Author's Notes: For some reason this story just keeps flowing, while my other story is much, much slower to emerge. But it's coming along. I promise. Thanks for all the wonderful feedback, as usual;) It definitely helps keep me going.
Someone Else's Star
by Kristen Elizabeth
Better to be alone than in bad company. – Thomas Fuller
In the end, she set aside her own preferences for the sake of her guests and served chicken in an apricot glaze, wild mushroom rice pilaf, parmesan broccoli, and raspberry tiramisu for dessert. Just because it was a hundred times easier to call for take-out at the end of a long shift didn't mean she couldn't cook real food.
Matt came over an hour early, with a bottle of wine and a bouquet of wildflowers. Sara, being way behind schedule, put him to work moving furniture to make room for the table she'd rented.
Just before the guys were due to arrive, Sara came out of the kitchen and was greeted with the sight of Matt putting the finishing touches on the table settings. He folded the final napkin and looked up at her with a smile.
The sheer domesticity of the scene flooded through her veins like ice water. To an outside eye, they could be just another young, married couple preparing their home for a quiet night in with friends.
Wasn't this what she'd run from six years earlier?
A knock disrupted her thoughts. Matt reached the door just as she did. "Sorry," he said, stepping back. "Old habits."
It was Greg and his date, a young rookie cop that Sara recognized as having recently worked crowd control at a public scene they'd worked. Greg had a wide grin on his face and a box of wine in his hand.
"Classy," Sara shook her head, accepting the gift.
"It's all fermented grape juice to me," he informed her. His attention shifted to the man at her side. "Who are you?"
Matt held out his hand. "Matt Wilson. I'm an…old friend of Sara's from San Francisco."
Greg shook it warily. "Greg Sanders. I took a shower with Sara once." Before Sara could rip him a new one, he introduced his date. "This is Summer Morris. I haven't showered with her yet, but I'm optimistic."
When Sara and Matt looked at her for a reaction, Summer shrugged. "He has a cute butt," she said in defense of her decision to date him.
"It's nice to see you again, Summer," Sara said, fighting back a smirk. "Come in, please."
Warrick arrived with Tina five minutes later. Sara had met her friend's wife only very briefly at the lab. She was pretty and intelligent, on the surface a good match for Warrick. But there was something in the way she looked at her husband's co-workers that didn't settle right with Sara. It was like she was viewing them as competition for Warrick's attention. Sara just hoped the woman never asked him to pick between her and the lab. She had a feeling Tina would lose.
Nick was the only one to press Matt into further identifying himself. When he showed up with his date, a pit boss named Breanna, he shook Matt's hand with even more suspicion than Greg had. "An old friend?" he repeated, shooting Sara a look. "Co-worker? Neighbor? Chess buddy?"
"None of the above," Sara said, firmly putting an end to the interrogation. "Thanks for the wine." She held up the bottle Nick had brought. "And thanks even more that it's not in cardboard."
"Hey!" Greg said from across the living room. "I'm gonna pour a glass from mine and his and see if you can even tell the difference."
This seemed to break the ice a bit, and over cocktails and appetizers, the four couples chatted amicably.
Then Greg suddenly decided to pick up where Nick had been forced to stop. "You know, not much is known about Sara Sidle B.V." He clarified. "Before Vegas. Maybe you can shed some light on the subject, Matt."
Sara cleared her throat. "As much as I love being considered a mystery…"
Nick watched Matt from over the rim of his highball glass. "For instance…are you an old friend of Grissom's, as well?"
"I'm not in law enforcement," Matt replied evenly.
"So how do you know our girl?" Warrick chimed in. Tina tightened her grip on his hand.
Matt and Sara exchanged another look. "We were engaged," Sara answered. There was a long moment of silence. "More cheese anyone?"
Nick caught up with Sara in the kitchen after the dinner plates had been cleared. She was spooning the tiramisu into dessert cups with the same precision she exercised when adding chemicals to test tubes in the lab.
"Need any help?"
She glanced over her shoulder. "I've got it, thanks."
Undaunted, he approached the counter at which she stood. "You throw a pretty good dinner party. I half expected to choke down some tofu."
"How can you be so sure that you didn't?" she said with a wink.
"Texans know meat." A moment passed before Nick folded his arms across his chest. "All this time we've worked together, I thought I knew you pretty well, Sara."
Sara paused as she added whipped cream to the top of each dessert. It would be an insult to his intelligence to make him spell everything out. "I never told anyone about Matt," she assured him.
"Not even Grissom?"
She was almost immune to his name; she was pretty sure there was no inflection in her voice when she said, "Not even Grissom." Straightening her shoulders, she added, "Although he knows now."
"What happened?" Nick clarified, "With Matt."
"Bad timing. Cold feet. The opportunity to work in the number two lab in the country." Sara placed a sprig of mint on the desserts. "The usual stuff."
"Did you love him?" Sara said nothing, so he pushed further. "Do you love him?"
