Rich in lovers and tribes
T is for There's a corner of your heart, just for me-Alex/Lexie (mentions of Mark/Lexie and Alex/Izzie)-PG
For Josie
Someone once said that you could love more than one person at the same time, but you couldn’t be true to them.
She should probably know who had said it, because she’d probably read it somewhere, and thanks to her handy photographic memory should have remembered it.
And maybe she wouldn’t have realized she loved Alex or had the guts to admit if it hadn’t been for that day.
But that day had happened, a day of broken bodies and bloody conference tables that would never be cleaned, a day where they lost coworker who should have been friends, lost babies that should have grown in beloved children.
And she loved him that day, and during the following days, through multiple surgeries and post op complications and physical therapy and nightmares that haunted both of them.
She loved him.
8888888
She had thought, stupidly, naively, that once she realized she loved him she’d just stop loving Mark.
Like anything in life was ever really that easy.
She thought that having made her choice, everything would fall into place.
She’d stop thinking about Mark, and the life they might have had, the babies, the house, stop remembering the way he’d smile when he was waking up.
Because it wasn’t fair to Alex, thinking things like that.
8888888
He’d called her by his ex-wife’s name.
And it wasn’t like she could claim she didn’t understand.
It wasn’t even that she held it against him.
It was just that it hurt and, she thought, it would have hurt anyone, even the most understanding person.
It was just that she wasn’t sure it mattered.
Because it kind of felt like you carried the people you’d loved before with you like a scar.
88888888
Maybe that was how it worked, living and loving, growing up, moving on.
Maybe your heart divided itself into pieces, sections.
Maybe loving one person didn’t mean you loved the next less.
Maybe it let you love them more.
For Josie
Someone once said that you could love more than one person at the same time, but you couldn’t be true to them.
She should probably know who had said it, because she’d probably read it somewhere, and thanks to her handy photographic memory should have remembered it.
And maybe she wouldn’t have realized she loved Alex or had the guts to admit if it hadn’t been for that day.
But that day had happened, a day of broken bodies and bloody conference tables that would never be cleaned, a day where they lost coworker who should have been friends, lost babies that should have grown in beloved children.
And she loved him that day, and during the following days, through multiple surgeries and post op complications and physical therapy and nightmares that haunted both of them.
She loved him.
8888888
She had thought, stupidly, naively, that once she realized she loved him she’d just stop loving Mark.
Like anything in life was ever really that easy.
She thought that having made her choice, everything would fall into place.
She’d stop thinking about Mark, and the life they might have had, the babies, the house, stop remembering the way he’d smile when he was waking up.
Because it wasn’t fair to Alex, thinking things like that.
8888888
He’d called her by his ex-wife’s name.
And it wasn’t like she could claim she didn’t understand.
It wasn’t even that she held it against him.
It was just that it hurt and, she thought, it would have hurt anyone, even the most understanding person.
It was just that she wasn’t sure it mattered.
Because it kind of felt like you carried the people you’d loved before with you like a scar.
88888888
Maybe that was how it worked, living and loving, growing up, moving on.
Maybe your heart divided itself into pieces, sections.
Maybe loving one person didn’t mean you loved the next less.
Maybe it let you love them more.