So, couple of things. Note to the keeners, what happened was, I posted last night, like 3 minutes later I realized that I hated it and wanted to change stuff and the grammar sucked. So I took it down and went to bed. I woke up, fixed it, and now I am posting it again.
So Mark, the only reason that I added Mark was because he is coming back on the show.
But he isn't in this chapter. He is in New York right now. But he will be back. I think. But the moral of the story is: I don't know what to do with Mark, I don't know what to do with Addison, I don't know what to do with Meredith, and I don't know what to do with Derek.
Actually, that's not true. I do know what I am doing with one.
But the other three.
I am curious to see what happens.
Now about the actual story. I did this chapter a little different. It's basically like one long 'scene'. There is a conversation and it moves along by what is being played on the jukebox (that's right jukebox). In between they are sitting in silence, but I didn't write that in, but that is what they are doing.
XXXXXXXXXX
Addison sat sideways on the bench, her back pressed against the wall. She was in the back in the corner, protected from the world by a table, two chairs and a half wall. And by the tray of whiskey shots in front of her, and the pile of quarters that were piled on the corner, so she could easily reach them when she leaned towards the jukebox at the end of her bench.
She threw back another shot, and closing her eyes rested her head against the wall.
She had been there 72 minutes, spent $38 on shots and $5.75 in the jukebox. She had no plans to move. She did however have plans to buy another tray of shots and get another couple bills changed into quarters.
She was getting divorced. And it sucked.
Her eyes remained closed for several minutes. The bar was almost empty and she inwardly groaned as she heard a patron invading her space.
"I'll apologize right now."
Addison slowly dragged her eyes open. The voice was disembodied, and Addison realized belatedly that they were hidden by the jukebox.
She picked up another shot and dangled it between he fingers for a moment before draining it.
"And why is that?" she asked.
She heard a glass hit the table on the other side of the jukebox, "Because I am in the mood to drink and to talk."
"I'm just in the mood to drink," Addison emphasized this heavily by slowly pouring 2 shots down her throat in quick succession.
"That's why I apologized. And that's why I told Joe to bring us more drinks."
Addison smiled in spite of herself, leaning forward and sliding another quarter into the jukebox.
XXXX
A slow healing heart dyin' to mend
Longin' for love lonely again
When the spirit is broken
And the memories start
You know nothin' moves slower
Than a slow healing heart
Nothin' moves slower
Than a slow healing heart
XXXX
"Finn might be leaving," Meredith finally revealed.
Addison didn't respond. She wasn't expected to.
"His sister-in-law, his wife's sister, has MS. She's a single mom. She lives in Colorado. I think that Finn wishes that he could be closer, to take care of her and help with his niece and nephew."
Addison heard Meredith take a long drink and set the glass down heavily.
"I think that he is staying here for me. And I am so selfish that I am glad he is. I don't want him to go. But it's still his family and he should be with him. Family is important. You don't just end your family"
"Finn wouldn't stay if he didn't want to."
Meredith digested this,"I hope not."
Addison continued her silent vigil, welcoming the thoughtlessness that evading her mind.
"I saw my half-sister at the market last month."
Addison inwardly sighed, turning her focus to Meredith's voice again.
"She says hello. The baby is beautiful."
Addison didn't respond.
"I never thanked you for helping her. You saved my niece."
Addison searched for something to say to the woman that she didn't want to be talking too, "You would have done the same for me."
"Do you have nieces? Or nephews?"
Addison groaned at the direction the conversation was taking, "Tons."
Meredith was silent.
Addison continued despite herself, "My brother, has 5 sons. The youngest, Jeramy is just starting junior high."
"5 nephews." She heard Meredith murmur, "Just like Derek"
Addison paused, "Derek has 9 nieces," she said softly.
"And 5 nephews."
Addison remained silent.
"He told me he had 5 nephews."
"He watched them grow up."
Addison heard her pick up her glass twice before she spoke again, "I don't want Finn to go."
