Addison stared at her reflection in the mirror. The hot shower had turned her skin red. She stood under the hot steam till she felt numb. She wrapped herself in the white bathrobe. Her hair was dripping wet but she decided to let them dry naturally. She poured herself another glass of champagne, took a long sip, picked the bottle and stepped out of the bathroom. She stopped in her tracks when her eyes landed on Derek. He was sitting on the chair, waiting for her.
"All your stuff is in your bags, they are in the cupboard. I could have sent your stuff to the reception. You didn't have to come back here." She informed him plainly and went to sit on the bed.
He stood up and walked behind her. "I never left. I was in the parking lot this whole time." He told her, sitting besides her.
Addison shook her head, staring at an incomprehensible painting on the wall in front. "You did leave. You left me, the moment you stepped out of this room. I warned you not to, but you still left. Our marriage is over."
"Addison you know I don't respond well to ultimatums. You dropped a nuclear bomb on me. How did you expect me to react?" He asked in a raised voice.
"You could have reacted in a thousand different ways, except walking away." She replied calmly and proceeded to take a sip of champagne. "Yesterday morning, right over there, you told me your love for me is bigger than any mistake and today your first instinct was to walk away…"
"I was furious. Try to imagine yourself in my position. What would you have done if you found out I had an affair, if I was in love with someone else, if I got someone else pregnant."
Addison gave out a bitter laugh and stood up. "Are you really asking me this question? I don't need to imagine Derek. I did know that you were having an affair and still I came to Seattle. You refused to end that relationship but I still moved here. You told me you fell in love with her and I waited for your feelings to pass. Both of us were sleeping with other people in those two months. Statistically, there were equal chances of you impregnating her."
Addison offered him her champagne glass. His horrified face made it clear that he needed it. Derek accepted it mutely and finished the remaining drink in one go.
"I accept that I started this trainwreck by sleeping with him. But after that, we both made mistakes. But no matter whose mistake it was I got punished everytime. You continued riding on your high horse while I got hurt repeatedly. I am done now. You can't hurt me anymore." Her tone was decisive.
She went to the wardrobe to get her clothes. She didn't feel comfortable sitting in a robe while they dissolved their marriage.
When Addison emerged from the bathroom, impeccably dressed, hair tied in a tight bun, Derek was still sitting on the same spot, staring at the carpet.
Addison occupied the chair across the bed and sat there silently with her legs crossed at the ankle.
"At least I was honest with you." Derek argued after a while. "Everything about my affair with Meredith was out there in the open."
"It's ironic, you know. I lied to save our marriage, you told the truth to destroy it. You were brutally honest because you wanted to hurt me."
"That's not true. I didn't want to intentionally hurt you. It's just that, i didn't-"
"You didn't care, how the truth would make me feel. You were indifferent." Addison supplied him the right words.
Derek was taken aback by her demeanor. He wondered if Bizzy had captured Addison's body.
"I was indifferent. But that does not justify your lying. Please don't pretend that you did it to save our marriage. If you wanted to save our marriage, you shouldn't have stayed with Mark."
"I know. I wish I hadn't. I am sorry for sleeping with him and I am sorry for staying with him. But there was no way I could have told you about our affair any sooner. Tell me honestly Derek, if you had known the whole story, would you have taken me back?"
Derek shook his head slowly.
"You would have signed the divorce papers. I would have gone back to New York and continued on my self-destructive path. You might have been happy with Meredith. But we definitely wouldn't have been together. Do you really think I should have chosen that option?"
Derek looked torned. Addison's reasoning was logical but still he couldn't accept that her decision to lie was right. He wanted to reprimand her for having an affair but he couldn't. He realized it would be hypocritical to judge her when he himself was sleeping with someone else.
"I wish both of us had made better choices." He admitted weakly. "I wish I hadn't disappeared like that. I wish you didn't have any relationship with Mark. I wish I didn't play with Meredith's feelings. I just wish we didn't create such a huge mess of our and others lives."
"Yeah I wish that too." Addison whisphered sadly.
They sat in silence, under the burden of their mistakes.
"I want to know the whole story. I want to know everything." Derek spoke after a while.
"Ask me whatever you want."
"When did it all begin?"
"I told you. When you caught us, that was the first time. Believe it or not, technically I never lied to you. I withheld a lot of information, but I never lied. Until that night, I or Mark, never crossed any line."
Derek nodded, accepting her explanation. Addison had confirmed what he already knew in his heart.
"What happened after that night, after I left?"
