Mer rounded the corner onto her street, breathing heavily as she pushed herself to a sprint for the last block of her run. She shuttled past her mailbox and broke stride, slowing to a walk to catch her breath. As she stopped and shifted her weight to one foot, pulling the other up behind her to stretch her quad, she noticed what she hadn't during her sprint—the black Impala parked a few cars behind her own. Forgetting her stretches, she bounded up the front walk, throwing the door open and hollering, "Dean?"
"In here," his familiar voice replied.
Mer smiled and beelined it for the kitchen. There she found him seated across the dining room table from her roommate, Phoebe, sipping coffee. When she entered the room, he rose to stand.
"What are you—doing here?" Mer questioned excitedly, still out of breath from her sprint. She moved to embrace him.
Dean lifted her off the ground with his hug, spinning her for half a turn before setting her back down.
"Sorry," Mer said, swiping her hand across her brow as she stepped back. "Sweaty."
"Eh, it's only a little gross," Dean teased, grinning.
"So?" Mer wondered expectantly.
"We were in the area and then my dad decided to take a job alone," Dean explained, keeping it vague in Phoebe's presence.
"How 'in the area?'" Mer wondered, raising her eyebrows.
"Well, in the state," Dean replied, trying to quell any worries she may have had about supernatural threat. "Dad took off with a…colleague of his and actually left me the car for once. I figured I'd hang out for a day or two—you know, if that's okay…"
"I was just telling him he couldn't have come at a more perfect time," Phoebe chimed in. When Mer looked confused, she continued. "The wedding? Tomorrow night?"
Understanding dawned on Mer. "Oh, yeah!"
"Mer here has been insistent on going stag," Phoebe said with a slight eye roll. "But now she has no choice but to take a plus one like the rest of us."
"Wait, no Brian?" Dean questioned, looking at Mer curiously.
"No Brian," Mer responded simply with a shake of her head.
"Leave it to Mer to find something wrong with the perfect guy," Phoebe teased. "She dumped him a few weeks ago." Mer shot her a look.
"Okay, you're definitely gonna have to fill me in," Dean told her. "I liked that guy."
"Everyone did," Phoebe insisted.
"All right, all right," Mer cut them off, putting her hands up in surrender. "I need to get in the shower and you two clearly need to get this Brian talk out of your systems while I'm not in the room." She snorted and turned to head upstairs.
Mer was out of the shower and brushing her teeth in front of her bathroom mirror, towel wrapped around herself, when she heard a soft knock at her bedroom door. "You decent?" Dean asked.
"Uh huh," Mer garbled from around her toothbrush, loud enough for him to hear her from her ensuite.
"Wow, love the look," Dean joked, nodding toward the other towel she had wrapped around her head.
"Ha ha," Mer snorted back. She spit into the sink.
"So, you and Brian…?"
"So, your dad took a job without you?" Mer interjected. "That's strange, isn't it? You can usually only get away when things are slow."
Dean took her blatant subject change in stride. "He's been acting weird lately," he admitted. "I don't know what's up." He shrugged and let out a small sigh, trying not to betray just how much it bugged him. "But if it means we can hang out, I guess it's not all that bad."
Mer smiled. "I was thinking the same thing," she agreed, slipping out the bathroom doorway past him and into her bedroom. "And Phoebe was right, you really couldn't have picked a better weekend. This wedding's going to be a good time."
"Open bar?" Dean fished.
"Oh yeah," Mer answered. "Jane and Derek both come from money. I have a feeling no expense will be spared."
"I guess it was pointless to think the attire would be casual?" Dean questioned.
"Black tie," Mer said in answer. "But I saw you brought the Impala. You have your suit in there, right?"
"Yeah, the fake Fed suit I lifted from the Goodwill," Dean countered. "Cheap is an understatement."
"It doesn't—Wait…you steal from the Goodwill?"
"Maybe I paid for it, I don't know," Dean answered boyishly. "Depends on the day. Point is, it's a secondhand piece of crap. Everybody else will be dressed to the nines out there."
Mer regarded Dean knowingly. "Why do you always feel like you have to impress my friends? They don't care, Dean. They already like you—some of them too much, even." She was referring to her friend Kate, who tried her luck with Dean every time he came into town.
"What, you jealous?" Dean asked tauntingly.
Mer shook her head, smirking. "The opposite," she replied, bobbing her eyebrows. "You know I think you should give Kate a chance."
"Well, we'll see," Dean postured. "Who's she taking to this thing?"
"Our friend, Paul," Mer answered absently, looking through the top drawer of her dresser. "Turn around, please," she instructed.
Dean faced the other direction and heard Mer's towel drop to the floor. "Is there anything going on between them?"
"No," Mer responded, stepping into a pair of underwear and pulling them up her long legs. "But, it's Kate, you know."
"No, I don't," Dean replied. "What's that mean?"
"I mean," Mer began, pausing for a moment to focus on clasping her bra. "It's blond, blue-eyed, tan-skinned, big-boobed Kate. She looks like a model. Everyone's a little in love with her."
"Her boobs aren't that big," Dean countered.
Mer snorted. "Sure, maybe not," she conceded flippantly. "Point is, the fact that you don't seem interested in the slightest drives her crazy—makes her want you more and more every time you come to visit."
"Hmm," Dean returned noncommittally.
"You're good to turn around," Mer told him, now sifting through her closet.
Dean turned and quickly put a hand up to guard his eyes. "Am I?" he guffawed, seeing her still in just her bra and underwear.
