Hello! I Addek, therefore I exist. Or something. I know it's been quite a while, between real life, the real craziness that's affecting all of us, and then some writer's block to boot ... it's been a while. The brilliant peachfresca reminded me how Flip the Script has helped me unblock over the years, and she is (as usual) right. She also reminded me of the prompt we discussed way back when about a classic Addek episode. But, first things first.
I am back at least for now and I am so totally definitely working on my WIPs and in fact FTS is alllll about loosening that WIP energy. I am going to finish TCW before Shonda decides to flip her own script and bring Addison back for a Zoom cameo on season 28 of Grey's #2021problems. Next after that: She Lit a Fire. Then QPQ. But hey, since those aren't updated yet, throw me a bone and read this one?
Okay, so back to the flip, which means I get to ramble in the author's notes even more than usual. The prompt comes from episode 2.07, aka "the one in the couples' counselor's office" or "the one with the cute little viewfinders" or "the one where marriage is a give and take." There's also a kind-of pregnant man! But forget the patients; this is about Addek. They bicker at the couples therapist's office (poor guy), have a bickery but gooorgeous outdoor lunch on the roof for five seconds where they have the cute little viewfinders convo and play a little divorce chicken, Addek-style. They challenge each other to commit to the reconciliation (moving to Seattle/giving up Meredith). Derek asks what would happen if he's never ready to give up talking to Meredith and Addison says she won't move to Seattle. "I guess you should go back to New York," Derek says. HAHAHA, just kidding. The man is tormented and he doesn't say that at all. "Well, I guess we're at an impasse, then," is what he actually says.
And on the show, he and Addison both solve their separate impasse-y problems with a little undercover maneuvering and end up semi-outsmarting the therapist. In the flip, well ... the challenge was, what if Addison decided to leave after that?
So here we go. (Oh, and please note that the seal-dog was not my idea. If you want to see it, watch the 3.01 flashback that still haunts us all.)
And ... flip.
At an Impasse
(2.07, "Something to Talk About")
Well, I guess we're at an impasse, then.
That's how they left it.
… well, Derek was paged, and Addison ate the rest of her peanut butter sandwich alone, one-handed, trying to keep her hair from blowing in her mouth with the other hand. And all along, the viewfinder was … looking at her, all judgmental and view-findery.
From her perspective, it wasn't exactly a Best of Seattle lunch.
It was … an impasse.
I don't live here yet, that's what she reminded him. She looked down when she said it.
Are you ever going to be ready to stop talking to Meredith?
What if I say no? he asked.
Then I'm not moving here.
It was that simple.
She opened the door for him—and it took all of her training in Advanced Emotional Repression not to let on how downright scary it was to put that out there. Meanwhile, her pulse was racing the rhythm of don't tell me to leave don't tell me to leave don't tell me to leave.
He didn't.
But here's where the impasse comes in.
He didn't tell her to leave. But he didn't ask her to stay.
He didn't decide, one way or another.
It shouldn't surprise her. Derek can be noncommittal.
… very noncommittal.
..
It's like—the statue thing. The one that sat on the table by the window in the brownstone, looking somehow at her and away from her at the same time. Her only tangible inheritance from her Grandfather Forbes.
She never liked it, and she wasn't particularly fond of Grandfather Forbes either, to the extent she remembers him. He smelled faintly of pipe smoke, and always wore the same jacket his father supposedly purchased from John Barbour himself before he even started selling to the public.
(Addison wouldn't have minded inheriting that jacket, come to think of it, at least not in the 80s during her ill-advised quasi-Sloane-ranger phase. But he left it to his footman—yes, he was the sort of person who had a footman—and Addison ended up with the awful dog statue.)
It was a dog that from some angles looked like a seal—that was Savvy's comment the first time she saw it in the old apartment, tilting her head this way and that, brushing back her blonde hair. Are you sure it's not a seal?
It wasn't a seal.
It was, in fact, a questionable replica of one of her grandfather's ever present hunting dogs.
He always had three or four English Pointers around, and they were never particularly friendly—at least not to little girls whose high standards came from Lassie reruns. She still has a faint scar on her knee from one of them—Blackie, she's pretty sure, but no one ever called the Forbses imaginative, and there was always a Blackie, a Brownie, a Whitey . . . one of them snapped at her when she was playing with Archer on the grounds of her grandfather's cottage. Whatever the dog's name, Addison does recall that he received more sympathy than she did—she should have known better, she should run along and stop being a bother, and the only time she recalls Bizzy noticing the scar is when she was scolding her for not having the girl let down the hem of her uniform skirt until it was so short as to be unseemly.
… yeah, there's a reason she doesn't fight too hard to remember those days.
