For the prompt:
Guest
4-21-2019
Can you write about Addison's reaction and how she dealt with Derek's death?
On what would have been their 20th wedding Anniversary, Addison goes back to where they spent their honeymoon. . . .
(I recommend you to listen to the piece, Recuerdos de la Alhambra— Memories of the Alhambra — in accompaniment to this story.)
Memories of the Alhambra
Their two weeks in Granada was beautiful, glittering and perfect in every way and she remembers it well.
They had walked past the Alhambra on their last night (she wanted to cry, almost did plenty a time, because she never wanted to leave, never wanted to go back to her life in New York). It was a beautiful blend of both Moorish Islamic and Christian aesthetics, magnificently lit in the dark. It had stood out to her as a beacon not only of light but of beauty in all darkness, too.
She had stood beneath its imposing façade and stared at all of its red. She felt the history of centuries singing to her from its grand walls and the cascading water of the fountains.
This city had seduced instantly.
"It's stunning, isn't it?" Derek said in wonder.
She nodded, sniffling.
"We'll see it again one day, darling. It's not going anywhere. Come. It's time to go."
"Promise me we'll come back here, Derek."
And promised, he did, that on their twentieth wedding anniversary, they'll be back to the Moorish jewel. But life had other plans for the both them. Plans their young, naive minds knew nothing about.
She was promised a trip on their anniversary, so here she is twenty years later. And it makes Addison want to take her thumbnail to it, to dig it in and gouge the paint, stripping off the layer of gilt and laying it bare.
She spends a lot of time here drinking, though. It's one vice Derek would have found aesthetically inappropriate, but so long as she doesn't get too sloppy about it (Oh, she would never), he'd make a pass. She sips a dry martini and tries not to recall everything she knows about Derek Shepherd's drinking habits. The picture she had cobbled up together is their almost twelve years of marriage (plus the four years they dated and the year and a half that they were engaged) that were anything but wedded bliss, while something that wasn't quite a man sitting across from her in their carefully curated home.
She doesn't think about it. She just never drinks whiskey, and that's fine. She never liked whiskey anyway.
Derek went out one night in Seattle, that time when they were attempting to recreate a dance called marriage, left her alone in that Godforsaken shoebox. He didn't volunteer where he was going or what he had planned to do when he gets to wherever he so desperately wanted to be in that hour. He would tell her if she asked, she's certain of that. He'd delight in telling her, in as much detail as she could stomach.
Addison didn't ask.
She's not sure if it's because she didn't want to know, or because she resented it feeling so much like a favour, a mercy, as if she didn't have a right to knowledge herself as his wife anymore.
Resentment, there's a constant companion. Almost as constant as the simmering buzz of alcohol in her veins or the low level headache brewing behind her eyes.
But he went (she knew he went to Meredith's), and Addison breathed a sigh of relief when he stepped out for the evening.
She hates to live into a cliche, but she couldn't deny the way her entire body sagged just a few millimetres earthward. The devil's in the details, and even now it's the little things. The way she quits sucking in her gut and lets her face — crumple is the wrong word — it's nothing so dramatic. It's nothing more than a fine gesture, like flicking off a light switch. She turns off the scintillating, whip-sharp companion and lets herself fully inhabit her own exhaustion, how bone-deep tired she really is.
She wipes off her makeup with expensive cold cream, splashes water on her face and studies the dark hollows under her eyes. She touches her fingertips to thin skin that's never quite how she remembers it, and — when did she start to get old anyway? She pulls her face into a smile just to watch it fall back into a frown, tracing her eyes over the severe curve of her mouth.
She just doesn't want to be fifty and alone.
(Like forty-nine and alone is any different)
It's an indulgence as fine as any other, a letting go that's only possible for the unobserved; the world's best-kept secret, that falling apart is its own luxury.
God knows Derek has had his share. Had it bloody and raw, splashed across the pages of American newspapers (not literally, of course, but it sure did felt that way at times). His breakdown had been showy and extravagant. A bit overwrought, like everything he does. Taken as though it was his right to do so, and how like a man.
Addison's crumbling must be managed more carefully, stolen in fits and starts. In little snatches in the bathroom, bedroom, in elevators alone (Alone is key). She doesn't have the luxury nor the temperament for making a spectacle of herself, but she'll take what she can get. She plans to scratch away a little more tonight, to steal it for herself.