"I spent the next two days on the floor, alternating between sobbing and calling you. Mark called the next morning. I told him not to call me again ever. After two days, I started calling our friends and family to ask if they had heard from you. No one had. I had to break the news of my adultery to them. Understandably, none of them were sympathetic. No one wanted to talk to me after knowing what I had done. Even Savvy didn't speak to me for a month. Mark continued calling and enquiring but I never answered. I resumed work on Monday. By then the news had spread in the whole hospital. People stared and gossiped behind my back. But no one said anything to me directly, rather everyone avoided talking to me except for work." She narrated the key highlights of that time plainly, as if she wasn't a part of that situation.
Derek gave her a pointed look. It was clear, he wanted to know what she went through and she wanted to avoid being vulnerable.
"Can we please be honest hear? I want to know how you felt?"
Addison shrugged. "I was worried sick about you. I had no one to talk to. Mark wanted to help but I didn't want to do anything with him. I was scared and completely alone."
"Few days later, our credit card statements arrived in the mail. I saw hotel, flight, gas, grocery charges on your credit card. Those credit card entries assured me that you were safe. I started stalking you through your credit card. I knew your internet banking password. I daily checked your credit card entries and tried to figure out your location but I couldn't. I also called the bank to enquire about the merchants, but they didn't divulge any information."
"I know. I got a call from the bank, to inform me about your enquiry. I changed my password, security questions and correspondence address after that call."
"I smashed my laptop that day. I was having a coffee in the doctor's lounge and entered your bank details as usual. It didn't accept the password. My only link with you was lost. My laptop had to bear the brunt. Mark watched me, from the door. He had stopped harassing me, but he was always around the corner, watching me from a distance.
That same day, Walker barged in my patient's room and yelled at me for screwing Mark and making you leave. She cursed me for your departure and ruining her career. It all happened in front of a patient and her newly born baby. They filed a complaint for emotional trauma. The Chief transferred the patient to Amanda and advised me to go home. I couldn't go home. I rarely did. I was spending most of my nights in on-call rooms. The brownstone didn't feel like home without you. So that day when I was forced to leave, I went to our bar.
Mark came and sat beside me when I was on my fifth or six drink. He didn't say anything. Just gave me a light pat on the back and a sad smile. I lost all my resolve and started crying. He was the only person who understood what I was going through. He held me close and let me cry. I told him everything that happened since you left and he listened. He offered to drive me home, but I didn't want to go there. So he took me to his place. He was a perfect gentleman. He made me tea. He offered me his bed and he slept on the couch.
He told me that he loved me and wanted a relationship. But he left the decision to me. I couldn't think of being with anyone but you. So he promised to be there as my best friend.
He literally nursed me. I was a mess. I either worked or sat in front of TV stuffing junk food and liquor. I had food crumbs in my head and french fries in my bra. He took care of me. Gave me a shoulder to cry. Bought me hair color and helped me reverse the terrible color choice I had made."
"What did you do?" Derek asked curiously.
"I had dyed my hair blonde." Addison admitted sheepishly.
"Seriously? How did it look?"
"Not good. If people weren't staring at me already, they definitely started when I turned blonde."
"I can't imagine you as blonde." Derek commented casually but then grew serious when he realized Mark had trump him in that aspect too. Mark had seen her with blonde hair but he hadn't.
"That was a mistake. And so was staying with Mark. Even though we were living together just as roommates, I knew you wouldn't approve of our arrangement. But I couldn't think straight. I didn't want to be alone. I needed a friend and Mark was the only one willing to be my friend."
Derek raised an eyebrow "Friend? After he told you that he loved you?"
"He didn't make any move."
"Didn't you know that in college, Mark's signature move was not to make any move?" Derek smirked. "He told girls that he had feelings for them but respected them too much to make any move. After that he sat back and waited for the girls to make the move."
Addison didn't want to believe Derek. She wasn't just a game for Mark. She wasn't one of his many conquests. But there was no point in convincing Derek about Mark's genuine feelings.
"So how long did you take to cave in?" Derek asked, clearly ridiculing her.
"A week." She admitted in a low voice.
"Good to know his playbook still works." Derek said cynically.
"Well you deserve some credit too." Addison responded coldly. "Do you want to know the day I got in bed with him again? It was the 23rd of July. You might remember this special date since that was the day you transferred half of our savings from our joint bank account to your own account."
Derek did remember the day. He signed the contract at SGH that day and also finalized the deal for the land.
