Waiting For The Storm That Never Comes - Part 2
“Where are the towels?”
Izzie finds her a little later, a sopping wet dishtowel in her hands. With some hesitation, Meredith asks, “Why?”
“Accident with the punch in the kitchen.” Izzie replies, cupping her hand around the edge of the towel that almost just dripped onto the floor.
“I’ll get them,” she tells her, rather than explaining where they are, grabbing the used towel from her hands.
The closet that they’ve designated for spare towels and sheets is luckily right near the washer and so she drops the towel into the machine, closing the lid with a small thud, and thinks nothing of it until she hears:
“What was that?” A hushed whisper, male in origin.
“I don’t know.” A second voice replies, this one female. Both are familiar but low enough, ambiguous enough, that she can’t yet place them. “Off topic. Can we get back on topic?”
“I’m not saying anything to her.”
“Why not? Apparently everyone else is doing it.”
Meredith creeps closer to where she thinks the voices are coming from, just across the hall in the bathroom, where the door is just cracked, probably not on purpose.
“That’s not the point.”
“Are you upset about that? Is that what this is about?” There’s a small bang. “Ow. Stupid towel rack.”
“She’s not going to be happy about this?”
“Why not?”
“Because I...just because, okay.”
The tone she recognizes. Enough to know that when she pushes the door open the people she finds behind it are going to be more freaked out that she found them then she’s going to be.
She gets two twin surprised and nervous looks for her trouble, along with, “Meredith!”
“You know I could hear you from the other room right?” She asks, and Lexie smacks George in the arm, resulting in him giving her a dirty look. But they don’t say anything to her, so she prompts them. “Well.”
Apparently the best George can come up with is, “My ex-wife is a lesbian.”
Meredith blinks, once, twice, waits for him to add something to that, but he doesn’t. “And that’s why you locked yourself in the bathroom with my sister?”
They just look at each other, each looking for the other one to get them out of this, but their words freeze on their tongues and Meredith can’t help but laugh at them, because it’s George and Lexie and she doesn’t know why she didn’t see it until tonight because they’re kind of perfect for each other in so many awkward ways.
She’s pretty sure the laughter scares the both of them. That doesn’t make her stop.
---
This time it’s her that checks in with Cristina.
“I just walked in on my sister and George.” She admits, quietly, making sure no one’s around to hear them. It’s probably not information that anyone wants broadcasted.
That piques Cristina’s interest. “Having sex?”
“No,” Meredith tells her, with raised eyebrows, suddenly very glad that was indeed not what she’d seen. “They were just in the bathroom - talking.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s all they were doing.”
“Okay, Cristina, there are some things I don’t want mental images of.” She watches George, who has come out of hiding, find his way to Izzie, who has found her way out of the kitchen, and whisper something to her. It’s nice to see them being friends again - you know, without all the adultery and bad sex. It’s nice, it’s normal. She lifts her attention from them, back to Cristina. “Where’s Derek?”
“I don’t know; I’m not his babysitter.” She answers, eyes widening. “Why is the Nazi here?”
Her eyes find Bailey, who it seems Cristina’s just noticed, and she smiles. “She’s a friend, or she’s our boss, but she isn’t Derek’s boss, he’s her boss, so I guess maybe they’re friends. And she’s - I mean she’s Bailey, she did a lot for us.” Somehow her presence is stranger than the Chief’s, perhaps because they associate her with work more than the Chief. Or at least Meredith does. “Anyway, I’m going to go try to find him.”
Cristina nods, not particularly devastated by Meredith leaving. She’s fine on her own, Meredith realizes more and more these days, she actually prefers it.
And so she’s off to find her proverbial prince charming.
---
Prince Charming turns out to be impossible to find, even when she looks everywhere for him, and, well, that figures.
She finally just walks out and takes a seat down on the porch steps, a bottle of her old friend tequila in her hand. She needs a break, a few minutes to herself, and so she’s going to take it. The group in there can handle themselves - or so she hopes.
Of course, sometimes a break is too much to hope for.
“Hey.” Lexie’s voice is far too high and far too perky for Meredith’s taste, as she takes a seat on the stairs that lead down to the walkway in front of the house, right next to Meredith.
She looks at her, without letting go of the bottle, keeping her voice low, in hopes that Lexie will follow suit. “Hey.”
It’s the elephant in the room, because clearly Lexie wants to talk about what Meredith overheard, and what was probably going on before then, because these are things that sisters are supposed to talk about apparently, but Meredith would really rather not, and Lexie probably senses that, and so they lapse into uncomfortable, stiff silence.
Silence that unfortunately won’t rectify itself.
Meredith isn’t ashamed that she is the first to give in. There’s only so long she can sit quietly without wanting to scream. “Alright, just say it.”
“He didn’t want to tell you. I mean, it just sort of happened, I guess maybe because we were living together and working together, and I know you don’t like me dating your friends, or at least you didn’t like it when it was Alex, which really wasn’t a date, but I still wanted to tell you and he didn’t want me to, and I don’t have a clue why.” It all comes out in one breath, and Meredith has to hand it to her. She rambles on more than Meredith herself can, and quicker too. But of all people, Meredith is probably the best equipped to follow her train of thought because it’s a lot like hers. That she is ashamed to admit.
