A/N: Thank you so, so much to everyone who expressed interest in and asked about this story during its brief-ish hiatus. I was a little stuck on this chapter, trying hard to make it a reasonable length, but ultimately there was too much I felt needed to be included and too many things I wanted to share with you at this point in the story. I'm still working on all my other WIPs - keep being the most wonderful readers and I won't be able to lag behind, either.
It's been a long time since Chapter 28, so quick recap: Derek spilled wine on himself in Addison's hotel room, went to the bathroom to wash it off, Callie knocked on the door to borrow eye makeup remover and then Derek emerged from said bathroom in his underwear, holding something ... (not like that, don't get all Mark Sloan on me).
I hope you enjoy this chapter!
..
ice
..
Callie's eyes – still wearing eyeliner, which I suppose is my fault since she came over to get eye makeup remover – get very big.
Abruptly, Derek closes his fist.
"Shepherd," Callie says, sounding like half apology and half greeting.
"Torres." He nods, then pauses. "Excuse me," he says politely, and then disappears into the bathroom again.
Great.
I hope I haven't just lost the only friend I have in Seattle.
Oh, wait. Derek and I are supposedly …
"Friends," I tell Callie hastily. "We're friends."
"You and I?" she asks, looking a little confused.
"No. Well, yes, but I meant Derek and I. Apparently."
"Oh." Callie looks toward the closed bathroom door, then back to me. "That's … good," she says tentatively. "Friends are good."
"He drove me here."
Why are you still talking?
"Since Mark's car was … ."
… it was Callie and Mark's sex-mobile, but I don't actually say that.
"Gotcha." Callie gives me a quick once-over. "You're okay, right?"
Of course I'm okay. Why wouldn't I be – oh, she's kind of glancing in the general direction of the back of me. I almost forgot that I fell.
"I'm fine," I assure her. "Just a bruise."
Well. A bruise … and whiplash from how tangled up my life is. But I don't mention that part.
"Good." She looks like she's about to say something, then stops and starts again. "Sorry again," she says, and the door closes behind her before I can respond.
And then, before I can react, the bathroom door pops open.
"Is she gone?" Derek asks, sotto voce.
I forgot I was living in an episode of Three's Company.
"She's gone, but Mr. Roper could be back any minute."
He raises an eyebrow. "Careful – your age is showing."
"It's your age too," I remind him grumpily. "Did you have to go – hide in the bathroom all – squirrely or whatever?"
"I wasn't all squirrely or whatever," he says, sounding affronted. "I wasn't dressed. Torres is a resident. It's not appropriate."
"It's not – " I stop talking, taking it in. "Oh. Okay. I'm sorry, just to be clear, it's 'not appropriate' to be in your boxers in front of a resident but it's just fine to get naked with an intern?"
"I forgot you're the arbiter of when it's okay to get naked," Derek says. "Remind me the part about the appropriateness of sleeping with your husband's best friend?"
"I don't need to," I point out sourly, "my husband brings it up enough for both of us."
Ex-husband.
Fuck.
Any chance he didn't notice that?
He blinks, and I take advantage.
"Callie came over for eye makeup remover," I tell him, "so if you don't mind – " I gesture toward the bathroom and he steps obligingly out of the way.
He's still standing outside the doorway, though, once I've retrieved the little bottle.
"I'm going to bring this to her now. Feel free to keep talking about what a cheater I am, but I won't hear you so don't waste your best material."
It's so un-Derek like to let me get in two shots in a row – I'd actually worry about him, but I know that's futile so I close the door behind me instead and exhale once I'm in the hallway.
And now I'm back at Mark's room, where Callie is, and it's like we're playing some weird game of sex hot potato. Or … musical sex chairs. Is there a way to make it so when the music stops, neither of us is in Mark's bed?
(Yeah, based on tonight, I guess not.)
There's something about bringing toiletries to what's basically Mark's bed – he pays for a whole room, but we all know he only uses the bed … and the shower, but whatever – that makes me feel like I'm somehow … pimping Callie out.
Like in addition to being Satan, I'm also the Seattle Madam. That should win me some more friends.
I hear the doorknob turn on the fourth knock, it opens a foot or so and – because of course the universe hasn't finished playing Make Addison Feel as Awkward as Possible – Mark sticks his head out. I can only see the top half of him, but it's safe to assume he's naked.
(Safe in the sense of accurate, not safe in the sense of bad-decision-proof, to be clear.)
"Look who's here!" He grins at me. "Torres got you to change your mind, huh?"
He looks like he's not quite sure whether that would be a good thing – because Mark, and threesome, and all of that – or a bad thing, because it would mean that someone else was better at getting me into bed than he is.