"I got the text alert from the bank, shortly after noon. It felt like a hard slap in my face. You were cutting all your ties with me. You had clearly moved on. I took the rest of the day off, bought a dozen wine bottles on my way to Mark's apartment and drowned all my sorrows and our marriage in liquor. I don't remember when Mark came back from work or who made the first move. I only remember waking up in bed with Mark. He again told me that he loved me, he was going to try his best to make me happy and I decided to try loving him back. You were already gone and I didn't want to end up alone."
"I wasn't trying to send you any message through that wire transfer. I needed the money to buy the land. Liquidating other investments at such short notice was difficult so I used the money from our joint account. I didn't even realize that the bank would send you an update."
"Well in those two months, our banks were my only source of update."
"You didn't call me that day. Until 23rd you called me at least twice everyday. But you didn't call that day or even a few days after that. I noticed."
"I realized you were never going to pick up my call so I gave up. I still called you every now and then, just to hear your voice. Mark also knew, but he pretended not to notice. Just like I pretended not to notice the love bites on Mark's neck."
"The guy you were cheating me with was cheating on you. Is that what they call nature's poetic justice?"
Addison ignored his snide remark and continued sharing her story.
"We were fooling ourselves. Mark hoped eventually I will move on from you. I hoped eventually Mark could be more like you. He wanted to go out like a real couple, tell our friends and coworkers about us. But I wasn't ready. Except for work, I barely got out of bed. I feel sorry for Mark. He got the short end of the stick. He didn't get anything out of our relationship, except for sex with constantly drunk, homeless looking woman."
"Believe me, he wasn't interested in anything other than sex. He got what he wanted. I am guessing he got plenty of it." Derek considered himself as the ultimate authority when it came to reading Mark. After all he had known him for 35 years.
Addison could see Derek's consistent attempt of reducing her relationship with Mark to one of Mark's countless meaningless sexual affairs. She could relate to where Derek was coming from. In her initial months in Seattle, she didn't want to believe Meredith was anything more than a fling.
"We were just dragging ourselves through the days. Mark's patience was wearing off. He wanted me to take my rings off. I refused. We constantly fought. In all of this chaos, I realized I was two weeks late. I got a home pregnancy test and it was positive. I went in shock. Before I could wrap my head around it, Mark found the test. He surprised me with a little onesie and a calendar marking the month. He was excited. He wanted that baby."
"He didn't want a baby. He wanted to trump me."
"Yeah I think so too. I thought he would stop sleeping around, since he wanted us to be a family. But he didn't. Two days later I walked in on him with someone else. I moved out of his apartment that afternoon. I got a call from Richard in the evening. After Richard's call, I booked an early morning appointment at Planned Parenthood and a plane ticket for Seattle for the next day. You know the rest of the story."
"You had a D&C and you stepped on a plane the next day?"
"I did."Addison confirmed.
Derek remembered Addison's grand entrance, in impeccable hair and makeup and killing high heels. There were no traces of the procedure she had a day before. He knew Addison was a pro choice, so was he. But was she really that cold to get rid of a potential life and carry on with her own as if nothing happened?
He looked closely at her. Her head was low. She was staring at her nails with a blank face. But it wasn't the resting bitch face she was faunting before. Her mask was melting down. She had her teeth pressed on her lips. He could make that out from her tight jaw. There were barely visible lines around her eyes. She was trying hard to school her face. Derek realized, she had spoken at length about Mark and their relationship but she avoided talking about the abortion. Whatever she had shared was clinical but he didn't know how she felt about it.
"Didn't anyone, the doctor, Mark or Sav advised you against flying?"
"I didn't tell the doctor I was flying nor did I tell Mark or Sav about the procedure." She revealed in a low voice.
"Then who was with you at the clinic?"
She shook her head. His heart sank. No one should have to go through that situation alone.
"I walked in through the front door, like I do every time, as if I was there to provide medical help." She had a lump in her throat. She paused to compose her emotions. "It was over in an hour. Jessica Homes did it. She was professional and respectful. I hailed a cab and came home." A tear rolled down Addison's cheek. Derek wanted to comfort her, but he couldn't move. What Addison was sharing felt extremely personal which he wasn't part of.
"Why didn't you tell Sav?" He wished Addison had someone with her that day.
"I was ashamed. Sav was disappointed when she learned I was staying with Mark. I was scared she would stop talking to me again, if I told her. They were trying to conceive for two years. She may not have supported my decision. After Mark you are the only person who knows about this. Actually you are the first person I am talking to about this. I left Mark a note. He didn't call back."
"I am sorry you had to go through that alone." Derek said sincerely.
Addison looked up at him, surprised. "Thank you."
"Were you.. what if umm Mark hadn't cheated or Richard hadn't called..?"
