Three: Roommates
The thing about living in my house is that you have to share it with two other people (who I would like to call my friends), and whoever they're sleeping with. You could also count in the people who sleep over (other than for sexual purposes) but that would only include Cristina. And probably George, because he's currently sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag. But he used to be my former roommate (and former other complicated things).
So, at any rate, it's not about roommates anymore. It's about my friends who started out with me as interns. Me, Cristina, Izzie, Alex and George—we all started out as interns. And we've all stayed in my house drinking and having sex and doing other stuff. I see this place as the house of misfits and people with a lot of issues. See, even the people who sleep over (a.k.a. people we have sex with) have a lot of issues, but that's beside the point.
The point is, these roommates are the closest thing I could ever get to a family. I wouldn't trade them otherwise for anything at all. And this morning, I wake up and find Izzie in the kitchen, cooking what looked like a week's worth of breakfast. Seriously.
I stop halfway through the kitchen and my jaw drops when I realize how much Izzie cooked this morning. Piles upon piles of pancakes sat on top of the counter, along with bacon, eggs, and muffins. A LOT of muffins. Izzie never really stopped making muffins even after she moved on with Denny. She looks up when she realizes I've been standing in the kitchen long enough to close my gaping mouth.
"Hey," Izzie greets happily, pulling a plate from the cupboard behind her, "Breakfast?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess." I reply, cautiously taking the seat in front of her. Izzie places the plates of breakfast foods in front of me, humming some song as she went back to tending the stove. I sighed. "Izzie, are you okay?"
Her eyes quickly flick over to me and widens before she answered. "Yeah, I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?" She stammers slightly and I roll my eyes at her. You see, Izzie is not good with lying.
"You made muffins."
"So?"
"Then something is bothering you." I press on and Izzie sighs, finally succumbing to my insistence seeing as I have not touched the breakfast she so happily made for me. She then proceeds to sit on the chair opposite mine, her chin resting on her hand. I stare at her in anticipation, narrowing my eyes at her after minutes of waiting. "So…? What is it?"
"It's George," She says evenly, and I groan. Somehow, I think, I shouldn't have asked. "And I know, you really don't want to hear this or something, but, Mer, the sex? It's really bad."
I groan. Again. I really don't understand why I have to keep up with the on-goings of my sexually screwed friends. Oh, right, they're my family. So I'm dealing with it.
"And you know, don't get me wrong," Izzie continues with her rambling, stabbing the pancake in front of her repeatedly, "I love George. And I really do. But he pecks like a chicken and sex with him is absolutely horrible and I forget why he's perfect and then I forget why I love him then I remember why you cried when the two of you had sex before…"
I cringe as Izzie trailed off a monologue of what seemed to be the one of the worst things I have ever done in my life—sleeping with George. It's not that George isn't good with sex; it's just that, it's wrong. And yes, slightly horrifying as Izzie had said. But crying while having sex broke George and it took him a long time to finally forgive me, and talk to me, and I really don't want to remember that anymore.
"Izzie, stop."
"What?"
"Just… stop." I repeat, and Izzie looks at me like I said the most ridiculous thing ever. I shake my head and roll my eyes, before answering. "The thing with me and George, I really don't want to remember that. It's water under the thing, whatever." She huffs in her seat before coming to rest her chin in her hand. "And you know, the thing with George, you just have to get on with it. If it's bad sex, it's bad sex. I really don't need to hear about it."
Izzie rolls her eyes, looking somewhat frustrated and amused at my answer. "Thanks a lot for being a great friend, Mer." She says, sticking her tongue out at me before standing up to resume her place in the kitchen. I smirk, scoffing slightly before coming up with a retort.
"It gives me bad visuals."
"Last night, we had a box of fun."
I look up at her with wide eyes, momentarily forgetting that this was Izzie I'm talking to. "Box of what?" I repeat slowly, slightly afraid of the answer I'm going to hear.
"Box of fun…" She trails off, "and booze. And I'm sorry if I took one bottle out of your cabinet, I really needed it."
"A box of fun?" The inside of my head flinches in disbelief and slight disgust as it tries to process the images of Izzie and George in the living room with that box of fun (and the contents thereof). How… ugh, how Izzie. Or something.
The thing with Izzie is that most of the time, she's happy. In a crazy sort of way. But really, she's just as screwed as everyone else who lives in this house, like me, like Alex or George or Cristina. She's the 'live life, be happy' kind of person even if the world was about to be crushed by a giant meteor. Even with the addicted-to-phone-psychics mother living in the trailer park, even with the modeling thing she had to do in order to get through med school, even with the screwy things she had as a teen, Izzie's always happy and smiling and stuff. Except that when things start to suck and life throws a curve ball at her and she doesn't catch it, she spirals into the land of extreme melodramas and blank stares into space.
