Waiting (2/?)
“Did he even wait for me to leave before he called you?” I asked as I stood in the opening between my apartment door and its frame, blocking her access.
“Did who call me? Elliot?” Confusion was painted over the delicate feature of the WASP in front of me.
“No, uh, nevermind. What do you want, Counselor?” I tightened my grip on the door and set my jaw. I didn’t want her to think I was glad to see her-at all.
She had obviously been home since I left her office. She’d traded the Armani business suit for jeans a pink, hooded sweatshirt. The look was completed with the black framed glasses she had become infamous for and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
“Liv, I want to talk to you. I want to explain,” she pleaded as she put her hand on the door and stepped toward it, adding what little weight she had behind it.
I rolled my eyes and stood my ground, until she did the full-pouty lips thing with her arms crossed over her chest. At that, I stepped to the side and motioned for her to come in. She briefly glanced around the room, taking everything in, including the suitcases sitting on my bed that were easily visible from where she was standing.
She turned around and searched my face before heading toward the bedroom.
“Alex! Dammit,” I followed her. “You said you wanted to talk. Now talk. Explain whatever it was that you wanted to explain and then leave.”
She lifted a few shirts from one bag and looked through the clothes I was packing.
“Are you taking a trip?” she asked innocently as she sat on the foot of the bed.
I exhaled deeply and crossed my arms over my chest, adjusting my stance so that it was more comfortable. “Why’d you come here, Lex?”
She looked so lost. The Cabot confidence was gone and that façade that made defense attorneys shimmy in their Dock Martins was nowhere to be found. In front of me sat the wounded Alex I had seen only twice in my life-once when she was escorted by the US Marshals to see us before entering the WPP and once when she came back to testify against the man who had attempted to take her life. If I stood here much longer ruminating on that, I’d fall for whatever game she was playing at here. And I couldn’t have that because I didn’t trust myself completely to ever tell her no.
So I chose to look away, busy myself with the task of packing a few more things into the suitcases that sat on the bed beside her. I was so tuned into tuning her presence out, I didn’t hear her cross the room to stand behind me.
I felt her hand at my waist. “Where’s your gun, Liv?” The hand slid further around my waist to the front of my belt, where I normally have my badge. “Liv, what did you do?”
“What does it matter, Alex?” Anger rolled off of me as I spun around and stepped away from her. I walked over to my bags and threw in the few pieces in my hands before turning around to face her.
“Did you do something stupid? Did they suspend you for something? Tell me what you did!” Her voice was loud and insistent as she closed in on me. “I know you’d never do something like quit. That job is your life. What happened? Tell me what happened and how I can fix it.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was a nervous reaction.
“What happened? I fucking fell in love with you, Al. That’s what happened. The rest…well, none of the rest of it matters. See, while I was here,” my hands were animatedly wild, putting emphasis on what I was saying, “waiting for you and still loving you, you had moved on. And I’m not talking about while you were still in the Program. I’m talking about since you came back.”
I started to pace back and forth at the foot of my bed, one hand nestled on my hip and the other alternating between rubbing my neck and running through my hair.
“At least when you were gone, that was a real excuse. You couldn’t be here. Being here could mean you’d die. But then you came back. And I waited. I waited, Alex,” I turned to face her. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “I was busy waiting and making all these plans in my head. Plans for a future with you. A future I thought you wanted. I can’t believe I was so fucking stupid. Like you could ever have really been serious about us-about me. And that ring. That ring just proves, doesn’t it?”
Whether out of guilt or habit at the mention of her engagement ring, she brought her left hand in front of her and cupped it with her right.
I was in full rant mode and didn’t give her an opportunity to interject. “You say you want to explain and you act like you care asking about my gun and my badge. But you don’t. And what I want to know, what I really want to know is if you ever cared. Did you? Did I mean anything to you? Or was I just some bad taste in your mouth that you couldn’t wait to wash out with the first eligible asshole who stumbled into your life? What was it, Alex?”
Her voice was shaky and soft when she first started to respond. “You have everything all wrong, Liv. Every day that I was away from you was pure hell. Sometimes I wondered if things would have been easier for both of us if we had never…” Her voice drifted off as she walked over to the lone window in my bedroom.
“I can’t imagine what things were like for you once I left again. No matter where I was, I was able to keep tabs on you. I checked the papers online, the police department website, hell, Hammond even kept me aware of some of the stuff going on at the precinct. You never had that luxury. You didn’t have any clue what I was doing or where I was. That had to be torture for you. And every day, I wished I could take that pain away. A few selfish times, I called here-usually late at night, just so I could hear your voice on your voicemail.”
