Disclaimer: I don't own Grey's Anatomy, I just borrowed the name of the characters for entertaining, no intention to violate any copyrights.
A/N : Thank you all for the support, and thank you all for liking this story. Hope this chapter doesn't disappoint you.
All mistakes are mine, sorry.
After getting everything Arizona thought that she needs for convincing her parents, we're heading to her house where about 15 minutes away from my apartment.
"So..." I ask, trying to sound as casual as I can. "You have done this before?"
"Done what?" She raises her eyebrows at my question, still keeping her eyes on the road.
"Bringing stuff to your girlfriends' place?" My head is facing forward, but watching her reaction from the corner of my eye.
"Nope, never." She shrugs her shoulder, saying lightly.
"Oh, they went to yours." I nod my head in acknowledgement. It's not my place to be jealous, but knowing that someone had once moved their personal belonging into Arizona's home brings a knot to my stomach.
"Nah, I haven't had a relationship long enough for... you know." She glances at me briefly, tugging the corner of her lips to a small smile.
"Seriously? You seem like knowing what you're doing." I turn to look at the bag that holds my clothes in the back seat, my mind revisiting the moment that she told me to fill it up.
"I told you, I've read the handbook." Her mischievous chuckles ring in the car as she pulls into the driveway.
"There's no sleepover handbook, Arizona." Her contagious laughter makes me chuckle along.
"I just... I don't know. Maybe I'm a little too excited for the whole idea, you know, having you as my girlfriend for the coming few weeks. And then I thought," She turns off the engine and then quickly gets out of the car. I can't read her facial expression to find out whether she is making another joke. "If you were my girlfriend, I wouldn't want us to spend any night apart. And I'd want you to have everything you need for the next morning in my place."
If I were her girlfriend, I wouldn't want to spend any night apart, either. I think in my head whilst exiting her car, with the bag in my hand.
Instead of going forward to unlock the door, Arizona is standing there few feet away waiting for me with her cellphone in hand. As I come closer, she holds it up.
"Let's take some pictures." She rolls her eyes when I give her a confused look. "I told you, we need couple's photos."
She shifts to stand on my side, one hand behind me on my lower back and the other raises the phone intending to take a selfie. She leans closer, but I pull back unconsciously. Being this close to her, the incident on my bed plays in my head again.
"Ugh, I can't get a good angle..." Arizona groans, stretching her arm and adjusting the position. And the hand behind me comes to rest on my hip. "Come closer, I need the two on us in the picture."
Swallowing thickly, I lean into her with my bag holding hand behind her. Her hand is shaking slightly and the lens can't really find the focus. After a few more attempts, I take the phone from her hand.
"Give me that." I laugh. "You have no idea how to take a photo."
She gives me a growl, but I can hear the smile in her voice. And now both of her hands are free, she wraps her arms around my midsection, nuzzling her face against my neck and smiling to the screen.
I feel my body going stiff. Dipping my head slighty try to look into her face, I am startled when I hear the sound of the shutter. My finger slipped and pressed the button.
"I thought you said that you know how to take a photo?" She smiles at me teasingly. The dimples on her face somewhat relax me and I give her an elvish smile, pressing the button once again without taking my eyes off of her.
"You'll see." I wink at her and then look into the screen, about to take a real picture.
It's late, the sky is luminous with the light at the uncovered moon. Combining with the street lamps and her front porch lights, there is a soft glow surrounds us. Looking at the beaming face in the screen, I couldn't help to spread my lips matching with hers.
"One more," She requests after I've already taken a few pictures of us with faces pressing together. I make a playful grimace at her.
"You're so demanding. Fine. One... Two..." The three chokes in my throat when she puts her lips on my cheek.
"Good, it looks... convincing." She takes the phone from my hand, looking down at the screen as she walks toward the front door, without giving me another gaze.
I don't need a mirror to know I'm wearing an uncontrollable goofy smile when I walk into her house.
"You go put the things in my room first," She waves her hand upward as she walked toward the study. "I'll go print out the photos. Oh, I'm gonna order us some pizza, is that okay for you?"
"You know it." I sing whilst walking upstairs. I've be here a couple times, knowing where her bedroom is.
Arizona likes soft colors, soothing colors. It shows on how she decorates her house, and her bedroom is no different. The walls are in a light shade of lilac, light grey carpet matching with light cream curtains, and sky blue bedding. It's a big contrast to mine. She likes to tease me for sleeping in a bat cave and I often mock her that she's sleeping in Alice's wonderland.
Walking to her closet, I can see that she has cleared out the 2 bottom drawers of the cabinet. How many things she thinks that I'm gonna bring here for a pretend stay?
After everything's in place, I stand up from the floor and come face to face to the top drawer. She probably keeps her underwear on the top drawer, like everyone does. My hand has its own mind reaching out to the handle.
Don't be a pervert, Torres. I shake my head. Well, she has her hand in yours a while ago, it's only fair for you to check out her bras, right?
"You can look into my underwear drawer if you want." Arizona's voice break my inter struggle. Dropping my hand like it's burning me, I swirl around finding her leaning against the bedroom door with a smug smile. "I won't stop you."
"I... who said that I... I..." I know that my face has turned beet red but I'm not going to admit what I almost have done. "I don't want to look into your underwear drawer."
"Yeah, right..." She smirks, walking into her own bedroom. "So, which side do you want?"
"What?" I look back to the cabinet. Are we supposed to share the underwear drawer?
"No! I mean the bed." Arizona laughs with her head throwing back, clearly proud of herself for messing with my head.
