Chapter Fifteen: Dialogue

Olivia

I feel your arms winding around my waist from behind as I crack open another egg. Satisfied that things are frying along nicely without my constant watch I turn into your embrace, smelling my shampoo in your hair. We end our hug with a chaste kiss as I turn back to tend my eggs. You lean back against the counter perpendicular to the stove, watching me cook. I don't have to see your face to know you're smiling at me. I finish the eggs, and slide two of them onto a plate, handing it to you to carry to the table. I slide the other two onto a second plate and flip off the stove before I join you. You're already sipping your coffee as I stop to refill my orange juice and pitch a napkin at you from the bar counter. There are no case files between us today. You've left your glasses where I put them, laying on the table between us… almost exactly halfway between you and I, like a wire-rimmed centerpiece to our first meal together. There's nothing to get between our pending discussion except food, and we both know we've never let that stop us from arguing before. I can't count the number of times you preached about my drinking over breakfast.

We dally here though. I thought you'd already be ready to start, that you'd kick us off with a dazzling opening statement. I assumed you'd reclaim your courtroom persona. But looking at you playing with your toast I realize you're just as frightened by this as I am.

Alex

I towel-dried my hair in your bedroom, wrenching the water from my new do while I try to gather my courage. I should pull out my hair-dryer… I like how easy it is to assume you've left it under the bathroom sink. I decide to risk some frizz in order to get closer to you faster. I change into a new pair of jeans that I dredged from my suitcase in the living room while you were in the bathroom before my shower. My shirts are wrinkly and I fight the urge to plug in an iron, then remember it wouldn't matter because you've never kept an iron. I try to smooth the worst of the wrinkles, wetting my hand under the bathroom faucet and leaving awkward handprints on my shirt hem. I look at my face in the mirror, trying not to focus too much on the lines that suddenly started appearing in the last couple of years. Being without you has aged me. I wonder if you noticed the new laugh lines around my lips. I pull my still damp hair behind my neck, and flip off the bathroom light, as I head towards the kitchen.

You look so domestic at the stove, frying up my eggs… over-hard just the way I like them. I love that you remember all those little things about our life together. You turn after I circle your waist with my arms and even though I'm not that much taller than you are you somehow feel small in embrace today. Your anxiety about this is palpable, and I can see you fighting against old habits as you lift your mouth to mine in a sweet, almost innocent kiss before turning back to the frying pan that crackles on the stove.

I step away and watch you from the side, smiling at this home-body side of you. I always loved watching you cook, and I know from experience that my eggs are almost done as I wait for you to hand me my plate before removing your eggs from the pan. I'm already sipping my coffee by the time you sit down after throwing a napkin at me and refilling your orange juice. All that's left between us are my glasses in the center of the table, casting odd shadows from the light that filters through the window in the next room.

I know it's time but I just can't find the words for some reason. All of a sudden I'm tongue-tied, trying to find a way to begin this dialogue without immediately making us both angry.

Olivia

"I'm sorry." It's out of my mouth before I can stop it. I'm not sure what I'm apologizing for exactly. It feels like the wrong thing to say until I look at your face.

"I know."

You don't offer an apology in return, and I suppose you don't really owe me one. I'm the one that screwed everything up in the first place. You've stopped eating your eggs, your toast is forgotten. I've lost my appetite, hungry instead for the cleansing of confession.

You know as well as I do that we won't be finishing breakfast, and you gather up our picked over plates and take them to the sink as I move into the living room, choosing to perch in a chair, drawing my feet up on the seat, hugging my knees to my chest with my arms. I want to be able to look at you while we talk, I want to be able to look at you without getting distracted by your body next to me on the sofa. You sit at the end of the sofa, as close to me as you can be separated by armrests and an end table. My water from last night still sits between us, and the light from the window behind me creates a rippling shadow on the wood.

"I'm sorry," I say again, gathering my courage, trying to find a better word.