But she remembers the statue, and her faint sense, when she inherited it as a child when her grandfather finally died in the least unseemly way possible (in his sleep, at the cottage, tumbler of scotch still half full of the bedside table), that her grandfather was somehow still amused about the dog bite incident. Or maybe it was so forgettable to him that he simply earmarked the statue for her with the same casual indifference that got Archer the Revolutionary War rifle and her cousin Crawford the Indian arrowheads whose provenance was sketchy enough that even in those days, she was relieved not to receive it.
It wasn't the sort of thing you throw out, but it certainly wasn't the sort of thing you display in a little girl's bedroom; Bizzy had it boxed up somewhere and it wasn't until years later, unpacking in the first apartment she rented with her husband—then just her fiancé—that she came across it.
It wasn't a dog like your dog, she remembers explaining, not like a pet. More like … a hunting companion.
She remembers that Derek raised his eyebrows, looking amused, and it was nice that it could be funny instead of stuffy. Which is probably why she didn't immediately box it back up again. Derek was always teasing her about how picky she was, whether the colored highlighters in her notes in medical school or the sheets for their new apartment, so she teasingly placed it right by their new bed.
There, she said, like a watchdog.
You really want it watching us? Derek asked and then they both laughed.
Fine, she teased him back, let's keep it there.
He okayed it and—was he calling her bluff, or teasing her back? Derek might think she's passive aggressive to this day, and she can admit most days he's not wrong, but he is indecisive, and it's not like they were different people, back then.
We can get rid of it, she offered then, daringly, if you want.
Maybe, he said, non-committal.
Would you rather keep it?
What if I say yes?
Then we can keep it, she said immediately.
But if I say no …
Then it's going back in the box.
They jostled jokingly with the statue but he never did decide, one way or another, which is how it ended up on the windowsill in that first apartment—he likes seeing the cars outside, Derek once joked—and then, in the brownstone, on the occasional table by their bedroom windows, for the same reason.
It was their … sixth anniversary? Seventh? when she made an offhanded comment about how she'd never liked the damn thing.
Derek … Derek acted surprised. Why did you act like you couldn't decide, then?
Because you couldn't decide, she said, and he frowned. Now we're stuck with the dog, she reminded him.
How is that my fault? he asked. You're the one who put it on the windowsill in the old place!
But I asked you what you wanted to do.
Everything else you put on the—walls or whatever—you wanted there, he reminded her. Is it so terrible that I trust you?
Okay.
That one pulls her up short, and the memory slams shut like the front door of the brownstone.
Is it so terrible that I trust you?
Well. She's not going to have to worry about that one anymore, is she.
..
That's the thing: Derek is indecisive.
Outside the OR and maybe one other exception, he's indecisive.
If he were decisive, then he would have told her to get rid of the seal-dog two homes ago, and the damn thing wouldn't have watched her chase Derek out of their bedroom for the last time.
The OR … and maybe one other exception.
And that's the thing she didn't want to realize on the rooftop, watching the annoying humid breeze moving his hair in that way it's hard to pretend she didn't miss.
She's not that one other exception anymore.
There was a time when Derek was decisive about her. Didn't he always say he knew, that very first day, that they'd be together forever? Wasn't it Addison who dilly-dallied, who had a handful of study dates with Cade Stewart and made him wait?
But he's not decisive about her now.
He's not going to tell her to leave.
He's not going to ask her to stay.
Well, I guess we're at an impasse, then.
..
Seattle, alone, isn't a great place for revelations. Not a great place for what the hell do I do now. Not by herself, anyway.
She picks up the phone twice to call Savvy and lowers it both times; her best friend was always a listening ear but she was dealing with her own problems with her mother's worsening health (and unlike Addison, Savvy actually liked her mother).
She even considers calling Nancy—Nancy's nothing if not decisive, and she can ask, should I go, or should I stay?
But Nancy is Derek's sister, even if she's been closer to Addison than her brother for years, and involving her is … unfair. And weird. It's weird. No one wants to think about their sibling's love life; Addison knows this for a fact after walking in on her brother half a dozen times with a girl from the country club or the sailing team or, worse, Addison's all-girls' school.
… yeah, Archer isn't the right person to tell her what to do. He knows what happened in Manhattan, he thought it was funny—well, he doesn't know about what happened after Derek walked in. Archer may be more of a whore than she'll ever be but he's never taken kindly to anyone pushing his sister around. Didn't he once shove Derek into the pool at their Hamptons house—a fully dressed Derek, too—because he snapped at Addison about firing up the grill to the wrong temperature?
(Sleeping with Mark is on her. She knows this. But a small part of her still clings a little to that memory of the splash. Derek would probably say she was petty and he wouldn't exactly be wrong.)
Archer's reputation (tied with Mark, of course) for the biggest manwhore of this generation just reminds her of one more friend she can't call.