You can just call it Sloan's Dilemma.
"Not quite." I hold up the little glass container of eye makeup remover.
"You're drinking from smaller bottles these days," Mark says, looking amused.
"Very funny." I tap my foot. I hold out the bottle and he doesn't take it. "Mark. Can you please just give this – "
And then I see two hands shoving past Mark. "Sorry!" Callie's a little breathless, the hair around her face damp like she's been trying to wash up and she looks grateful to see what's in my hand. "Thank you so much. I got back here and I … ."
Her voice trails off. I'm just hoping the end of the sentence is … forgot I didn't get the eye makeup remover and not needed a quick orgasm to wash away the image of your hotel room.
" … yeah," I say, finishing the sentence for her, not particularly articulately, but it works. We do a fast exchange – the cleanser, not the guy.
She gives me a rueful look and I'm about to say good night when Mark speaks up again.
"Torres, you're not going to invite her in?" he prods from a few feet back. He sounds like all this is very entertaining. "Where are your manners?"
"Ignore him," Callie tells me with a sigh.
She doesn't add: easier said than done, even though her post-coitally tangled hair clearly demonstrates the truth of that statement.
"Okay, well. I should … ." I gesture toward the door. I should leave you two to screw in peace. I mean, I should, because it's the best use of her time in that room. I should know.
It's certainly better than thinking about what comes next.
"Thank you, Addison. Really. And I'm sorry I – burst in on you." Callie looks a little embarrassed. "Tell Shepherd I'm sorry too," she adds.
And then there's a second of dead silence where, if my life were a movie, there would be a semi-comical record scratch instead.
(If my life were a movie … well. Let's just say it wouldn't make it to basic cable, and I'm not sure who would watch it. Other than Mark, and I'm not even sure it wouldn't be just for his scenes. Especially the adult ones.)
The point is, there's a second of silence in which I can basically feel Mark's ears pricking up.
Ooh, I don't want to deal with the aftermath.
… which is basically my middle name, I know.
So I assure Callie as fast as I can that it's fine and turn to leave, the door closing on Mark's voice – all I can hear is, "wait, what do you mean, Shepherd?"
..
I forgot my key card.
I live in a hotel and I still forgot to grab it when I left the room, because muscle memory apparently doesn't extend to whatever the hell you can call that weird toiletry exchange.
Which means I'm now in the new and awkward position of having to knock on the door of my own hotel room.
I can hear Derek moving toward the door and for a crazy moment I almost put my eye up close to the peephole – like we used to in our first apartment when one of us forgot the key or needed to get inside with a bag of groceries or whatever, so the person inside the room sees just a big, freaky ball of blue. We only did it with each other, and we thought it was hilarious.
(Before you judge, please remember how young we were.)
I stay where I am this time. If he looks through the peephole he'll just see … me. In hotel slippers with no key.
I tap one slippered foot.
(Don't tell my mother I walked down the hallway in hotel-issued slippers, please. Actually, just don't talk to her at all – I tend to regret it when I avoid that advice.)
Finally, he opens the door.
"Took you long enough."
"You're welcome," Derek says, frowning.
I just close the door and lean against it.
He looks at me. "How was your errand of mercy?" he asks.
"How do you think it was?" I make a face.
"Well, you're fully clothed," Derek says mildly, "so it can't have been that exciting."
Yeah, I guess I deserve that.
As potshots go, it's not much harsher than what I was already thinking.
Derek clears his throat. "I hope Torres didn't … get the wrong idea," he says.
Chalk this up in the same column as Derek hoping he didn't overstep the night he slept here. Get the wrong idea? Gosh, why would she get the wrong idea just because my half-naked ex-husband strolled casually out of my hotel bathroom?
(See? I said ex-husband. I'm the poster child for personal growth.)
"I can't imagine why she would," I mutter sarcastically.
(Fine, not that much personal growth.)
Derek manages to look offended. "You said I could get cleaned up," he reminds me.
"I know."
"And I didn't know Torres – Callie – was going to come over for … girl supplies," he adds, still sounding defensive. "I wasn't aware you were running a home for wayward Sloan conquests."
Well, there's already one of those living here, so I might as well open the door for the rest. Or has he forgotten how depressingly empty my Seattle life is?
Probably he has. Whatever's going on with us, whatever overstepping got us here, he's never going to convince me he gets how shattered everything was after that stupid prom. Or the fact that when he smiled smugly at the mediator and gave me all of our joint possessions, all that he was doing was emphasizing that he was actually leaving me with nothing.
Nothing at all.
