Sara's mind was spinning. Nick's words had left her in a daze and as she continued to stare at the doorway she tried to rationalize whether what he said was real or if she had just imagined it. She was still standing there with a bewildered expression on her face when Catherine sauntered into the locker room.
The veteran CSI took in Sara's expression and cleared her throat, concern flitting across her face. "Sara?" Catherine's voice just barely pierced the fog that surrounded Sara's mind. Catherine took another step towards Sara and spoke in a motherly tone. "Sara, are you ok?"
Sara snapped out of her reverie and looked in Catherine's direction, wondering to herself just how long she'd been standing there staring off into space. "I'm sorry, what?"
"You must have had some case." Catherine was fishing to see if she could figure out what had her normally unflappable colleague in such a state.
Sara furrowed her brows together. It took her a moment to even remember her case and as she did, she pasted what she hoped looked like a smile on her face. "Bugs, lots of bugs."
Catherine nodded, both brows curving upwards. "Better bugs than Botox." Catherine could not get the case she and Nick worked on out of her mind. She was used to people responding to her beauty and as she saw younger and younger women garnering the attention of men that used to turn their heads at her she faltered. "What people do to stay young and beautiful." There was a bit of resignation in her tone. "With a few more zeros at the end of my paycheck and I might just join them."
Sara looked at Catherine as if she was out of her mind. How in the world a woman who looked a good ten years younger than she was and who never seemed to lack for suitors thought she needed improvement was beyond Sara. "Hmm."
Catherine opened her locker to retrieve her jacket and regarded Sara for a moment. She wished that she had the self assured confidence of her younger coworker. She hadn't had to rely on her looks to get ahead in life, but as Catherine mentally calculated what a makeover would do she realized that Sara probably could have gotten by on her looks if she'd wanted to. She furrowed her brow once again. "Are you sure you're ok?"
"Uh, yeah." Sara nodded and then reached to close her locker door before realizing that she already had. She quickly glanced at Catherine. "I need to go."
Without another word, she turned and headed out of the locker room and into the hallway. As she walked towards the front door of the lab she had a vague recollection that someone was saying goodbye to her and so she had lifted her hand in a halfhearted wave.
When she stepped out into the parking lot, the morning sun seeming extra bright after working the nightshift, she slid her sunglasses on and then glanced around realizing that Nick had probably been gone a while, especially since she wasn't sure exactly how long she'd been standing in the locker room before Catherine had walked in.
His words echoed in her mind again as she climbed behind the wheel of her Denali and she shook her head in disbelief. Had he really said that he thought she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever known? Beautiful was not a word that she'd heard directed at her very often. Grissom had said it once when he'd mentioned that he thought baseball was a beautiful game and she'd asked him when he had become interested in beauty. His simple remark that it had been since he'd met her had given her a strand of hope to cling to and build her affection upon. In retrospect she could see that regardless of how Grissom might have felt about her, he was either unwilling or incapable of acting on any feelings he might have had for her. Pinning her hopes on that one comment had resulted in her heart being broken in countless pieces.
As she drove, she wasn't really paying attention to where she was going, so it came as a bit of a surprise to her that instead of pulling into the parking garage of her apartment complex she was pulling up to the curb in front of Nick's house. She sat there for a long moment before she turned the ignition off and descended from the vehicle.
She strode purposefully up the walkway, a plan formulating in her mind as she approached the front door. She needed to know if Nick had meant what he said; the last thing she wanted was to pin her hopes on a compliment and end up with another broken heart.
She stopped in front of the door and took a couple of deep breaths before she lifted her hand and knocked. After waiting what felt like an eternity, she knocked again, silently wondering if she should just go home and just talk to him before the next shift.
When the door finally opened, Sara was a bit startled and she jumped slightly, suddenly unsure of what she was doing there. Again the question came to her mind whether she had only imagined what Nick had said to her in the locker room.
Nick regarded Sara's silence and her bewildered expression with a hint of a smile. "Sara." For some reason he wasn't really surprised to see her standing there on his doorstep. He had anticipated that she would either ignore what he'd said to her in the locker room or that she'd show up on his doorstep and demand an explanation; a speechless Sara, however, wasn't what he'd expected.
When Sara finally found her words, she had a slight waver to her voice. "Why?"
Nick's eyebrow arched upward in curiosity.
She closed her eyes to concentrate for a moment and then steeled herself as she opened them. "You." Her throat felt dry. "I mean. The Hope Diamond." She looked at him as if pleading for him to understand what she was trying to say. "Why?"
Nick tried to restrain his smile at how one sentence had seemed to unravel Sara. "I meant what I said."
Sara's eyes widened. "I didn't imagine it." Somewhere in the back of her mind she was thankful that normal speech had finally returned.
Nick shook his head, his smile widening. "No, you didn't imagine it." He studied her face. "You are the most beautiful woman I've ever known, and the longer I know you, the more beautiful you are to me."
Sara felt her cheeks burning as she furrowed her brow. "Why?" She really couldn't fathom why of all the women he had known that she was the most beautiful to him.
Nick let out a soft chuckle. "Because you're you." He let out a sigh as he watched her face. "I wish you could see what I see." He felt a pang of sadness that she couldn't seem to comprehend what an amazing woman she was.
Sara looked at him for a moment and suddenly she knew what she had come there for. She stepped forward, cupping his cheeks in her hands and kissed him for all she was worth. Before he had a chance to fully respond, Sara stepped away, a smile widening into a grin as she saw the dumbfounded expression developing on Nick's face. "Ok, I'll see you tonight then."
Nick looked at her in confusion, the kiss having short circuited his ability to speak.
She tried to restrain a giggle and stepped forward, placing a chaste kiss against his lips. She whispered and looked into his eyes as she stepped away. "At work." She turned and walked towards her vehicle, glancing back at him and winking as she climbed into the SUV.
Nick was standing there with a dopey grin on his face, still not having said a word as Sara drove off in her Denali.