Naomi, tight as they were in medical school, still made no secret of the fact that she considered Addison a slut for sleeping with Derek before the engagement. (Addison never had the heart to tell her she slept with Derek before their first date even technically happened.) Naomi's not going to be the best ear for this particular dilemma.
She's alone.
Very much alone.
No one is going to make this decision for her.
And no matter how much she missed him when he left, and no matter how handsome he looks with the wind in his damn hair, and no matter how easy it would be to stick around for whatever non-committal crumbs he'll toss her way … she knows what that decision should be.
..
"I can't accept this decision. Addie, I want you to stay. What can I do to get you to stay?"
She holds the phone tightly, looking out the window at the lights of the city she won't be calling home.
Admittedly, these are words she was hoping to hear.
Not from this voice, though.
"Let me make the job more appealing. There are things we can do."
"I'm sorry, Richard. I've made up my mind."
Silence for a moment, while her old mentor breathes gruffly down the line. She knows she's displeased him, and as much as the old teacher's-pet instinct to please, please, please never left her …
"I really appreciate everything you've done for me," she says in a small voice. "I would have loved to work with you again."
"Stay, Addie. Stay here and fight for him, and get a damn fine neonatal wing while you're at it."
"There's no fight," she says, not for the first time.
"Well, did you at least—"
"You can tell him I said goodbye."
She hangs up the phone, hating herself a little more than usual, just for a moment.
She arrived in town undercover and she can leave that way, too.
It takes only a moment to call her travel agent.
Only a moment to make her decision final.
So much for the impasse.
..
Derek stops her at the airport with an armload of out-of-season peonies—her favorite—and begs her to stay.
I'm sorry, he says. I choose you.
I'm sorry too, she says. It was always you.
He takes her in his arms and the peonies scatter at their feet when their lips meet. Everyone at the gate watches their reunion. Some of them clap, and she catches a few whistles.
They're still that couple.
And they're going to make it.
(She still hasn't told him everything about their time apart, but it doesn't matter, because this airport scene only happens in her head, so she can take her time with the truth.)
..
Derek would say she was being dramatic. If he knew what she was imagining, with the airport and the peonies and the clapping, that's what he would say.
She's alone now, of course. She's wringing out her wet hair in an arc onto the bleached white bathmat someone else will clean. Her hotel room is faceless. No one would notice if she just … disappeared, would they?
(Dramatic again. She never said Derek didn't know her.)
The thing is that Derek is dramatic, too.
He'd never admit it.
He'd probably deny it, and who knows how this flannel-wearing, wood-chopping, wife-hating version of him acts now?
But the Derek she's known for sixteen years … was dramatic.
You don't propose on the ice rink at Rockefeller Center in front of clapping tourists if you don't like grand gestures.
You don't write a twelve-verse song about your own love story and sing it to your new wife at your own wedding if you're a wallflower.
And, though it might not be kind to say so, you don't drive off in a three-thousand-mile cross country huff to start a new life if you're a master of discretion, either.
..
"You're going back to New York."
His tone is neutral; he could be saying anything; it's raining today.
(Of course it's raining. It's Seattle. It's a grey, misty morning in her faceless hotel room, and it's raining.)
But he called.
He picked up the phone and he called and her own hand trembles, just a little (the left one).
He called.
She tries to choose her next words carefully; they feel important.
"Yeah, I guess I am," she says.
Great choice, Addie.
"Um, so Richard told you?"
She made the question rhetorical enough that he doesn't seem to feel the need to answer.
She could protest, say but I told Richard to wait until after my flight left, but she doesn't have the energy to find out if he'll know it's a lie.
"He must have known you weren't planning on telling me." His tone is mild, though. Not like he minds the slight, or whatever it was.
"I was going to call you." Why is she trying to defend herself? "Later, I mean."
"Nice of you."
He's Derek, he can be sarcastic and indifferent, all at the same time.
He's multi-talented, her husband.
(Or whatever he is to her now.)
"I'm sorry," she says finally, filling what's becoming an uncomfortable silence.
"For not calling?"
That too.
"Did you, um—"
But he cuts her off, surprising her.
"We had an appointment this afternoon."
Couple's counseling. Right. Her stomach flutters unpleasantly. Had.
"Um, maybe we can get a discount for a long distance session?" she tries.
"Is this funny to you, Addison?"
Which part? The part where you hate me, the part where I fly back to Manhattan with my tail between my legs, or the part where a man who gets paid three hundred dollars an hour three times a week to make us get along still couldn't hack it?
He's actually waiting for an answer, like she's his resident.
"No, Derek, it's not funny," she parrots obediently and hears the change in his breathing that means he's annoyed.
(Annoyed is still better than neutral.)
"There are logistics to sort out," he says, his tone still cold even if she can recognize the irritation underneath it.