"It's fine, Derek," I tell him now, coolly. "Obviously, the more preferable thing would be if you'd managed not to pour wine all over yourself, but since that ship already sailed, then yes, I did say you were welcome to use the … sink or whatever." I pause, looking down at his hand.
His fist is closed again.
I could pretend I never saw what was inside it. We could stand here next to the door and keep up this medium-energy jousting – for practice, somewhere between play and real.
Well Until someone gets hurt, that is.
"Derek … I said you were welcome to wash up," I clarify, "not to pickpocket."
He looks almost amused at the term pickpocket. He looks down at his fist, the one wrapped around my stupid, jack-in-the-box rings that keep popping up where they shouldn't be.
"I thought you wanted me to take them," he says.
"Then why did you leave them?"
Pause, rinse, repeat. The conversation is as circular as the two rings he's holding.
So we're back to the other kind of hot potato. The really-nice-rings kind of hot potato, which I guess is better than the Seattle Madam kind of hot potato.
"They're yours," he says simply, like he said in the hallway after he consulted on the Rivers triplets.
"Not really, Derek." I'm starting to get a headache, not to mention the coccyx-ache from earlier. "See, you gave them to me in a certain … context." Not that he remembers. "And that context is gone. So maybe … they're actually yours."
"You left them on the counter," he says.
Okay, I know I was just complaining that this conversation is circular, but I can't help responding: "You left them on the counter."
"Fine. After I left them on the counter, you left them on the counter."
I open my mouth to retort and then suddenly realize how ridiculous this is.
Ridiculous … and sad.
I feel a little hollow, in the pit of my stomach, because it's sad.
This is sad.
And I don't say anything.
Derek doesn't say anything, either. He opens his fist, though, and we just look together at the rings in his palm.
I realize that I still don't know where his ring is.
I don't want to ask.
The thing is, I didn't see it when we lived together in Seattle – if you can call what we did living together. I haven't seen it since the night he left me and I don't want to think too closely about that at all. I asked him about it once in Seattle and he did the whole thing where he would change the subject and act like he could barely hear me and couldn't be bothered with me either. He did that a lot. I don't think I asked again.
I haven't had the time or the inclination or, hell, the sheer amount of alcohol necessary, but I think I always knew, deep down, how little he was giving to our quasi-reconciliation. At the same time, though, a part of me still wanted to see that ring one last time – and not on the hand I saw the night he left me.
I remember it. His ring, I mean. If I close my eyes I can still see a shadow of that ring – his hand pressed against the glass of the door. Just a shadow, because the glass is smoked. And I was outside. And rain, and other things, were blurring my vision.
The rings are just sitting in his palm. I remember when he proposed, the ring was in his hand. A closed fist that he opened: like that. Not in a velvet box. That's Derek for you: tactile.
I'm so tired. I don't want to think about any of this.
"I don't know what to do with them," I tell him. It's actually – true. "I didn't mean to put them on that morning, and now I don't know what to do with them."
"Okay," he says quietly.
"Okay in what way?"
"Okay as in okay," Derek says.
For a moment neither of us speaks.
"But I think you'll feel better if you do something with them," he announces. It's in that sort of annoyingly hearty tone he used to use to try to get me to do things like go hiking upstate or buy twiggy high-fiber cereals that taste like dust.
"Oh, is that what I need to do to feel better?"
He kind of puts his hand out again like he's going to give the rings to me and I take a step back. We could choreograph a line dance at this point.
"Addison …"
I notice he looks tired too. Join the club.
"You're the one holding them," I point out. "You figure out what to do with them."
"That's how this works?" he asks.
"I don't know how this works." Any remaining interest I had in pushing him on this deflates out of me like an old balloon. It's just too sad. "I don't know how any of this works."
"Yeah." Derek glances down at the rings. "Well, neither do I."
Then for a minute we're both just breathing, like those pauses we used to take when we were really getting into it – fighting, excuse me, not the other kind of getting into it. You couldn't have paid us to take breaks for the other kind, not when we were really … but that doesn't matter now.
"Just – fine, Derek. Give them to me or whatever." I don't want to look at him right now, I definitely don't want to see his eyes when he puts my rings in the palm of my hand. They're warm from his hand so the metal actually feels … alive. There's no way to avoid the aching sense memory of the day he slipped each of them onto my finger for the first time.
Right before our wedding ceremony, I switched my engagement ring from my left to my right hand, just as Emily Post and Bizzy Forbes Montgomery require, leaving my left hand bare for Derek to slip the wedding band onto its fourth finger. And then after the ceremony, the engagement ring went back to my left hand, on top of the wedding band. I remember him taking that hand in his while we stood on the receiving line, calling me Dr. Shepherd, kissing my fingers where the rings were sparkling.
