Alright, so this one is a bit longer, so there's that. Kind of still angsty, sorry I'm not sorry. Let me know how you feel in the reviews. Also the reviews for this have made me so happy, so thank you. Enjoy!
It's his feet beating against wet pavement that helps him clear his mind. That burn spreading across his chest, slight ache in his side, lungs attempting to get some air inside, blood rushing. It's a different kind of pressure than the one he's been feeling for the past week or so. This one's more tangible than the weight that's been settled on his chest ever since she...
He speeds up.
He's learned that the faster you go, the less time you have to think about other things. Hell, if it were up to him he'd run forever just so he wasn't standing still, just so he'd have somewhere to go so he wasn't sitting and thinking and drinking, getting angrier with every passing hour. And he knows he has no right to be angry, because he gets it, honestly- she needs time, that's fair- but that doesn't stop him from upping his nightcap of bourbon from one glass to two (the past few nights, three and once, even a cigarette), and it also doesn't stop him from adding an extra mile to his midday run or an extra half hour to his regimen at the gym.
He feels his feet moving faster under him and the wind picks up on his face. He wipes sweat from across his forehead and goes faster still, moving from what was a jog into a full on run, turning down another path in the park near the the office. He's starting to head back when he decides to keep going, running past where he would usually stop down another path. It's relatively empty out due to the rain earlier in the day, and he relishes in it. He doesn't really want to see anyone right now. In fact, he's been avoiding everyone since that day. Aside from a few calls to his mother and Richie, and some very brief work-related conversations with Reed about what he missed while he was in LA, he hasn't made it a point to be social with anyone. It's been back to routine- getting up, heading into work, going to the gym, and then home- and he has faithfully stuck to his system. Routine gives him something to do, it keeps him occupied, prevents him from checking his phone every ten minutes looking for a text or a call or an update about what the hell is going on. It keeps him from wanting to punch a wall every time he thinks about that day in his apartment- them arguing and him not knowing what to do and her leaving and him being an absolute fool- and it stops him from remembering that she did exactly what he feared she would do: run. She ran and she left him and he fucked up by not understanding that of course she had some reservations. But that doesn't matter now, because he's not going to think about it anymore; he doesn't have time. When he's on a tight schedule packed with patients and paperwork, he doesn't have time to sit around waiting in the lounge hoping she's going to come in for even a split second so he can see her. He's not standing around at reception waiting for her to leave her office just so he can hear her voice. And that is a good thing. No, that's a great thing. As a matter of fact, he's never been better. He's focused and he's fit and yeah, he's lonely but that doesn't matter, because he's been lonely before and it didn't kill him, no matter how much he wished it did.
He going faster now, shifting from a run to a full on sprint. He moves swiftly along the pavement, passing the few people who are out on their lunch breaks and some moms out pushing strollers. He keeps the pace, pushing harder and harder, until he sees water up ahead. As he closes in on the boardwalk, he slows down, trying to catch his breath. He jogs up the edge and finds an empty bench near the end and promptly takes a seat. He breathes in deep and exhales, releasing his head against the back of the bench and repeating the breaths. He sits there for a moment, letting the silence of his surroundings wash over him. He knows that he's going to have to return soon- he has a 2:30 appointment with Mrs. Wasserstein- but for now he just needs this. He needs a second to catch his breath, because this is the first time all week that he's felt like he's actually getting some air into his lungs; the first time he's felt like his chest isn't going to cave in on him. He lifts his head once his breathing has evened and gazes out to the water. Maybe he should take a trip out to the island this weekend, just to get away for a while, because that's what he needs- a vacation. Time to get away from here, to think about something else, get some clarity. He stands and proceeds to head back to the office, mentally planning the details of his trip, when his eyes catch two figures strolling down the boardwalk. He starts to pay them no attention until he hears a familiar laugh ring out, high yet full and warm. It's the laugh he's been wanting to hear all week, the laugh he's been hiding away from.
Mindy.
She's strolling next to Cliff, hands tucked into the pockets of her emerald coat and her glasses perched on her face and hair tucked behind her ear. She looks... different. Happy. Definitely not how she looked the last time he saw her. He watches for a bit, and with each passing second he feels that recurring pressure start to build back up, and he can't do it. He won't. He can't give into it anymore. He gives her one more glance before heading back up to the paths, and he's running again.
She swears she sees Danny down the walk and for just a instant, she freezes. She could just be hallucinating, only seeing what she wants to see, but maybe she's not. After all, now is about the time he would be out on his jog. She looks down at her watch and notes the time- about 1:45- and looks back to up only to see the figure disappear back up into the paths. It probably wasn't him. He's probably already back at the office preparing for his 2:30 with Mrs. Wasserstein, and plus this isn't his regular path- he usually stays further up just in case one of his patients goes into labor so he can get back quickly. Plus it's still wet out, so maybe he didn't even go for a jog. Maybe he went to the gym instead.
Okay. Let's go with all of those.
"Mindy?"
Cliff's hand on her elbow pulls her back to the present, and she looks up at him, softly smiling. "Sorry", she says, resuming her walking with him. "I just... blanked for a minute. I'm back now."
