September 23, 1984 – I-90

Grant drove silently onto Patroon Island Bridge while Angela leaned her shoulder against the doorframe. They both stared out at the landscape quickly passing them by. The Hudson River rushed underneath, and Angela looked out at the water on her side. It reached forever into the distance, just as it did on his side.

She turned to look at Grant's face. She'd seen that look on him a thousand times before: stressed, unsettled.

"Hey," she inched quietly.

Grant jolted mildly out of his thoughts and looked over at her, "Hey."

"What are you thinking about?"

His straight face curved into a smile, "You know very well what I'm thinking about."

Her smile rose a smidge, but her eyes stayed the same. "No, you're not." At his frown, she persisted. "You're upset."

"What I'm thinking about is why I'm upset."

She nodded and looked out the windshield, "Understood."

He got louder, "Angela, this is going to blow."

She smiled over at him sadly.

"I guess it's good I won't be around all the time anymore. I don't know how I'd have you so close now, and not just pull you into my office at random."

Angela rolled her eyes at him, "Oh, cry me a river, Paxton. I'm the one who has to go through life knowing what those rowing legs can do."

Grant laughed, but it turned into a whine. "Damn it! Angela, I'm going to miss you!

Angela leaned slowly toward him over the large middle console and tipped her head. She tried to lower the energy with her voice; she needed to nip this thing in the bud. "I think we can both agree a weekend was too short - but a lifetime is too long."

Grant's brows scrunched, "Is there no middle ground?"

With that, her voice became clear, "Definitely not. I can have fun and pry myself away." She glanced down briefly before looking back at him. "But I'd be wrecked if I could feel you start to tire of me." She turned to look out the windshield. "That's one wound I've had more than enough of."

Grant briefly squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. "Look, Angela, I know you've been through the wringer, and I don't want to hurt you…" He growled, and her head flipped up to his. "I just wasn't expecting it to be like this."

She watched him while she listened.

"I'm probably going to stumble through this, but-"

"It's okay," she encouraged, albeit somewhat stiffly.

"I've had casual weekends," he shrugged. "They were fun, but that was the end of it." Shaking his head, he looked at her pointedly. "That's not what this was, and it's not what I intended it to be." Angela nodded slowly. Grant exhaled, leaned back against his headrest, and dragged an anxious palm down his face. "I haven't even dropped you off yet, and I'm already climbing the walls." He turned to look at her, "This wasn't just hot."

Returning his sincerity, her response was soft. "I know."

After checking the road, he zipped his harried face back toward her, "Do you know who you are?"

Angela froze. 'You're a fucking whore!' sliced through her mind, and she stuffed it down like a horrortown jack-in-the-box. Her deep breaths and lagged attention caught Grant's continuation a few words in.

He shook his head and shrugged, "I mean, I get closeness and shit. With Holly, we'd known each other our whole lives; she was smart, and we had similar upbringings. And then sex …shifted us closer, I guess. That was a pretty deep level, I thought. With other women, it was pretty much just hot. I mean, fun, but – flat. Exactly what I wanted."

Angela was breathing better now, and she felt her face soften. I think I'm in the clear.

Grant turned sharply to look at her. "But you… Do you know you're not just pretty? Do you know how fucking smart you are? You- you go toe to toe with the biggest names in the industry as well as anybody I've ever seen!"

With the attention back on her, and Grant's demeanor still a little strident, Angela's lungs decided to see how things played out before they committed to more action.

"You're fun, and creative, and…fragile, and… tough as nails. You're not like other women, Angela!"

She managed both a tentative smile and an exhale. She swallowed, "I like you, too, Grant." Taking a deep breath, her voice smoothed out. "And I think I know what you mean about history. It is different with us."

"Can't we just try and see if-"

Angela shut her eyes in pain. "Please don't." Empathy was one thing; screwing with her was another.

