Book Three, Part Twenty: Old Feelings

Meredith's Point of View

"Ugh, quiet board." I muttered to myself as I looked at the surgical board.

"I know."

I looked to my right and saw Bailey looking disgruntled.

"That's a bad sign." I said quietly.

"I know that, don't you think I know that?" Bailey said.

Before I could respond, Derek walked up. I avoided looking at him.

"That's a quiet board." He said.

Bailey groaned.

Derek leaned closer to me, his breath floating near my ear.

"Why is she in a bad mood?" He asked.

"Quiet board." I said.

"Right, I hear it's a quiet board." He said.

"I can hear you two talking about me." Bailey scowled.

"We're just saying…" Derek said.

"A quiet board means trouble! A quiet board is death! A quiet board bodes bad news!" She turned around to face us. "And stop looking at me like that!"

She stalked off. Well okay then…

"Dr. Shepherd." I nodded and then turned to follow her lead.

"Dr. Grey." His tone suggested he had more to say.

I turned back to face him and plastered a smile on my face, trying not to sniff him. God, that man smelled like heaven.

"We have known each other for several years."

"Yes."

"We have now worked in the same hospital for a while now."

Where the hell was this leading?

"Yes."

"We share a daughter. So, I was wondering if we could work together today." He said.

"On what?" I asked, indicating the very sparse board.

"Well, I have this idea for a clinical trial, this time for Alzheimer's. I wanted you to take a look at it." He stated.

Oh. I looked at the board again and sighed.

"Okay."

"Yeah?"

I shrugged.

"Thanks." He smiled at me, a smile so beautiful it made my chest hurt.

"It's…not a problem."

"You sure?" He asked. "Cause if it is too much and you…"

"Derek! I said I would look at it. Now, do you want me to or not?" I asked.

"Yes, I want you." He smiled and then he frowned. "To. Look at the proposal." He shook his head and then smiled sheepishly.

I looked at him expectantly.

"Oh! This way." He said, leading the way to his office. Once there, he sat down behind his desk and powered up his laptop. I sat down in one of the two chairs put out for consults. While he was occupied, I took a covert look around. Beige walls, dark oak furniture, beige carpet, hospital type art on the wall. The only personal thing in this room was Mia's school picture and another two frames that help pictures I couldn't see. I peered around one and saw a huge family portrait of his mom and sisters and their families. The other one I grabbed and when I looked at it, I froze.

It was a picture of the two of us. It had been the night of Derek's eighteenth birthday, two months before he left. He was sitting down, and I was leaning over the back of the chair he was sitting in, my arms wrapped around him. We were both smiling like fools, the look of love deeply ingrained in our eyes.

"We were happy."

I looked up at him and blinked away my tears.

"Yeah, we were, weren't we?" I said, sniffling.

"I'm sorry. I am so sorry Mer." He said.

"I know you are." I said, meeting his anguished eyes. "I was so hurt at first. It destroyed me and then I let the anger take over. I have been angry for so long that I am having trouble turning it off. But I am going to try. Because when it comes down to it, it wasn't your fault. Not really. I mean you could have handled it better, but the end result would have been the same. You would have left me."

"Yeah, she was my mom. They were my sisters, my responsibility."

"Dad wouldn't have let me go with you." I stated.

"No. Maybe if we had known about Mia, he would've…I don't know." He sighed.

"Maybe this happened for a reason." I said.

"Yeah, maybe."

"And look, you are married and have a great job. Life didn't work out too bad for you, did it?" I asked.

"About that. Addison and I are divorcing." He said.

"What? Why?" I demanded to know. I was counting on the wife to keep him at arm's length.

"We haven't been happy for a while. She cheated on me last year with a colleague. We tried to work it out, but I don't love her."

"Did you ever?" I asked, curious.

"I thought I did, but not in the way a husband should love a wife. Not like I loved you for instance."

I looked down at my hands.

"Anyway, we are filing next week." He concluded and then blew out a breath. "Okay what I have here is a grant proposal for the trial…"

"I broke up with Mark." I blurted out.

"And I think we have a good chan…I'm sorry, what?" He asked.

I looked back at him.

"Mark and I, we broke up."

"When?"

"A few days ago. It's been coming for a while. He has feelings for someone else."

"He cheated on you?!" Derek stood up; his eyes angry.

"No! He didn't. Mark wouldn't do that to me, but I did suspect he had strong feelings for my stepsister, and it wasn't fair to him to have his life on hold any longer because of me, so I let him go."

'Lexie?" He asked.

"Yeah." I said.

"Wow." He said, sitting back down.

"I know."

Then all of a sudden, we were laughing. God it felt so good to laugh. And with him! It felt like I was sixteen all over again.

"God, I needed that." He admitted. "I haven't laughed like that since…do you remember that day it rained really hard?"

"It was July." I remembered.

"Yeah, and we were late to school so I had to park on the grass."

"And when we got out of school, we got into the car and decided to back out to go get Amber and Mel so they wouldn't get soaked."

"And I was stuck and I tried gunning it, and my tire spun." He said.

"And covered Amber and Mel in mud." I finished.

We laughed again.

"They looked so funny covered in slimy brown mud."

"They didn't think so." I said, remembering the screaming we got from not only them, but his mom for having to pay to have his seats cleaned. If she only knew what else had been on those seats. So glad she didn't own a black light.

"We had some good times, didn't we?' He asked.

"The best of my life." I said sincerely.

"Mer, I was wondering…"

Our beepers went off simultaneously.

I cursed under my breath.

911. Pit.

"Looks like an all hands-on deck." Derek said.

"Yeah, looks like." I said, following him out of his office.

All I could think about was the quiet board and the weird feeling in the pit of my stomach.