That includes lying on the bathroom floor for hours, baking muffins enough to open a shop and making a box of fun for sex nights with a person you obviously don't have chemistry with.
Izzie goes back to the kitchen island to store the pile of breakfast foods she has cooked this morning and I look at her, releasing a heavy sigh. Most of the time, I can't deal with Izzie and the extreme happiness emanating from her, but honestly, I really couldn't think of any other way to have it. She's a great friend, even when she's screwed up and messed up and being the queen of fantasyland.
ooo
George is hiding in a supply closet. Not because he's screwing someone, but because he's hiding. In the closet. Alone. He's hiding in the closet alone trying to avoid Izzie, and I'm the one who found him because I wanted to hide in the closet as well. Because I'm trying to avoid having to deal with Lexie.
"What are you doing here?" George and I both say at the same time, the moment I open the closet door. My brow furrows in confusion as I think of a reason why he's inside and some sort of answer as to why I'm going in there as well. He shoots a curious look at me before he opens his mouth to reply, only to be drowned by the same answer from me.
"I'm hiding." I respond, and so does George. His mouth drops open in surprise and I shrug, nudging him to the side with my foot. He scoots over and I close the door behind me, crouching low to sit beside him. I sigh.
"Who are you hiding from?" George asked when I've finally settled myself on the small space. "I'm hiding from Izzie."
"Lexie," I mumble beside him, my shoulders drooping in exhaustion, "I'm avoiding Lexie."
George's eyebrows knit together in something that horribly resembled a unibrow and if it was any other situation, I would've laughed. But it wasn't, so I simply resort to sighing heavily before slumping to the wall behind me.
"Why are you hiding from your sister?" He asked after the long stretch of silence from me, "I thought you were fine with her. I mean, coz yesterday you told…"
"My dad was in the ER today," I say, cutting off George before he got to telling me about having a relationship with my sister, "He was drunk, he put his hand through the window and said a lot of things I never heard him tell me ever in my life."
"And you're hiding from Lexie because…?"
"I told her to keep an eye on Thatcher. And then she screamed at me for reminding her that she has to keep a better eye out for him."
George sat beside me with his lips opened slightly in surprise, before catching my eye and nodding quietly. We both sat in relative silence for minutes before he even attempted to restart any sort of conversation.
"Bailey's letting one of her patients take her for granted for saving his life." George mutters quietly as he sat beside me. I turn my head to look at him.
"What does this have to do with you hiding from Izzie?"
He shrugged, his shoulders slumping slightly as he pulled his knees up to his chest. "Why can't I just tell her things anymore? It was easy before, now; I can't even look at her. Or talk to her. Or, I don't know. She doesn't want to talk to me because now I talk to you." George cradled his head in one hand and turned to look at me. "I'm her best friend, and I can't even fix this. AND she's asking me to give her back the keys to the house."
I narrowed my eyes at him, one eyebrow rising in confusion. "But you have your own keys to the house." I tell him, and he shrugs again.
"I think she thinks she gave me one."
I sigh, and we relapse back to the moment of complete silence. It wasn't uncomfortable, it was just… we just ran out of things to talk about. George is sitting beside me and I could hear him breathing heavily, probably contemplating on what he should do. He's a nice guy, really, George is a nice guy. I know I've made bad decisions by sleeping with him before but I've said sorry and he's forgiven me so we're okay. And I know George and he really needs a friend right now.
Of all my friends, I would've thought that George had the closest to a normal life. As far as I'm concerned, he's the only normal guy—well, until we got to the point where he tells us that he doesn't get his family and they don't get him. But at least he's got a family, even if the only things that his brothers know about are cars and mail. Anyway, about George. George knows his stuff: he's smart, and funny, and sweet and he's a caring guy. Sometimes, however, George doesn't like to think about the things he's doing. Then he ends up making a huge mess out of it, and normally, the stuff he does are just so damn hard to fix.
Say, for instance, marrying your boss a few weeks after your dad dies. And then you cheat on your wife with your best friend weeks after. The sad thing is, he doesn't tell her about it until it's all too late to fix.
Shifting slightly, I turn my body to face George and he looks up at me like I hold the answer to his problems. I don't. Instead, I reach out for his hand and squeeze it, smiling slightly as I do so.
"You should go tell Bailey that she shouldn't let her patient take her for granted."
His head dips down once. Twice. And George looks up at me again. "Okay." He replies softly, his lips turning up into a smile as I squeeze his hand again.
"And you should go tell Izzie about everything." I add, tilting my head to the side before making a move to stand up. "Cause she's your best friend and you should get to tell her everything."