"That didn't worry you when you left for Seattle, did it?"
"This is my fault, now?" Oh, she can just hear his raised eyebrows down the phone line. "You traveled all this way and still can't take responsibility for yourself."
"I take responsibility." She's having to work to keep her voice from shaking. "I am taking responsibility, Derek. I made this decision, didn't I? When you wouldn't?"
"What are you talking about?"
She draws a deep breath. "On the roof, Derek. You didn't—do you even remember the dog statue?"
He's silent for a moment.
"I'm not doing this with you now," he says finally. "You want to tell me what a terrible husband I am before you fly out, you can come to work and do it like an adult."
"I already quit."
"Oh, for—" he cuts himself off. Probably a decent decision on his part (but no, that doesn't count as his being decisive. "Addison," and now he sounds like he's trying very hard to be patient. "I have a job to do. I have a life here—"
"—that doesn't include your wife. I get it, Derek. I told you I'm leaving. You're supposed to be happy about that."
He inhales and she doesn't want to know what comes next.
(She can admit it: she's afraid.)
"Fine," she says before he can speak, like it's actually a concession, "if I come to the hospital before I fly out, will you actually meet me? Or will it be like it was at home when I'd wait outside your office like the freaking paperboy until your coffee got cold?"
"Is this how you're going to behave if I meet you?"
"Probably," she admits.
He exhales audibly into the phone. "Well, that was honest, at least."
"So are you going to? Meet me, I mean," and she's trying desperately not to sound too eager, but desperately is probably showing through more than she'd like.
He waits.
Maybe on purpose.
(Which wouldn't be too bad, since he'd have to care to try to piss her off, right? And yeah, it's embarrassing, but that's pretty much how she operated that last year of their marriage. Same sophisticated level of thinking that told her if the nanny went for the hairbrush at least she was paying attention.)
"Fine," he says shortly. "Half an hour. Benches by the north entrance."
Like she's supposed to know which entrance is which.
Like he lives here.
But … he's going to meet her.
"Will you bring me a coffee?" she asks daringly.
"Don't push it."
..
He brings her a coffee. She can tell just from the weight of the cups in his hands that it's an Americano and even though she knows it won't have been any extra work, really, since he has one for himself too, it has to count for something.
It's not peonies.
But it's something. Maybe.
Or maybe he's just saying goodbye.
"Don't do that – thing," he says, handing her the cup.
"What thing?"
"The girly thing." He takes a sip of his own drink. "It's just coffee, Addison."
"It's an Americano," she reminds him, and who's the one who got you to like Americanos, anyway?
"It's an Americano, which is more or less a coffee." He puts both hands on his cup like he needs to warm them.
"Fine. It's a coffee."
"Addison … did you ask me here to talk about coffee?"
"You said you didn't want to talk to me on the phone."
"And yet I don't recall saying I wanted to talk to you in person, either."
In spite of herself, her cheeks burn. But makeup covers it and she would deny it, so no one has to be the wiser.
"You said—" she stops mid-sentence. "I'm flying out today," she says quietly.
"Yes." He takes another sip of his coffee.
"My flight leaves in a few hours."
"Yes."
"Stop yessing me," she says automatically.
"What do you want me to say?"
Ask me to stay. Tell me you'll miss me. Say that even if we end everything on a stupid bench outside a hospital where I never wanted to work, you don't regret marrying me.
" … a lot of things."
"Honesty again?"
"Maybe a little." She takes another sip of coffee, watching him out of the corner of her eye. There's a breeze and it's moving his hair, even down here at sea level or whatever, and if this is the last time she's going to see him then she'll just go ahead and memorize it right now.
"Addison."
His tone is a little softer, and there's a flicker in her chest.
"Yes?"
"Did you bring those papers?"
An actual slap would have felt better.
For just a moment she's frozen, sitting there on the stupid bench with the coffee she didn't even really want, is everything a game to you, Addison, but she can't move.
It feels like an hour.
It's probably a second.
Still, he's looking at her curiously when she glances up.
"You said logistics," he reminds her, oh, how nice, you're not just hurting me for sport.
"Of course." But her cheeks are burning again because she left the hotel fast, heart pounding, not wanting to leave the timing of their meeting to chance. She has her purse, of course, but no briefcase.
Briefcases are for jobs, and she doesn't have a job.
"I, um, I actually forgot them." She looks at the pointed toes of her shoes contrasting with the damp beige cement underneath. Anywhere but at him right now. "I was going to bring them," she adds, still not looking up. "I can go back and get them. I didn't know how much time you had, and you said half an hour, and the last time I drove from the hotel there was traffic at the intersection with the—"
"Addison."
"Yes?"
It comes out like a whisper.
It comes out like she's sad.
(She can hate herself for it later.)
"You're rambling."
"… oh."