"But-"

She looked at him, pleading. "Nothing's changed, Grant. You don't want to be tied down. You don't want more kids. And those are built into a deal with me."

"Angela-"

"Stop it!" she yelled.

Grant frowned and stared at her.

Embarrassed by her outburst, Angela dropped her head and lifted her eyebrows. "I'm sorry, Grant," she breathed.

Several seconds went by, but finally she looked over at him apologetically and spoked much quieter, "I had a nice time with you, and I don't want to spoil it."

"Forget manners; what was that about?"

She answered quietly, daring to look back at him, "I am sorry. It's not your fault. It just hurts. My life with Michael was chaotic - extreme highs and lows were a part of my every day. But the hope that we could someday be happy was what killed me. I had no empirical reason to believe in such a fantasy, but I wanted to. I couldn't accept that this was all there was. Our physical connection was powerful, and our relationship just dead-ending in great sex and his fleeting good moods didn't make sense. There had to be more to it. There had to be a way to make us work. But that very denial is what drug me through the worst years of my life. I can't afford to pretend, Grant. And just hearing you flirt with the idea…I feel the heat from over here. Not a sexy heat - a danger heat – because I want it, too. Please tell me you understand. You know you don't want this. You've made that very clear, and I'm alright with it. Can we please just let this be what it was?"

Grant's face was stiff. "And what was that? And don't you dare say just hot sex."

Angela smiled softly at him, "No. It was more than that. But however great it was, it can't erase our situations. Look, I've never felt totally wanted. Eventually, I know I'm going to get left. I mean, Michael liked the sex, too. He just didn't want the rest of me. And I guess he could say the same about me… You have a thing about feeling forced to say, 'yes' when you really mean, 'no'. And our issues are colliding. It's awful. But reality doesn't change just because I'm uncomfortable with it. You don't have to say, 'yes', Grant, and I wouldn't want that for you. I want you to say, 'no', because that's what you mean. Really; it's okay."

Grant looked from her to the road in front of him, letting minutes go by without saying anything.

But then he did speak. "Do you ever wish you could bring your business sense to your personal life?"

Angela laughed, "Every day. I don't know why it's so much clearer and detached at work, but it is."

"I usually try to troubleshoot at home by asking myself how I'd handle the situation if I were at the office." He looked over at her, "But that only works if I don't have an agenda." He spoke softly and carefully, "I really want you, Angela, and it's screwing with my data."

Angela shut her eyes. It hurt so much. Didn't Michael say basically the same thing at the Waldorf? He wanted me badly, but he wanted it his way?

She shook herself free. …No. Just because I'm triggered doesn't mean I have to make my problems with Michael a problem with Grant. This situation is different. Grant is conflicted, and I want to let him be where he is.

Angela turned her face to Grant and made a brave smile, but the thick layer of tears covering her eyes ratted her out. Accepting its presence, she leaned far across the console and patted Grant's leg. It was kind of a buddy move, but that's what she needed him to be. "I want you, too, Grant." Then the tears fell. Leaning her head down onto her folded arms across the console, Angela let herself cry.

It wasn't a couple of seconds before she felt Grant's fingers stroking her hair.


Grant bit his lip as he drove through Southport. "Angela, before we get there, can we talk for a minute?"

Angela smiled over at him, "Sure."

It had been dark for at least an hour, and the weariness from travel and emotional release was making her sleepy. But if she could legitimately extend her time with Grant even a little, she'd take it.

He pulled into an elementary school parking lot and turned the engine off. The few playground lights that were always lit shone through the shadows of the car in harsh and awkward beams.

Grant reached over and lightly stroked Angela's cheek. Then he let his hand flop into his lap. "Angela, I wanted to say I'm sorry. You're right. While it wouldn't take much to convince me to be exclusive with you, I'm not ready for more kids." He exhaled. "And I don't expect that to change. I just didn't like what that meant for us. But I shouldn't have yanked you through the possibility when you were already clear about what you wanted." He looked down and shook his head, "I wasn't trying to mess with you… I was just-" he exhaled roughly, "wanting you. Badly. I'm sorry."