I stand up and reach for the door when George pipes up again. "Even if she doesn't want to talk to me? Even if it's hard?" George looks glazed and unsure, and I nod my head, turning the knob open before answering.
"Even if she doesn't want to talk to you. But she's your best friend. It always gets easier when it's simpler that way."
ooo
Alex is brooding. Like, seriously brooding in the corner of the couch while watching television with a beer in his hand kind of brooding. It's really not normal for me to see Alex this way.
"Hey," I greet him when I enter the living room, and Alex looks up from the T.V. He lifts his beer-laden hand in greeting, before taking another sip. "You're home early."
He shrugs indifferently before leaning back on the couch. "I'm not home early," he says, his eyes now fixated on the game showing on the television, "You just got home late."
Okay, so I was home late. Derek drove me back here from the trailer and we've spent enough time groping and kissing each other in the dark of his car. I'm pretty sure Alex knows that but he doesn't need to hear it. Instead, I head over to the other seat in the living room and flopped myself down, pulling my feet up to rest on the coffee table. Alex doesn't budge.
"What's up?" I ask and he shrugs, his eyes still never leaving the T.V. screen. I've never really been able to hold any sort of sane conversation with Alex unless it has to do with sex, booze, or the rare occasion he decides to divulge his problems. I don't think today was any of those days either. "Anything interesting today?" I continue, and I'm surprised that Alex faced me before he answered.
"Nothing much," he replies, once again taking a sip of his beer, "Except for the fact that your sister is mad at me."
I try to suppress a laugh and Alex looks at me quizzically. "Oh, so it isn't just me then."
"I don't suppose," Alex said, shrugging. "Did she yell at you?"
"Not exactly yell…" I trail off, trying to recount the better moments of my recent encounter with Lexie, "More like… raised her voice."
"So she's mad at you for telling her to take care of your dad?" He muttered knowingly, his eyes partially meeting mine. I rolled my eyes, shrugging my shoulders at him.
"How'd you…? Did she tell you about it?"
It was now Alex's turn to snort. I wasn't exactly expecting to have this discussion with Alex, on the account of having to talk about my last disastrous encounter with my half-sister. But here we are, in the living room, talking about Lexie Grey like she was a normal topic of conversation around here.
"No," Alex leans back on the couch and silence surrounds us before he answers, "It's always like that. They think it's such a personal thing that they don't need other people to help them. It's a private family issue. Or whatever crap they have to make up for keeping other people from knowing that someone in their family is a drunk."
"You seem to know a lot about crap like these." I state quietly and Alex continues to stare blankly at the television screen. He doesn't talk for a while, and I'm kinda afraid I offended him.
"My dad was a drunk," He says monotonously, as if it was no secret to the world, "Had to clean up after the bastard when I was seven."
Most people won't believe me if I told them that there's a human being inside Alex Karev. The truth is, he's a jackass, he lacks the proper niceties when it comes to bedside manners and he always tells the truth (especially to his patients), even if it's not what you want to hear. But it's mostly because he's had a rough childhood. He's good at keeping those pesky emotions at bay, locked up in the back of his brain, which makes him hardcore. And really, it's a good quality when you're a surgeon.
But then, there are only few people who've seen his human side. I think you need to be one of those few screwed up people before he actually shows you that he's capable of actual human emotion.
Alex looks at me expectantly, and I blink back, staring at him blankly. He snorts, once again taking a sip from his bottle.
"Life sucks," I tell him, stealing the bottle of beer from the table. "Being a grown-up sucks."
And it has come to that. I'm sitting here in my living room with Alex, telling him that life sucks. Alex simply tilts his head to the side, leaning back on the couch lazily. Between me and the rest of the people inside this house, Alex is the one guy who would probably understand me, but he's too much of an ass to actually be someone to talk to. My point is, he's just as screwed up in everything as I am.
"Tell that to your sister then," Alex says, his eyes fixated on the ceiling. I roll my eyes at him, my head shaking in disapproval. "Maybe she'll listen to you when you tell her that growing up sucks."
"Why should I tell her?" I mumble indignantly at Alex, "You tell her. I don't even freakin' know how to grow up, Alex."
Alex huffs and he looks at me while I glare right back at him. "Besides, I shouldn't even care." I finish, slamming the beer bottle on the table. The foam rises from the golden liquid inside, but it wasn't enough to overflow from the top. We continue staring at the bottle as if it was the most fascinating thing we've ever seen, before Alex spoke up again.
"But you do. So you tell her," Alex replies as he stood up, taking the bottle with him, "She's still your sister, even if you hate her." With that he left me and I manage to look up before he was gone.
"I don't hate her!" I call out and the only thing I hear is "Whatever" all the way from the other room.