You don't respond this time, knowing I'm almost ready to break my silence. Our postures match a night that seems so long ago… longer than two years. Last time we sat like this you were crying, leaning your elbows on your legs, your face in your hands, fingers tangled in your hair. I sat hugging my legs, too angry to cry, to scared to speak.

"Alex, last time… when you were here, when you were so angry at me. You need to know I wanted so much to say something to you. To say what you wanted to hear. But I couldn't Alex. I didn't know what that word meant. I didn't understand how three words could be so important when I went my whole life without hearing them."

"I said them Olivia. I said them to you over and over and over again. Didn't you hear me?"

"Yes… … no. I don't know Alex. Life with my mom was-- hard, you know that. I spent my life cleaning up after her messes, sopping up her vomit from the kitchen floor after she came home from a bender. I was five the first time I had to empty a roll of paper towels to clean up the vomit around her head on the living room floor after she passed out one night. I might as well have been the maid for all the attention she paid me. She always cast me the same type of scornful glares your mom gives Celeste when she finds a dusty shelf. By the time I was seven she was ignoring me completely. I made my own breakfast, got a ride to school with a friend's mom or dad, then made my own dinner at night.

"I ate a lot of bologna sandwiches back then. Maybe that's why I'm so picky about the meat I eat. Certain things just remind me of being alone there with her, waiting to smell the alcohol on her breath, waiting to see that droop of her eyelids that tells me she's about to pass out." My chin rests on my knees and I'm not looking at you anymore. I can feel my tears starting to well up in my eyes.

You don't fill my silence as I try to recover my resolve. You seem content to let me speak, and I imagine you're relieved to hear these things, even though I know telling you my secrets, telling you these stories makes you hurt for me. It's a strange feeling, this opening up. Even when they make me talk to Huang, I never get into detail. Not really. I focus on my failed relationships, my one-night stands. I never get into this nitty-gritty of what it was like for me living in that house.

"That first night, when I came to you after her funeral I was beside myself. I couldn't decide if I should be upset or relieved that it was finally over. Ever since I joined the academy our relationship had started to improve. It helped that I didn't have to listen to her footsteps coming down the hall, plodding, unsteady, drunk. Living away from her was like a dream, and all of a sudden my duties at the academy helped me forget what it was like to come home from college for the weekend and having to check her pulse before starting my laundry and locking myself in my room. I was busy then, studying, training… trying to become a good cop-- no, the best cop. I always wanted to be the best. Wanted to be opposite of everything she was. I hated having to see her imperfections laid so bare before me all my life. I remember being in high school, afraid to bring home friends… swearing I'd never drink. That I'd never go down that road, never copy her failings.

"Once I became a cop our relationship actually got better. She had finally started drinking less. She managed to stay sober for a few hours every day. We met for lunch, sometimes for dinner if she was still dry enough to catch a cab. My first year on SVU she actually helped me come to grips with my … heritage as it were. I even thought I'd found my father at one point, with a little help from Munch. It was the first time I didn't feel like she hated me. The first time I didn't feel like I was a mistake to her. The first time I didn't feel like I was a mistake to myself."

Alex

I don't stop to say that you were never a mistake to me. I'm afraid if I stop these confessions you'll clam up again. Afraid that your closed-off nature will reclaim you and I'll lose these moments. You stopped looking at me when you started talking about your mom, but my eyes haven't left you for an instant. I think I've forgotten how to blink, afraid to miss any of the emotion that crosses your face. I want to be looking at you when your eyes finally return to mine. For the moment, I just sit, leaning my elbows on my knees, the way I did more than two years ago. But this time you're the one crying, and I'm the one listening. The anger of that moment doesn't exist here. The sound of your voice, the sound of you finally speaking has erased it from between us.