Remember when you thought that rambling was cute?
She doesn't have to ask if he still does.
"I can, um, I can drop them off. On my way to the airport. Or mail them or something."
"Fine."
They're both silent for a moment.
If this were a movie he would have already swept the coffees out of their hands—well, no, since they're hot, but people in movies never get burned. He would have removed them somehow anyway, and they wouldn't be sitting two feet apart either. He would have swept her close, maybe dipped her back to kiss her, and he wouldn't be saying fine, either.
Tear them up, he'd say.
I'd marry you all over again before I'd divorce you.
Okay, fine, that last one's a bit much, even for a movie.
"What do you want from me, Addison?"
It's the kind of question that could sound exasperated or even downright cruel with the right inflection, but Derek just sounds … tired.
She doesn't answer because she can't answer.
His brows knit. "Richard said you were flying back to New York today."
"I am. I just—"
"Is this a game? You tell me you're leaving and then I'm supposed to beg you to stay?"
"It's not a game."
He shakes his head. "Even for you, Addison …"
Even for me what?
But she knows what.
"I'm not being passive-aggressive." Her voice sounds small and tight. "I'm … I'm leaving, Derek. Maybe I just wanted to say goodbye."
"Did you?"
No.
"If I hadn't come to Seattle at all," she says instead, daring herself to continue, "would you have talked to me again?"
"Don't do the thing."
"What thing?"
"The what if thing." His voice is clipped. "It's going to lead right back to what you were doing in my bed."
"It was our bed."
"You really want to talk about the bed?"
"No." The one good thing about the humidity in this place is that it can kind of mask the moisture in her eyes. He won't notice it.
They just … sit there, for a moment.
When Derek finally speaks, his tone is actually a little softer. Maybe he feels sorry for her.
"This isn't a movie, Addison."
"I know that."
"You bought a ticket. You're flying out."
"I know that too."
"You'll send me the papers."
"I'll send you the papers."
Silence.
Tapping toes.
A group in scrubs passes them, their voices rising and falling.
"You really quit?" he asks when they're more or less alone again, surprising her with the subject change. "What about your patients?"
What about the patients you left behind in Manhattan? But if she brings that up, he'll blame that on her too. He probably had his assistant add my wife screwed my best friend to their charts, too. Derek's version of transfer of care when he couldn't even be in the same city as her anymore.
"They'll be well taken care of. And I can monitor any progress I need to from New York. Besides, it was just a temporary contract."
"And Richard?"
"He asked me to stay," she admits.
See, Derek? It's not that hard to ask someone to stay. If you want them to.
"You probably didn't sleep with his best friend."
The probably stings a little.
"When would I have time to do that?" She can't help rising, a little. "I've been chasing you since I got here."
"Chasing me." He raises an eyebrow. "Is that you were doing?"
"I just wanted you to talk to me," she bleats, hating how pathetic she's starting to sound, "I wanted to talk, Derek, I wanted to have a—conversation, have something before we sign."
"It's just a piece of paper," he says after a moment.
His meaning is clear: I was already done with you.
But just a piece of paper? So was our marriage license.
"I'm going back to New York," she repeats the mantra, "so you don't have to worry about me chasing you anymore."
"Fine," he says.
"Fine," she repeats.
She actually wishes it would rain again, just for the distraction, but of course Seattle isn't going to take her side.
"Are you going to finish that?"
"What? … oh." She looks at her Americano. If she wanted the whole thing she would have finished it by now, but her stomach can barely function as it is. She's been passing the cup – still two thirds full – back and forth between her hands just to keep them from trembling. "No, I guess not."
Wordlessly, he holds out a hand, and she passes it to him.
When he takes the first sip from her cup, she closes her eyes.
Just for a second.
Just in case it's the closest thing they get to a final goodbye kiss.
"Addison."
She opens her eyes.
"You're being dramatic."
"I didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to."
She ponders that for a moment.
They're both silent, and she looks beyond the hospital. It's a nice location, she can grudgingly admit, the view from the outdoor cafeteria is … a little green for her taste, but you can see the city.
Not that she's seen it, and she says as much to Derek.
"You hate Seattle," he reminds her.
"I don't hate Seattle."
"You don't hate Seattle," he repeats. "You?"
"I found us that lunch spot, didn't I?"
"You did find us that lunch spot."
And for a moment they're back there, wind whipping the sash of her raincoat while she bluffs her way through their version of marital poker. Marital chicken, neither of them wanting to be the first to blink.
I guess we're at an impasse, then.
Maybe she's dramatic.
Maybe he's indecisive.
Maybe she's been deceitful.
Maybe he's been indifferent.
But she's going to miss him.
And there's no way she can tell him.
And god knows he's not going to tell her.