Sure, life sucks—it always has anyway.
ooo
Cristina's dancing like there's no tomorrow. Seriously. My best friend is dancing because she says it makes everyone braver. And I'm dancing because I want to believe that it will make me braver.
I drop myself down on the couch and Cristina follows me, pouring two shots of tequila before she flops beside me.
"You invited Lexie." I state matter-of-factly, as if she didn't know about it. She grunts. "You invited my half-sister."
Cristina tosses back the shot of tequila and I do the same, and we both lean back on the couch. I shift, turning my body to face her and Cristina grimaces, shooting one last look at Lexie before she answered me.
"I told you, she's got no one."
Lexie's dancing somewhat wildly in front of us, the upbeat music continually hammering our eardrums. George and Izzie were still dancing slowly, although they shouldn't be because Justin Timberlake is singing songs made for wild party dancing. I look back at Cristina, and she narrows her eyes at me.
"You're smiling," she accuses, pouring two more shots of tequila for the two of us, "Why are you smiling?"
"You invited Lexie." The phrase has long since been repeated over the past few minutes and I'm pretty sure that Cristina's getting annoyed. But I had to know, and I think I deserve the right to know why my half-sister is in my house dancing and drinking with us. Cristina rolls her eyes at me, her wild wavy hair shaking in all directions.
"Because I told you," Cristina downs the shot without waiting for me, "She's got no one."
"Yeah, but that's never made you invite people over for a drinking party."
She sighs loudly, her hands flopping helplessly in her lap due to frustration. "Well," she glances at me sideways, "She was brave today."
Cristina was the first person I talked to the day I started in Seattle Grace. Sure, we didn't exactly start off in a good way, but my life probably wouldn't be the same if I didn't end up being her friend. She hated me the first day back, but come to think of it, I guess she just hates everyone she meets the first time—okay, maybe except for Burke.
You see, Cristina's not good with emotions. She doesn't do the hugging thing, or the "I-care-about-you" kind of thing, or whatever it is that friends are supposed to do with friends… well, most of the time she doesn't do those things anyway. I'm not sure if it's her screwy childhood to blame or because that's just the way she is. But even with the super hard-core, driven, apathetic Cristina, she's still a good friend—she's still my best friend.
When Derek broke my heart, Cristina was there. When Alex failed his board, she helped him. When Izzie was in trouble for cutting Denny's LVAD wire, she agreed to keep it a secret. When George's dad died, she comforted him (at least that was what George said.) When I had the near-death whatever, she was the first one I saw in that room.
And when Lexie had no one, she invited her to dance with us. Cristina does have a heart after all. She does care—she just doesn't want to admit it.
She looks at me strangely and I simply shrug, now turning to look at the tequila on the table. "Okay," I tell her, before shooting the tequila down, "It's okay."
"You're not pissed?" She asks, her eyebrow rising in surprise, "You're not pissed I brought Three here?"
"No," I tell her and it was the truth, "Lexie has no one. She deserves to have someone."
"We don't have anyone." Cristina tells me bluntly and I roll my eyes at her, stretching out on the couch. "We all have no one."
"Of course I have someone." I reply defensively, propping my head on my hand, "I have you."
"Yeah, and just me."
"And Izzie, and George, and Alex."
Cristina snorts, somewhat ungracefully and stretches out on the coffee table as well. "Oh, right. I forgot that we had the smackheads as well." Her voice was characteristically sarcastic, but she turns to look at Izzie and George over the other side of the room and her face softens. She probably wouldn't admit it, but she knows she's got them anyway.
The song changes and we're still both on the couch. Lexie, Izzie and George suddenly stop dancing and they all turn to approach us.
"Hey," George says, "you stopped dancing."
"I don't think I was dancing that much," I tell him, lining up five shot glasses and filling them up, "I was more like jumping all over the place."
"Okay," Izzie sits on the floor in front of the table, reaching over to grab her shot glass, "Let's just drink then." She raises her shot glass for a toast. "To friends, family and surgery. Crappy friends, crappy family, crappy surgery." We all clink our glasses together and simultaneously gulp down the tequila, half-wincing as they burned our throats. The music changes once more and Lexie stands up, dancing to the beat.
"I like this song," Lexie says enthusiastically and pulls George to his feet. She reaches over to help Izzie up as well and the three of them launches into another fit of dancing. "Meredith, dance!"
I stand up and dance around again, pulling Cristina up with me. And while we are trashing around, Cristina leans close to me and whispers in my ear.
"Okay, so maybe I'm glad I have you guys. At least I have someone."
I turn to look at her but she's already gone jumping over the other side of the room. You see, Cristina's not so bad at all.