(no subject)
01 - No Obstacles, Only Challenges
02 - Girls Like Us
03 - Champagne Beat Boogie
04 - You're the Lucky Ones
05 - Duke's Up
06 - 20 Minutes of Disco Glory
Title: Groove ♠ Perpetual [7/14]
Rating: PG-13.
Pairing: Indirect Addison/Mark.
Summary: Two and a half years later in June, Juliet is cute with a kickball and Addison reluctantly makes two phone calls but happily gives out a Disney band-aid. And other things.
Note: Daddy Hints will begin to drop next chapter. Patience, grasshoppers.
Addison looked up at the sky as the rumbling thunder got closer. “Juliet, honey, it’s going to rain. Come inside.” She stood up from her chair on the small patio in the backyard and headed for the door. She turned back expecting to see Juliet walking toward her. Instead, she saw her daughter with her hands firmly planted on her hips and a defiant pout on her face. Addison raised her eyebrow mostly in amusement.
“No!” Juliet’s favorite word, outside of why, came out of her mouth without losing the pout.
“Do you want to get wet?” Addison felt the air get a little heavier, the kind of increase in humidity that signals that the thunder wasn’t just teasing and it really was going to rain.
Juliet lost the pout for a second while she was thinking. “No,” she said with slight hesitance.
“Then come inside.” Addison worked hard to suppress a grin. Two year-old logic was beginning amuse her instead of frustrate her now that she had had it (sort of) figured out.
“No!”
“Okay,” Addison shrugged. “Then you get to clean up any mud from the kitchen floor.”
Juliet studied her mother from the other side of the flowerbed, trying to determine whether it was an empty threat or real. Settling on real, choosing to risk the wrong choice rather than tempt fate and clean up mud, she ran inside the door Addison held open. Addison immediately followed her, laughing.
“Peanut butter jelly!” Juliet anticipated her mother’s question as she was lifted into her chair.
Wondering when her daughter would pick up the idea of conjunctions (or stop speaking in exclamation points), Addison smiled and shook her head. “You have got to expand your culinary horizons.” She opened up the cupboard for the peanut butter and kicked the refrigerator door shut with her foot once she found the jelly. “Toast or no toast?”
Juliet was in the middle of saying “no toast” when a huge clap of thunder hit and it started to pour. She jumped and immediately slid off her chair and ran to Addison, hugging her leg. Loud noises didn’t mix well with Juliet and the only reason she sat through Memorial Day fireworks was because she found huge interest in the glow necklaces and Addison let her sit in her lap the entire time. She looked up expectantly at Addison, her eyes wide and lower lip quivering.
Addison bent down and picked Juliet up, hugging her tightly. She hadn’t particularly enjoyed thunderstorms when she was a kid either, at least not until she was thirteen and her father dragged her out onto the porch during one phenomenal summer storm. “It’s okay,” she whispered, rubbing her back softly as Juliet buried her head in her shoulder. After a few minutes and several more loud rolls of thunder, Addison carefully set Juliet on the counter and poured her a cup of lemonade in a sippy cup. “No toast?” She smiled crookedly when Juliet nodded and it seemed that the lemonade (and the ability to be on the counter, something Addison never let her do) was cheering her up.
--
Mark looked over at Ellie staring off into space, the four-am New York traffic noise the only sound in the room. It bothered him. She either stared with a purpose or closed her eyes and he could usually hear her breathing. She didn’t breathe heavily, but they were usually closer together or cuddling. She was on the complete opposite end of the bed and had been distant all weekend. The temptation to reach out and stroke her cheek was strong but he stopped before he even lifted his arm. It was something about them that was off, not her or her job or her life. It was them.
“Ellie. Talk to me,” he whispered. When she didn’t say anything, he decided it was okay to touch her and gently turned her head so she was facing him. Confused by the tears in her eyes - he had only seen her cry three times in ten years and all three of those were law school meltdowns - he wiped a stray one away and furrowed his eyebrows in concern.
“This needs to stop, Mark,” she breathed shakily and moved away from his touch. “Us.”