Her voice no longer shaky, she turned around. Her face, however, was stained with tears. I had to bite down my impulse to run to her, to hold her and tell her everything would be okay. The truth was that nothing was okay. We weren’t okay. As long as there was a ring on her hand that someone else had put there, we’d never be okay.
“I turn 35 in three months, Liv.”
“I know when your birthday is, Counselor. You don’t have to remind me.”
“What you don’t know is that there was a codicil in my mother’s will that stipulated my marriage by the age of 35 or the bulk of the estate would go to my cousin Victoria.”
“So let me get this straight, your dead mother is still dictating what you do and don’t do in your love life? And you’re marrying Richard because you want your mother’s estate? Did I miss anything there?” I know my voice was dripping with sarcasm, but it was unavoidable.
“Yes and no. Yes my mother is dictating my life to some degree from beyond the grave. And no, I’m not marrying him because I want my mother’s estate. I’m marrying him because I don’t want that bitch Victoria to have it. She’s about as conservative as they come. I mean, everyone in our family is-even me. But you don’t see me picketing abortion clinics or railing against gay marriage. She’d use that money for absolute evil, I’m certain of it.”
I looked up and found her on her knees in front of me, taking my hands in hers. “Richard is about as gay as they come, Liv. There’s a prenup in place and a written agreement between the two of us. Three months in I’ll catch him with the poolboy, the cook, the masseur, or some other tall, dark and handsome fella and we’ll go through an amiable divorce. There’s nothing in the codicil that says I have to be married for any length of time, but for appearances sake, we agreed on three months.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this to start with?” I asked as I tugged on her hands and brought her up to me, wrapping my arms around her slender waist and resting my head against the small expanse of her stomach. “I would have understood.”
Her nails scratched lightly at my scalp as she ran her fingers through my hair. “I know you would have. And I wanted to. But each time I thought about doing it, it made me sick to my stomach that I’d have to explain to the woman I was desperately in love with that I was going to marry someone before I married her.”
I pulled back and looked up into her eyes, “Before you married her…me? You wanted to marry me?”
She tugged me up to her height and kissed me chastely on the lips. “That had been the plan. I’ve had plenty of time to consider how I would ask, where we’d go, our honeymoon.”
She blushed as she shared her fantasy with me.
“I know you love me. And you know I love you. There’s just this teeny-little thing about a marriage to a guy that I need to do and then we can be together.”
The room started to spin and I pulled away from her and sank to the floor, my back against the foot of the bed. “Shit.”
When I lifted my head, Alex was on her knees in front of me. “What is it?”
I laughed and shook my head before tossing it back against the bed. “I quit my fucking job today. I’m here packing to go somewhere-I don’t know where-just somewhere. I quit my job and you show up and you lay all this on me.”
I reached out and pulled her towards me. She was off-balance and landed awkwardly against me, my mouth instantly finding hers. I tugged on her bottom lip with my teeth while rubbing it with my tongue. My hands were in her hair, using it to pull her head back and exposing her neck. I bent forward and began to pepper kisses from that little spot under her ear to her pulse point. When she moaned, I pulled back. Her eyes were dark, filled with desire and I ached with need. But even through my lust-filled haze, my eyes caught the almost gaudy diamond engagement ring on her hand and the spell was broken.
I stood up and pulled her along with me, walking her toward the door of my apartment.
“You should go. It won’t look right for you to be at a lesbian’s apartment this late at night when you should be with your fiancé.”
“But Liv, I…”
“You’re engaged, Alex. Whether it’s real or fake, you’re engaged. And I respect that. I need to finish packing and I can’t do that if you’re here. So I need you to go, okay?”
“I don’t understand.” There was nothing more adorable than Alex Cabot when she looked like she was a six year old kid. And when she was out of sorts or not getting her way, that’s exactly what she looked like.
“Get your life straight, Al. I’ll be gone for a while. When I come back, when I have my head straight and you’ve got your personal affairs in order, we’ll see where we are.”
Desperation and fear stained her voice as fresh tears burst from the wells of her eyes, “But I love you, Liv!”
“I know you do. And I love you, too. Don’t think for one moment that I don’t. But I can’t watch this happen. I’ve waited too long to be with you to read about you with someone else or worse yet, have to witness you with someone else-even if it’s all pretend.”
I opened the door and gently pushed her out, her chin quivering and tears trailing down her face, rolling off of her chin.
I leaned back against the door, my own tears beginning to rush down my face. How I had kept them at bay this long was beyond me. I could still hear her on the other side of the door, sobbing uncontrollably and whispering my name like a mantra, when I turned the deadbolt on my door and turned off the lights.