XXXX
Pardon the way that I stare
There's nothing else to compare
The sight of you leaves me weak
There are no words left to speak
So if you feel like I feel
Please let me know that it's real
You're just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off of you
XXXX
"That night. At prom. The night that we..." Meredith trailed off and took another drink, "It was the first night that... he looked at me."
Addison threw back a shot, considered it and threw back another, "You slept with my husband because he looked at you."
"He looked at me like he looks at you."
Addison considered this for a moment, "My husband hasn't looked at me for a long time."
Unseen to Addison, Meredith rolled her eyes, "Then it must have been some other redhead he was always staring at and watching."
Addison sat in silence and continued to drink.
"He never noticed me when you were around. It's like I wasn't even there. He would look at you and I would feel like waving my hand in front of his face to get his attention again. We were talking one day," Meredith rambled on, "he heard you laugh, and he knew it was you right away. He couldn't take his eyes off of you. And all of a sudden..." Meredith sighed and took another drink,"... I wasn't there anymore. He never saw me like he saw you."
XXXX
She should be accustomed
She oughta know you just can't trust 'em
When he's got a wife that he ain't gonna leave
Maybe she deserves what she's got comin'
She can't hide and there's no runnin'
From the guilty, lonely life she's bound to lead
'Cause she's the other woman
You've seen her before
Deep in his eyes
When he walks through the door
But did you know that even though
She's puttin' you through hell
You don't have to hate the other woman
She'll do it herself
XXXX
"He cheapened it. I just couldn't stop thinking that if he really cared about he in the way that I wanted him to, he wouldn't have..." Meredith paused, "He would have done it right."
"Meaning he would have left me first." Addison stated bluntly.
Meredith sighed, "Well yes." She took another drink, "You know I spent... months... thinking that I didn't care how we got together, as long as we eventually did. But clearly I was wrong. Apparently I still wanted him to show me some of the decency that he showed you:
"Derek? Show me decency? I think you were watching a different marriage disintegrate. There was no shows of decency in our marriage."
"It comes down to the fact that if he had the decency to try work things out with you, then he should have at least had the decency to end it with you before approaching me again. But he would never do that, because he loves you."
"He doesn't love me he loves you."
"No he doesn't."
"He does, he told me."
Meredith froze.
"Right before Christmas. He said he didn't want to hurt me, or leave me, but he was in love with you and that doesn't just go away." Addison took a swig of her recently delivered beer, then clenched her jaw bitterly, "Then he asked me to wait for it to pass."
Meredith stared at the wood paneling.
"I'm still waiting for it to pass."
Meredith drained another glass.
"I know he loves you," Addison continued, now that she had started talking she was finding it hard to stop, "Everyone at the hospital knows that he loves you. And now you know he loves you..."
"Everyone is wrong," Meredith stated.
Addison opened her mouth to protest, but Meredith kept talking.
"If everyone in the hospital, including you, thought he was in love with me, then me and Derek were the only two that knew how much he really loved you.
XXXX
Talk to me
In your own language, please
In your own
Talk to me
In your own language please
XXXX
"I have had two conversations with Derek that stood out in my mind, but to be fair, we never really talked a whole lot. No three, we had 3 conversations. The first one wasn't really so much a conversation as, I said I wouldn't sleep with him again until he told me something, anything about himself. I got, mothers maiden name, his favorite book and his favorite colour. He left out the wife."
"The cheating wife," Addison corrected, making a sloppy motion with her glass before taking a small sip.
"He left out wives altogether. And then he said that was all I got."
"Because me introducing myself to you as his wife served us all so well."
"Amen." Meredith took another drink, then set it on the table between them. On her last trip back from the bathroom Meredith had chosen to give up on the charade that if they couldn't see each other, the conversation wasn't happening, and had slide into the booth across from Addison. Between the two of them they had amassed enough glasses and pitchers that they couldn't see each other that well anyway.
"Then another time, it was right after I almost blew up, and he came to my house," Meredith saw Addison's raised eyebrow, "Sorry. Anyway he came to my house, and I asked him what our last kiss was, and he described it back to me in painstaking detail. What I was wearing, what I was doing, what I smelled like."