She's starting to think this meetup was a mistake. Not the trip—she can't let the trip to Seattle be a mistake—but this. This sad little park bench, the third of a cup of Americano, the way the damp breeze is moving her husband's hair. She's well aware it's not a movie but this still can't be the ending. And yet … it's going to be.
She practices goodbye for just a moment, in her head.
Bye, Derek. See you … never.
(Dramatic? Her?)
Bye, honey. Have a nice life.
Eleven years of marriage. They deserve some parting wisdom. Something, even it's just to remind him to roll his ties to avoid that awful crease. Then again, maybe he doesn't even wear ties here, and she's pretty sure flannel shirts can withstand the force of a hanger. If he even has hangers.
"I still haven't seen the Space Needle."
She didn't realize she was going to say it until she said it and Derek almost looks like he's going to laugh.
"The Space Needle," he repeats dubiously, "you want to see the Space Needle?"
"Not particularly, no."
"I didn't think so."
"I've never seen your place, either," she's suddenly more daring. "Not even once, and you told the counselor that you would try to—"
"You're leaving," he reminds her, "does it matter?"
It matters.
"Trust me," he says drily, "my place isn't the kind that would make you want to stay."
But she already wanted to stay. She just wanted him to want her to stay. That's all.
"How bad could it be?" She half-laughs, mainly because she's seen Derek practically drooling over downright awful cabins in the Adirondacks so she's actually pretty nervous about where he's leaving. "I mean, I'm living in a hotel room right now, so I don't actually have much room to complain."
"You?" He smirks. "I'm sure you'd find a way to complain."
"Try me," she says suddenly, before she can stop herself.
"Try you." he stops. "You want to see—"
"Your place," she fakes bravery again. "Yeah. I mean, I'm leaving anyway."
"I'm working, Addison. I can't leave and show you my—"
"—place," she fills in. "Right." She looks down at her hands. "You could show me later," she tells her clenched fingers, her rings sharp enough to leave an indentation in the fingers of her other hand.
"You're flying out later."
"I know, but …"
Her voice trails off.
There is no but.
There is no anything.
She needs to shut up before she makes things worse, if they get worse than awkwardly saying a non-goodbye to your husband of eleven years outside the hospital where he met the teenage intern he screwed to get over you.
(Fine, she's not a teenager, but she's an intern. That's teenaged enough.)
Another moment passes where she prays for rain and Seattle refuses her.
"I can't tell Meredith I'm going to stop talking to her," Derek says without preamble, and the brakes screech on yet another turn she wasn't expecting.
Are they still—are things still on the table?
But she forces down the hope.
She made the decision, because someone had to.
"Okay." She glances at him. "Well, that's fine, Derek, because I'm leaving, so you can talk to her all you want."
"No, I can't."
She tilts her head, trying to understand.
"Bailey told me to leave her alone. To let her mend." His tone is regretful, and it brings back the stomachache that turned the Americano unappealing. "She told me to leave her alone."
Why are we talking about your girlfriend's ... mending process?
Slowly, she adds two and two.
"I said I wouldn't move here unless you were ready to give her up."
Just barely, he nods.
"But you have to give her up anyway."
He nods again.
"Okay." She leans back against the bench—it's hard and a little damp—and folds her arms over her chest. "Well, um, thanks for telling me."
"You wouldn't have liked living in Seattle, anyway."
"No, I guess I wouldn't."
She has questions. So many questions. How did he end up in a relationship so fast, with someone so different, with someone so new? How did he leave everything in New York behind without a second glance when it's still physically painful for her to remember their time there together?
She has answers, too. Answers to questions he hasn't asked and maybe won't ever ask, but answers that weigh her down nonetheless. If this is goodbye, it's still not the end of the story. Not really.
When she glances at her husband—he's still her husband, at least in this moment—his face is soft with reminiscence that's probably not about her. His eyes are sad. Can he belong to someone else even if that someone else won't talk to him?
(She knows the answer to that is yes because she belonged to him, didn't she, those months he wouldn't speak to her.)
She's fairly certain she always will and also that all it's doing now is complicating things.
All it's doing now is making it hard.
Painful, and hard.
She made the hard decision already, so all she has to do is stand up and walk to her car and drive back to the hotel. Finish packing, load the car, drive to the airport, and get one last glimpse of Seattle from the air before she leaves it forever.
Derek used to complain she was bossy. That his sisters were bossy, too. They were always deciding things for him, weren't they?
It seems Bailey is another of those women in his life, then. She decided for him. She decided he was done.
And in some ways, Addison envies Meredith. Imagine being two months in, when done is a word that makes sense, and not sixteen years in, when you've been growing together so long you're not even sure what you'd be like alone.
The movie's over, though, and he's not going to ask her to stay.
"I'm sorry," she says quietly, "for everything."
He just nods: maybe accepting it, maybe ignoring it.
