Chapter 2: Yesterday

Things we said today? Well, at least she didn't say things we did today, which might mean she doesn't remember the kiss, Cristina thought. How could she have been so stupid? First of all, this was real life, not some movie; people don't magically forget shit the next day, because they happened to be drunk yesterday. It was like an Izzie-sized mistake. Cristina groaned. Not Izzie, anyone but Izzie. Secondly, she should never have allowed Meredith to kiss her. Meredith had her number. Meredith would know that it was something that it wasn't supposed to be. But the most colossally stupid thing she had done by far had been admitting to herself that at the thought of Meredith her heart felt all tender and gooey. This was just... no. A heart is an organ that pumps blood through your body and if one of the valves doesn't work you have it replaced with a pig valve or an artificial valve. A heart does not feel tender. A heart is not some storage space for feelings. Especially not Cristina's heart.

And now the secret was out. She knew the fairytale: you do not let the genie out of the bottle, because it won't go back in. Now Cristina was aware of these feelings in a way she had not been before. All this time they had been suppressed and repressed with extreme care and they had not been permitted to surface, to come into full being. She could smack herself with the bottle heating device. Just hammer away. Stepping away from the device to remove the temptation, Cristina opened the fridge. She wasn't hungry. She closed the fridge. She noticed she was still wearing McDouche's shirt.

'I'll shower and get dressed and wait for Meredith to come back,' she said to the empty house. Love; it had already reduced her to some waiting by the phone sort of person.

After the shower and sniffing her clothes and deciding they would do, she decided to wait outside. It had started raining again, but surprisingly it wasn't cold. She sat down on the porch swing and the gentle motion was nice. It was peaceful and quiet and everything Cristina hated. Buckets of blood and guts and the cold steel of a scalpel; that's what Cristina wanted to see and feel right now, but it wasn't to be. From a neighbouring house a song drifted over.

'Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away.' Damn, that McCartney was just full of crap. Beautiful, beautiful crap, but crap nonetheless, Cristina thought. She had certainly added to her problems since yesterday with the kiss and acknowledging her feelings, but there had already been the pregnancy and her deteriorating marriage with Owen. She was going to have to do something about that. Not the pregnancy. She had an appointment and that was going to be taken care of pretty soon. But what about Owen? She understood that he wanted to have the child and it was his child too and she was not going to play the 'it's my body' card. Yet, this corner that he'd driven her into, where she needed to do what he wanted or their relationship would be over was not a corner Cristina particularly appreciated. Nor was it a corner she was unfamiliar with.

It might as well be called the Preston Burke honorary corner. Have the baby or break up; it reeked eerily of marry or break up. She knew relationships were about compromises, but the compromises weren't supposed to be that big. She had almost married Preston, despite the fact that she didn't want to get married, because she loved him. Stupidly, she would have gone through with it, if he hadn't wanted her to want it. At the time she simply didn't want that and she couldn't want it. He couldn't make her want it. Neither could Owen make her want to have a baby. And she had no idea whether this was progress or whether she was hardening, but she couldn't have a baby, simply because he wanted one and she loved him. How was it that she was required to make the sacrifice anyway? Why should she have to have a baby she didn't want to prove that she loved Owen? Why couldn't Owen forgo having children, because he loved her? Maybe this was just an area neither of them could compromise on, because it wouldn't be fair to either of them.

Thinking about it made her angry and sad, but she was much better at being angry. She was starting to get a bit chilly, but it was a welcome distraction, so she stayed outside. With some trouble she thought about something she had done in the last couple of days she could be proud of. After some intense thinking she could only come up with things she hadn't done. She hadn't told April what she thought about her being made chief resident. She hadn't said a number of mean things to Jackson. She had refrained from telling Meredith her real thoughts about Derek. The latter was courtesy of a sort of girlfriend code Cristina thought she would never fully understand. You weren't supposed to tell your best friend her husband was a total dick. Instead you had to be supportive, unless said best friend wants to hear negative things about said husband. And even then you had to be careful, because they might reconcile and then those negative things you had said would be used against you. It was all very exhausting and complicated.

'Hi.'

Think about the devil. After greeting her, Derek asked whether Meredith was at home and Cristina said she wasn't. They both went inside. Derek looked horrible. Big bags under his eyes, his hair all messed up and not in a sexy way. Not that Cristina could ever find Derek sexy, but sometimes, if she tilted her head a certain way, she could imagine that people might not find him completely disgusting. She had an amusing thought. What if he hadn't managed to convince either Mark or Alex to provide a sleeping place and had been forced to sleep out in the rain? Cristina bit her tongue to prevent from asking. It would only lead to bitchy comments like, 'Wouldn't your self-righteousness keep you warm and dry in such a situation?' Derek was talking about how he had finally listened to the messages Meredith had left for him and how he came over immediately.

'I didn't know the adoption had gone through,' he explained and his tired eyes focused on Cristina. Was he apologising, sort of, in a typical Derek kind of way, without actually apologising, to her? They seemed to want something, those eyes. Like she was supposed to absolve him or something and she didn't know what to make of that. Her control was impressive, if she said so herself, because she stayed civil and offered him coffee. He accepted. This simple exchange changed the dynamic between them and their roles in the house. She was suddenly the permanent resident and he was the guest. He did look around the kitchen as if he had never been there before. Or maybe that was just because the remnants of last night's party were still on the table. Suddenly there was a knock on the front door and when Cristina went to open it a very chipper middle aged woman bustled inside.

Derek stayed seated in the kitchen. Either he was really that fatigued or he had accepted his diminished role in the household. The woman introduced herself as May Kepner, the mother of April and the cheery months-as-first-names theme bewildered Cristina. She quickly led Mrs. Kepner into the kitchen, grinning when she saw how worn-out Derek looked after only one glance at the woman and went upstairs to wake April.

'April! Your mother's here!'

If Cristina would have had to construe events developing in April's room after her announcement, she would say that after a few healthy curses, April reached for the alarm clock, but accidentally knocked it over. She cursed again and then stubbed her toe when she got out of bed. Swearing again, hastily pulling on of clothes, bumping into the closet. Very loud cursing and the door opened. Through slits of eyes, April mumbled something about forgetting about the visit. Cristina followed her downstairs. April looked presentable. Her clothes were a little wrinkled, because they had been so hastily assembled and her eyes were very small. Her hair was a bit unruly and she was paler than usual, but other than that she looked fine. Her mother seemed to notice something nonetheless, but presumably kept quiet until they were outside.

Derek and Cristina heaved a sigh of relief simultaneously, until they realised this meant that they were alone again. A fairly uncomfortable silence ensued, broken only when someone knocked again.

'April probably forgot something,' Cristina said to Derek and then felt like an idiot for explaining. She went to open the door, seeing as Derek never made a move to get up. Perhaps it was less of a guest-inhabitant dynamic they had going on than a lord-servant relationship, Cristina pondered. When she opened the door and saw who it was she momentarily blanked.

'Cristina,' he finally said.

'Owen,' she returned.