Disclaimaer: 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 : sorry for the unedited chapter, again.
"Wait. What do you mean you don't even know if you had graduated or not?" The two of them stood in front of the bathroom mirror drying themselves off with towels. Arizona asked after wrapped herself in the towel, picked up the bottle of night cream.
"I left Miami right after the final, didn't wait for the result. I didn't even attend the graduation." Callie shrugged, took the offered bottle from her girlfriend. "This one really is better than the brand I am using. Wanna go shopping tomorrow?"
"Ok. So, what had happened actually?"
"It was a long story..." The brunette said casually while applying the night cream on her face. "You don't wanna know."
"I know it was a long story. You can't just drop a bomb, telling me you went to med school and then left it there. I won't be able to sleep if you just leave me hanging." Arizona turned around to lean on the lavabo sink, hands on either side next to her hips.
Moved a step to stand right in front of the blonde, Callie put her hands on Arizona's towel covered hips, a sly smile plastered on her face. "How about we go multiple rounds until you couldn't think straight?"
Callie was about to capture the pink lips, but the blonde pulled back. "Hey, don't make me use the withhold sex card, I plan to use that for more important occasion."
"You won't do that." Brown eyes squinted at blue.
Arizona wriggled out of the hold of her girlfriend, walked out of the bathroom, sang out over her shoulder. "If I have to."
Head bowed. Callie followed the blonde out of the bathroom, found her girlfriend was putting on a T shirt to sleep in. "Seriously?"
"Ya, you don't want to mess with me." Arizona tried to hold in a smirk while putting on the short. Glance to the brunette, who was wearing a pout. "Put the clothes on. We are going to talk."
"But I don't want to." Badass bartender Callie Torres whined again.
Arizona turned around to hide her smirk. Pulled off the bedspread, she sat in the middle of the bed, resting against the headboard gazing at the brunette.
Rolled her eyes, mumbled under her breath, Callie put on a tank top and a pair of panties. She stood by the end of the bed, hands on her hips, looking at her girlfriend with a pout still on. "Happy now?"
"Thrilled. Now come on." She patted the spot next to her. The brunette climbed on the bed and flopped next to her.
"What do you want to know?" Callie sighed.
"From the beginning?"
"OK." Shaking her head, Callie pursed her lips to organize her thought. "First off, you need to know I realized I'm attracted to girls until very late. Started from my teenage, I always went out with boys. Didn't really take them home to meet anyone from my family, but they knew I dated boys. Then, second year of med school, there was a new girl transferred to Miller. Did I tell you I was in Miller?"
The blonde shook her head.
"Anyway, I was in Miller, close to home. So this new girl, in a new place, knew nobody. And I don't know why, the rest of the kids didn't really like her. Out of pity, or... I don't know, I liked her attitude, we were getting close. At the time I had a boyfriend, but other than spending time with him, I was with Erica. My relationship with that guy didn't last long, he was a dud." Callie rolled her eyes. "I can't even remember his name."
"I didn't look for another boyfriend after the dud, because school was getting hectic, and without knowing it, I spent most of my waking moment with Erica. I mean, we took the same classes, we went everywhere together, we crushed in each other's dorm room to study or just chat almost every night."
"You got curious?" Arizona interrupted, totally seeing how this story went.
"We got curious." She nodded. "Thing started to surface during the third year. I didn't really think about that way at that moment. But one of the guy, you know those frat boys, joked about it when we went drinking before spring break. He offered a 100 dollar to dare us to kiss on the stage in my pub... Did I tell you I already had a pub? I had it with a 2 cousins since college, I owned the biggest share. And then there was another guy offered another 100 to dare us kiss with tongue."
"You made out with a girl for money?" Arizona laughed. Callie laughed along. Flipped to lay on her stomach, propped herself up by the elbows.
"We earned 200 dollar. And a relationship. We didn't know what was that in the beginning, it got awkward for the rest of the night. And after the spring break. Well, somehow we figured it out and we started to date. Not going to lie to you, the sex was awful. We both didn't know what were we doing, I couldn't go down on her in the first few times."