“Why?” He moved his hand away.
Ellie took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling. “Because I want more. And you’re not the guy I want it from and you’re not going to give it to me.”
“Why not?”
She turned her head on the pillow. “Because you’re in love with my sister.” She looked back up at the ceiling. “And the sex is great between us but if you want Addison, you need to go get her. Settling for me isn’t fair.”
“I’m not settling.”
Ellie clenched her jaw and closed her eyes and spent a minute organizing her thoughts. “I feel like you are and I’m done being the consolation prize.”
Mark blinked. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you have until Monday to fuck me senseless and then, when I walk out your door Monday afternoon to go home, this is done.”
--
Addison sat on the steps of the porch of her house, glass of post-dinner wine next to her, and watched her daughter kick a ball around in the quiet street with a couple of other toddlers, parents and older siblings strategically scattered around in case of tumbles, stray balls or cars. She smiled softly as Juliet pouted at the boy who wouldn’t give her the ball. The boy’s mother said something stern about sharing and he begrudgingly handed it to Juliet.
Juliet was well-liked in the neighborhood so all the kids were telling her to kick it to them. Instead, she dropped it and swung her foot up and kicked the ball straight up to sail a few feet over her head in a perfect arc and land behind her. Addison laughed at the cute look on her daughter’s face as Juliet realized that the ball didn’t go where she wanted nor did it do what she intended. Confused, she turned around looking for it, her bright blue dress twirling a little around her feet. Upon seeing it, she grinned widely and kicked it toward a friend but somehow tripped and fell. She immediately began to cry in that way that signals the end of the universe over something quite small.
Addison jumped up and ran over to her. She crouched down and checked Juliet’s knee - just a scrape - and looked up at her, brushing some brownish-red curls out of her daughter’s face. “You want a band-aid?”
Juliet nodded enthusiastically and promptly stopped crying. She hung on tightly as Addison picked her up and walked them inside and sat her down on the closed toilet seat of the bathroom.
“Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty?” Addison asked as she pulled the box of band-aids from the medicine cabinet.
“Ariel!”
Smiling, Addison looked through the box to see if there were any Ariel band-aids left. Ariel was Juliet’s favorite Princess and was, of course, the first of anything to run out. She triumphantly pulled the last Ariel band-aid from the box and then set the box behind her on the sink. “Last one. You gotta find a new favorite Princess now.” She kissed Juliet’s forehead and apologized for the sting of the alcohol pad to get rid of some of the asphalt and dirt and then gently placed the band-aid on her knee. “All better.”
“Kiss it, make it feel better.”
Addison did as her daughter demanded with a laugh.
Later that night, Juliet crawled into her mother’s lap and fell asleep cuddled in Addison’s arms. Addison thought about getting up and putting her to bed, but decided that she looked too comfortable and Addison herself was too comfortable so as long as she was asleep it was okay for her to be up later than normal. She gently ran her fingers through Juliet’s hair and marveled at how adorable and innocent she was and decided that no matter how much it hurt to keep that quiet, their lives were perfectly uncomplicated (if a little hectic) and Addison wanted to keep it that way. If Juliet wanted to know later, she’d tell then. But otherwise, it was staying her secret.
Juliet stretched and rolled onto her back and sleepily blinked up at Addison, wondering why she was on the couch instead of in bed but not having the energy to ask. Addison smiled and scooped her up, Juliet immediately falling asleep again on her shoulder, and took her upstairs. After washing up and a miraculously easy pajama decision, Addison pulled the light blanket up over her soundly asleep daughter and kissed her cheek, wishing her sweet dreams.
As she clicked off the lamp, she reminded herself to stick to normal bedtimes from then on: getting a half-asleep child into bed was harder than it should have been.
--
Addison rolled her eyes in frustration at her cell phone. It blinked to tell her that she had a new voicemail but she never heard it ring. It was nearing ten at night and if it was the hospital they would’ve called the house but she picked it up anyway.