As soon as she thinks it, Addison already knows what she wants.
She wants a goddamn burger.
The last guy she dated, a chef, would make it for her — probably, if she asked (Then again, he's not here, is he, Addison?). He would delight in the fact of her asking. But the burger would be delicious, of that she has no doubt, although whether it would be beef or pork or those vegan meat that claims to mimic real red meat is anybody's guess. She hasn't had meat in almost ten years, choosing to content herself with seafood. The slippery, briny slide of it down her throat feels liquid in a way she recognises, kin to the way she carries her grief oceanic inside her.
She'd had a lover once, in college. A woman, a poet. Not very lengthy of a relationship. An experiment, to which she concluded: definitely not gay, had tonnes of fun, though. She would have appreciated that sentiment, Addison thinks. She always did like the ocean.
Addison hated it, even then. She always did have a way of taking up with people who were somehow the least suited to her. Geeky guys from band, air-headed quarterbacks, kind-hearted poets, husband's — ex husband's best friend (Oh, Mark; she misses him so dearly). She's Goldilocks at the table. Everyone seems to have too many sharp edges or not nearly enough.
Everyone but one.
The man that got away.
Addison is picky tonight. She revels in her pickiness, for what does she have left to her but the frivolity of choice? She wants meat tearing beneath her teeth and doesn't want just any burger. She wants the worst one she can find, cheap and bland and loaded with salt and carbs. She wants water retention. She wants her wrists and ankles to swell up. She wants a burger that's never even met real food.
She wants to go to McDonald's, wants it with a sudden fierceness that frightens her.
But what doesn't frighten her these days?
The world is a crumbling mess of muck and we're only at the preview.
Of course she's afraid. She is many things, but foolish isn't one of them.
Fear is less an old friend than a guest she can't get out of her house, one she purses her lips at, making snide remarks in hopes that one day it will take the hint and leave her alone for good.
Tonight she's alone (Who is she kidding? She's alone every night). She has the hotel room to herself, and there's nothing to stop her from joining the inky blackness outside her window, the glittering streetlights and the quiet hum of cars. The people who live and breathe and fuck and laugh (somehow — it still seems impossible, doesn't it?), who does it without the pall of any of this hanging over them.
Spain has sun kissed her porcelain skin with soft warmth, and Granada is even more beautiful at night. Through her open window the sound of the television playing fills the quietude, and the smell of her neighbour's paella goes straight to her stomach in a painful churn.
Earlier in the day, Addison had found a café down a cobbled lane not far from the antique store she likes to spend most of her afternoons in. It had a view of the sea and she was graced by a cool breeze that eased the summer heat. She sipped her coffee in silence as she watched the sunset.
She has been here for a little over a three weeks, and after twenty years, the city still hasn't lost its charm.
Addison passes the Alhambra Palace once again, taking the time to stand and feel dwarfed before it. She can almost hear the tremolo of the classical guitar, like cascading water of the fountains inside. What she hears is drifting and lush, notes being plucked against the instrument, sweeping in its melancholy, tinged with an unnameable ache.
The music sounds as if it is speaking directly to her.
Oh, so fitting for what today represents.
The piece builds in rhythmic repetitions, each more ornate than the last, changed by the one before it. It's not without an occasional misstep in timing but the piece swells in tempo, cresting forward in its melody with burgeoning passion, building on itself in its own eagerness until the final trills ring high and clear for several voluminous beats, and then fall away softly. The melody repeats itself again, quiet now, calm, and she exhales a shaky breath as she just notices the tears in her eyes.
Nothing is beautiful and everything hurts.
They had went on a tour of the palace the last time they were here and she was just as entranced by it's history and architecture as she is right now.
She hadn't thought about this place in many years, though she still remembers most of what the tour guide had said.
She would love to have another tour, wondering what's changed, what's new.
It's, of course, closed right now but if it were open, she would walk into the Puerta de la Justicia (Gate of Justice), one of the main entrances to the palace — a massive horseshoe archway. She remembers fondly that there was a hand carved on the exterior of arch, the hand of Fatima, with fingers outstretched, each representing the five pillars of Islam, and as a talisman against evil eye, while a key, the symbol of authority, is engraved on the opposite side of the archway.
