[5] {Feel free to think of Max as Matt Bomer. You're welcome.}
Keeping to his word, Max succeeded in successfully escorting an inebriated Meredith back to her apartment complex. She didn't know how he did it—Meredith had been told she was quite the handful when she'd consumed tequila—but somehow Max watched her carefully while she unlocked her door and stumbled into her living accommodation. "You need to sleep," he said at once, all-business while Meredith collapsed onto her bed. "Promise me you're going to bed," he ordered, satisfied when she seemed to have fallen asleep the minute her head hit the pillow "Night, doctor," he said, his voice a softer tone as he tucked the covers around her chin and left her apartment.
Meredith woke up the next morning with a mild headache, initially unsure of how she'd gotten back home in one piece. With the way she'd been feeling lately, she just didn't care about anything anymore. She could end up on the side of the street, alone, and it still wouldn't matter to her; she'd already lost the one person who'd ever held a special place in her heart. And it'd been the consequences of her reckless actions. She just wasn't known for thinking before acting.
"Oh. Max." She mumbled plainly, falling back onto her sheets while bits and pieces of her conversation with the bartender last night came back. No, maybe he shouldn't be referred to as "the bartender" anymore. Apparently, drunk on tequila, Meredith had asked "the bartender" to be her friend. "Let's just stick with the name 'Max'," she muttered to herself, forcing her aching body off the bed and into the bathroom.
The coffee burned his tongue all too quickly, not even giving Derek a chance to enjoy the flavor before he pulled the cup away from his lips. "Hot," the volume of his voice rose, earning a chuckle from Mark.
"She was always telling you to wait until it cooled down," Mark responded, the words leaving his mouth before he even realized what he was saying. "Sorry," he caught himself, glancing over sideways at Derek while they entered the elevator.
"No big deal," Derek lied. Mark slipped up a lot; it was habit for him to think of Derek without Meredith attached. Everything was still "Derek and Meredith" in his brain, even though it'd been four years since he'd even seen the couple—ex-couple—together.
The floors went by one by one, the indicator on top of the doors flashing from one number to the next. "I miss her," Derek blurted out, and immediately, Mark's hand reached out to pull the emergency stop button. "I miss her," Derek repeated, talking over the soothing hum of the elevator. "She's… it's like she's everywhere. Four years, Mark," he turned to the plastics surgeon standing next to him. "Four d*** years, and she's still everywhere. I can't get her out of my head."
"You don't have to," was his best friend's reply, and Derek just nodded. He let themselves stand there in the silence for a few more seconds before his own hand moved, and the elevator started up again.
Meredith's fingers moved quickly as she sewed up a line of tight, neat stitches, closing up her patient while nurses and interns moved around in the OR. Tying up the last stitch, she stepped back so she could take a closer look at her work. "Mark Sloan would be proud," she found herself saying, and an intern interested in plastics glanced up.
"You know Mark Sloan?" He asked, his intrigue apparent.
"Oh, no," Meredith said quickly, mentally kicking herself for the lie. "I mean, yes. I do. Kind of. It's complicated," she explained, while really not explaining anything at all. Ignoring the intern's prying expression, Meredith walked into the scrub room, removing and disposing of her mask and gloves while she scrubbed out. 3,000 miles away, even Mark Sloan's name had a way of catching up to her.
"Have we met before?" The tall and handsome doctor asked, standing in front of her with two coffees in his hand. He handed her one with a wink, and although Meredith wasn't interested in the wink, she took the coffee anyway. She'd stayed up all night on-call, and the coffee would do wonders for her attention span this morning.
"I don't think so, Dr.," she paused, purposefully glancing at his name tag on his lab coat, "Sloan."
"Ha," he chuckled, taking a sip from his coffee. "Don't pretend like you haven't heard of me."
Meredith laughed, shifting the hot coffee to her other hand. "I've heard of you. But no, we haven't met before." She gave him a smile, raising her eyebrows teasingly. Of course she'd heard of Mark Sloan. Not only was he one of the best plastics surgeons in the country, but he was also Derek's best friend; and a massive player from the looks of it.
"That's too bad. We could've had real fun, if we'd met before." Mark shook his head, hiding his grin in vain.
"Maybe," Meredith shrugged. "But I have to say, I'm seeing someone already. Sorry, Dr. Sloan."
"Really?" Mark asked, genuinely interested. He'd never seen the intern before, and although she was just an intern at the bottom of the surgical food chain, he was certain that he would've remembered her face. She looked like the kind of girl that people didn't forget too often. Anyway though, he hadn't seen her—which most likely meant that she was new, possibly even new to Seattle. Seeing someone? He was impressed.
"Really," Meredith grinned, before turning on her heel and walking away from him.
"Hey," Mark yelled out after her, and she turned and began to walk backwards while he spoke. "Where are you going?"
"I'm an intern, Dr. Sloan. I have rounds!"
There was nothing special about this particular evening, but for once, Meredith didn't mind so much that the only thing waiting for her at her apartment was a bottle of tequila. But despite her readiness to just get home and fall asleep under her covers, the moment her foot hit the gas pedal, Meredith's mind wandered over to Derek. It was a familiar path that her thoughts were used to taking, and she was hardly surprised when she found herself walking into the bar once again.