"Before you came…" your voice breaks. I can hear your breath catching on your tears as you try to calm yourself, "Before you came, I spent a lot of time doing things that I'll always regret. It wasn't until I became a cop that I really started drinking. The resolutions of my teen years vanished as the stress of the job started beating me down. I'd head to Maloney's after work, joining other cops as I started trying to drown my stress. It started off easily enough, a drink to sooth my nerves, a shot to erase my cases from the day. I didn't start out trying to get drunk. I figured I could fight my genes, that I could keep it moderate, not get stuck in the cycle. But after awhile, getting drunk was all that worked. Getting drunk… or getting screwed."

I can't help but cringe at the turn this is taking. I know you've been with men, quite a few. I know you spent a lot of time trying to deny who you really are. I'm relieved at your honesty, but I know this is about to get as hard for me to hear as it is for you tell.

"I know you've already heard the gossip about Cassidy. About Michael. You know about the reporter who almost got me fired because he wrangled a look at a case file while he was at my place. They're not the only ones. I tried a date with a woman once at the academy. It … didn't end well-- which was my fault really. She's a doctor now. Actually, she's filling in for Huang while he's working on a federal case. She switched somewhere along the way at the academy, decided cop life wasn't for her… left to go to medical school. She kept telling me she forgave me, that she understood my fears but I could tell she was angry. I know she thought my accepting her date and then shutting down before the night was even over was just cruelty. She tried to kiss me goodnight and I slapped her. I couldn't stand the idea of everyone knowing the very thing I'd spent so much time trying to deny since college."

I didn't expect this turn in your story. I was almost ready to hear about boyfriends, about sex with random men. I wasn't ready to hear about you dating a woman, even if it was before you met me, even if it was just once. Especially since you're working with her now. I feel my first twinge of jealousy, surprised that this isn't an issue that's come up in all the years we were off and on and off again.

"Rebecca was a nice woman. Intelligent, sharp. She still is. I wasn't surprised to see her wearing a wedding ring. I don't know who she married yet, her sexuality was as flexible as I pretended mine to be. From there on out I only dated men. -- No, that's not it either, I didn't really date anybody. Unless you count sleeping with someone after dinner and then never seeing them again a date. I did that a lot. I was never at a loss for someone to fuck. I didn't think I was all that attractive, but somehow when I needed to forget my day there was always a willing partner waiting somewhere around me.

"It really boiled down to a desire to banish the part of me that flared at the sight of a beautiful woman. I wanted to scrub away that part of me that reacted to Rebecca when she was in the room. It wasn't like the way I react to you, but it was similar."

I can't help but smile as you include me in your memories. I was starting to think you'd forgotten I was here at all. And I'm glad to hear you don't hold this… Rebecca and I in the same place in your mind.

"Cassidy was the first in a line of professionally fucked up mistakes. At Special Victims I kept running into these versions of my father. Rapists, perverts, abusers. I knew better than to bring him home with me, knew better than to let him into my bed. I knew it wouldn't last, that I couldn't get attached to him. And it had nothing to do with the job. I could see in his eyes that he wanted more than just one night. I could tell he was the kind to get attached. I'm not used to sleeping with co-workers, or rather I wasn't then. I wasn't used to having to see them every day afterwards. I'm much better at a duck and dodge. Better when I can find a way to avoid my partners afterwards. Cassidy was a drunk, late-night mistake that turned into an awkward, gossip-inducing office mistake. I know Elliot still thinks it was my fault that he left special victim's. He's probably right. I wasn't exactly kind afterwards. It sort of went downhill from there."

You raise your chin from your knees, looking at me to gauge my reaction. I'm glad I haven't shifted from my position, as I meet your eyes. I sit up, taking my elbows off my knees, reaching out to you, laying my hand over yours on the top your knees. I curl my fingers under your palm and give you an encouraging squeeze. I don't want my voice to break your flow, but I need a way to tell you it's ok. You grip my hand and then release it, reaching down to hug your legs to you again, arms laying parallel to each other, dividing your calves in two, I watch you wiggle your toes nervously over the edge of the chair. I can see the struggle in your eyes reminding me how precious these revelations are to you. You've been speaking so easily I'd almost forgotten that the omission of these stories is what kept tripping us up for so long.