Still Healing
"What are you doing?" Lena shouts at her girlfriend as she loads their plates from breakfast into the dishwasher. She had left for half an hour to pick up some groceries and Stef had already managed to disobey her doctor's orders.
"Am I loading the dishwasher wrong again?" Stef jokes, thinking back to one of their very first "fights" as a couple that lives together. Apparently, there is an incorrect way to load a dishwasher after all.
"You aren't supposed to be up or bending!" Lena declares, taking dishes from Stef's hands.
"It's been three weeks, Lena. I can help out." Stef argues.
"You can help out by sitting on the couch and looking pretty." Lena rebuttals.
"I have been sitting on that couch for three weeks. I am starting to go insane." The blonde woman rolls her eyes exasperatedly. "Thank god I'm going back to work on Monday."
"What?" Lena asks. "When was this decided?" There's a certain venom in her tone that Stef has never heard before.
"My doctor said last week that I could go back if I was feeling up to it." Stef defends herself.
"You were shot, Stef! It hasn't even been a month! And you want to go back to work already!" Lena yells, not understanding why Stef can't comprehend the craziness of this situation.
"I'm going stir crazy in this apartment, Lena. And it's not like we can afford for me to be off work for much longer." Stef responds, her voice increasing in volume as well.
"You didn't even discuss it with me. You just decided on your own. Like we aren't even in a relationship. Like you don't have anyone else to consider when making decisions like this." Lena fumes, her chest a jumble of anger and disappointment and insignificance.
"It's my job, Lena." Stef counters, not sure why Lena is blowing all of this so far out of proportion.
"I'm sorry if I thought that being in a relationship together meant that we would consider each other's feelings when making big decisions." Lena argues, turning away from Stef and grabbing her purse.
"Where are you going?" Stef asks incredulously, watching Lena strut towards the front door of their apartment.
"I thought we weren't telling each other the important stuff any more?" Lena replies rhetorically before strutting out of the apartment, letting the door slam behind her.
Lena drives around in her dark gray Subaru Legacy, the San Diego sky turning from a bright blue to a hazy purple as the sun begins its descent for the evening, her mind a jumble of thoughts and emotions. Stef could be so headstrong sometimes. Why didn't she understand that the decisions she made didn't just affect her anymore? They had been together for a year now. They lived together. For all intents and purposes, they had merged two lives into one.
After driving around aimlessly, Lena finds herself pulling her car into a parking space in front of her favorite patch of beach in all of southern California. Her father used to take her down here to Windansea Beach for a weekend getaway when she was a little girl. That was when she fell in love with the San Diego area; the salty water lapping at her toes buried in the sand, the sound of seagulls calling to one another in the air above, the hot summer sun against her skin.
Now, with her toes buried in the soft sand, all Lena could feel was a sickening pressure around her heart. The sun was kissing the horizon, winking between fluffy purple clouds. While the feeling in Lena's chest was nothing compared to what she felt watching Stef lay unconscious in the hospital, it still made her sick to her stomach. She and Stef had never had an argument like tonight's before. Sure, they had little spats; like the best way to load the dishwasher or whether they should get pizza or Chinese on a Friday night. But Stef making such a huge decision without even consulting her - how could she overlook something like that?
Stef was in a frenzy. She had no idea where Lena had gone. Driving around in her black SUV, Stef was driving around in circles looking for Lena. Lena had never walked out of their apartment like that. Never. Stef hadn't thought that going back to work next week would upset her so much. Right now, all Stef wanted to do was find her, talk to her, get her to come home. But she had no idea where the stubborn, curly haired woman would have possibly gone.
"Kelly," Stef says into her cell phone. "It's Stef. Have you heard from Lena at all today?"
"No, I haven't." Kelly's reply comes through the phone. "Is everything okay?"
"We had a big fight." Stef tells her friend. "She stormed out of the apartment. She left her cellphone behind. And I don't-I don't know where she is."
"Well, sometimes she goes to Windansea Beach to think." Kelly informs her. "She used to do that all the time back when we were dating."
"Do you think she'd go there at this time of night?" Stef questions, wondering how safe that really was.
"It's where she feels calmest when things get crazy around her." Kelly tells her, in her wise and all-knowing kind of way. Well, things right now certainly qualified as crazy.
"Thank you," Stef says, hanging up the phone and turning around towards the direction of Windansea Beach.
Relief floods over the blonde haired woman as she pulls her black SUV up next to Lena's dark gray Subaru Legacy. Barely stopping to turn the engine of the car off, Stef jumps from behind the steering wheel and takes off at a run down the sandy beach. A quarter of a mile down the beach, sitting just where the tide was brushing gently against her sand covered toes, is Lena.
"Lena!" Stef calls, her breath sawing in and out, her side screaming in agony at the sudden moment after almost a month of being on sick leave.
"Stef, what are you doing here?" Stef can hear the anger still in the curly haired woman's voice as she stands up.
"I-I'm sorry," Stef gasps, trying to catch her breath. "I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about going back to work. I should have. I should have talked to you because. . . because we're a team - you and I. I'm sorry. I love you."
"I love you, too." Lena replies softly, slowly absorbing the words Stef just said. Stef takes two big steps, closing the gap between them.
"You know, in the hospital, I could hear everything you said to me." Stef tells Lena, taking her girlfriend's hands in hers. "I heard you say that you wanted to get married and grow old. And I didn't realize, until tonight, how desperately I wanted that too. I love you, Lena. I'm sorry that I let you walk out today. I shouldn't have. It has taken me twenty-six years to finally learn to accept who I am; and I never would have been able to do that without you - not fully. You complete me. The love I feel for you consumes my entire being." Still holding Lena's hand in hers, Stef drops to one knee in the damp sand. "Lena Elizabeth Adams, will you marry me?"
A/N: *GASP* Okay, now I need suggestions for honeymoon destinations for future chapters. ;)