She swallows hard. Automatically, she reaches for the coffee he's holding. Her lips are trembling and she needs to sip, needs to mold her mouth around something to keep the tears away. He lets her take it from his hand, take a merciful sip.
One more goodbye kiss, after a fashion.
When she looks up he's watching her. She tries to smile around the coffee cup, lighthearted, oh I get divorced every day, it's a lark, really, but her lips tremble again so she clamps them down.
"You can keep it," he says after a moment.
She looks down, her rings catching the light.
"The cup," he says quickly. "The coffee."
Right.
"I just needed a sip." She hands it back, and his fingers brush hers.
If she's lucky, she'll make it to the car before the tears come.
"Okay, then." He sips it again.
Last kiss.
And then he stands up; she does the same, so they're eye to eye again.
Not everything is a competition, Addison.
"I'll send the papers," she says quickly, before her voice can betray her.
He nods, then glances toward the big glass doors leading inside the hospital. "I need to get back to work," he says after a moment.
"Right, work. And I need to—fly," she stumbles a bit over her words, "get ready for the flight, I mean."
He nods, his face actually softening for a minute, but then he turns to walk back inside before she can say anything else.
And that's that.
It's over.
She makes it back to the car before the tears come, so that's something, at least.
..
Addison has never been late for a flight in her life—yes, including flying private—she's as rigid about time as she expects others to be.
Which means she's watching the bellhop load the last of the bags into her rental car—leased or whatever, as temporary as her time in Seattle. It's twenty full minutes past when she'd normally leave, she's tapping the toe of her shoe with irritation, and her face is going to be swollen at SeaTac because makeup—even her makeup—can only do so much.
She rented the little sports car for Derek, but he never seemed particularly interested in it. She's already late, so this is ridiculous, but she feels rebellious. How much left is there to lose? So she gets the bellhop to help her with the soft top of the car and then it's a convertible, smaller but no less open than the deep green one Archie drove—and crashed, more than once—in high school.
Her face may be swollen, but her car is devil may care, at least, and the breeze feels nice. Fresh and freeing.
A little vigorous, as she picks up speed.
And her hair is whipping around toward her mouth; she has to keep moving her sunglasses to try to keep it out of her face. But it's fine. She braces both hands on the wheel.
It's fine.
Until Seattle betrays her one last time and now—now, of all times—turns its typical thick humidity into actual rain.
And not a drizzle either.
Actual rain. Rain rain.
Which falls down actually into her open car, splattering her with drops, leaving her hands slippery on the wheel and when her foot skids on the gas she has a moment of terror—
Don't let me die in Seattle, Bizzy would be horrified.
before she gets control and manages to pull to the shoulder.
Now she's going to be even later for the flight. She'll be scrambling, wet-haired, swollen-faced, a practically-divorced drowned rat so obviously broken people will feel sorry for her. Her hackles rise at the thought, or as much as they can rise when she's sitting on the shoulder of the highway, watching her leather suitcases take on the rain a hell of a lot better than she is.
She just needs to fix the—hood thing, the car roof, whatever it is, but she's cursing herself for not actually watching when the guy leasing it to her showed her how to do it, and just leaving it up to the bellhop to secure the hood down this time. She actually scoots across the passenger seat to see if she can figure it out, hunts in the glove box for a now-damp guidebook, and—come on, she's a surgeon, there's no way these instructions are decent if she can't figure them out.
It takes just a few minutes of standing in the mud far too close to a couple of tractor-trailers that spatter her with dirty water, slapping with frustration at the parts of the car where she's almost positive the hood should loosen. She even grabs at the canvas-y or whatever material should have been keeping her dry, and tugs.
Hard.
Hard enough to almost fall over, skidding a little in the mud even closer to the road, which is definitely hard enough for her to give up and get back in the car, tracking mud in with her heels.
Ugh.
At least she's not going to be mowed down inside the wet—and now dirty too—car. She slinks into the driver's seat, trying not to hear the squelching of the mud.
Her hair is in her face, long and wet and—now dirty too as she tries to push it somewhere more convenient. She knows where extra clips are in the jeep Derek drove in New York, but not in this car—and then finally gives up and lowers her head to the wheel.
It's raining in her car, okay? In her dirty, muddy, car. On her formerly beautiful suitcases. If that's not license for indulgent self pity, then nothing is.
She even lets herself cry, a little.
Just a little.
She's so wet no one would ever know.
She does it quietly like she learned to when she was small, to avoid her mother's rebukes, but she can't help the few soft sounds that are almost loud enough to drown out the phone.
It's buzzing, in the flap pocket of her purse, apparently more waterproof than she thought.
Of course she can't even car-drown in peace.
"What?" she says into the phone, grumpily, but she can hear how congested she sounds.
"Addison? What kind of a way is that to answer the phone?"