She was already seated at the counter when she remembered her prior evening's encounter with Max, and when the bartender appeared before her with a shot of tequila in his hand, Meredith's cheeks flushed a shade of pink.
"Hey, doctor," he grinned, setting the shot before her. Meredith rolled her eyes, forcing the smile off her lips as she left the shot untouched.
"I vaguely remember telling you last night that my name is Meredith," she replied, her smile appearing despite her best efforts to act serious.
"Oh," Max snapped his fingers. "That's right. You told me your name, and also not to take you home to your bed."
Her cheeks flushed again, and Meredith knocked her shot back before replying, "I did, didn't I? What else did I say?" She was clearly embarrassed. Throughout her four years in New York completing her residency, Meredith hadn't made one solid friend—that on its own was embarrassing enough. To think that she might've begged Max to be her friend was a little too much to bear, especially since he knew her as the doctor who came in for tequila too often than not.
"You asked me to be your friend." Max's tone was gentler now, with an edge of softness to it in an attempt to relax Meredith's tense nerves.
"Another shot," she responded, raising her eyebrows when Max didn't even begin to comply. "Aren't you supposed to be the bartender?" She asked, trying to act annoyed to hide her embarrassment.
"Just your friend," he responded, looking her dead in the eye. His blue eyes locked on hers for a few seconds before he filled up another shot glass and slid it across the counter. Meredith wrapped her fingers around the glass, squinting in the slightest bit as she studied Max's expression. She had a knack for finding flaws and deception in people, but she couldn't find one thing about Max that said he wasn't genuine. He saw how much he drank and she was sure he'd assumed that she was pretty d*** screwed up. And yet, he still wanted to be her friend. She hated to admit it, but the way he was looking at her made her believe that he wanted to be there for her. She'd spent the past four years pushing people away, and despite her best judgments, Meredith didn't want to let this one opportunity for friendship go.
"Okay. Friends."
As always, the best laid plans go askew. This cliché ran through Derek's mind as he flipped his pillow over when the first side became too warm for his liking. Then when he remembered how much Meredith hated when he did that—some kind of adorable OCD thing she insisted on—he flipped it back over, choosing to endure the heat pressing into his cheek than to undermine a quality that made Meredith, Meredith.
He'd planned on spending one of his rare nights home early by going to bed as soon as possible, but instead had spent the past two hours lying in wait of sleep. During the 120 minutes that had dragged painfully by each second, Derek had done everything possible to keep his mind off the blonde who'd stolen his heart. At one point he'd even tried counting fluffy sheep, but had written the whole idea off as stupid after only five sheep.
It was no use; he couldn't get his mind off her.
This was nothing new to him though, and by now he was used to the fact that she occupied his mind even though he hadn't seen her for the past four years. He missed her so much that his heart ached whenever her face appeared in his mind. And despite the fact that he would give anything for her to be his again, she was still never there.
Derek's hand reached out to the other side of the bed, hand grasping at open air before falling down onto the cold sheets. For a year she'd occupied the space next to him almost every night, and it was strange to think that he still wasn't quite accustomed to sleeping alone. He wanted nothing more than to pull her smaller form against his own, wrapping an arm protectively around her waist while she slept. It was so simple and yet it was so complex: he missed her. He missed her more than he even knew how to say.
With a heavy sigh, Derek reached for his phone, pulling it to him as he dialed his voicemail, punching in the familiar code to take him to just the message he wanted. He held the phone to his ear, cradling it gently while an automated voice informed him the time and date the message had been sent at. Then suddenly Meredith's light laughter flooded into his ear, and Derek shut his eyes, the initial pain at hearing her voice hitting his heart with a bang before the pain subsided, replaced by butterflies in his stomach.
'August 22, 2007 at 8:37pm: "Hi Derek, I'm just calling to say… Well, I met you a year ago today. And it's just funny, because I didn't even know this was the day we first met. In my head it's always that rainy day in the grocery parking lot because that's when I actually learned your name. I'll never understand why you didn't introduce yourself that day on the beach, but it's okay. I'm glad you did eventually. I'm glad fate brought us together because honestly? I never believed in a happily ever after before I met you. I love you. Oh, hi Zeus! Zeus wants to say that he wants you to come home soon. I can't believe you're working late on our one year anniversary, but I forgive you, I always forgive you. Come home soon, I love you. Happy anniversary." To replay this message, press one. To delete, press seven.'
The silence that followed shortly after he placed his phone back on the nightstand was almost too much for Derek to go through. It just felt so empty. The message, laced with laughter and sentences where Derek could hear Meredith's smile, made him happy and sad all at once. Remembering her was bittersweet. After she left, everything was always bittersweet, and nothing in between.
And he hated it. He hated the fact that all her messages sat in his voicemail because he couldn't bear to delete them. But knowing they were there compelled him to listen to them, and just from that small fact alone he knew he could never let go. So he didn't delete them. Because those were one of the only things that still reminded him that she'd once been here, with him, and that they'd been happy together. He couldn't let go.