Addison looked pained.
"No it gets better, I crawl in bed that night and I realize. That wasn't our last kiss at all. I kissed him weeks after that. You were already here and my mother had been admitted, and Cristina had collapsed, and I was just having a really bad day, and I ran into him as he was leaving and... what?"
"Nothing. Keep going."
"No what are you thinking."
Addison shrugged, "Nothing, just the day of Cristina's surgery I kissed him too. He had a change of heart on a case we were working on, and I took the chance to try to tempt him back."
"Well it worked."
"Not really."
They sat in silence.
"What was the third conversation."
Meredith shrugged, "It was about you. How you cheated. He knew all the details of that too. He just sat there and told me everything, well, he told me his version, which in hindsight may have been slightly skewed because he was reliving seeing the woman he loved in bed with his best friend, and he was clearly still hurt by that. All he would talk about was how things felt. And the way he described it, it was like it had been an out of body experience. He still hadn't dealt with it. Which should have been my first clue."
"Your very bitter towards him."
"Your not bitter enough."
XXXX
I'm sorry, so sorry
That I was such a fool
I didn't know
Love could be so cruel
XXXX
"You know he never apologized. After you arrived. Not once. All the chasing and the excuses. But no apologies. I mean, would a 'Meredith, I'm sorry I lied to you about my wife' be so hard?"
"Derek doesn't apologize unless he is pushed into a corner. That would be like admitting he was wrong."
"And Derek is never wrong."
"No. Never."
XXXX
Jolene, jolene, jolene, jolene
Im begging of you please dont take my man
Jolene, jolene, jolene, jolene
Please dont take him just because you can
Your beauty is beyond compare
With flaming locks of auburn hair
With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green
Your smile is like a breath of spring
Your voice is soft like summer rain
And I cannot compete with you, jolene
He talks about you in his sleep
Theres nothing I can do to keep
From crying when he calls your name, jolene
And I can easily understand
How you could easily take my man
But you dont know what he means to me, jolene
Jolene, jolene, jolene, jolene
Im begging of you please dont take my man
Jolene, jolene, jolene, jolene
Please dont take him just because you can
You could have your choice of men
But I could never love again
Hes the only one for me, jolene
I had to have this talk with you
My happiness depends on you
And whatever you decide to do, jolene
Jolene, jolene, jolene, jolene
Im begging of you please dont take my man
Jolene, jolene, jolene, jolene
Please dont take him even though you can
Jolene, jolene
XXXX
Meredith drained another glass she proclaimed to be her last, "What," she paused thought about what she was going to say, and began again, "What are the chances that your middle name is Jolene."
"Mine?" Addison continued shelling the beer nuts but not eating them, "The songs about you."
"It's about a redhead."
"It's about a man-stealer."
"I didn't mean to!"
"It still counts!"
Meredith began furiously tearing up her napkin, "He said your name once. I think. In his sleep. He was sitting up with a patient and passed out in the chair,"
"And how did that make you feel?" Addison mocked, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the wall.
Meredith shrugged, "I felt fine. I'd only known him a week." She reached over and stole a handful of Addison's abandoned beer nuts.
Addison's eyes remained closed, "I'm getting divorced."
Meredith chewed silently.
"Could you not? Until we are?"
Meredith took a few minutes to process what Addison was asking her, "I wasn't planning on..."
"But if...."
Meredith was silent, "Okay."'
Addison nodded and stood, steadier on her feet then she should have been.
She left the bar without saying another word.
XXXXXXXXXX
How random was that chapter.
Basically I decided that I wanted to know how Meredith felt about Derek and Addison, or how she saw Derek's feelings for his wife. Now whether she actually thinks that Derek loves Addison, or she has just convinced herself... i dunno. 'Cause, well okay. If I was in Meredith situation, and thank the lord I am not, I think that the only reason that I could rationalize the man I love leaving me for another women, is if I convinced myself that he really truly loved this other person. So that's what I was trying to show here, Meredith really believes that Derek loves Addison because otherwise he would be with her.
Review.