired as hell and Meredith's eyes were drooping by then. She gave me a giant hug and we promised to try to communicate after she went back to LA and I caught a cab back to TriBeCa, which she insisted on paying for. She promised to see me tomorrow at the Fundraiser.
I sneaked into the new entrance of the apartment and into my room around three-thirty. The trick to this was trying to be as silent as possible. The loft felt so quiet and heavy with sleep. I brushed my teeth and heard a soft knock on the bedroom door.
"Alexis?"
"Dad?" I looked out into the bedroom to see Dad standing there in his pajama pants and a t-shirt. I spat out toothpaste and rinsed my mouth out.
"I'm so glad you went to talk to her," Dad said.
"Why did you spring it on me?" I asked. "In a public place?"
"I thought you'd talk to her in a booth," he said. "I didn't expect you to make a scene."
"What did you expect?"
"We talked about it in the Hamptons," he said.
"I've got a lot going on."
"Like what?"
I shook my head. "I'm closing the door on Ben." I shut the door, leaving it open just a crack. I couldn't look at Dad as I changed into my pajamas. "He's just not that into me..." I put my top on and opened the door. "Unless you threatened him again."
"I didn't! I swear!"
"I'm moving out," I said. "I'm going to find my own place. And stock it with ten different types of hard alcohol, and I'm drinking them all myself and becoming an alcoholic author like William Faulkner. With my cat and my dried up uterus."
"You're not on that again, are you?"
"Meredith tried to tell me I'm from a very fertile line of women. On both sides."
"Ugh..." Dad moaned. "Do we have to talk about that? I can't get it across to you that you're so young, sweetheart, even if you're almost thirty. I hope Meredith got it through to you that you've got so much time ahead of you. I hope you can learn a lot from her, now."
"Can I have a relationship with her now? And it not be so painful?"
"How do you feel now?"
I shrugged, pulling back the covers. "I don't know," I admitted. "Confused?"
"Angry?"
I shook my head.
"Overwhelmed with happiness?"
I shook my head. "It's different this time. I just feel... apathetic."
"Do you expect anything from her?"
I shook my head.
"I've always noticed that when you stop expecting things from other people, you really cut the chances of being hurt. I'm so proud of you for facing her. Trust me when I say this, but she is so sorry for how she treated you. She knows there's no way to make it up to you. But when I try to think of how she feels right now? Having a kid she hardly knows? I don't know how she's doing it."
I nodded.
"Go on to bed. We've got a big day tomorrow," he kissed me on the temple and left me to sleep.
A/N- I felt like the entire Meredith storyline from the last fanfic needed to be tied up, and I didn't do that in the original version of this story and I'm kicking myself for that. So, I tied it up.