Same rings I'm holding now.
It was totally different, of course.
Totally different, but still us. So in a way, still the same.
Maybe that's what makes this so hard. It's still Derek. And I still have no idea how to navigate a world where we don't, on some level, belong to each other.
I haven't lived in that world since I was twenty-two years old.
And yeah, that includes the time in New York when I was living with Mark. Just ask him.
(My advice: be sober when you do it – he's hard to resist otherwise. Just saying.)
As soon as my fist closes around the rings I turn to the dresser – the one responsible for the bruise on my side from my drunken stumbling the night I'd rather not think about – yank open a drawer and just – toss them in.
When I turn around, Derek looks taken aback.
I can't blame him. He lived with me as long as I lived with him and he's aware I'm not the kind of person who just … tosses things into drawers.
But maybe I am. Maybe that was another Addison. His Addison.
We don't belong to each other anymore, right?
"There," I say. "I did something with them."
It may have been Addison Montgomery who got the engagement ring the first time, but it was Addison Shepherd who got it the second time, put it on top of her wedding ring.
She's the one we signed away in the lawyers' office, sealed and delivered.
And yet half the hospital still calls me Dr. Shepherd – more, really. I can't blame them. Not really. I can't expect them to shake the habit of me as quickly as my husband did, can I?
(Ex-husband. Right. I know this one, even though he's currently in my hotel room. Even though he just, in twisted Shepherd-post-divorce-fashion, actually handed me my rings, except it's not will you marry me so much as can't you figure out this divorce thing already?)
I need to concentrate to make my next breath a deep one; it feels like too much.
Maybe Derek senses this, because he changes the subject.
"I don't think Torres likes me very much," he says.
Okay, then.
Of course that's noteworthy when you're Derek Shepherd. If I kept a tally of everyone in Seattle who didn't like me, I wouldn't have time to practice medicine.
I just shrug a little. What am I going to say?
Derek tilts his head. "Then again, she's sleeping with Mark – so I guess her opinion of me doesn't hold much weight."
"I slept with Mark. Does my opinion of you hold weight?" I ask it daringly. Like a challenge. But like so many of my challenges to Derek, I'm not sure I want to know the answer.
"You didn't sleep with him tonight," he points out.
True.
I make a face, I think, maybe recalling that even if it wasn't that close, it was a little closer than I would have preferred, back at the bar.
I get the sense, from Derek's expression, that he's recalling the same thing. My cheeks flush a little, remembering the way the three of us were … entangled, when Derek came up to on that sticky little patch of non-dance-floor.
"Derek. You know I didn't actually – "
"I know that," he says quickly.
"Okay. Good."
"You were doing the thing," he says. "The … girl thing," he adds as if that's why I'm curious.
"You know about the girl thing?"
"Of course I know about the girl thing. You used to do it in – "
" – medical school," I finish for him.
Something flickers in his eyes.
"It's not like I think – "
"I know. He wouldn't – "
"But still."
"Right."
Yeah, that was a whole conversation. A handful of words and very little punctuation to say, hey, Mark may not be the king of informed consent outside the OR, but I'm not saying we have to call the cops either.
Derek looks almost amused for a second.
I don't want to know that. I don't want to be able to read these minute movements, I don't want to recognize the light in his eyes. It doesn't help. It hurts.
Like admitting that even after the prom, and the papers, and the supply closet, a piece of me is still standing alone on that dance floor in a stupid half-French-braid waiting for Derek to come back.
I wish his face didn't still feel so familiar. That I could just skate over it. Like a stranger would. Like he did, before all this started.
And I'm back on that divorce thing. I've never seen a divorce, not really. Kind of like how I'd never seen a marriage before Derek and we had to figure that out together too.
I don't want to think about that. So I gesture toward the bathroom.
"Did you, uh, did you get the stains out?" I ask.
(Of his clothes, to be clear. I'm already well aware of the permanent marks we've left on each other.)
He nods. "I think so. I used the – " and he sort of moves his hand vaguely in a way I recognize well to mean stuff of yours I wouldn't know how to describe.
"You did?"
"Yes." He frowns a little. "I didn't think you'd mind."
"I don't."
Really, I don't, and the bottle's on the marble shelf next to the pretty linen laundry bag where I always leave it, in hotels, and where it was in our bathroom at home too. I don't even know what's in it, it's some – magical concoction Savvy bought for me years ago when she was traveling all over the place for work and had to keep her junior associate suits looking perfect. The label has Chinese characters on it and it smells faintly of lavender and a little acidic and it's insanely good at pre-treating stains.