"Don't be a prude," Mer teased. "It covers more than my bathing suit. Besides, you totally saw me naked the last time you were here." reminded him. She selected a white sundress dotted with purple flowers, wresting it from its hanger.
"That was skinny dipping," Dean countered. "In the dark. It was different."
"It was a full moon," Mer pressed, tugging her dress over her head and smoothing it down just above her knees. "I could see everything I wanted to."
"Yeah, well…there were…other people around. It was a party…I don't know," Dean spluttered before insisting, "It was different."
"Okay, sorry," Mer apologized, taking her hair down from her towel and padding back toward the bathroom.
"A little warning next time would be nice, that's all I'm saying," Dean amended.
"I didn't realize the sight of my body was so jarring," Mer played, angling her head to give him an odd look.
"Okay, calm down," Dean told her. "Wait…what do you mean by 'you could see everything you wanted to?'"
Mer shrugged a shoulder and smiled coquettishly.
"What has gotten into you?" Dean demanded, amused.
Mer seemed to snap out of it, the smile fading from her features as she tousled her hair in the mirror. "Uh…I don't know," she answered lamely. "I think school is taking all the brain cells I have left. That and the breakup has me a little all over the place."
Seeing his in, Dean asked, "Does this mean you want to talk about it?"
Mer sighed, staring at herself blankly in the mirror before picking up a tube of lip gloss. "There's nothing to talk about," she answered glumly. "Phoebe was right, Brian's perfect. Nice guy. Smart. Funny. Good-looking. Driven. Like name-brand marriage material."
"Whoa," Dean interjected, taken aback. "That's serious."
"Well, I am twenty-four, Dean" Mer said.
"So am I," Dean replied, squinting at her. "Is that supposed to mean something?"
"Maybe not for you," Mer reasoned. "But I'm hoping to be married before I'm thirty. Graduation. Career. Marriage. That's the plan. I mean, I'm seeing it happen all around me—Jane and Derek aren't the only ones."
"I've never heard you talk like this," Dean admitted, looking at her through the mirror as if he was regarding a stranger. Hearing her talk the way she was brought an unexpected melancholy over him. "You want the picket fence?"
Mer chuckled. "Not exactly," she responded. "I'm thinking something a little more…rural. Less neighbors, more open space."
"Well, what was the deal with Brian, then?" Dean wondered, wanting desperately to get back into more comfortable territory. "Bad in bed?"
Mer snorted. "I wish it were something like that," she said. "That I could deal with."
"You could commit to bad sex for the rest of your life?" Dean questioned, astonished.
"I have other things at the top of my list," Mer admitted.
"Then you clearly haven't had good sex before," Dean teased, cracking a smile.
Mer shot him a stormy look and then became very concerned with a loose thread on the strap of her dress. "You know how things are with my parents," she murmured. "Kindness, respect, feeling safe with someone—those are the things that matter to me."
"Mer, I'm sorry," Dean told her guiltily. "I didn't mean to make a joke of it."
"It's okay," Mer replied quietly, glancing up at him. "It's not you, it's…it's me. I say I want those things and then someone like Brian comes along and I just…mess it up. He made me laugh, he did really sweet, romantic things, the sex was great. Then one day he brought up marriage—not even in a super serious way—and I realized I couldn't see myself with him. So I ended it, just like that." She tugged feebly at the thread on her dress.
"Can I help you with that?" Dean asked.
Mer nodded wordlessly as Dean walked over and took out his pocketknife. He took the thread between his fingers and deftly cut it.
"Thank you," Mer said, slightly bashful.
"Look," Dean told her, meeting her eyes. "I think it's good that you followed your gut like that. Brian might have been perfect but he obviously wasn't perfect for you. You didn't mess anything up, you made a choice—and it was the right one, as far as I'm concerned."
Mer smiled up at him appreciatively.
"If I know one thing about you, it's that you can do anything you put your mind to," Dean continued. "But I'm telling you, if you really want to meet the one and be married by thirty, you can't think like that. You have to get out of here." He affectionately tapped the top of her head, one corner of his mouth turning up. "Stop thinking about guys as marriage material or not marriage material and just start thinking about whether or not they make you happy."
Mer wrapped her arms around Dean, burying her face in his shoulder. "You're the best," she said, muffled against his shirt. "I'm glad you're here."
"Glad I'm here too," Dean returned warmly. "You need someone around to tell you to stop being so damn brainy all the time."
Mer laughed, stepping back from their hug. "We're gonna have fun at this wedding," she proclaimed.
Dean nodded. "If they even let me in in my suit."
"Okay, I hear you," Mer relinquished. "I'll call a couple of my guy friends and see if they have anything you can wear."
"Thank you," Dean responded, relieved.
"In the meantime, let's go to a couple thrift stores and see what we can find," Mer said.
"Is this a ruse to get me to go shopping with you?" Dean wondered skeptically.
"Maybe, maybe not," Mer quipped. "We at least have to check out this upscale secondhand place I go to—nicer stuff, but still reasonable. It's where I got this dress, actually."
"Oh," Dean responded, looking at her through the bathroom doorway. "Then I'm sold. That's a nice dress. You look nice."
Mer smiled. "Well, I know you much prefer it to my birthday suit," she joked.
She moved out of the bathroom to grab her purse off the back of her desk chair, then turned to go out the door. "Today, Dean, I'm going to teach you about this magical thing called 'paying.'"
"Oh, I see," Dean said, breaking into a grin as he followed. "Very funny."