Angela smiled, and her sadness whispered, "I wanted more, too, Grant. I hope you know I had a great time, and I wish it weren't over."

Grant nodded. "Me, too," he said quietly.

He slumped back into his seat and looked out at the playground in front of them. Taking a breath, he turned his head toward her. "Angela?"

Her eyebrows raised in question.

"I know you have reason to be cautious, and I know you had me pegged. But I hope you don't do that with everyone."

Angela frowned, "Don't do what with everyone?"

"Don't assume they're going to tire of you, or not really want you, or whatever. Just take it as it comes, alright?" He stared off into the empty playground, and she breathed through his insistent coaching. "There's gotta be someone out there with their shit together, and when he gets you," Grant shook his head, "he better know what he has." Rolling his head on his headrest, he looked at her seriously. "Don't push him away, Angela, worried he's going to be like Michael or like me."

Angela dropped her head. Shit, this is hard. Taking a breath, she slowly unbuckled.

Scooting backward over the console, she left her legs in the middle and sat on Grant's lap, grateful for one more opportunity to commit the feel of him to memory. He put his arms around her like he'd been doing it his whole life, and she looked him in the eye. "You're nothing like Michael," she said quietly. Putting a gentle hand up to his cheek, she kissed him goodbye.


Grant pulled up to Angela's house in silence. He turned the car off and hesitated only a second before looking at her seriously. Still not saying anything, he got out and opened her door. She waited as he got her suitcase, and then walked with him to the front door.

"Goodbye, Angela," he whispered and leaned in to kiss her cheek.

Angela turned her head and got him on the mouth. With a solid, closed-mouth kiss, she opened her eyes, and gently pulled back. "Goodbye, Grant."

He backed away, watching her for the first few steps. Then he turned toward his car and left. Angela watched 'till his taillights had gone and turned to look back at her house.

Mine.

I have a house. I have a son. I have a career.

And I want them.

Angela smiled up at the address markers nailed to the boards and took in the reality of her situation.

She had a life, and she wasn't fighting for its existence anymore. She wasn't struggling for the will to keep at it. She could breathe, and she did so purposefully.

Just then, she heard a chorus of laughter, and scrunched her brows. Shaking herself out of her thoughts, she unlocked the door and opened it.

Tony was sitting between Jonathan and Samantha on the couch, both arms doing a damn fine job hugging a gigantic bowl of popcorn. His head whisked toward her as she came in, pulling her suitcase with her.

"Angela! You're just in time! It's 'The Apple Dumpling Gang', and the kids are just about to creep up on Theodore and Amos!"

"Come on, Mom!" Jonathan waved her over.

"Yeah, come on, Mrs. Bower," Sam yelled, patting the cushion next to her. "We've got lots of popcorn!"

Mona bumped her hip through the swinging door with her own empty, but sizeable, bowl. Looking over at Angela, Mona walked in front of Tony and filled her own bowl to the brim. Nodding toward Angela, Mona spoke dryly to an unsuspecting Tony. "The child knows not what she says."

Feigning a haughty raise of her chin, Mona plunked down next to Jonathan and snuggled her bowl in close.

Rolling her eyes, Angela walked in front of everybody, snatching a handful of her mother's popcorn on the way to sit by Sam.

They all watched the screen, and Tony laughed louder than anyone as the three orphans unknowingly charmed the goofy villains at their hideout. Feeling a little charmed herself, Angela turned and looked at Tony. Absently placing a piece of popcorn in her mouth – an astonishing combination of the simplest butter, grain, and salt – she smiled at him.

Tony turned his head toward the eyes on him and smiled genuinely back at her. He mouthed, "Welcome home," and held her gaze for a second or two before licking his lips and reaching for another piece of popcorn. Returning his attention to the movie, he leaned far back into the cushions, and Angela saw her mother smirking back at her.

