Yes, life unfortunately got in the way of me updating like last week. That and beautiful writers block. Hopefully I still have some readers!
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don't forget my broken heart
you remember it from the start
you made it and it's all a part
of your grey blue eyes
She wondered how many was too many.
When drinking went from being recreational to when it became a problem.
Her mother was an alcoholic, but her mother had reason to drink.
Maybe she had reasons to drink.
Derek was finishing up a surgery. She was going to wait for him at Joe's. He said he'd stop by later.
It had been a week since the roof, since Derek broke and she wasn't sure where they were. Neither had the energy to discuss the situation. It was easier to simply take comfort in the other's presence and pretend their other problems didn't exist.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the interns. All of whom were laughing and already drunk beyond measure. Meredith stumbled off her seat as her friends doubled over with laughter again. A young man helped her up and the way she leaned on him Addison knew what would come next.
She wasn't sure what she felt but it wasn't disgust. No, Meredith was young and attractive she had every right to be do what she chose in her free time. Perhaps it was disappointment.
Yes, disappointment that this was who Derek fell in love with. This was the woman who occupied his mind every waking moment of everyday.
A woman so different from herself.
She held her breathe. Had Derek changed that much?
She looked at Meredith again, had they met like that? She stumbled and he picked her up?
Derek always liked to play the white knight.
She lifted her finger, signaling she was ready for another drink. Joe came down, and filled her glass. She couldn't remember how many she'd had.
The hours trickled, the interns and Meredith's new friend had all left and the bar slowly emptied. She knew it was closing time and Derek was no where to be found.
She felt like stumbling and seeing if Derek would be there to pick her up.
"Dr…umm..Mrs. Sheppard, I called you a cab."
She looked up at him. Was it pity in his eyes? Derek never came and Joe knew. She felt exposed.
She took a deep breathe. Her life wasn't about to fall apart sitting in a cheap bar.
"Thank you Joe."
She got up and walked steadily towards the door. She knew how to carry herself, even when she had had much too much liquor.
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She wished she was in New York, the part of the city where you worried about getting into cabs in her condition. A place you had to worry about getting home. But this was Seattle and no one worried about things like that. Everyone got home safe even when they didn't want to.
She saw the driver smirk as they pulled up to Derek's trailer. Yes, this was the place the woman wearing the newest season of Jimmy Choo's called home.
If only he knew she had no true home. This was just the place she slept, when she was lucky enough to get sleep.
She opened her purse and pulled out a crisp, large bill. And the smirk on his face was gone. Her perfect exterior preserved again.
She looked out front and saw Derek's rusty jeep. Her legs felt weak and the liquor finally kicked in.
The door opened and she exited the cab. Her knees like jello but she didn't stumble and she didn't fall. At the door she stopped one hand on the door knob.
It surprised her that she wasn't crying though her continued ability to feel this sadness frightened her slightly. She had felt a glimmer of hope earlier but the sadness had returned.
He had left her, forgotten about her. She ached deep within. Such a pain she was afraid she couldn't breathe much less continue to live. And she didn't know what to do. It was too soon to feel that way again. She wasn't strong enough yet. She was sure she never would be strong enough but Derek had done it again.
They had come so far. Sometimes she'd look at Derek and see the man she married but maybe she had been looking too hard. Imagining things that weren't there.
Maybe they hadn't gone anywhere at all.
She stumbled into the trailer, towards the bathroom.
She handled her liquor, and she knew when she couldn't.
Her mother had reasons to drink. And now Addison knew she had reasons to drink.
She felt a hand on her back, gentle and soft. And someone held her hair.
And though he was her husband, she still felt a little shocked that it was Derek standing with her.
"Why did you drink so much?"
A rhetorical question. Why drink anything less than what makes you numb the pain of everything else.
And tonight, sitting on the floor in their tiny bathroom she knew it hadn't been enough.
She wouldn't tell him, though, and she wouldn't tell him it wasn't the first time she had drank too much. Derek was a deep sleeper and he never noticed when a bottle of wine disappeared.
She leaned back against the door. She felt worse than before.
