Author's Note: I apologize for the supreme lateness of this update. I was enormously blocked and I didn't want to write something just for the sake of updating. So I'm updating now, and I hope it was worth the wait.
The next morning, Garret was afraid to open his eyes and confront the reality of morning. He wasn't proud that he had slept with a married woman, but at the same time he didn't regret it. His only apprehension this morning was that Audrey might have regrets of her own. When at last he opened his eyes he found her sitting on the edge his bed with her back to him. She had wrapped a sheet around her middle and tied her hair into a sloppy bun, inadvertently leaving a few auburn strands to course down her back and graze the top of the sheet. As Garret's eyes followed those hairs down the perfect slope of her neck, a sparkle caught his eye. Somewhere in the night Audrey's chain had twisted on her neck and now her wedding rings were hanging next to her shoulder. Garret had assumed that such a reminder of Audrey's marriage would finally cause him to feel the guilt he thought he should, but they barely fazed him. He watched the steady rise and fall of her shoulders for a moment before he finally spoke.
"You're still here," he said quietly. Somehow he had thought that after they had finished last night, she would have guiltily hurried home to her husband the way women in the movies always did. She turned and smiled at the sound of his voice.
"My car is at O'Malley's," she explained. Garret nodded slowly, realizing she hadn't snuck away like a woman from the movies only because she had no transportation.
"You could have taken a cab," he reasoned. Audrey moved closer and leaned over him wish a coy smile.
"I didn't want to take a cab," she breathed before dropping her lips to his.
Garret took Audrey to her car and waited in O'Malley's parking lot until she drove out of sight. They had spoken briefly about what she would say to Rodger when she went home to change her clothes. She would tell him that she had spent the night at her sister's as she so often did. Garret hoped the other man would believe her. He wasn't much for keeping secrets and hated lying even more, but he realized that if he wanted to continue see Audrey in any way other than professionally, secrets and lies were necessary.
x x x x x
As usual, Garret was the first to arrive at the morgue that morning. All day he did his damnedest to keep away from Audrey because he was certain that others would pick up on the new connection he had with her. Twice today he had seen her pass his office and had to turn away quickly for fear of anyone catching him grin like a love struck school boy.
Late in the afternoon Audrey waltzed into his office and slid a file across his desk. He looked up from his work to find her smiling down at him. He looked for something in her expression that would reveal the change in their relationship, something just for him, but found nothing. Her eyes and smile were precisely the same as they had been the day before. She was far better at pretending than he was, Garret thought.
"That's my last one for today," Audrey announced indicating the file, "unless there's anything else, I'm going to get going." Garret glanced at his watch and nodded. It was nearing six o'clock and he thought it best if he got going as well.
"That's fine Dr. Jackson," he said, "I'll see you tomorrow."
"G'night, Garret," she said quietly and then was gone as quickly as she had come. Garret leaned back in his chair and followed her with his eyes as she headed back to her office to collect her jacket and purse. When he couldn't see her anymore he sighed and opened the file she had brought him. Stuck to the first page of her report was yellow sticky note on which Audrey had scrawled: "O'Malley's in an hour?" Garret laughed to himself as he remembered the last time he had made that promise. He silently vowed not to be late this time.
Just to be on the safe side Garret arrived at O'Malley's fifteen minutes early. As he had expected Audrey was there before him, tucked into a booth in the back. What he hadn't banked on however, was that Jordan and Lily would be with her. As he approached their table the sound of their incessant chatter got louder and louder and when he slid into the empty seat beside Lily he felt as if he had interrupted some kind of girl's night out.
"Garret what are you doing here?" Jordan asked, obviously not intending to be rude, but sounding that way just the same. Garret thought for a moment before answering his friend. Audrey obviously hadn't told the others about his invitation.
"Long day," he said simply, "I thought I'd get a drink before heading home." Jordan nodded, satisfied with his answer and jumped right back into conversation as if she had never been interrupted.
Garret watched Audrey from across the table and smiled to himself as he thought about the night before. Tonight he had wanted to meet her for a quick drink and then take her to his bed, but at least for the moment that seemed out of the question. As he watched her face light up with rounds of smiles and laughter Garret replayed their night together. In the small hours of the morning he had found the tattoo on her ankle. It was perfect white daisy and when Garret had traced his finger around its every line and asked her about it, Audrey had laughed out loud and gotten a far off look in her eyes.