Rolling her eyes, Angela fixed her gaze on the screen. She made a quick hug to Sam's shoulders with her inside arm and reached for a handful of Tony's popcorn with her other.

Angela was watching the movie and didn't see Tony watching her do it, but Mona did.

It didn't take long for the comedic genius of Don Knotts and Tim Conway to, again, bedazzle the five of them.

The kids fell forward and crashed their heads into their hands so often Angela lost count.

Mona was the most reserved of the bunch, a bit distracted with her unsuspecting projects doing a lousy job of stealing glances at each other.

Tony was as involved in the movie as if it were a live sporting event, jumping and leaning in, yelling at every swell.

Herself, Angela was delighted. She felt like she was cresting, and she laughed so hard, her throat hurt.

But her heart didn't.

It felt good. Really good.


Last A/N: Alright, so this was my story, guys - my 190k word story. Ha! Thank you for being with me in it. But as I've shared with a few of you (please forgive me for repeating myself on any of this), this project was more than just a story to me. This was my way out of my head. Angela's story has always been highly relatable to me, largely made possible by the prodigious vulnerability of Judith Light. But I took their ideas and told the story I needed to tell. For me.

This story is a mashup of my take on the Angela we saw on-screen, my own history, interviews/personality of Judith, and an imagination I didn't even know I still had. I'd have to dissect each sentence with someone to reveal which was which.

I tried to stay within the canon, but if it ventured too far into an AU for anyone's center, I could understand that. This is my first attempt at fiction since the 9th or 10th grade, and I am still amazed by the constraints there are in writing fan fiction.

It feels like I'm on that cooking show, 'Chopped': "Here's a pomegranate, candy corn, and yak butter – make me a salad." It's fun but challenging! I reveled in the freedom of those 6 or so years of open road I had in Michael's and Angela's marriage - as long as I started and ended at the right spots, the middle felt fairly free. Trying to stay within character was arguably subjective, and I went back on hard lines I'd drawn a number of times. But some of these constraints were bizarre:

After 9 months of no contact, (the last 6 months of which were apparently spent in the Amazon, but Angela didn't know that) Michael comes home in "Angela's Ex". He'd spent 6 months before that last phone call trying to teach gorillas to talk in Africa. He'd asked Angela to go with him, and bring a 6 yr old Jonathan along. Angela had gone on location with him before, but she didn't this time because she didn't want to give up her career – a job she was used to him diminishing (Angela's Ex), a job providing success which threatened him (Wedding Bells). They'd probably been married for at least 6 years when he left, and yet he "didn't know [she] had it in [her]" to become president of W&M. He's not all that surprised or upset to find Tony living with her. Michael's stuff is moved out and he rang the doorbell when he got home, but he is surprised by the divorce papers. He puts her down. He negates the importance of her work, and expects her to drop everything and entertain him, or he's going to throw a fit and leave.

Herself, Angela is furious when he comes home, slamming the door in his face, calling him "cold blooded". She's slept with at least Grant (Pilot/Protecting the President) and Jeffrey (Sports Buddies), at this point. And from the moment Michael walks in, she's seething and talking a big game around the family. But as soon as she's alone with him, she's jittery and nervous. Then it's not one soft-spoken conversation before she's back in the sack with him. As soon as he informs her of his decision to give up field work, she welcomes him back with open arms.

Michael is so absent and apathetic in general, and then if he doesn't get his way he gets riled up. Making all this make sense, along with why Angela would be with a guy like him, and still want him after all this time, was my goal. I wanted to have compassion on her for this decision. I wanted to have compassion on me for my own insanity. I wanted to understand it, without shoving either of our noses in it. And it was easier to tell her story than mine. (Our stories are not the same, but its close enough that I've spent the last 10 months digging into it to figure myself out.) At first, I wanted the reader to understand why this character was confused – justification, if you will. But I ended wanting to see the truth of the situation. I'm done wanting to be confused.

