"Arizona..." Callie shook her head. "We can't get into this. What's the use of talking about it all now?"
"I want to know," Arizona insisted. "I just don't get it. I still don't get it. Why did you walk away during that last therapy session? The night before...I thought everything was good between us. I thought it was going to be."
"It wasn't," Callie whispered, looking down. "You had stopped loving me."
Arizona's eyebrows flew up to her hairline. That was the last thing she'd expected Callie to say. It was so erroneous that she wasn't even sure she had heard correctly. "I...what?"
Callie's head shot up and she met confused blue eyes. "You did! You kept saying you loved me and needed me, but you never showed it. You'd say all these beautiful words, but I never felt it. We just kept having the same arguments, and I kept compromising for you. Over and over again. I was trying so hard to keep us both standing upright, and I felt like you didn't help at all. Like you didn't care."
Arizona couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe Callie had felt that way and that she'd never known it. "How can you think I'm anything but hopelessly in love with you?"
Callie's eyes widened. Arizona had said I'm. Present tense. I'm in love with you. Had she meant to? Did she mean it? "No..." Callie argued.
Arizona fished through her pockets, pulling out a wad of ink-stained paper. "I cared," she insisted. "I care. Here," she handed the pieces of paper to Callie.
Callie knit her eyebrows together. "What's this?"
"A list," Arizona explained. "Of everything I love about you. I started it in therapy. I've been adding to it since. I didn't want to forget. I've already been forgetting."
Callie turned the folded paper over, suddenly noticing her ex-wife's messy scrawl covering every surface of the white printer paper.
Arizona's beeper exploded with an obnoxious bell sound. "Shoot," she swore. She looked up at Callie apologetically. "I have to go. But we're going to talk later," she added ominously.
Callie nodded, watching her ex-wife stalk away to go save a sick kid's life, most likely. Then, looking back down at the thick wad of papers her hands were cradling, she curiously unfolded them, eager to see what Arizona had been talking about.
And, there, written neatly on the first piece of paper was:
When you talk to a patient, and it's like they're the only person in the whole world.
You bite your lip when you study scans.
When you read to Sofia.
Your smile.
Your laugh.
When you sing in the shower.
The way you crack yourself up with one of your awful corny jokes.
The way you wrap your arms around me while you sleep.
How much you care. About everything.
Your shoulders. Your arms.
Callie's eyes widened as she continued to read. Those were clearly the first ten reasons she'd named, but there were dozens more scrawled across the page.
Your legs in tight skirts. How amazing you are with kids. Your obsession with leather jackets. Your magical eyes. Your fear of public speaking (it's really cute). Your integrity. How much you love helping people. How protective you are. Your thick hair. The way you dance. Your hands. The way you moan a little when you sip coffee, or when you used to wake up to me kissing you, or when you get a foot rub. How you help everyone you meet be better.
On the back, the writing continued, getting progressively messier, as if Arizona was desperate to get it all down before she forgot.
The way you smell. Your idealism. Your innocence. Your honesty. How genuine you are (do you have any idea of how rare that is?). How you think you're badass, when you're really so girly. How much you love Sofia.
Your name. Calliope, I love your name.
When you used to speak Spanish in bed. Your confidence in yourself. Your confidence in me. How perfectly your body always used to fit with mine. Your skin. Your cute little sneeze.
Your lips. I could go on about your lips forever.
How soft you are. Your mind. Your idea of camping. Your taste in music. Your strength.
Callie kept flipping through the papers, skipping ahead, seeing just how much her ex-wife had written. There must have been ten double-sided pages, each completely filled with her tiny scribble.
The way you used to smile every time I walked into the room. How thoughtful you are. When you would reach for my hand under the table when we used to sit together at boring board meetings. How much you like baby showers. And pizza. The way you always smile at everyone on the street. How much you know about cars. The way you used to insist on making our bed every single morning. How quickly you got my parents to fall in love with you. Your light. The way you pout when you don't get your way. The way you loved me.
Callie felt tears sting her eyes. Clearly, Arizona had loved her. Arizona did love her.
Present tense.
She hadn't shown it, but Arizona loved her. There was no way Callie could deny it now.
Arizona had loved her before, but now, things were somehow different. What had changed?
Callie hurried to the Peds floor, quickly tracking down Alex in the NICU.
"Where's Arizona?" she barked. She wanted to talk to her ex-wife. She needed to.
"She's in surgery," Alex defended, alarmed by his friend's tone of voice. "What happened?"
"Nothing," Callie shook her head. "When will she be done?"
