Please Note: I do not own these characters. They belong to Grey's Anatomy.
Chapter Two: Was She Sloshed?
The flutter of her lashes, the exact shape of her mouth, the smell of her perfume, these were only a few of the things Alex Karev could recall from that moment in the nursery, when he had come so close to kissing Addison. Of course what stood out more were the other, less pleasant details. The thing he remembered most of all was the look of dismay on her face as he leaned towards her. Not to mention her obvious horror at what had almost happened. She had apologized excessively. She had told him it would not happen again. After these speeches what she had done next had been completely unexpected.
She had kissed him. Earlier that night. A kiss so gentle it hurt. Alex glanced at his alarm clock. It was 4:20 in the morning. He had been lying awake, reliving that kiss for hours. As much as he needed to sleep he just couldn't get it out of his head, couldn't stop feeling her touch on his face, the softness of her lips against his own. He could still smell her, still taste her, still see her if he closed his eyes. He had wanted to pull her to him, to feel her body against his, had wanted to return her caress, stroke her face, her neck, run his fingers through her hair. Instead he had frozen, amazed by what was happening to him. He couldn't believe she was kissing him after everything she'd said. Then, when the all too brief kiss had ended she had looked exactly like he felt... confused.
"What did it mean?" he wondered. "Was she sloshed?" He remembered a glass in her hand, a subtle hint of alcohol on her breath but she hadn't seemed drunk and the bar tender had assured him she'd had only the one drink. Maybe the kiss was her own bizarre way of telling him she was sorry she was so completely out of his league. Maybe she just didn't know what she wanted. Alex sighed. Unfortunately he knew exactly what he wanted and it didn't look like he was about to get it, at least not on his own terms, anytime soon.
He couldn't figure out exactly what it was that had made him start to want Addison. Originally he hadn't even been that attracted to her. Sure she was hot, but she wasn't exactly his type. Then there was the fact that when they first met she had been married to Shepard, who he strongly disliked. She was also considerably older than him and taller than him too when she wore certain shoes. None of these things seemed to matter anymore. Instead it was the little things, not immediately visible beneath the height and the gorgeous hair, that began to matter. The way she bit her lower lip when she concentrated. Her wrists and delicate collarbones. Somehow over the course of their professional relationship Addison had become breathtakingly beautiful.
It wasn't just about beauty either. He didn't just want to have sex with her. It was about the way she made him feel. Lessons that would have seemed intolerably condescending coming from Burke or Shepard or any of the other surgeons didn't seem so coming from her. He realized that she was probably the only person at the hospital he was close to. He had admitted things to her that he had never admitted to anyone else. The reasons behind his interest in plastics. That he wasn't just some evil spawn only interested in making money. It felt good to open up to her and even better to see the certain way she smiled when he revealed something about himself that she hadn't expected from him. He found himself trying to make her smile like that more often, a crooked smile, one eye squinting slightly more than the other. He told himself that she wouldn't smile like that for no reason. That it had to mean something to her too because for him it was breathlessness. It was a whirling in the pit of his stomach like standing too close to the edge of a cliff and staring over into the abyss. It was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. He didn't like to think of himself as the type of guy to let a woman affect him like that but he couldn't deny that Addison affected him, couldn't deny that breathless feeling.
He'd had the same feeling while kissing her and it had frozen him. For a brief moment he'd thought it might actually mean something. But what she'd said next had cured him of that. He could tell it was coming from the look of confusion on her face but he couldn't do anything to stop it. He had wanted to tell her,
"Don't say it Addison. I know you're going to say it but you don't have to say it. It's not what I want to hear. All I want is for you to kiss me and not regret it," but he couldn't get the words out. She was the first to speak and she said what he'd been dreading,
"Im sorry Alex." Then she had left the bar.