"I think about it now, I didn't know we were together because I loved her as a girlfriend, or a best friend. Anyway, we were together. But, my family didn't know I was dating a girl. Not that I intended to hide from them, just I didn't use to bring anyone home. And knowing my super religious parents, I needed to ease a way to tell them. But Erica wasn't happy about it. She wanted more and she wanted it right away. She wanted to meet my parents, be a part of my family dinner or something. I just blushed it off the best I could."
"A new born met a new born, never went well." Arizona shrugged, wrinkled her nose in a grimace.
"Worse. I was her first serious relationship." Callie wrinkled her nose as well. "I went home to my parents during summer. One day, I was supposed to meet Erica in the shopping mall for our lunch date. She came to my parent's house to claim that she was there to pick me up for our date."
"Oh my god!"
"My parents were not happy about it. My mother ignored me. My father threw a bible at me, literally threw a bible at me. He threatened me that if I don't stop doing what I was doing with Erica, he and the family would cut me off, he could pretend that he never had me as his daughter. I thought he wasn't serious because my dad loved me, and I adored him. I was his favorite daughter that had him wrapped around my finger. A week after returned to school, he came to the campus will a priest. I don't know how but he managed to get an empty classroom, he and father Kevin kept telling me what a sin it was to be in a relationship with a woman, how I might be burnt in hell for eternity." Callie dropped her body on the mattress, rested her head on her crossed arms, stared at the headboard in front of her.
"There is something I still don't understand about that day. My father knew me. He knew I'm a hothead and as stubborn as him. He knew he couldn't force me to do the thing that I don't want to. But he did it anyway. He told me if I insisted on committing that crime, he rather to cut me off. We had the biggest fight we ever had, father Kevin had to drag him out after he slapped me on the face. Before he left the room, I shouted at him consider I'm out of your life."
"Oh Callie..." Arizona ran her fingers through the dark hair, tried to soothe her girlfriend.
"2 days later when I tried to use my credit card to buy stuffs, it was blocked. I checked with the bank, found that my father had frozen my account." Callie tilted her head a little to look at the blue eyes. Not surprise to see it dilated.
"He didn't!"
"He did." Callie nodded. "Luckily I had full scholarship so I didn't have to worry about school. And the investment in the pub kept me from starving to death."
"For how long? I mean this situation between you and your father?" The blonde furrowed her forehead, hand still combing the silklike hair with her hand.
"Well, 6 or 7 years..."
"What?" Eyebrow raised, Arizona couldn't believe what she heard. "That means..."
"I told you it was a long story." The brunette turned to the side, propped up her head by the elbow.
"But honey, for 7 years, you didn't talk to your father?" Arizona held out a hand to run along the tanned arm, picked up Callie's free hand, entwined their fingers together.
"Uh... my whole family..." Callie gazed at their hands, said in a whisper.
Arizona didn't know how to response to that except dropped her jaw.
"After the fight, after he froze my account, I called him, I called my mother, I tried to reach my sister, but none of them returned my calls. I went back to the house and the housekeeper told me Mr. Torres forbade me to enter his house, what else could I do?"
"You had to deal with all the terrible things without any support from your family, no wonder..." Released the breath that she didn't know she was holding, Arizona tugged their linked hands to pull Callie closer to her. The brunette happily leaned forward. Rested her head on the chest of her girlfriend's, hands wrapped around the slim waist in an instant.
"Well, I don't need them. I survived with or without them." Callie answered with her eyes closed. It was hard in the beginning when her family abandoned her. She had cried. She had cursed. And she got over it eventually. Live went on. She just needed to not to think too much about it.
Arizona's hand gently rubbed circle on the tank top cover back. They laid like that for a while without saying a word.
Suddenly, the blonde stopped her hand and asked. "That doesn't answer why you didn't graduate from med school."
Sighed heavily. Callie sat up with her legs crossed, facing her girlfriend. "I thought we are done talking."
Putting a hand on Callie's bare thigh, Arizona said softly. "We don't have to. I just want to know more about you."
Looking into blue eyes, dimples smile plastered on that angelic face. Callie scrunched her face.