“Hey, Ads, it’s El. I don’t know why you even need to know this, but I feel obligated to tell you that Mark and I are done. I ended it, he was never going to give me what I want and I didn’t really want it from him so...that’s over. And you really should go back to him, Addie. I know you think he’s a jerk, which he is, but he’s a good guy. He’s grown up, you know, so...give him a chance. Because he says he’s in love with you but I don’t think he’s lying. Right, yeah, so...I’m gonna hang up now.”
Addison found her sister more entertaining sober than drunk so shook her head at the message instead of laughing and promptly deleted it. She had never understood the relationship between Ellie and Mark but had always suspected that there was something more than sex behind it (mostly because exclusive “just sex” relationships just don’t last for two and a half years) and after a while had just assumed that it was one of those things that would continue forever simply because it defied all logic.
Addison knew the rules (which really turned into guidelines which then deteriorated into concepts) of the strange relationship but also knew that after almost three years there was no way either of them still felt nothing toward each other. It might be minimal, but it was there and definitely a sense of loss. Hell, she had felt that way about leaving Mark after two months. So she understood that, even if she was the one to end it, Ellie wasn’t feeling so hot. But calling her back now would be useless and a waste of time; Ellie was impossible to deal with drunk.
So Addison simply sighed, wrote call Ellie on the whiteboard on the fridge right next to orange juice and went to bed.
--
“He’s still in love with me?” Addison finished off her wine and topped off Ellie’s glass with whatever was left in the bottle.
“Yes. And he’s going to do what he can to get you back. Thanks.” She took a relatively large gulp of wine. It wasn’t her favorite coping drink - gin from the bottle was - but Addison didn’t drink hard alcohol anymore so it was either wine or room temperature beer.
She looked hard at her sister. “I’m not going to take him back.”
Ellie sobered up for a moment and made sure Addison knew she was serious. “Look. He’s a good guy, Addie. He’s messed up and he has issues but he’s a good guy. He knows he screwed up with you and he knows exactly how he screwed up with you and he’s determined to not do it again.”
Addison hesitated, glass halfway to her mouth. “Why should I believe you?”
“For one, because I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“You didn’t tell me that the two of you were back together.”
“Because it really wasn’t important at the time. And for two, he’s grown up in the past two years. We weren’t officially a couple, but he never cheated on me. He had every opportunity, every right, and he really had nothing to lose by doing it, but he didn’t. He hated it, but I kicked him into actually talking whether it was emotions or, you know, the fucking Yankees.”
“Hey now.” Despite living in Boston for almost three years, Addison was still a diehard Yankees fan. Closeted, because she liked her life, but diehard. Addison reached out and covered her sister’s hand with hers. “Ellie, did you fall for him?” she asked softly.
Ellie shook her head. “No. I ended it before I could. I don’t want to go through life knowing that I was the second choice.” She looked up at Addison. “You’re his first choice, Addie. You always have been and you probably always will be. He’s a decent guy. He just needed to grow up a little.”
Addison waited a few minutes, absorbing her sister’s words and giving herself time to figure out what she wanted to say. “I’m not going to make the effort to go to him. He has to come to me.”
--
“Jane Doe, approximate age 32...” an intern rattled off statistics and vitals and tests just like Addison asked.
But Addison wasn’t paying attention. She was seeing a pregnant woman in her third trimester with severe brain and craniofacial damage. Which meant that she was seeing two phone calls in her very near future to two men she really didn’t want to see.
“Dr. Montgomery?” The intern prodded, knocking his attending out of her reverie.
“Yes. Keep up the current treatment and keep me updated every hour and a half unless something radical happens. I’m going to call Dr. Derek Shepherd from Seattle Grace and Mark Sloan from Mount Sinai. They’re the best in brains and plastics and this woman is going to need the best.”
“Plus you’re the best and working on her, too.”
“Flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere with me, Goldman, you know that.” She smirked at the eager and promising intern and walked out of the room. She stopped at the doorway and turned back with her trademark flashy smile. “But thank you anyway.”