"On my sixteenth birthday," she sighed, "my sister Casey took me down to the tattoo parlor in our town and told me to pick whatever I wanted. Our mom would have had a heart attack if she had known, but this was just between me and Casey. I promised I wouldn't tell." Garret smiled and looked closer at the daisy. On one of the petals, written in tiny letters, was a name. Audrey had laughed again when he told her he couldn't read it without his glasses. "It says Casey," she explained. "And Casey has a daisy with my name in it on her ankle. We were just stupid kids when we got them. We didn't put much thought into the whole permanent aspect." Audrey reached down then and ran her hand across the flower. "Some times I wish it were a little smaller, but I'd never get rid of it."
"Did your mom find out?" Garret asked. Audrey smiled at the memory.
"Yeah, and she just about went through the roof. But we explained it to her. We got them because we were best friends and that was never going to change. Casey was just about to go off to college and she wanted to take me with her. So she did. Years and years later she told me that when she was homesick, all it took was seeing that daisy to know that I was there for her, even though I was thousands of miles away." When she finished her story Audrey's smile stretched clear across her face and for a moment Garret was jealous of her.
Never in his life had he been close enough to a person to commit to printing their name on his body. He'd been alone for most of his life and even when he had thought he was in close and secure relationships, something always managed to creep in and shake it apart. Before Garret's mind had the chance to wander into his past failed relationships, his attention was captured by a roar of laughter at the table. He hadn't heard what was so funny, but smiled and pretended he had. When the laughter died Audrey announced with a tired sigh that she had better get home.
Garret watched her as she made her way across the bar and out the door. When he'd found her invitation in the file, he had hoped that they could be alone, that he could talk to her without having to disguise his feelings in front of their colleagues. He wanted to go after her now and ask her to come home with him, but instead he stayed with Lily and Jordan for one more drink.
When he finally made it home an hour later, he slumped against the wall of the elevator and closed his eyes as it ferried him from the underground parking lot to the first floor. Turning the corner towards his apartment, Garret stopped dead in his tracks when he saw someone sitting on the floor beside his door. Audrey seemed to notice him at just the same time. She got up stiffly, as if she'd been waiting there for a long time. When Garret reached her, she slid her arms around his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth.
"What took you so long?" she asked with a smile.
"I didn't know you were going to be here, did I?" he reasoned as he fumbled blindly with his key in the door.
"Where else would I go?" Audrey whispered. The door flew open then and they stumbled through it tugging on the buttons and zippers on one another's clothes.
x x x x x
Over the next few weeks Garret and Audrey kept up their pretence of a strictly employee-employer relationship without complication. As far as Garret knew, no one in the office suspected they were anything more. Effortlessly, they had slipped into a routine. Audrey divided her nights between her sister, her husband and Garret. Garret had given her a key to his apartment so she wouldn't ever have to wait outside the door for him again.
Once she had used her key at two in the morning and Garret had woken with a start thinking some one had broken into his home. Audrey had spent the evening with Casey and her nieces and nephews but didn't feel like going home afterwards. She'd slipped into the bed beside him and Garret wrapped his arms around her, molding his front to the contours of her back. A moment before he fell back to sleep she spoke.
"Is that your daughter?" she asked. She was looking at the framed photograph of Abby on his dresser but Garret didn't have to open his eyes to know that. It was the only picture in the room.
"Yeah," he mumbled drowsily.
"She looks like you."
"She'll grow out of it," Garret joked. The room went quiet for a moment and Garret remembered what Audrey had said about having kids of her own. She'd said children had never been a priority and when she said it, Garret had felt like he was being lied to. "Why didn't you and Rodger have kids?" Rodger's name tasted bitter in his mouth and he silently wondered if it sounded that way too. Audrey sighed and rolled over to face him.
"I wanted kids," she admitted with a sigh, "but for Rodger it was never the right time. Whenever I suggested that we start a family he'd say that if he got his next promotion we'd have more money for a baby and a house. And the promotions kept coming but Rodger just kept putting off having a child. And then one day I turned around and I was forty and I decided I'd missed my chance." Audrey smiled the saddest smile Garret had ever seen. "So I just stopped pushing." She kissed him then as if to close the subject.
Garret took the hint but spent the remaining few minutes before he fell asleep thinking that Audrey would have made a good mother. He'd never seen her with children, but she was caring and gentle and had an enormous heart. For just a moment he entertained the notion that if they had met years ago Audrey might have had children and those children might have been his. But Garret dismissed the idea quickly. Just as Audrey didn't want to go back and erase the daisy from her ankle, Garret didn't want to go back and meet Audrey at age twenty. If they had met earlier perhaps he wouldn't have married Maggie and together they wouldn't have had Abby. Any rewriting his past that didn't include his daughter just didn't make sense.