For the first time since he'd entered the kitchen, she really looked at him. If she was going to have this deep of a conversation with any of her co-workers, she could only be truly honest with Nick. "I want the life that loving him would give me."
"What life is that?"
She glanced away. "You know…a family, children, someone who loves me back." Sara bit her lip. "Don't you dare laugh, but I want all those girly things."
"You can have all of that. I can't say it won't be weird seeing you with a baby on your hip instead of a Glock, but you can have it, Sara." Nick paused. "But with him? I don't know."
Her forehead pulled into a frown. "What do you mean?"
"I wish I had an example of what he did or said. But it's not that simple." Nick shrugged. "I just don't like something about him. I mean, if I'm getting this history right, you left him in San Francisco to come here five, six years ago? And he just showed up…what? A couple of weeks ago? Out of the blue?"
"He missed me."
"It's just sudden."
Sara turned on him. "You know…it's not a bad thing, being missed. Feeling like at least one person in the world cares about you more than they care about themselves." Her voice faltered. "Or their career." When she started again, she was steadier. "You've know him for two hours. Can you at least wait until after dessert to start judging him?"
"Fair enough." Nick reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. She covered it with hers in silent forgiveness. After a moment, he nodded towards the dessert cups. "Can I at least help you carry those out?"
When everyone had been served, Sara sat down to eat on the couch next to Matt. He slipped his free hand around her waist. In front of her friends, it was a declaration.
"You do realize that Greg has a crush on you, right?"
In the aftermath of the dinner party, Matt had opted to stick around, in order to help clean up. Sara had four empty coffee cups hanging off of her fingers; she laughed at Matt's statement. "I've always tried not to encourage him, but yeah. I know."
"Nick and Warrick, too. Not a crush so much on their parts, but they adore you." He carried the dessert dishes into the kitchen right behind her. "I've gotta say, I feel a whole lot better now that I know they're with you when you're at a scene."
Sara shot him a look. "I take care of myself just fine when I work solo."
He came up behind her. Maybe it was just a coincidence that he touched the shoulder that a perp had twisted violently enough to dislocate…the site of the injury that had brought them together. "Of course you do," he soothed.
They worked in silence until the dishwasher was full and running, and the extra dishes had been hand washed and dried. While Matt moved the furniture back into its usual order, Sara took a moment to consider the evening.
Her first effort as hostess had gone over surprisingly well. Her guests had gotten along and no one had displayed any symptoms of food poisoning yet. The only sticky part of the evening had been the disclosure of her one-time engagement.
As expected, her friends reacted characteristically to the news. Warrick had nodded, like he'd suspected something of the sort all along; he was far too laissez-faire to be caught off guard by anyone's past. Nick had stared at her as he silently digested the idea that she'd been keeping such a big secret; he was far too honest to ever assume that a friend wouldn't be the same.
Greg had blinked, something akin to hurt in his eyes. He knew very well that there couldn't have ever been anything more than innocent flirting between them. But in that moment, Sara realized that he'd always assumed this was the case because of Grissom. Knowing that she'd been serious with Matt meant that it wasn't a case of unrequited love that kept her at arm's length, but a lack of a deeper attraction.
As the evening progressed, she'd seen some of that hurt dissipate as Summer proved to be a smart, funny, attractive date. Maybe there would be a future there for her friend.
She came back into the living room and found Matt pulling on his coat, preparing to leave. Her apartment, which had been so full of friends and food, conversation and camaraderie…so full of life only a short while ago, was about to be as empty as it always was. She realized right then that she couldn't spend another night alone.
"Don't go," Sara said softly. Matt paused as he adjusted his coat's collar. There was a question in the look he gave her. She answered it, "I'm not ready for sex. I just…could you just stay with me?"
His own answer was to remove his coat.
Hours later, Sara woke from the dream of the stairs and doors. Something was different this time, but she couldn't put enough of the hazy fragments together to figure out what.
She tried to roll over, but she was pinned into place by something warm and muscular. Matt's arm. It was his breath against the nape of her neck, his scent wrapped up in her sheets, his hard chest against her back.
When the tears started, she couldn't stop them. She was spooned up against a gorgeous, athletic, prime example of manhood, most women's fantasy come true.
Yet all she wanted was the comforting softness of another man's older, less fit body.
Another bottle of scotch, another undeniable urge to hear the sound of her voice. Grissom fought it for what seemed like hours. But by the time he'd worked through a third of the bottle, he could no longer deny himself anything.
Oblivious to the early morning hour, he dialed and let it ring.
"Hello?"
Even through the fog of alcohol, he knew it wasn't Sara who had answered the phone. It was a man. A man who'd just been woken up.
"Is anyone there?" the sleep-heavy male voice continued. "Hello?"
Grissom pressed a numb finger against the talk button, ending the call. He recognized the voice. It was Matt Wilson. He'd spent the night at Sara's.
The phone hit the floor. He poured another shot and raised it to himself. When he put effort into something…be it academics, an investigation, or pushing the woman he loved into another man's arms…he always achieved his goal.
To Be Continued