I used to keep bottles everywhere – in my locker at the hospital, in the bathroom off our bedroom, in the beach house, in my makeup bag, in the spare travel bag of toiletries. I didn't even realize it came with me to Seattle until I unpacked.
Both times.
I don't need to use it that often. The day I took off for drinking, after Derek slept with Meredith, aside, I don't really spill things on my clothing. I do plenty of damage, to be clear … it's just rarely external.
"They're, uh, they're almost dry."
I nod. "You want another glass of wine?"
"And risk more stains?" He shakes his head. "I'm driving."
Right.
He looks at me.
When in doubt, Montgomery it out, so I give him my country-club smile and invite him to sit down until his clothing dries like that's a normal thing to say.
He sits down on the armchair and I sit on the edge of the bed.
All of a sudden, waiting for clothes to dry seems like a bad idea.
I'm – confused, I'm still tired. There's always been one safe area between us: medicine.
I open my mouth to direct the conversation that way, and I'm surprised at what comes out instead.
(Why should I be surprised, though? When all I've done tonight is put my foot in my mouth – taking breaks to put some alcohol in there, and a burger too, of course.)
"Alta." That's what I say, without context, so I'm also not surprised when Derek looks confused.
Even Turn-of-the-Millennium Attentive Derek had his limits; I'm not about to hold it against him. "The restaurant."
He tilts his head. "The one in Wallingford?"
"No. That's the one with the Brazilian sushi chef. Alta is the one with the – "
"Tapas," he says.
"And wine." Powerful Spanish reds, which was a major part of the appeal.
"Wine goes without saying." He pauses. "Alta," he repeats, turning the word over like he's testing it. "Okay. What about it?"
Don't say it, Addie. There's still time for some dignity.
"We were going to go," I tell him.
(Please remind me to kill myself after Derek leaves tonight, okay? Or at least tape my mouth shut before I see him again?)
"We." He pauses. "You and I we?"
Oh, so he does remember that he and I used to be a we. Good to know.
I nod. "You said we could go. I made a reservation."
"When – "
He stops talking, apparently anticipating my response.
"For the weekend after the prom," I tell him.
"Oh." He looks down for a moment.
"I made a reservation. And I told you about it. We were in the trailer and you were making coffee. You said you wanted to go – "
Shut up, Addison, for the love of god just stop talking.
I hate that I remember that moment.
I hate that I can see what he was wearing – a flannel shirt and a fishing vest and if that didn't glue my knees together you'll have some idea that the man has serious skills – and I can smell the coffee the way he makes it. Strong, the way I like it, but also a little bitter.
I hate that so many moments are emblazoned in my memory when it seems like he only has to remember what's convenient – or what he's forced to acknowledge.
"Addison."
"I mean, obviously we missed the reservation." I'm talking again, off to the races, before he can say anything else. God. "You know, things just kept – happening, even after … that. Plans and … things."
Nice, Addie, very articulate.
He seems to get it somehow, based on the way he's sort of hanging his head, looking down at his hands.
I'm expecting him to come back with a dig, a what about the plans we had for the weekend after you screwed my best friend?
(We didn't have any, by the way. We'd stopped making weekend plans by then and we'd also stopped commenting on it or maybe even noticing it, which is probably worse.)
He doesn't say anything at all and I'm still talking in spite of myself.
"Like – Kathleen's birthday is next week," I offer an example.
He looks up. "It is?"
I shake my head. "Of course it is. You forgot it, didn't you."
He doesn't respond.
"And Tessie's is the week after that, and then – "
"All right, all right," he interrupts, and then frowns. "You're doing the thing," he says.
"The girl thing?"
"No." He does his thing then, that half-laugh. "The … wife thing. The one where you nag me."
"I'm your ex-wife."
"And yet – you're still nagging me."
"I'm not nagging."
"Fine, you're … judging me. There are a lot of birthdays to remember in my family, Addison."
"Oh, I'm aware. I'm the one who was in charge of remembering them. Which reminds me … you should really start keeping your own calendar, Derek."
"I have a calendar," he says defensively.
"You need a calendar with other people's information in it too," I spell out as clearly as I can. "That or marry someone else who's willing to take on the hordes."
There's a moment where we both sort of pause and smile and remember the first time someone referred to the whole crazy Shepherd clan as the hordes in front of me – without enunciating with the type of clarity I was used to – and I heard it as whores and Derek and I spent the whole train ride back to the city laughing about it. One of us just had to say "the h-" and we'd start again.
Everyone on the train must have hated us.
