Please Note:

I named this chapter after a song. I will probably never do that again. It's a huge pet peeve of mine. Kind of like playing your car radio really loud and assuming the rest of the world wants to hear what you're listening to.

That said, anyone who can identify the artist behind this song gets to join my club. We can sit around a talk about how our taste in music is so obscure and how we're so much cooler than everyone else because we support musicians no one has ever heard of. Then when said musicians achieve fame we can stop supporting them and start to complain about how they've sold out. It'll be a super fun time. But no one's going to know anyways so... Never mind.

Here's that chapter I was telling you about. The one that made me cry.

P.S. Props to Ics for getting the meaning of the orchid. I would also like to ad to Ics' interpretation that Addison sees herself as a little too dependant on others for happiness and emotional sustenance.

Chapter Seventeen: What Do You Think Will Happen Next?

Addison stayed at the far end of the boat after Derek left. She needed the silence. Needed to think. And she couldn't do that surrounded by people. The heat, and the noise, and the mingled smells of countless different perfumes and aftershaves and bodies were not good for thinking.

No. Fresh air was good for thinking. Fresh air and silence and a cool breeze off the water.

She and Derek were going to try to be friends. She wasn't sure if it would work, but at least they were going to try. She couldn't see Derek ever being her shoulder to cry on but something casual, maybe like what she had with Callie, might be nice. By now it was pretty obvious that Mark was her real best friend.

And it was pretty obvious that there was the possibility of something more if she decided she wanted it...

But do I want it?

It was not a simple question.

Mark found her, lost in thought, as the sun was dipping below the horizon. The distant humm of the reception was beginning to die down as guests left the deck and moved inside the boat. She was pacing, her heels clicking rhythmically on the deck.

"Addison? Do you want to come inside? It's getting dark out here."

"No. I um... There are lights."

"Okay." He crossed over to the guardrail and leaned against it.

She continued to pace and he, leaning against the railing, watched her. Her steps slowed and she came to a rest next to him propping her elbows on the railing and sighed. He picked up on her mood and, as an almost tangible silence fell between them, she found herself thinking,

Oh god, this is awkward.

But then he spoke,

"You know what this reminds me of?" and smiled and her discomfort melted away.

She and Mark had always been comfortable with conversation, sharing sharp wits and sharper tongues, and Derek, who had honed his own sarcastic wit only after years of tagging along with their conversations, had once told her it was a little weird how much the two of them had in common.

Maybe I have more in common with Mark than I like to admit. History...

"What does this remind you of?" she responded absently.

"Your wedding,"

"Oh." She was more startled by the softness in his voice than by the actual words and fumbled for something to say.

"I'm surprised you remember. At the reception... you got really drunk."

"Yeah well, I was miserable." Mark laughed softly. "My best friend was marrying this girl who... kind of drove me crazy. Stubborn, difficult, always had to be right...

"And she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."

"Mark..."

"And she was smarter than me. And funnier than me."

"You were jealous of me?"

Mark looked up and shook his head.

"I was jealous of him."

"Oh."

He shrugged. And then he leaned towards her, and brushing a gentle kiss to her lips said,

"I've pretty much always thought we were perfect for each other."

She swallowed. His lips were against her cheek now. It was perhaps the softest kiss he'd ever given her and she was frozen by it. Mark was still speaking, slowly, cautiously.

"I told myself it would go away but it didn't... It hasn't."

Her breath caught in her throat. This was her best friend and he was looking at her like... like...

And suddenly all the complexities of her feelings for Mark condensed into one simple fact. With Mark she was never going to be certain of anything. And there was no way she could put herself, or him, through that and pretend it was all right. She couldn't do it.

"Mark... I can't."

She saw the hurt in his eyes, the subtle tightening of his jaw she recognized as the sign he was fighting desperately to hold it together. He sighed. As a surgeon she knew what that sigh meant, was painfully accustomed to delivering the news that provoked it: there is no hope.

"Are you sure?"

His voice was raw.

"I'm sure."

He sighed again and ran his fingers through his hair.

"You can't right now or you can't ever?"

"I... Never." Tears blurred her vision and her own voice trembled as she whispered, "I'm sorry."

He took a ragged breath. "No. I'm sorry... I... Can we at least still be friends?"

She'd never heard him sound so lost.

"I don't want to if it hurts you."

"It'll hurt more if we can't be friends," he whispered.

She nodded.

"O.k."

"O.k. I'm gonna go and... I guess I'll go try to pick up some chick or... I'll find you later, okay? I'll drive you home."

"You don't have to... I mean, I can just get a cab."

"No. I'll drive you." He started to walk away and then turned back to her and forcing a grin, said, "What are friends for, right?"

She nodded again, clamping her hands over her mouth, trying to choke back a sob.

So yeah. That made me cry. In my imagination it was all sunsety and beautiful in a symbolic 'the sun goes down on Maddison' kind of way. And Kate Walsh was her usual gorgeous self. And E.D. wasn't wooden. And probably none of that came across in my writing. Crys some more.

Next Time: What Do You Think Will Happen Next?

Har har I kill myself.