"I..." I chuckle out, trying to cover up my embarrassment but I believe my burning cheeks are giving me out. "Whichever side is fine, but..."
"I have to at least make it looks like you actually sleeping here." She read my mind. Flopping down on her bed, she pats the empty spot next to her, gesturing me to sit down. "I don't mind you actually sleeping next to me though."
Arizona and I have fallen asleep in on-call rooms next to each other a couple times during a dreadful day of works, surgeries after surgeries that drained away our energy. We were both too exhausted to seek for a room that have 2 separated beds so we just simply shared the only bed in the room for a power nap. Even so, we were fully clothes in our scrubs, and too tired for thinking of anything other than getting some much needed rest.
But sharing a bed, Arizona's private bed, in the night, in our sleeping clothes...
"What is your plan?" I sit down on the edge of the other side of the bed, keeping a distance between us. "You know, pretending to be your girlfriend."
"Well, not thinking that as a pretend." Arizona throws her arms over her head for a stretch, sinking deeper onto her bed. And her smile drops seeing the hesitation on my face. "Calliope, I don't mean to burden you with my trouble, but like I said, I've told them that I'm dating you. And they're so excited to come to see the woman that I've fallen in love with. But if you don't want to..."
"I've already promised to help you, Arizona." I stop her hurriedly. Hating that she thinks I'm backing down on my promise. "I just don't know how are we going to work it out?"
"Thank you." A small smile finds the way back on her face. "What my father hates the most is to know that someone's lying to him."
"And we're actually lying to him." I lie down next to her, giving her a teasing smile.
"He doesn't know that doesn't hurt. We just have to convince my parents that we're in a relationship." She turns to her side, propping her head up looking at me. "You don't have to come over every day. I can make some excuses like you're on the night shifts, or surgeries that keep you away."
"Okay." I nod my head. That would work.
"But I hope that you don't mind joining us for dinner a couple times during their stays." Her blue eyes find mine. She gives me a strange look and there is a hint of shyness in her voice. "You don't really have to sleep in here. Don't worry, they normally go to bed early. They wouldn't know that you leave the house afterward. And I can tell them that you got page in early in the morning."
"You really have thought of everything." I nod again with a brief smile. Resting my hands on my stomach, fingers drumming against fingers, I ask her. "But then what? I mean, you can't lie to them forever."
"About that... I think, I'll tell them that we have broken up a few months later, and we have decided that we're better off of being just friends." Arizona flopped back down on her back, narrowing her eyes at the ceiling. After a pregnant pause, she sighs. "And I'm too traumatized for even consider dating someone again. That would shut my mother up for a good couple of years."
"Yeah..." I trail off, retracting my gaze from her face, staring at the ceiling.
She does have thought of everything. How we started, and how we're going to end.
We just lie there in silence on her bed, until the door bell rings.
"Pizza's here." She gives me a smile, and then gets up to answer the door.
"Tell me something about your parents?" I take a sip of the wine washing down the last bit of pizza in my mouth. We're sitting on the opposite side of the couch, the volume of the television is on low working as the background sound of our conversation.
"You already knew that my father was served as a colonel in the marine." Arizona throws the pizza bone into the now empty box. We have already run through some of the details about how to deal with the Robbins' in the coming 3 weeks, but I feel like I'd need more. "What do you want to know?"
"Well..." I twist my lips thinking. "How did they meet?"
"Glad that you ask me. If you ask my mother, you'd never hear the end of it." She gives a short chuckle before wetting her lips with the wine. "They were high school sweethearts."
"Wow! Like... 50 years ago?" I'm impressed. My own parents are together for nearly 40 years and that is already a long time. 50 years, unimaginable.
"More or less. They met each other when they were both 15. And then my father enlisted when he was 18. It was his dream and destiny to follow grandpa's footstep." Arizona turns her back against the armrest and her legs cross in Indian-style on the couch. "He tried to break up with my mom because you'd never know what would happen when you serve in the military."
"And they found each other again years later?" I sip my wine slowly, intriguing by the story.
"No, my mother didn't let him." A glimmer of smile comes to her lips. "She said to him, and I quote, if you want to break up with me because you don't love me, fine. But if you do that just because you are leaving to serve the country, I won't accept it, Mr. Robbins."
"Wow..." I exclaimed again. "You mother really is..."
"Yeah, she is really something." Arizona laughs, a coarse hearty guffaw. "She even asked my dad to marry her before he got ship off, but he said no. He wanted to give her some time to think it through. For 5 years they'd only see each other during my dad's breaks and communicated just with letters. But that didn't change her mind."
"Distance makes the heart grow fonder." I prompt, and she agrees with a nod.
"Exactly. And once I asked my mother if she ever have doubt about this relationship, she said never. She told me when you find a person with whom you have a connection so strong that you're drawn to them in a way you have never experienced before, you want to have a future with this person, sharing your life with this person. You wouldn't let them get away-"
"He is her soulmate." We say at same time.
"And dad is grateful that my mother didn't give up on them." Arizona hugs her knees to her chest and rests her head against the back of the couch, staring at the fireplace in her thoughts. "Sometimes I just wish I could be as bold and determined as my mother, to be able to tell the person that I love her."
"You..." I clear my throat. Acting as nonchalant as possible, I reach for the bottle filling up our glasses. I'm nervous of going to ask a question that I'm afraid to know the answer. "Have you met that person?"
"No." She breathes out, pulling her gaze from the fire to my face after a few seconds of silence. "No, I haven't."
A/N 2 : I try to keep it light and funny and silly but old habits die hard... don't worry, crazy things are going to happen when the Robbins arrive in the next chapter. (just hope I'd deliver :-p)