I'm a drowned rat. Screw etiquette.
"I'm a little busy right now," she says, "I'll get to the niceties later."
Except there is no more later with her husband, and the last thing her wet, muddy self needs to do is dwell on that.
"What is that noise?"
"… rain," she says.
"Rain. It's raining in the airport?"
With my luck, probably.
"Derek. Can I help you with something?"
Now it's his turn to be quiet.
Great, just what she needs right now.
"Is the connection bad or are you moping?" she asks pointedly.
And then he rocks her footing once more.
"You want to see my place?" he asks abruptly.
Does she …
"Are you asking me out?"
"I was just asking if you wanted to see my place. You said before that you hadn't seen it."
"I know I haven't seen it, Derek, and I know I wanted to see it, but I'm flying back to New York."
He's quiet for a moment.
"Wait a minute."
"No," he says quickly. "This isn't one of your—dramatic things."
"You're asking me to see your place an hour before my flight is supposed to take off. How is that not a dramatic thing?"
"I don't know," he says. "It just isn't."
She rolls her eyes in her very wet face. "Derek, I can't see your place without missing my flight."
He doesn't respond.
"Are you telling me to miss my flight?"
More silence.
"You're not telling me to miss my flight, but you're not denying I'd have to turn the car around if I wanted to see your place."
Is he really going to make her do all the work here?
"You want me to cancel the flight," she says slowly. "Derek—"
But he cuts her off.
"Turn the car around," he repeats. "You're not at the airport … You're not at the airport?"
Ugh.
"Not yet," she admits.
"There's less than an hour before your flight!"
Don't remind me.
"So?"
"So, you'd never wait that long to get to the airport." He pauses. "You had second thoughts."
"You had second thoughts first!"
"You didn't leave for the airport before I called you."
"Well, you asked me to see your—" she pauses, trying to clear her head, looking up with frustration and then spluttering a little when rain falls directly into her mouth.
"Addison? Where exactly are you right now?"
"I'm in the car," she says with as much dignity as a drowned rat can manage.
"It sounds like—" he pauses. "You opened the top, didn't you."
"No, I didn't." She crosses two wet fingers.
"You opened the top—no, you probably made someone else open the top, and now you don't know how to get it closed again."
"Maybe."
"Addison. It's pouring."
"Thank you, Derek, I hadn't noticed!" She pauses. Was that — "Don't you dare laugh," she warns him.
"Okay, I won't."
There's a pause.
"And you put your luggage in the backseat," he asks suddenly, "because the trunk is too claustrophobic for your sentient bags?"
She chooses to ignore the insult, and take it as a compliment that Derek remembers the way she liked to pack the car. "Maybe," she says.
"You realize the trunk would have kept them dry."
"I'm hanging up," she says.
But she doesn't.
"Don't laugh," she reminds him.
But he does.
He laughs and then she can't help joining in.
She's sitting on the shoulder of the highway with cars speeding by and sending more water in her direction, wet and bedraggled and very, very confused about the direction of her life, and yet –
It's funny.
So she laughs, too.
"What am I supposed to do?" she asks once they've stopped, swiping at her wet face. "I can't get the hood thing up." She pauses, wondering just how dreamy this softer version of her husband is going to be. It's not like he hasn't rescued her before.
"Derek …" she starts, biting her lip softly even though he can't see her; it usually works.
"No. I'm operating in an hour," he says. "Call Triple-A."
… what a dreamboat.
"Derek, would you just—"
But she blinks, suddenly realizing there's no water pouring down her face. The rain's stopped.
It's actually stopped.
"The rain's stopped!" she repeats triumphantly into the phone.
"Yeah?" There's a pause where she expects he's looking out the window. "The rain has indeed stopped."
She draws a deep breath.
So she's wet. And not particularly comfortable. So she's far too late for a refund on a last-minute ticket that already cost far too much.
She squints toward the sky. Is that—the clouds are actually parting. That hasn't happened once since she stepped foot in this godforsaken town.
"Derek—the sun is coming out."
"That seems unlikely."
"Would you just look?"
She hears him rustling toward the window again.
"Well?" she demands.
"Well, it's … less grey than it was before."
"It's not just less grey, Derek, it's sunny." She tips her head back, feeling the air on her face. The open car isn't so bad. Maybe Seattle isn't so bad either.
"Sunny is pushing it, Addison."
… she's okay with that.
And, script flipped. Not gonna lie, it felt good to write these two again, 15 and a half years after that episode actually aired. And if you are young enough that you didn't watch it in real time, that's fine too. Just don't remind me. But do let me know what you thought of the flip. Block loosened (I think) and more to come. So I hope you'll review and let me know what you think because, as always (she says, ten years(!) after she started posting on this site) I absolutely love hearing what you think.