I Miss You
Seattle, Washington 2012 - S8E21
After she said she missed him, he daydreamed about it for hours. He thought about her lips moving as she said it. The words forming from simple shapes. He knew every muscle and nerve in the tongue, in the cheek, and he knew how it was possible for her to say the words. But then there was a hidden magic that he did not know. That he could not explain away with science. In the attendings' lounge he sat with his chin on top of his fist and thought about her lips again. About the softness of them against his own, about the pink of the blood flowing underneath her skin. He could see the constellations of her freckles in the summer when she had a slight tan from the lunch breaks she spent outside. When she bit down into the soft flesh of the fruit she was eating. The warmth in her cheeks as she laughed, blushed when walked by.
The next time he saw her, she was charting. He knew that she knew that she could pass it off to someone else - one of the interns - but she hadn't. She was doing them herself because she wanted to make sure they were right. That she had them memorised. She had a pen between her teeth, chewing the end whilst she wrote. He felt himself smiling as he watched her, chewing on his bottom lip. He wasn't thinking about Julia. Not even a moment did he feel guilty, because looking at her was just a natural part of his day. He wasn't imaging anything to do with her, he wasn't, it's just that looking at her made him happy. For the tiny moments of his day.
In his apartment, in his room, he saw her in all the places she used to be. Her limbs strewn over his couch, her coffee cup, her toothbrush in his bathroom. Her hair dripping down her back. When she popped her head out of the shower and called out his name. Okay, now he was thinking about doing things with her. Now, he was ignoring the little voice in the back of his head that told him he was with Julia. That little voice that should've been bigger because really, he was with Julia. He was.
He opened his eyes. He was laying on his back in the middle of his bed, alone because Julia was working a surgery tonight. He wiped the sweat off his brow and stared at the ceiling. "I can't keep doing this," he told himself. He almost pulled himself up, he almost put a shirt on. He almost called Julia's cell, he almost called Lexie's. He almost left his apartment and drove to the hospital and told Julia it was over. He almost texted Lexie that he missed her. He almost called Callie to whine about all of this nonsense. But he didn't. Because he was a coward.