Alex shrugged. "'Few hours. You can wait."
Callie nodded, sitting down in the chair beside him and anxiously bouncing her knees, still clutching the papers.
"Not here," he said.
Callie sighed. "Fine. Page me when she's done."
Already off duty, Callie didn't know what to do with herself while she waited. She didn't know what to think. She didn't know anything.
She loved Arizona. She had always loved Arizona. That wasn't the problem.
The problem was that Arizona didn't love her. At least, that's what Callie had thought.
But now, nothing made sense.
She paced back and forth, trying to decipher her thoughts. She was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with the thought of Arizona still loving her and what that meant.
She wanted the blonde. Of course she did. She'd learned her lesson with George, and when she'd married Arizona, she'd been committed. She was prepared to love her for life.
Forever.
And, unfortunately, whether or not they ever got back together, she always had. And she knew that she always would.
But she had spent the past two and a half years trying to accept the fact that they were over. That her relationship with the love of her life had ended. Permanently. Because, while Arizona was the love of her life, Callie wasn't the love of Arizona's.
That was what Callie had been drilling into her brain. But had she been wrong?
Callie had walked away, and Arizona hadn't stopped her. What had changed?
She sat down, putting her head in her hands. Worrying and wondering wouldn't help. She needed to talk to her ex-wife.
Eventually, her pager went off: Alex was paging her to the Peds ward.
"Shit," she muttered, her stomach bottoming out. She felt like she might be sick.
Callie raced through the hallway, looking for her ex-wife and not finding her anywhere.
Finally, she threw open an on-call room door, and there Arizona was, practically wringing her hands together in worry and expectation.
"Hi," the blonde peeped.
"Hi," Callie breathed. She held up the papers. "Can we talk about this?"
"Yeah," Arizona sighed. Talking about it was the best possible outcome she could have expected, after all. "Do you want to sit?"
Callie shook her head maniacally. The fact was, she wasn't sure if she could sit. She could feel her entire body humming, shaking, thrumming, and sitting did not seem like a viable option.
"Okay," Arizona nodded. In truth, she wasn't sure that she could sit, either. She was suddenly overcome with overwhelming panic and struggled to keep her breathing in check. She could feel her heart thumping in her ears.
Callie just looked at her ex-wife expectantly, and Arizona realized that the brunette was waiting for her to say something. "What do you want me to say?"
Callie looked at her seriously. "Whatever you want me to hear. This is me, giving you space to be honest. I won't interrupt."
"No pressure," Arizona muttered under her breath.
Callie leveled a serious look at her.
Arizona exhaled heavily, preparing herself for the uncertainty of what was to come. "I want to be a family again," she offered simply.
Callie nodded slowly. She had guessed that much.
"I want us to be 'us.' I want us to be 'us,' again. And I want us to love each other. Forever."
"I think..." Callie paused, meeting Arizona's carefully expectant eyes. "Well, don't we?" She motioned towards the lengthy list. "I was wrong, right? You love me."
Arizona felt a gust of wind flow through her abdomen, her heart pitter-pattering in her chest. "I do. I always have. What about you?"
With a soft smile crossing her features, Callie whispered, "Of course I do, Arizona. I always have, and I tried not to, but..." she shrugged helplessly. "I need to love you like I need air. It feels like it's the way the universe meant us to be."
Arizona nodded. She understood. Better than Callie might ever know. "It is. And maybe I forgot how to show it, but I remember now, Calliope. All I remember is how to love you."
Callie felt a coy smile sprout on her lips. "How?"
Arizona raised her eyebrows, surprised by the challenge but not unprepared. "Well," she began, taking a tiny step closer to the taller woman and reveling in the way Callie's breath hitched. "To start, by telling you that you're beautiful."
Callie inhaled a deep breath. She was certain that nothing could feel more incredible than the one she loved proving just how much that love was shared. "And I am so in awe of you, every day. And I-"
Before Arizona could even go on and physically tell Callie everything she loved about her, the woman standing in front of her grabbed her face, tenderly forcing a meeting of their lips.
Finally.
Blissfully.
Arizona melted into her. They melted into each other, for what felt like a lifetime. A long, flawlessly perfect lifetime.
Finally, Arizona pulled back, breathing, "I was getting to that." She felt dizzy. God, she'd ached for this for so long.
Callie grinned at the blonde's dreamy expression, ducking her head to drop another quick kiss on soft pink lips. "I know you were. I couldn't wait."
Arizona exhaled a long, accomplished breath, thinking about the impending years to come, and how they would spend them together.
"I can't, either."
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