"Are you done Derek?"
Her voice so soft and tired. She looked so weak sitting before him. And she dared to hope that the second time she asked the question he would answer honestly.
His eyes scanned over her. Her hair a brilliant mess and her mascara smeared and running down her cheek. Her skin a paler shade than usual. She was still beautiful, a beautiful tragedy.
"Addison. I knew you would make it home."
He had no idea how bad she wished she hadn't.
"You haven't forgiven me."
She remained on the floor, afraid she'd only fall if she attempted to stand.
"I don't want to talk about Mark."
His voice full of pain and she wondered how his pain compared to hers.
"Not Mark."
And she knew that he knew what she was talking about because the look in his eyes changed.
He could deny it but she knew he thought about it. Derek wasn't the kind of man not to think about it.
"I didn't know what to do Derek. You said you didn't want to have children after Kaelyn. I didn't know what to do."
She felt so tired but not sleepy. Just worn out with no hope of rest.
"I don't want to talk about it"
It was over a year ago, he still didn't want to talk. She wondered if he even wanted her. Obligation was a big word.
"Derek," she stood up Derek had seen her fall more than once. Though now she was sure he wouldn't help her up, "I'm sorry."
Her breathing shaky and quick. And she felt like she was dieing but she knew death wouldn't be as painful as what she felt.
"What do you want me to say Addison? What do you expect me to say? Do you want me to say that it still hurts, that I still think about it? Because I do, but it doesn't change anything. I can't do anything to stop it. Everyday," he held his head in his hands before looking at her, "I don't know how to mourn for a child I never knew I was going to have."
A slow building anger within him. Anger and sadness.
They stood in silence and the world was spinning so fast she was sure years had gone by and not simply seconds.
"And I'm responsible for it."
Oh God she couldn't breathe.
"I didn't say that." He moved towards her but she stepped away.
She was trembling, and trying to breathe but it seemed damn near impossible.
"Sometimes you don't need to say things, you just feel them."
And she remembered the feeling. Knowing that you're life was falling apart at the seams.
It wasn't intentional, she had wanted the baby but circumstances got in the way. Her life had a way of never turning out how she expected.
"My mother died and I went to that funeral alone. I lost the last part of my family and you weren't there to hold me up."
"If you had told me Addison. It would have been different."
Maybe things would have been different but a baby didn't fix what was broken in her marriage. Though her miscarriage had only made it worse.
"You should have come with me. You should have sat by me as we buried my mother."
She felt a cold sweat as she remembered collapsing during the funeral. She had known something was wrong.
She knew the statistics; added stress to the fetus caused a miscarriage in the first trimester. Very common, though she never thought she'd be part of the statistics she told her patients when what they feared the most happened.
She should have told Derek, she knew that but she was afraid. Fear that the joy a child brought could so easily be overshadowed by loss once again. Little did she know her fears would come to pass regardless of her actions.
"I was going to tell you Derek."
"You told Mark."
And an uncomfortable silence fell between the two.
She knew she'd never stop paying for her mistakes.
But then again she knew didn't deserve peace.
"Because Mark wasn't you. You, the husband who was quickly becoming the best neurosurgeon in the entire country at the cost of his family, the husband who forgot his anniversary, the husband who stopped answering his wife's calls, the husband I saw in the late hours of the night and never woke up to in the morning."
"I made mistakes Addison. I won't deny it but you didn't tell me I was going to have a child."
"I know. But you should have come to the hospital. No one should lose a child alone."
She never told him how much that hurt her.
It was the only other time in her life she had wished she hadn't made it home safe.
"You weren't alone Addison, you had Mark."
She closed her eyes. Tears streaming down her face and unable to breathe.
All she remembered was hearing the door slam and Derek's car start.
you're gone and i know i'm dead
i've lost my way
can't find me in your grey blue eyes
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Dave Matthews Band
I promise I'm gonna lay off the soap operas and try to tone down the melodrama! Though it helped me move past the block sitting on my laptop so I won't complain too much. Hopefully the next update is sooner!
And thanks for reviewing--you make the sun shine
Thanks for reviewing!