“Did who call me? Elliot?” Confusion was painted over the delicate feature of the WASP in front of me.
“No, uh, nevermind. What do you want, Counselor?” I tightened my grip on the door and set my jaw. I didn’t want her to think I was glad to see her-at all.
She had obviously been home since I left her office. She’d traded the Armani business suit for jeans a pink, hooded sweatshirt. The look was completed with the black framed glasses she had become infamous for and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
“Liv, I want to talk to you. I want to explain,” she pleaded as she put her hand on the door and stepped toward it, adding what little weight she had behind it.
I rolled my eyes and stood my ground, until she did the full-pouty lips thing with her arms crossed over her chest. At that, I stepped to the side and motioned for her to come in. She briefly glanced around the room, taking everything in, including the suitcases sitting on my bed that were easily visible from where she was standing.
She turned around and searched my face before heading toward the bedroom.
“Alex! Dammit,” I followed her. “You said you wanted to talk. Now talk. Explain whatever it was that you wanted to explain and then leave.”
She lifted a few shirts from one bag and looked through the clothes I was packing.
“Are you taking a trip?” she asked innocently as she sat on the foot of the bed.
I exhaled deeply and crossed my arms over my chest, adjusting my stance so that it was more comfortable. “Why’d you come here, Lex?”
She looked so lost. The Cabot confidence was gone and that façade that made defense attorneys shimmy in their Dock Martins was nowhere to be found. In front of me sat the wounded Alex I had seen only twice in my life-once when she was escorted by the US Marshals to see us before entering the WPP and once when she came back to testify against the man who had attempted to take her life. If I stood here much longer ruminating on that, I’d fall for whatever game she was playing at here. And I couldn’t have that because I didn’t trust myself completely to ever tell her no.
So I chose to look away, busy myself with the task of packing a few more things into the suitcases that sat on the bed beside her. I was so tuned into tuning her presence out, I didn’t hear her cross the room to stand behind me.
I felt her hand at my waist. “Where’s your gun, Liv?” The hand slid further around my waist to the front of my belt, where I normally have my badge. “Liv, what did you do?”
“What does it matter, Alex?” Anger rolled off of me as I spun around and stepped away from her. I walked over to my bags and threw in the few pieces in my hands before turning around to face her.
“Did you do something stupid? Did they suspend you for something? Tell me what you did!” Her voice was loud and insistent as she closed in on me. “I know you’d never do something like quit. That job is your life. What happened? Tell me what happened and how I can fix it.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was a nervous reaction.
“What happened? I fucking fell in love with you, Al. That’s what happened. The rest…well, none of the rest of it matters. See, while I was here,” my hands were animatedly wild, putting emphasis on what I was saying, “waiting for you and still loving you, you had moved on. And I’m not talking about while you were still in the Program. I’m talking about since you came back.”
I started to pace back and forth at the foot of my bed, one hand nestled on my hip and the other alternating between rubbing my neck and running through my hair.
“At least when you were gone, that was a real excuse. You couldn’t be here. Being here could mean you’d die. But then you came back. And I waited. I waited, Alex,” I turned to face her. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “I was busy waiting and making all these plans in my head. Plans for a future with you. A future I thought you wanted. I can’t believe I was so fucking stupid. Like you could ever have really been serious about us-about me. And that ring. That ring just proves, doesn’t it?”
Whether out of guilt or habit at the mention of her engagement ring, she brought her left hand in front of her and cupped it with her right.
I was in full rant mode and didn’t give her an opportunity to interject. “You say you want to explain and you act like you care asking about my gun and my badge. But you don’t. And what I want to know, what I really want to know is if you ever cared. Did you? Did I mean anything to you? Or was I just some bad taste in your mouth that you couldn’t wait to wash out with the first eligible asshole who stumbled into your life? What was it, Alex?”
Her voice was shaky and soft when she first started to respond. “You have everything all wrong, Liv. Every day that I was away from you was pure hell. Sometimes I wondered if things would have been easier for both of us if we had never…” Her voice drifted off as she walked over to the lone window in my bedroom.
“I can’t imagine what things were like for you once I left again. No matter where I was, I was able to keep tabs on you. I checked the papers online, the police department website, hell, Hammond even kept me aware of some of the stuff going on at the precinct. You never had that luxury. You didn’t have any clue what I was doing or where I was. That had to be torture for you. And every day, I wished I could take that pain away. A few selfish times, I called here-usually late at night, just so I could hear your voice on your voicemail.”