"Are you asking if I would have still had the procedure?"
Derek nodded.
"I would have. It wasn't an easy decision but I knew that was the right one. I was in no condition to be a mother, I couldn't count on Mark. We both are totally screwed, self destructive people. We would have brought out the worst in each other. I couldn't trust myself to be a decent mother. If I had the baby, that would have been the final nail on our marriage. I might have resented her, blaming her for losing you. I didn't want to mess up an innocent life. I did what I thought was best for everyone." Tears were rolling down Addison's cheek, she had given up on hiding them.
"Her? You called the fe..the baby, her?"
"I have a feeling, it would have been a girl. Ella. She would have a gap in her teeth..just like I did..she would have been.." Addison couldn't complete the sentence.
Derek stepped forward and kneeled down in front of her. "Oh my God Addie. You got attached.." He tried to hug her but she pulled away.
"Don't.. I don't deserve your sympathy."
"Do you regret your decision?"
Addison shook her head and wiped her tears. "That was the right decision at that time. I don't regret it. But I do think about it, every now and then."
Derek sat on the adjacent chair and ran a hand over his face. They were living together for months and he had no idea what was going inside her mind.
"When you came to Seattle, you looked so..you looked like Bizzy. There was no trace of the emotional storm you must have been going through."
"Honestly, there was no emotional storm. I channeled Bizzy. I wallowed at home for a day, but next morning I went to the salon, got my hair and nails done and then got on the plane. I blocked the whole thing out and focused on you. It did work. I didn't think about it for almost a month."
She paused to drink water.
"It hit me back after a month, when I had my first period. It was a flood of emotions then. I took a day off and cried my heart out, locked in my hotel room. Things between us weren't any better. I felt guilty for sacrificing my baby for the marriage which wasn't salvageable."
"I remember that day. That was your first day off since you arrived. I noticed your name was absent on OR board. I asked the Chief, he told me you were under the weather."
"I was worried about what to tell you, if you asked. But you never checked on me."
"I am sorry for not checking on you, or not paying enough attention. I am guessing subsequent periods wouldn't have been easier either and there is a possibility that I was a complete jerk at some of those times."
"They weren't. Every month I thought about how she could have been developing in my womb if I had.. you were a jerk a few times but there were also times when you were kind and comforting. I can't blame you or anyone else for it. It was all my doing and I should deal with the consequences." She started crying again, this time Derek didn't care about her resistance and pulled her in a tight hug.
It was weird. Consoling her for her lost adulterous love child. But in that moment, seeing the pain she was in, all his resentment vanished.
She stopped after a while and pulled away. She wiped her face and gave him a smile. "Thanks. I feel better after talking about it." She leaned and kissed him on the cheek. "You are a nice man Derek. I hope..I hope you find happiness again." Tears started gathering in her eyes again. "I will always love you."
"And I will always love you too. We are going to stay with each other and find that happiness together." Derek told her confidently.
"I can't. I am really sorry Derek, but I can't do it. I don't have the thick skin anymore to sit through your anger or indifference. I can't again live with the fear that you could walk away any minute."
"I am not. What do I have to do to convince you?"
"You had to not walk away. In the morning your first instinct was to walk away."
"I was angry. I needed time to process."
"I don't have confidence that you wouldn't be angry again. I understand, my mistakes are not easy to forgive. Your anger might be justified. But I can't relive the last year again. I think we have hurt each other enough. It's time to move on."
"No. you don't get to decide that. This is my marriage and I am going to fight for it. I get that you are tired. You can sit back and let me shoulder our responsibility. But you can't quit."
Addison's eyes widened. She searched his face, trying to decide if she should trust him.
"What you revealed. That was huge and I will not lie that I am over it. I will need time to process and adjust. But that's my problem and I will deal with it. I promise you will not have to bear any brunt. All I need from you is little faith in us. Just stay with me and be yourself. I am not going to take no for an answer. I am driving and you are riding along."
Addison nodded but she still looked hesitant. Derek understood her comprehensions. But he was confident that he could earn her trust again.
Derek stood up and pulled Addison up with him. He slid his left hand around her waist and pulled her closer. He caressed her cheek and freed her hair from the tight bun. She started trembling. There was only one way to assure her in such a moment of despair. He pressed his lips against hers and waited for her to take the lead. He could feel her body relaxing in his arms.
"I love you." She whispered against his lips.
He pulled back and looked into her eyes. "I Love you too Addison Forbes Montgomery Shepherd." They both smiled. "Until eternity" Derek added and captured her lips again.