She’s fairly sure she knows why George didn’t want to tell her, but she’s also fairly sure Lexie doesn’t know anything about bad judgments on Meredith’s part and really, really awkward sex, and so she doesn’t say anything. “It’s not a big deal. You’re a grown up, you can do what you want.”
“Are you sure you’re not mad or anything?” Lexie asks, and it’s actually kind of funny how worried about this she is. Meredith would reassure her, but her attention gets caught up by the sound of wheels on the road, and then the car itself coming into view, something sort of familiar, even if she can’t see the driver. A straggler, she wonders, but can’t place it. “Meredith?”
She snaps her attention back. “What?”
Lexie frowns, following her initial line of sight, abandoning her first question. “Do you know who that is?”
And since even if she did she’s fairly sure it’s no one Lexie knows, she just shakes her head, “No. But what did you ask me?”
Her sister - she thinks of her in those terms now, finally - stares at her in thought, pressing her lips together, but then she nods, and it’s, “nevermind,” that finds it’s way out of her mouth, and she tentatively puts a hand on Meredith’s shoulder as she gets up, a movement that feels like good luck and she wonders if Lexie thinks she’s hiding something from her.
She listens to the sound of the door shutting quietly behind her, a sharp contrast to the noise from the inside, the not-so-quiet chatter and, she thinks, the sound of Izzie laughing at something she isn’t privy to, and then she rises. She gets to her feet and walks carefully down the walkway that is still unfamiliar to her, squinting to try to peer into the tinted windows on the car that still isn’t moving.
Then the windows roll down, ever so slowly, just a crack, and she knows in a second that pushes her the rest of the way.
Meredith puts a hand on the frame of the window and it rolls down the rest of the way. “Don’t you think sitting outside in a dark car is a little suspicious?”
Addison smiles, sheepishly, “I didn’t want to crash the party.”
That they’re able to have this conversation, even this small two line conversation, without biting words, like almost friends who lost touch, makes her smile too. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see for myself that you didn’t let him get away.” Meredith frowns, but then she remembers Joe’s bar and the last time Addison was here, and she remembers.
“I didn’t.” She tells her, quietly, and Addison nods, the sort of ‘good for you’ nod that feels congratulatory, except then she would be congratulating the woman who stole her husband for stealing him back from another woman, and that would be weird. Except that might be it. That might be exactly what she’s doing. Meredith nods to the house, then, “You can come in, you know. I don’t mind.”
There’s a moment of contemplation, at least Meredith’s pretty sure there is -- she’s watching the house, the windows that are covered with sheer curtains and dark silhouettes - but then there’s a, “I think I’d better go.”
Meredith won’t try to convince her. Because that would be pushing it. “Alright.”
Addison turns the key in the ignition and there’s the sound of some monotone radio DJ, leading into the next song, as she says, hesitant but meaningful all the same, “Good luck.”
And it isn’t what Meredith expected to hear, which is probably why she sucks in a breath and can’t quite think of anything to say before the car drives off into the night, the glow of the moon reflecting off the bumper before it turns and she can’t see it anymore.
---
The party ends sometime after midnight, unofficially of course as people started to filter out of their own accord. It’s a full hour after most of the partygoers leave that Cristina, Izzie, and Alex head out and as the door closes on the last of them she can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.
Her head is spinning from too much information and too many people, and she has no idea why she ever thought this would be a nice, easygoing little get together. That it was not.
Derek smiles at her, at the frazzled look on her face, and she thinks it might be the first time she’s actually had time to really talk to him in hours.
“Where were you earlier, I was looking for you.” She asks, remembering quite well where that had led to.
“I was showing Mark what we were going to do with the backyard.” He replies, and she wonders why she hadn’t thought to check out there. “Did you need me for something?”
“No, I just…” she shakes her head, forgetting mid-sentence what she was going to say and not bothering to pick it back up again. There are so many things she could tell him, about Lexie and George, and Callie and Erica, but she doesn’t think he’d particularly care about them. Although there’s one thing he’s missing that he would care about. The words Addison showed up start to form on her lips but she stops them and thinks better of it. Even if she told him he would want to know why and that didn’t bear explaining, not to him anyway. It would just be their little secret, a sign that everything was in the past, and Derek didn’t need to know that.
He seems like he understands that there’s something unsaid, but he doesn’t pry, instead taking a step closer to her and placing a gentle kiss on her lips, before asking, “So, about that feeling you had. Did it pan out?”
She almost says yes. Almost but when she thinks on it for a second she realizes that no, not really. It was a long night but it was a good night. No one caused a scene and they all made it out in one piece and there really isn’t anything more she could ask for. Her hands play at the edges of his shirt, as she looks up at him with tired eyes, and repeats his words from earlier back to him. “Sometimes it’s just a feeling.”
And he smiles and kisses her again and everything is just fine.