Her voice no longer shaky, she turned around. Her face, however, was stained with tears. I had to bite down my impulse to run to her, to hold her and tell her everything would be okay. The truth was that nothing was okay. We weren’t okay. As long as there was a ring on her hand that someone else had put there, we’d never be okay.
“I turn 35 in three months, Liv.”
“I know when your birthday is, Counselor. You don’t have to remind me.”
“What you don’t know is that there was a codicil in my mother’s will that stipulated my marriage by the age of 35 or the bulk of the estate would go to my cousin Victoria.”
“So let me get this straight, your dead mother is still dictating what you do and don’t do in your love life? And you’re marrying Richard because you want your mother’s estate? Did I miss anything there?” I know my voice was dripping with sarcasm, but it was unavoidable.
“Yes and no. Yes my mother is dictating my life to some degree from beyond the grave. And no, I’m not marrying him because I want my mother’s estate. I’m marrying him because I don’t want that bitch Victoria to have it. She’s about as conservative as they come. I mean, everyone in our family is-even me. But you don’t see me picketing abortion clinics or railing against gay marriage. She’d use that money for absolute evil, I’m certain of it.”
I looked up and found her on her knees in front of me, taking my hands in hers. “Richard is about as gay as they come, Liv. There’s a prenup in place and a written agreement between the two of us. Three months in I’ll catch him with the poolboy, the cook, the masseur, or some other tall, dark and handsome fella and we’ll go through an amiable divorce. There’s nothing in the codicil that says I have to be married for any length of time, but for appearances sake, we agreed on three months.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this to start with?” I asked as I tugged on her hands and brought her up to me, wrapping my arms around her slender waist and resting my head against the small expanse of her stomach. “I would have understood.”
Her nails scratched lightly at my scalp as she ran her fingers through my hair. “I know you would have. And I wanted to. But each time I thought about doing it, it made me sick to my stomach that I’d have to explain to the woman I was desperately in love with that I was going to marry someone before I married her.”
I pulled back and looked up into her eyes, “Before you married her…me? You wanted to marry me?”
She tugged me up to her height and kissed me chastely on the lips. “That had been the plan. I’ve had plenty of time to consider how I would ask, where we’d go, our honeymoon.”
She blushed as she shared her fantasy with me.
“I know you love me. And you know I love you. There’s just this teeny-little thing about a marriage to a guy that I need to do and then we can be together.”
The room started to spin and I pulled away from her and sank to the floor, my back against the foot of the bed. “Shit.”
When I lifted my head, Alex was on her knees in front of me. “What is it?”
I laughed and shook my head before tossing it back against the bed. “I quit my fucking job today. I’m here packing to go somewhere-I don’t know where-just somewhere. I quit my job and you show up and you lay all this on me.”
I reached out and pulled her towards me. She was off-balance and landed awkwardly against me, my mouth instantly finding hers. I tugged on her bottom lip with my teeth while rubbing it with my tongue. My hands were in her hair, using it to pull her head back and exposing her neck. I bent forward and began to pepper kisses from that little spot under her ear to her pulse point. When she moaned, I pulled back. Her eyes were dark, filled with desire and I ached with need. But even through my lust-filled haze, my eyes caught the almost gaudy diamond engagement ring on her hand and the spell was broken.
I stood up and pulled her along with me, walking her toward the door of my apartment.
“You should go. It won’t look right for you to be at a lesbian’s apartment this late at night when you should be with your fiancé.”
“But Liv, I…”
“You’re engaged, Alex. Whether it’s real or fake, you’re engaged. And I respect that. I need to finish packing and I can’t do that if you’re here. So I need you to go, okay?”
“I don’t understand.” There was nothing more adorable than Alex Cabot when she looked like she was a six year old kid. And when she was out of sorts or not getting her way, that’s exactly what she looked like.
“Get your life straight, Al. I’ll be gone for a while. When I come back, when I have my head straight and you’ve got your personal affairs in order, we’ll see where we are.”
Desperation and fear stained her voice as fresh tears burst from the wells of her eyes, “But I love you, Liv!”
“I know you do. And I love you, too. Don’t think for one moment that I don’t. But I can’t watch this happen. I’ve waited too long to be with you to read about you with someone else or worse yet, have to witness you with someone else-even if it’s all pretend.”
I opened the door and gently pushed her out, her chin quivering and tears trailing down her face, rolling off of her chin.
I leaned back against the door, my own tears beginning to rush down my face. How I had kept them at bay this long was beyond me. I could still hear her on the other side of the door, sobbing uncontrollably and whispering my name like a mantra, when I turned the deadbolt on my door and turned off the lights.