We were young and in love and everything was funny and everything revolved around us. We were that besotted couple who annoyed everyone else … if you can believe it.
"I feel old," I tell him.
"Don't say that," he says even though he's the one who told me before that I was showing my age.
"Why not?"
"Because we're the same age," Derek says, "and I don't want to feel old."
"Oh, is that why were you were dating a child?"
"… don't say that either."
"Derek – "
"Come on, Addison, we were getting along so well," he says, in exactly the same plaintive tone he used to use to say those same words when we were married and he wanted me to stop nagging him.
(Yeah, back to nagging. That was what he would call it; it was a fair term sometimes but other times, particularly toward the end … nagging was pretty much anything I said other than offering him a drink.)
God, divorce is weird.
We shouldn't be allowed to use the same words we did when we were married. Maybe divorcing couples should be required to learn a whole new language. Maybe Come on, Addison, we were getting along so well would sound different in Portuguese.
Different enough that it wouldn't hurt at all.
Because right now, I hurt. And not because of the bruise I still haven't iced.
"We can go there," he says abruptly, interrupting my train of thought.
"Go where?"
"To that – place." He's looking down at his hands again. "The, uh, the restaurant. Sometime. If you want."
He glances up.
"Alta," I repeat doubtfully. "That place?"
"Yes. That place." I must still look doubtful because he keeps talking. "As friends," he adds with some haste, and I try not to be insulted that he thinks he has to, I hate to use the term, friend zone his wife of eleven years.
But considering I threw myself at him the last time he was in this hotel room, I guess I don't get the high horse.
"As friends," I repeat coolly.
"Friends eat." He repeats my words from earlier now.
" … burgers," I remind him, since he hasn't finished the sentence. "Friends eat burgers."
"Friends can't branch out?" he asks.
Truthfully … he looks about as happy with his own mouth as I've been feeling all evening about mine. I guess we were both counting on a little more censorship.
He seems to be waiting for me to respond.
Great.
I should say no, object because he's asking me out of pity.
Because he just ate a room service burger – okay, a pretty decent room service burger, which is understandable at these prices – in the depressing hotel room where I've been living since a rogue pair of black panties kicked me out of the closest thing to a home I had in Seattle.
In other words, he feels sorry for me.
I'd feel sorry for me too.
The obvious answer: say no.
Come on, Addie. Just say no.
"Yeah, okay," says my traitorous mouth. I'm not even surprised at this point.
Derek doesn't seem surprised either. He nods shortly, his patented okay so we're done here signal, and stands up.
I guess his clothes are dry.
..
When he emerges from the bathroom he's fully dressed again.
The stains are gone. That stuff really is incredible.
Half of me is a little disappointed, though. One more time Derek is leaving without scars. I'm standing there with tonight's bruise really starting to throb.
I'm playing with my bracelet to keep my hands busy, to keep from fussing with his shirt – he got the stain out but dabbed too aggressively, and there's a crease starting. But that's not my job anymore.
I just stand there, between Derek and the door, making meaningless conversation about the Rivers triplets.
Okay, fine. I'm dawdling because I don't really want him to leave.
"You, uh, you don't have to go."
It sounds so obvious that I'm embarrassed. He looks at me for a moment.
"Do you … need something?" he asks.
His tone is neutral, maybe even friendly.
But need, he says.
Need, not want. Which seems to suggest he'll willing to be here if I need him – let's say, to keep me from downing another bottle of gin – and god, I'm not saying that's nothing, or that I'm anything but grateful – but not if I want him.
That's my take, anyway.
"No, of course not. I just meant if you're too tired or whatever." I smile at him as if my excuse made any sense at all. "Just, you know, drive carefully."
"I always drive carefully."
He does. I can't deny it. Assuming we're not counting his brief foray into motorcycles.
We kind of switch places then, in a semicircle around each other, and then he pauses at the door … I guess to say goodnight. God, it's weird saying goodnight to someone you lived with for as long as we lived together. Not the kind of goodnights we used to say, the we-still-share-a-bed kind, but this kind.
Where we're both at the door, but only one of us will be left behind when it closes.
Meanwhile, I'm sort of playing with the molding around the door frame, running a finger around the whorls. Sometimes I just … I need something to do with my hands when Derek's around. Keep them busy.
We both say it: good night.
He steps over the threshold but then seems to remember something, turning around.
"Thank you for dinner," he says.
Oh yeah, I charged it to the room.
"You're welcome." I pause. "Is that why you came up? For a free burger?"
I'm teasing. At least I think I am.
"No," he says. "That's not why I came up."
He just looks at me and I want to grab his shirt and pull him back over the threshold. I want to take back everything I did to hurt him. I want him to stay.