"No, it's fine." He's smiling back at her now, and she's looking away, looking for a place to sit instead. She spots a bench not too far away. "Hey, you want to sit for a minute?" she asks, heading towards the bench.
"Why, are you getting tired already?" Cliff teases, following behind her. "Ha, you know me," she jokes back flatly, "walking and exercise, too much for this gal." She lets out a short chuckle before taking a seat. He doesn't notice but she scoots over just an inch as soon as he slides onto the bench. Since she first agreed to meet him on her lunch break a few days ago, she had been dreading it. She'd thought that they'd just meet somewhere and hash things out and she could just go about her day and get everything figured out, but Cliff apparently had other ideas. He'd offered to take her out for lunch at a new tapas bar not too far from the practice, and while it was a place she had wanted to visit, she hadn't wanted to go on a day where she was actually hungry. They had a few of the appetizers and some wine (all of which were underwhelming. She couldn't wait to do her Yelp! review, they were going to get some words from her), so now not only was she starving, she was also a little tipsy, and alcohol plus a starving Mindy does not a nice girl make. They had been out for almost two hours now and the topic of their situation still had not been broached, and she was getting relatively aggravated, not to mention her feet were starting to hurt and it was chilly. This was her last resort. She realizes that Cliff has been talking (rambling) ever since they sat down- something about the boats at the pier- and she can't take it anymore.
"Cliff, we need to talk," she finally blurts out, stopping his speech. His eyes widen at this, and then he's nodding, looking out at the water. He takes a breath before looking at her again and folding his hands in his lap. "Alright. Yes. Let's... let's talk."
"Okay," she responds, taking her own breath and shifting in her seat just a little so that she's facing him. She goes to speak but then realizes she doesn't know what to say. Well, it's not that she doesn't know what to say, she just doesn't know where to begin. There's a lot to go through: the letter, their level of trust with each other, his hesitance to move in with her, her kissing Danny...
"Do you want me to start?" he offers, sensing her apprehension, and she simply nods. "Okay," he sighs. "Well... I guess we should talk about the letter."
She swallows, thinking back to the email she sent him when she was on the plane, and how none of those words were hers, but all of Danny's. Talk about a missed sign. A huge, glaring, Las Vegas sized sign she just totally wasn't even paying attention to. Jesus.
"Okay."
"Well," he says, "did you mean everything you said?" She opens her mouth to speak but she's grateful when he continues on. "Because you said a lot, and I've had some time to think about it all and I-"
"I kissed Danny!"
"-think we should try again. W-what?"
She isn't quite sure what just happened but she knows that she's fucked up- that much she can gather. She immediately covers her mouth. He's looking at her now, eyes wide in shock and then he's standing up and moving away from her.
"You... did what?" he stammers.
She removes her hand from her mouth slowly and sighs. "I... kissed Danny," she mutters. "I mean, well, technically he kissed me, but I'm guessing you're not too concerned with the technicals right now."
"You kissed Danny? Danny Castellano?" She nods. "Angry, surly, old man Danny Castellano?"
"He's not surly", she mumbles but he hears her and it's like she's just digging a deeper hole and she doesn't even know what's going on anymore.
"Are you kidding me right now, Mindy? I'm telling you I want to be with you and you choose now to tell me that you kissed your co-worker?!"
"He kissed me!" she exclaims, standing to her feet.
"Mindy, that doesn't matter even matter right now! What matters is now I can't trust you!"
"Oh, like you trusted me before?" she retorts, half wishing she hadn't said it but continuing. "Like how you saw one picture of me and assumed that I hooked up with my ex-fiance?"
"Okay, I admit that was an overreaction, but who would have thought I was actually on the right path with the idea!"
"Okay, no," she snaps, stepping in closer to him. "If you didn't trust me before, if you had even a little bit of an inkling at any point in time before I went to L.A., me kissing Danny was not going change that. And for your information," she says, poking him in the chest, "I kissed him after you broke things off with me."
"Oh, so you did kiss him back?" he spits.
"No! I mean, yes but he kissed me first!" She's shaking her head, trying to regain focus. "Ugh! What does that even matter now? You just said that doesn't matter!"
He's moving around her now, out of her space to the other side of the bench for some distance. "You know what? You're right. It doesn't. What's important here is timeline. Did you kiss him before or after you sent me that letter?"
She flusters for a bit. "W-what?"
"Did you, Mindy Lahiri, engage in a kiss with Danny Castellano before or after you sent me that letter of apology?" He's waiting now, one hand on his hip and the other on the bench, and he's staring at her and she can't find it within herself to lie. She swallows this time and stuffs her hands into her pockets. She's quiet when she answers him back.
"...After."
And in that moment she knows whatever they had can't be fixed. It's irreparable. She watches him sit and take a deep breath, running his hands through his hair and then shaking his head. She stands for another moment before approaching the bench slowly and taking a seat next to him. A silence covers them both and they settle into it for a while. After a few minutes have passed (or like an hour, she doesn't know), he finally speaks.
"You know... I always thought there was something there."
Her head snaps up at this. "What?"