Oh, and Grant – ha! This one was a surprise for even me. He's always seemed like an opportunist to me on the show, but he had his own constraints, and frankly, at this point, I was sick of her being with assholes. (I'm calling it artistic license. You can call it BS, if you wish.) But yeah, he snags her waist in her own kitchen, he practically climbs on her to kiss her on the floor, she defends that to Tony and confirms her desire to go away with Grant for the weekend. She claims the reason she's dating Grant is, "he's great looking, fun to be with, and a good dancer". That all seemed a little (purposefully) forced to me, and it's confirmed by that painful scene in Grant's office where she's just as nervous with him as she was when she was alone with Michael. It seemed very sketchy and sad – like she felt like she had to do that to survive in her job. But then, after she decides to wait to sleep with Grant (but is still holding to her decision to make good on it later) and gets the presidency, she does indeed sleep with him (Protecting the President). Most curiously, that episode also has her confident that Grant would've told her if he was leaving the Board of Directors – implying they were still friends – probably loyal friends, considering they'd slept together, separated amicably, and she expected to be notified. But yeah, mostly I wanted her to be with a nice guy, who wasn't going to work out, but on whom she could still cut her personal-decision-making teeth.

I've always hated Brian, and I don't apologize for making him as much of an ass as he is ridiculous. Ditching his fiancée because Angela's got a bomb-ass hair flip is just rotten. And still, I understand how she'd feel with all that attention when she'd never had it before. But speaking in terms of the canon, my interpretation of their weekend could be pushing it. There could be room for the weekend as I wrote it to land in the what-if category in which she has him in season 4, so that's where I'm hanging my hat. But even if it doesn't, I don't care. I hate that guy.

Panama was a surprise to me, as I said in the A/N on that chapter. But in my head, it fit for their situation. The woman was going to snap at some point, and I think it was good that Michael called out some of her own BS that was holding her hostage.

While I stand firmly behind my interpretation that Michael was emotionally abusive in the show, I wasn't going to have him be physically abusive in this story. But sometimes those lines get vague, and with his fit throwing after their fight in Angela's Ex about the Scrubbo campaign, it seemed like maybe not too far of a stretch that their situation would indeed be fuzzy. But, like all of this, that's interpretation.

As for Tony, I can only offer my apologies. I've been so into where this character was at the different phases she was in, that the guy hasn't even been on my radar. And I think that's okay. This story was always about Angela, not Angela and Tony. Tony and Angela are why I ever got involved in this show in the first place. They have something special. But at least at this point in the character's life, Tony was a new addition to her new life. I wanted to design a prequel, something that explained where Angela was at in the Pilot and why she got there.

As scared as I was to try my hand at writing Tony's character (everybody loves Tony, and I didn't want to mess him up), I did have fun making those in-between scenes at the end, there. I'd like to do more of those, as time permits. For the record, I love the Tony in seasons 1-3. He's so good for Angela, helping her heal and grow and create in his own enchanting, disarming way. He was exactly what she needed. But my inspiration for this story was her, not him. I'm very sorry if that has been disappointing to anyone who has hanged in there with me this whole time only to get a few sides scenes with the guy. It was never my intention to catfish. Actually, I originally thought the end would be Angela opening the door to Tony. But I had loose ends with Grant, and that's when I realized this story wasn't about Tony rescuing her. It was about her realizing she was worth caring about, and she needed to be the one to get that ball rolling.

Anyway, these are my reasons, and, not surprisingly, I'm sure I have tons more (and a multi-paged spreadsheet for my timelines and to calculate Nabisco's actual profit margin in the early 80s) as I've thought about this way more than is natural. However, like I said, this wasn't just fan fiction to me. It wasn't just entertainment. This was me giving myself a voice. The support, encouragement, and community you all have shown me in this has been a lifeline. Thank you.