But I need him to want to stay. And that ferry sailed a while back; I have the signed papers to prove it.
"Okay, good," that's all I say, my voice high and unfamiliar in my ears. At least it doesn't shake. Unconsciously, my hand finds its way to the sore spot where I fell – as if that's where the pain is coming from right now – and then his eyes flicker down to follow it.
"Don't forget to ice that," he says.
There's the briefest of moments, a flash, where I think he's remembering. The ice.
Sixteen years of this. If we were together it would be … nice. This thing. The fact that basically every word links back to something in our shared past. Like our own private language. Like a square on a quilt.
Divorce, though. Now any word can be a minefield and I'm always stepping wrong.
"I won't forget," I say and I'm starting to close the door when I hear his voice.
"Ginny," he says abruptly. "Ginny Halloran."
Now it's my turn to be confused. I pull the door the rest of the way open.
"What?"
"That was her name – the girl Mark kissed on the jungle gym in the second grade," Derek explains, and then I remember his telling me Mark's 'My First Cheating' story from their shared childhood earlier tonight, except he couldn't recall the name of the pint-sized Other Woman. "Ginny Halloran," he repeats now, turning her name over like a memory. "Her family owned the candy store in town and she'd give you free lollipops if she liked you. Red ones." He pauses.
"I guess Mark was being strategic that day," he says.
Strategic. I consider this.
Free red lollipops are a pretty good reason to cheat, I guess, but what did Mark get from me, then? What was his strategy there?
Derek looks at me for a moment. "The … other night," he begins quietly, "the other time I was here," and he stops.
This is how you start stories when you're married: a turn of phrase, a prompt, and then the other one picks it up and keeps going, or encourages the rest of the story.
I make myself wait a second before I respond, like I'm trying to summon the memory. Like the night he slept here isn't painfully forefront in my mind.
"I remember," I say, and nod, waiting for him to go on.
"You were drunk," he says. "Very drunk."
"Yeah … I remember that too."
We exchange a rueful glance and I can pretend for a moment he's referring to any number of episodes during our relationship, from letting off a little too much steam post-exams to letting loose on rare days off. Like we both don't know that the night in this hotel room was different.
He kind of eases his body back a little bit and his gaze flickers just the smallest amount but I can't help reading him like a blinking neon sign and I know he's looking toward Mark's hotel room.
And I know he's thinking about Joe's.
When he looks back at me he seems … troubled, and I have to fight sixteen years of urges to take the step that divides us and put my hand on his cheek. What's wrong?
How long does it take until that instinct to make it better goes away? I want to get in a dig here, I really do, that Derek seems to have overcome his pretty fast, the way he shredded me to bits in that supply closet the day I walked out of Hannah Fowler's room. But then Derek also showed up here, the night I polished off more Bombay Sapphire than anyone really should. So maybe he's not above his instincts, either.
He's looking down at his hands now.
"Derek?" I just say his name when he still doesn't talk.
Finally, he raises his eyes to look at me. "Is that how it was?" he asks.
I shake my head, trying to understand. There's marital shorthand and then there's just variations of the verb to be with no detail, so I'm not following.
He clears his throat a little. "Is that how drunk you were," he asks, "in New York?"
Oh. I get it now.
He wants to rewrite history, or at least revise it to make it less incriminating – god, I know what that's like. I see how he wants to see it: If I was drunk and Mark took control, better yet if I was incoherent and Mark took advantage … that's easier to stomach than just …
Being sober, and throwing my life away.
(I mean, I'm not saying I was sober. That last year in New York I don't think there was a single night that went by without sufficient wine to make sure I stayed numb.)
But I wasn't drunk. Not that kind of drunk. Not excuses-your-behavior drunk.
Not the kind he's asking about.
I don't know if he's been wondering this since the night he slept here or if something about tonight at Joe's made him think of it. Seeing Mark in action with Callie, showing up after I tried to check on Callie and ended up half sucked back in again.
He's still looking at me, and my chest constricts because he's actually – he's offering me a Get Out of Jail Free card.
Okay, not free, because my marriage is still over and I'm still stuck in a hotel room three thousand miles from civilization, but – parole, at least. Work release. Something that would ease his disgust for what I did with Mark that night.
God, you have no idea how much I want to say yes.
To tell him that's exactly what went down in New York, the night he caught me with Mark. I was off-my-feet drunk, incapable of decent decision-making, and Mark took advantage of my vulnerable state to check another box … so to speak.