"Yeah," he exhales, peering out at the water. "I always suspected or whatever. Just... I don't know. There was always a thought in the back of my mind."
She's looking at him now, trying to read his face, letting his words roll around in her head. It's not the first time she's heard this. She got it from Josh at rehab and Gwen's mentioned it once or twice, but to hear it now from Cliff, it just all... settles into place. Looking back on her relationship with Danny, she can see how she may have missed all those signs. There was the moment before she went to Haiti with the glasses in the lounge, and them after the Weiner night fiasco, also their conversation the morning after crazy neighbor lady...
But those were all experiences that involved other women. She never once thought he was looking twice at her. Okay, that's a lie, because there was the night he gave her her secret Santa gift... And she would also be lying if she said she had never thought of Danny in that way before. Even after all that's transpired between them in the past week, she still can't admit to herself that he's always wanted something more from their friendship and that she's been too blind to see it. She's always been so involved with every other guy that she missed the one man she's been waiting for hiding right under her nose. It probably also didn't help that the first time he showed her just a little bit of himself- opened up and let her see another side of him- she bolted.
Frick.
She lets out a sigh and puts her head in her hands. She takes several deep breaths before sitting back up and turning to Cliff.
"Cliff, listen. I'm... I messed up."
"Yeah," he answers sharply.
"But in my defense, I didn't set out to cheat on you, especially not with Danny. That never once crossed my mind. I was actually trying to race home to get you back when Danny needed some help. There was this whole thing with his dad and him finding out he had a sister and-"
"And we're back to Danny again."
There's a change in the air around them and it has nothing to do with the weather. Mindy can feel anger boiling up within her but she tries to calm herself. "Okay. Look, I admit where I went wrong. But please, for your benefit, don't try to put this all on me. Don't act like the moment you thought I messed up, you didn't break it off with me. You were looking for an out-"
"I was not looking for an out-"
"-You were too, and you found one the minute you saw me with Casey. Admit it, Cliff. Instead of letting me know that you thought I was moving too fast, you took the first exit you saw."
He pauses at this and shakes his head, letting out a wry chuckle. She isn't phased. "Tell me the truth, Cliff."
He's staring at her for a moment until he finally speaks. "Fine. Fine. I admit that I thought we were moving too fast and I guess, subconsciously, I was looking for an out."
It's her turn to wryly chuckle. "Huh. Okay. 'Subconsciously.'" She stands and adjusts her glasses, and then folds her arms across her chest. "You know, Cliff? I feel like we're fighting to no end." He's standing now too, hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat.
"Yeah?" he questions. "How do you mean?"
"I mean that it's clear we're not going anywhere. I mean this isn't going to work. You don't trust me and you walk around with this idea in the back of your head that I'm not fully invested in you, which wasn't true up until this past week. You should have seen how badly I wanted to get back here to fix whatever was broken between us, and now you tell me that you've always had these doubts, which before I wouldn't have understood, but I do now. We communicate differently. I'm the type of person who will tell someone I love them on the second date, and you're the type to say 'I love you' by mistake and then pretend it never happened." She watches him shift from foot to foot and she presses on. "Look, you have every right to be angry at me. I did make certain decisions after I begged you to take me back, and for that I apologize. I shouldn't have kissed or slept with Danny."
"Wait- what? You slept with Danny too?" He scoffs. "Incredible." Her eyes roll at this. She's over this conversation, this meeting, this entire situation. "Yes, but that doesn't matter now. The point of this is that we both had/have our issues. I can't be with someone who has one foot in and one foot out, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to be with me while I'm in love with someone else."
He's staring at her again, but with a different look than before. It's not animosity looking back at her, but honesty. Clarity. (Is that relief she detects? Rude.)
"You're in love with him, huh."
It's an immediate response from her end. "I am."
He looks at her a moment longer before breaking eye contact and looking at his feet. He lets out a laugh. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yeah. Okay." He takes a step forward and takes her in. "No, you're right. I wasn't fully committed to this, as much as I told myself that I was. And you... well, it's clear you have your own kind of baggage that you need to deal with. So... okay."
She smiles softly. "Okay then." Sticking out her hand, she goes for a handshake and he embraces it. "I guess that's it then."
"Yeah, I guess so," he says, releasing her hand and stuffing his back into his pocket. They linger for a moment before her phone beeps with a text from Betsey saying that her 3:00 is on her way. "I guess I better go then," she states, returning her phone to her pocket.
"Yeah, I guess so," he sighs, sitting back down. "I'll wait here for a bit just so we don't have to make that awkward walk back together." She's chuckles, grateful for this. "Thank you." She looks at him one more time before turning to head up one of the many paths that lead through the park back up to the main street. She's walking back up when she hears him call out to her.
"Hey Mindy."
"Yeah?"
"Don't... don't fuck it up."
She throws him a smile and nods, and then resumes her walking. She wants to tell him that that was rude but she doesn't want to ruin the moment and she doesn't want to spend any more time there than she has to. She's hungry and she also has some problems that need attending to. Time to put on your big girl panties, Lahiri, she sighs.
Here goes nothing.