"You are not playing fair again. You know I won't said no to your dimples." That earned her a firm squeeze on the thigh and a wider smile. Shaking her head, she continued.
"Erica and I remained together. But to think about it now, it was kinda like I kept seeing her to prove to my family that I was not a push over, I won't bended because they took away my wealth. Another reason, we were busy with preparing for the final, I didn't really put much of thought about 'us'." Arizona nodded. She understood how hectic it would be around the final exam.
"The day after the final exam, we... Uh... celebrated, you know. In her dorm. We laid in bed, she wrapped around me. As the exam was over, it was like I was finally able to think about what had happened in the last few months. I was deep in my own thought, thinking about the future ahead of me. To be honest, I didn't have Erica in my plan. Not that I intended to exclude her in it, just... I don't know, I didn't think about her. Suddenly, she started to talk. She said something about never really saw leaves before, I made her realized the green blobs on the tree were leaves."
Arizona frowned, looking at the brunette in confused. "Leaves?"
"She explained to me, that it was like she didn't realize what she was missing in her life until she met me. I made her see things clearly, like she could see the leaves on the trees from afar." Subconsciously, both of them glanced to the plant in the corner of the room.
"She imagined our future together. We would go to the same hospital for the internship and residency. We would be the power couple that everyone look up to. She said a lot but all I could think about was what the hell did I get myself into." Callie propped her head on the elbow against the thigh that was not squeezed by her girlfriend, looking at the woman laying in front of her.
"She was obsessed with me. I understand that. We were each other's first woman and she thought I chose her over my family. But I wasn't. I was just mad at my dad for not accepting who I am. Anyway, I made up an excuse to leave her room in the middle of the night. For a week, I tried very hard to explain to her that I didn't think we were going to work, but she didn't listen. Instead, she became more and more clingy."
Reached out to the nightstand, Arizona grabbed a bottle of water and handed it to the brunette. She took a sip before continued the story.
"Then, one night I was in the pub drinking and talking with my 2 cousins, the only 2 that still talked to me from the entire family. Partly because we had the pub together, partly because one of them was in the closet, had sympathy for me. I complained that I didn't know what to do with Erica. And learning my father told my uncles that he won't accept a lesbian daughter, made me realized he cared about his name more than he own blood. I wanted to be a doctor because I liked it, of course. But saw the proud in his eyes when I told him I got in med school was one of the happiest moment I had with him. I was proud to make him proud."
Callie looked down to the bottle of water in her hand. Chewing the corner of her mouth. She didn't realized it still hurt so bad when she thought about her and her father. It had been a long time.
Arizona sat up face to face to her lover, held up a hand to pull the woman by the back of her neck. Arizona buried her face in Callie's neck, and the Latina did the same.
"I said to my cousins, I just wished I could throw caution to the wind, leave everything behind, start fresh in somewhere without the drama." The Latina said against the soft skin of her girlfriend, a hint of lavender coming from the woman she loved soothing the pain she hadn't felt for years. A kiss landed on her neck from Arizona as in the response of understanding. Who didn't want to throw caution to the wind?
Pulled away from her girlfriend, Callie sat straight to go on with the story telling.
"Toni, my favorite cousin asked me why not? And then I asked myself the same question. At that time, I sincerely believed that this was the right decision. I didn't need the family that didn't accept me. I didn't need to do anything to make my family proud because I didn't have a family. And I didn't want to be responsible for someone to see leaves. So... I took the earliest flight to New York the next morning."
"You just took off?" Arizona tried her best not to look shock. She knew Callie could just up and leaving like that. But leaving Miami didn't like leaving New York. Leaving a place that she grew up with should not be an easy decision.
"Toni and his boyfriend bought out my share of the pub, much more than it was worth. And I think they took care of my crap in the dorm too." Callie chuckled. "I called Erica after I arrived in New York. Explained to her that I... umm... felt suffocated. From my family. From being a doctor. From being in a serious relationship. I had to leave. She didn't accept my apology. The call didn't end well."
"Let me guess... You never called her again?" Arizona squinted at the Latina in a serious face. Callie shook her head.
