FanFic100: #021 Friends
There it is. The name on the doorbell that still makes his throat constrict, even after more than a year. It makes him feel like this was a very bad idea, and it probably is. It’s just that… he has to be here. He put it off for over a year and it hasn’t done him any good. He has no idea how she will react to seeing him here, after everything. The last time they talked had been shortly before she got married to Carson Beckett… a wedding he never saw because suddenly the pain had been too cutting and he had taken off almost right after he’d found her in the small room in the parsonage where she had gotten ready to marry.
After that he had been on leave for three weeks and when he’d been back in Atlantis, they had already moved to Earth so he never saw her again. He also never talked to her again, never answered her letters and e-mails. The pain when he saw Laura Beckett as the sender’s name had been bad enough for him to throw them away and delete them unread. There was also a certain feeling of shame that he left her alone on one of the most important days in anyone’s life, just because he was too weak to stomach seeing her getting married to someone else.
He’d been her friend, dammit, and friends don’t leave you on your wedding day. They are happy for you, congratulate you and tease you about the wedding night. But the thought alone of seeing her tying the knot with someone else had been heartbreaking enough that the ache had been almost physical and he had felt like he would never make it out alive of the church if he sat through the whole ceremony.
With a sigh, he stares at the nametag again. It hurts to think that behind the name Beckett there are two people now, not one. But he had to come here… if only to see that she is still happy, that it was right to never make a real move and leave her for Carson… that he’s over her. It’s really easy, he thinks. Just press the doorbell, wait until someone answers…
But how does he know if she even wants to talk to him? If he was her… “Evan?”
Startled, he turns around to see her standing in front of him, with a bag of food in one hand and the keys to the apartment house in the other. She’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, her hair is in a ponytail. On her face there is something between disbelief and surprise. “What… are you doing here?” Everything is back. The accelerated heart rate, the lump in his throat, the block on his mind.
He rubs his neck, trying to stall until he can come up with an answer that is casual enough that she won’t suspect any of the chaos in his heart and mind. “I was just… in the neighborhood, you know, and…” He breaks off, his voice failing.
For a moment, there’s silence between them and he can see conflicting emotions racing over her face. Still as open as a book to him. There’s hurt and anger and disappointment… and joy and relief, although she tries to contain it and hide it behind all the negative emotions. She wants to say something, starts several times, looks away… and finally settles with, “There’s a lot of things I could and should say now, but the thing is… I missed you.”
He could and should say a lot of things now as well but she’d see through his pretense anyway, like she always has seen through his pretenses. “I missed you, too.”
She looks away again, her lips pressed tightly together. He has made her unhappy with coming here and regrets it. He’s sure that she’ll now tell him he should have never come here, should have stayed away… “Then why did you just leave? Why did you never write back? Dammit, Evan, you were my best friend and I needed my best friend this last year.” Furious, she wipes the hand with the keys over her face and he’s surprised to see tears running down. What… what the hell happened in that year that it’s still strong enough to make her cry in public?
“Laura, I…” She shakes her head, still looking distressed.
“No, look, it’s okay. I… I hurt you and I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry. It’s just that… last year…” He was selfish, he sees that now. Not opening her letters or reading her e-mails… If he had been strong enough, he would have known what had happened and would have been there for her, no matter if she was married and no matter how much it hurt reading about her life as Mrs. Beckett.
It’s not her who has to be sorry… it’s him. He could have made his move and he never did. Instead he abandoned her, left her alone with whatever she couldn’t solve with Carson. He swallows. It’s time he stops to think of himself and starts thinking of her again. Tentatively, he takes a step towards her and gently pries the bag of food out of her arm. “Tell me about it over a cup of coffee?”
For a moment, he’s afraid she might say no, tell him Carson is about to come home - although that wouldn’t keep him away anymore anyway because he now knows that the sooner he starts acknowledging this part of her life, the sooner he will be able to cope with it - but in the end she just nods and says, “It’s gonna take a while, though.”
Swallowing again, he can bring himself to a shaky smile. “Don’t worry; I’ve got all the time in the world.”
Mirroring his shaky smile, she finally sets to unlock the front door and invites him in. Hopefully, this time around, he won’t mess up being her friend again.