They're on opposite ends — so close yet so far away.
Legend has it that the end of the world would come when the hand and the key come together as one. It wasn't the tour guide who had told them this, but a local they met at a bar that night.
She looks up at the dark sky, eyes filled with something approaching transcendental devotion, religious fervor, this place means so much to her and for the life of her, she cannot point out why.
Maybe it's Granada, herself. Their first trip to a foreign land together. Maybe it's that it was their honeymoon. Maybe it was because this was where he made his promise to her. Maybe she just feels a spiritual connection. Maybe it's that she wants justice.
Justice for everyone.
She had made a choice, plenty of wrong ones, and she has questions, too.
Would they be here, twenty years later in Granada, if she hadn't slept with Mark? Which begs the question — would they have eventually gotten a divorce because they were just so unhappy with each other?
Would their marriage even have survived if she hadn't slept with Mark?
Would everything change?
But she's here now like he promised she'd be.
She'd driven to the airport on impulse and boarded a plane. Her car is back somewhere, she assumes, collecting parking tickets, probably impounded by now.
She had been debating for months whether or not she ought to do this; and she's only here because she finally realised that you get to a point in life where you're lucky if you even get sixty-percent of what you wanted.
She isn't quite so arrogant — not quite sure enough — to say she'd do it again, but she hadn't regretted it at the time. It feels as close to forgiving herself as she can manage.
Addison breathes in the scent of the Granada streets, hot and acrid after the rain, the heat of the day still rising off the pavement in gouts of steam. She passes a family of tourists, a man and a woman with two identical blonde-haired children between them.
Americans, like her.
The girls chatter excitedly in the soft twangy tones of the Midwest with occasional excited shrieks that pierce the night sky. Their mother shoots Addison an apologetic glance, and she offers a small, polite smile in return.
It doesn't reach her eyes.
The McDonald's is only a few blocks away, open 24 hours and thank God for that. It's as unobtrusive as a corporate monstrosity can be, tucked away in a building that looks as storied and ancient as any of the others lining the Centro Comercial Continente. She walks through an automatic door and finds herself face-to-face with familiar menus, everything sleek and covered in chrome.
She'd be embarrassed, if there were anyone here to see her, at the wave of nostalgia that grips her hard, a clenched fist around her heart. She doesn't bother to read the menu. She orders a Big Mac with large fries and a large Coke — she orders in English, never mind that her Spanish is perfectly passable.
"For here or to go?" a teenager asks in accented English.
She briefly considers eating in the restaurant itself, but it feels too exposed, too wide open and cold under glaring fluorescent lights, afflicted with the same modernist architecture as fast food restaurants grasping at class the world over. She wants to be alone for this, wants to slink off into the dark to lick her wounds and gorge herself in peace.
She orders her food to go and takes it back to the hotel, clutching it to her chest, close as a secret.
(She remembers a time when she lived in a hotel.)
She spreads her haul over the dining room table. There's a limp burger that, true to form, doesn't look as good as it does in the pictures and squashed, soggy fries. Her paper cup of Coke is half empty and already watered down. All things considered, it's a truly shitty meal.
And it's exactly what she wants.
Addison takes a bite of the burger, revelling in the uncomplicated taste of salt and fat. The patty itself is thin and anaemic. The onions tastes like nothing, and she takes another bite. She stuffs some fries in her mouth. They're cold and mealy, and she eats some more, licking the salt and grease from her fingers.
She leans back and sighs. It occurs to her that she should savour this, what little freedom she's been able to eke out in congealed fat and sub-standard fast food, but that's what Derek would do. Derek savors things. Derek makes things into events.
He was amazing like that.
But she doesn't want a fucking event.
She just wants to eat a goddamn burger. She just wants to put something on top of this hurt. She wants to eat her burger in peace and finish reading her book, and that's exactly what she'll do. So, she fetches the book from her bedroom, snagging it from the nightstand with greasy fingers, already flipping it open before she even sits down.
She eats her food with the minimum amount of attention, dragging her eyes across the page and letting pictures form in her mind. It occurs to her that she hasn't done this since college, since staying up all night cramming for a final, the door to her dorm room open because everyone left their doors open in those days, and tinny music filtering in from the hall.