--
Phone calls made, Addison leaned back in her comfy black chair and twirled a pen. As expected, she got Derek’s voicemail. The time difference almost guaranteed that he would be in surgery at the time. She hadn’t actually planned it that way, but liked the way it turned out. Mark, on the other hand, who never answered his phone when he was at work, picked up on the second ring and she was forced to talk to him.
In ten minutes of pure medical and factual conversation, Addison slowly realized that Ellie might be right. She managed to slip in at the end a somewhat concerned question about him and how he was about the demise of his and Ellie’s relationship. He sounded legitimately like he was okay and made Ellie even more right (which Addison hated, though had come to expect it to be one of the constants of the universe) when he genuinely asked how Addison was and seemed interested in her answer.
He was, however, not thrilled when she told him Derek would be there as well.
And when Derek called back, he was not thrilled to learn that Mark would be there.
♠ Halcyon
02 - Girls Like Us
03 - Champagne Beat Boogie
04 - You're the Lucky Ones
05 - Duke's Up
06 - 20 Minutes of Disco Glory
Title: Groove ♠ Perpetual [7/14]
Rating: PG-13.
Pairing: Indirect Addison/Mark.
Summary: Two and a half years later in June, Juliet is cute with a kickball and Addison reluctantly makes two phone calls but happily gives out a Disney band-aid. And other things.
Note: Daddy Hints will begin to drop next chapter. Patience, grasshoppers.
Addison looked up at the sky as the rumbling thunder got closer. “Juliet, honey, it’s going to rain. Come inside.” She stood up from her chair on the small patio in the backyard and headed for the door. She turned back expecting to see Juliet walking toward her. Instead, she saw her daughter with her hands firmly planted on her hips and a defiant pout on her face. Addison raised her eyebrow mostly in amusement.
“No!” Juliet’s favorite word, outside of why, came out of her mouth without losing the pout.
“Do you want to get wet?” Addison felt the air get a little heavier, the kind of increase in humidity that signals that the thunder wasn’t just teasing and it really was going to rain.
Juliet lost the pout for a second while she was thinking. “No,” she said with slight hesitance.
“Then come inside.” Addison worked hard to suppress a grin. Two year-old logic was beginning amuse her instead of frustrate her now that she had had it (sort of) figured out.
“No!”
“Okay,” Addison shrugged. “Then you get to clean up any mud from the kitchen floor.”
Juliet studied her mother from the other side of the flowerbed, trying to determine whether it was an empty threat or real. Settling on real, choosing to risk the wrong choice rather than tempt fate and clean up mud, she ran inside the door Addison held open. Addison immediately followed her, laughing.
“Peanut butter jelly!” Juliet anticipated her mother’s question as she was lifted into her chair.
Wondering when her daughter would pick up the idea of conjunctions (or stop speaking in exclamation points), Addison smiled and shook her head. “You have got to expand your culinary horizons.” She opened up the cupboard for the peanut butter and kicked the refrigerator door shut with her foot once she found the jelly. “Toast or no toast?”
Juliet was in the middle of saying “no toast” when a huge clap of thunder hit and it started to pour. She jumped and immediately slid off her chair and ran to Addison, hugging her leg. Loud noises didn’t mix well with Juliet and the only reason she sat through Memorial Day fireworks was because she found huge interest in the glow necklaces and Addison let her sit in her lap the entire time. She looked up expectantly at Addison, her eyes wide and lower lip quivering.
Addison bent down and picked Juliet up, hugging her tightly. She hadn’t particularly enjoyed thunderstorms when she was a kid either, at least not until she was thirteen and her father dragged her out onto the porch during one phenomenal summer storm. “It’s okay,” she whispered, rubbing her back softly as Juliet buried her head in her shoulder. After a few minutes and several more loud rolls of thunder, Addison carefully set Juliet on the counter and poured her a cup of lemonade in a sippy cup. “No toast?” She smiled crookedly when Juliet nodded and it seemed that the lemonade (and the ability to be on the counter, something Addison never let her do) was cheering her up.