"And your family? Did you try to call them?" Arizona asked again, in the same expression.
"What can I do? My dad cut me off." Callie exclaimed.
"Do they even know where were you all these years?" Callie shook her head again. "Oh god..."
"I did fine. I settled in New York. Used the money from selling the pub in Miami to open another one in New York. I made money in there. I made friends. I met Malena. The years in New York meant a lot to me."
"But why didn't you continue... I mean, you finished the exam, you didn't even check if you passed it. You could have passed the exam, started your internship in somewhere... I don't understand." The blonde found herself couldn't sit on the bed. She got up and started to pace in the room.
"Arizona, I wanted a clean start. Continue the path of being a doctor wasn't in my mind. Maybe because of my father. Or maybe it remained me of Erica. I don't understand either. I just... I like to be a bartender. I like the interaction with my customers. So I opened another pub. I named it Funhouse. I wanted it to be a house of fun." Callie's head followed the pacing blonde head anxiously.
"How could you... how could you... just drop everything? I understand you were hurt by your family, but how could you... how..." The blonde was pacing faster and faster. Callie jumped out of the bed, grasped her wrist to stop the pace. Arizona was stunned by the sudden move, almost fell backward from the pull. Callie quickly wrapped her hands around the blonde's waist to stabilize her.
"What's matter, Arizona?" Callie ducked her head to look at the blue eyes.
"Don't ever leave." Arizona breathed out after a while of silence, looked back to the brown eyes.
"What?"
"There's a pattern in here. When things went downhill, you... ran away. You left Miami because of your family. And because you and Erica were going toward a serious relationship. You left New York because George wanted more from you." Callie was about to protest, but Arizona stopped her. "I know, I know he was a mistake, but still... you left him. You left the city you called home for almost 6 years. You didn't just leave. You fled. You took the next flight fled to another state, Callie."
"I am not proud of it." Callie took a deep breath, glanced to the ceiling to gather her thought. "In my defence, I left Miami and New York because there had nothing for me to stay." Looked down, she met the worried eyes from the woman in her arms. "I would have stayed in Miami if my family didn't cut me off. I would have stayed in New York if Malena didn't die."
A ghost of smile played around the plump lips before she leaned down to capture the sweet lips of her girlfriend's for a tender kiss. "You are the reason I stay in Seattle. As long as you want me, I am not going anywhere. I promise."
Arizona held up her hands, grasped Callie's lower cheeks to lock their sights. "I love you. I never thought I would love someone so much, so deep in such a short time. But I did. You made me fall in love with you. I had baggage. I had past that I am ashamed of. I need you to promise me, if... no, when you feel like you are suffocated, from me or from anything that happened around us, you come to talk to me. Do not just jump on the next plane to god knows where to flee from me."
Looking straight to the woman, Callie surprised to see vulnerable dancing on the face of the usual confidence surgeon. And tears started to glaze around the sky blue eyes.
Tightened the hold on the waist to pull Arizona closer to her body, Callie wet her own lips before saying. "I can't go anywhere without my heart. You have my heart. Unless you broke it. Unless you threw it back to my face. You are stuck with me." She landed a kiss on her girlfriend's forehead, pulled back to look at the woman who had a smile slowly spread across her face. The brunette plastered a megawatt smile in returned.
They stood there forehead against forehead, arms wrapped around waists, did nothing but... just held each other tight. Suddenly, Callie started to giggle.
"What?" The blonde couldn't help to smile, pull back to squint at Callie, who just leaned forward, dropped the head to her shoulder, still giggling. "What?"
"Just... something wrong with us tonight, didn't you see it? We took turn to freak out tonight." Callie laughed against the fair neck. Realizing it, Arizona let out the angelic laugh along.
"Oh my god, we did. Didn't we?"
After the laugh stopped, Callie collected herself. Stood straight, put her hands on either sides of Arizona's shoulders. "OK, we let it out of our system tonight. I love you, and you love me. None of the rest of it matter, right?"
Full force dimpled smile on her face, Arizona answered. "Right!"
A/N 2: This part ran longer than I intended, at least I had their love to each other secured. Time to reveal the big drama, I guess.