She thinks of Derek again and how she didn't get to say goodbye, didn't get any form of closure or justice because she wasn't called to the fucking funeral. Hell, she didn't even know he had passed away until Amy called her the day after the funeral.
Addison got the news that her ex-husband died on a Thursday. She remembers it was a Thursday — will remember it forever, in fact, because she'd been planning to take one of her colleagues with her to the new boba place by the park. She was going to look at a boat her neighbour was trying to sell. She was looking forward to changing the curtains in-lieu for the new season. She knows it was a Thursday because when she woke up, she'd cared about so many things that didn't matter. She'd cared so much.
But she didn't know.
Was it quick?
Her then boyfriend found her on the beach.
He opened his mouth. He took one look at her face and closed it again, and Addison wondered what exactly did he see.
Neither of them spoke, until she broke the silence.
"Derek's dead."
He waited.
"I'm alone now."
"You're not," he said.
"Mark is dead. Now, Derek."
She swallowed hard. The ocean rushed against the underside of the rocks in whispering waves.
"Derek was the last person who actually knew me — who knew me before." she swallowed again, against a throat that burns like acid. "He was my history. He knows —" she stopped, closed her eyes and took a deep breath before continuing, "He knew me better than anyone."
Was he scared?
His expression hadn't changed. He didn't pretend at the type of emotions everyone else would — not for her. He didn't pretend to be anything but what he is, and she preferred it that way, most of the time.
Maybe not at that moment.
"Say something," she said. "Tell me that's stupid, if you want. He's my ex-husband. Just, say something."
"It isn't stupid. The death of any loved one is one of the greatest losses most people experience in their lifetime. It's often traumatic, especially if it's sudden. Your feelings are normal, Addie."
A bark of unexpected laughter tore its way free from her throat. It rattled some tears loose on its way out, and they prick at the corner of her eyes.
"So what you're telling me is that I'm perfectly, boringly ordinary."
He looked at her fondly, lips tipped up in the barest suggestion of a smile. "In this, yes. Do you find it comforting? To know that you are just one of many in a long line of humanity to experience this loss?"
She stared at him. "No. No, I don't. Jesus, you're bad at this. Aren't you a therapist?" she snapped.
Addison had put distance between the both of them then, and he stayed put. Her eyes track the crest of the waves as they foam white at the tips and break against the rocks.
Was he in pain?
Derek Shepherd had a beautiful smile and hair so thick that for the longest time, she was envious. He had the cutest laugh and a stubborn soul. He'd cried with her when her first baby died, and he was sitting in the front row grinning from ear to ear when she had graduated magna cum laude.
She thought of the first fish she ever caught. She thought of Derek beside her for all of it.
Eventually she relented. Little by little she closed the gap, inching her way toward him until their fingers touch. The sunlight sparkled on the water. It looked exactly the same as it did when she thought Derek was alive.
"I'm sorry," he said at last, quiet and sincere. "I know you loved him."
"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I did."
And she always will.
They stood outside for so long that she felt her cheeks starting to burn in the sun. She stared out at the water, and he held her hand.
"I know," she said eventually.
He gave her a questioning look.
"I know I'm not alone."
She wish she could believe that.
Why didn't Meredith call her?
She would be there. She would have gladly dropped everything, and catch the first flight to Seattle or hire a private plane, even, to be there for and with him.
Derek would have wanted her there. She knows he would. Because they were finally friends. They were finally in a great place and he finally stopped feel nauseous.
He loved her and she loved him with all her heart.
She finishes her sandwich first, saving the fries for last. A blotch of special sauce drips onto a page, and Addison wipes it off with a thumb, sucking it into her mouth. She idly wonders if that's an offense in Derek's mind. She only realises she's hit the bottom of her soda when a loud slurping sound jars her out of her reverie.
She sits back, uncomfortably full and already feeling sick in that way that only comes from ill-advised dates with the dollar menu. It somehow still feels like victory.
She marks her place and flips the book shut, getting to her feet with a stretch that cracks her spine. She shoves her trash back into the brown paper bag, the burger wrapper and ubiquitous red French fry carton. She crumples it up and tosses it in the trash can, right at the very top like a taunt. Like a declaration.
I'm still here.
She goes to bed, turning on every last one of the lights in the hotel in her wake.
Thanks so much for reading.
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