Just the idea of it is enough to make my heart pound; I feel almost giddy with a moment of hope because if I tell him that, maybe the scales of this judgmental Derek, the new Derek, will fall away. He'll be concerned like he was the night he stayed over in this hotel room. He'll be gentle. And I don't want to admit to anyone, much less myself, how much I want that.
And all I have to do to get there is tell him yes. Just one word: yes, Derek, you can actually forgive me, because that's how drunk I was in New York.
But it's a lie.
And as much as Derek tore me apart for lying to him about my relationship with Mark, as much as he probably thinks I am a liar, that lying's easy for me, when I look at his eyes now it's just not even a possibility.
"No."
It comes out as a whisper; damn it.
"No," I say again, a little louder. "It wasn't like that."
He nods, just barely, not looking at me anymore.
"Derek … I'm sorry."
"It's fine," he says calmly. "I was just wondering," he adds, like what he asked me was whether I thought it would rain tomorrow.
(The answer is yes. It's going to rain tomorrow and pretty much all the freaking time.)
His voice is quiet; he's not yelling or using that awful cold tone that cuts right through me.
So why does it feel like a knife anyway?
"It's late," he says. He nods a little toward me, adding, "don't forget the ice."
I blink and wait for ice to bring up memories for him too, to see a light in his eyes that – even if he hates me now – remembers that we used to be young and in love.
No. It doesn't happen.
His eyes are just regular.
So I thank him, stretching my face into something neutral and polite when all I want to do is grab him and shout loud enough to cut through all the garbage that's still between us – and then the door closes behind him.
..
I must have stared at the door for five straight minutes after it closed behind him.
I'm still standing here now. Because I'm half-expecting it to buzz again.
But it doesn't.
I'm frozen but I remember ice so I walk through water to the phone to call the front desk.
Of course, Dr. Montgomery, I'll get that up to you as soon as possible – and can I bring you anything else?
I wonder what the nice, eager concierge would say if I requested some cyanide. Or a noose. Or a false identity and a ticket somewhere tropical.
(Large hat included, of course. I have enough problems already without ruining my skin too.)
"No, thank you," I tell him politely. "I don't need anything else."
Biggest lie ever. But it's not like what I need is something the concierge can get me, anyway. What I need isn't something you can order over the phone.
… well, except a drink. But I can do that myself; I have plenty of bottles here.
I grab one, and a corkscrew. And a glass. So civilized, so I don't have a problem. Right?
What was that Mark said? I know you and Derek are competing for who's the most functional alcoholic.
I've been losing to Derek for longer than I care to remember, that's what I'm thinking about when I pour the first glass.
That and – at least I'm not drinking out of the bottle. I'm drinking out of a lovely crystal wineglass. Faster than a lady should, sure, but who's here to see me?
No one.
It's okay. Okay? Don't think I'm about to finish the bottle and go throw myself at Mark again. Even I'm not going to sink that low. And I'm doing this responsibly … kind of.
As in I'm already calculating my limitations, knowing what time I have to be up for work, and I make myself promise to stop at two.
Myself.
Because I'm alone.
On a white bed, surrounded by white walls, in a hotel full of rooms that look exactly like this one. Pan out the shot and I would look so small, a dot of a human in a sea of barely-lit windows. I would disappear.
The door buzzing interrupts my self-pity – my heart flutters for just a second before I remember it's the hotel. They've actually brought one of those pretty, old-fashioned bags imprinted with a pattern of blues and greys, and a copper bucket of replacement ice, all on a little linen-draped wheeling table with a stout china vase of fresh flowers.
Such a civilized setup for an injury that would best be called falling on my ass on a filthy bar floor, but I'll take it.
I move the ice bag from hand to hand for a minute.
As for what happens next – do me a favor and just ... look away, okay? It's for your own good. You might not want to see this.
And I'm not even drunk so I can't use that an excuse.
But fine, here's what I do: I check to make sure the door is bolted and chained and then I open the drawer of my dresser, and sift around a bunch of folded knit things – the drawer is a casual one; my actions are anything but – until my hand closes around my rings.
Don't worry – I don't put them on.
I do sit there on the side of the bed holding the rings in my hand, feeling the shape of them, using my other hand to prop the ice to numb the ache in my lower back.
Sometimes I wish I could numb the rest of me that way too.
That's not healthy. I get that.
I know. It's just that some nights it feels like that's the only way to make it through.
Tonight is one of those nights.
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you'll review and let me know what you think. And thank you Shonda, not just for creating my favorite love triangle ever, ever, ever, but for the heartbreaking lines I paraphrased to end this chapter. I have a lot of works in progress right now, but it's Christmas. We love posting fics on Christmas. Hopefully, we love reviewing them too, because I love hearing from you.