--
Mark looked over at Ellie staring off into space, the four-am New York traffic noise the only sound in the room. It bothered him. She either stared with a purpose or closed her eyes and he could usually hear her breathing. She didn’t breathe heavily, but they were usually closer together or cuddling. She was on the complete opposite end of the bed and had been distant all weekend. The temptation to reach out and stroke her cheek was strong but he stopped before he even lifted his arm. It was something about them that was off, not her or her job or her life. It was them.
“Ellie. Talk to me,” he whispered. When she didn’t say anything, he decided it was okay to touch her and gently turned her head so she was facing him. Confused by the tears in her eyes - he had only seen her cry three times in ten years and all three of those were law school meltdowns - he wiped a stray one away and furrowed his eyebrows in concern.
“This needs to stop, Mark,” she breathed shakily and moved away from his touch. “Us.”
“Why?” He moved his hand away.
Ellie took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling. “Because I want more. And you’re not the guy I want it from and you’re not going to give it to me.”
“Why not?”
She turned her head on the pillow. “Because you’re in love with my sister.” She looked back up at the ceiling. “And the sex is great between us but if you want Addison, you need to go get her. Settling for me isn’t fair.”
“I’m not settling.”
Ellie clenched her jaw and closed her eyes and spent a minute organizing her thoughts. “I feel like you are and I’m done being the consolation prize.”
Mark blinked. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you have until Monday to fuck me senseless and then, when I walk out your door Monday afternoon to go home, this is done.”
--
Addison sat on the steps of the porch of her house, glass of post-dinner wine next to her, and watched her daughter kick a ball around in the quiet street with a couple of other toddlers, parents and older siblings strategically scattered around in case of tumbles, stray balls or cars. She smiled softly as Juliet pouted at the boy who wouldn’t give her the ball. The boy’s mother said something stern about sharing and he begrudgingly handed it to Juliet.
Juliet was well-liked in the neighborhood so all the kids were telling her to kick it to them. Instead, she dropped it and swung her foot up and kicked the ball straight up to sail a few feet over her head in a perfect arc and land behind her. Addison laughed at the cute look on her daughter’s face as Juliet realized that the ball didn’t go where she wanted nor did it do what she intended. Confused, she turned around looking for it, her bright blue dress twirling a little around her feet. Upon seeing it, she grinned widely and kicked it toward a friend but somehow tripped and fell. She immediately began to cry in that way that signals the end of the universe over something quite small.
Addison jumped up and ran over to her. She crouched down and checked Juliet’s knee - just a scrape - and looked up at her, brushing some brownish-red curls out of her daughter’s face. “You want a band-aid?”
Juliet nodded enthusiastically and promptly stopped crying. She hung on tightly as Addison picked her up and walked them inside and sat her down on the closed toilet seat of the bathroom.
“Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty?” Addison asked as she pulled the box of band-aids from the medicine cabinet.
“Ariel!”
Smiling, Addison looked through the box to see if there were any Ariel band-aids left. Ariel was Juliet’s favorite Princess and was, of course, the first of anything to run out. She triumphantly pulled the last Ariel band-aid from the box and then set the box behind her on the sink. “Last one. You gotta find a new favorite Princess now.” She kissed Juliet’s forehead and apologized for the sting of the alcohol pad to get rid of some of the asphalt and dirt and then gently placed the band-aid on her knee. “All better.”
“Kiss it, make it feel better.”
Addison did as her daughter demanded with a laugh.
Later that night, Juliet crawled into her mother’s lap and fell asleep cuddled in Addison’s arms. Addison thought about getting up and putting her to bed, but decided that she looked too comfortable and Addison herself was too comfortable so as long as she was asleep it was okay for her to be up later than normal. She gently ran her fingers through Juliet’s hair and marveled at how adorable and innocent she was and decided that no matter how much it hurt to keep that quiet, their lives were perfectly uncomplicated (if a little hectic) and Addison wanted to keep it that way. If Juliet wanted to know later, she’d tell then. But otherwise, it was staying her secret.
Juliet stretched and rolled onto her back and sleepily blinked up at Addison, wondering why she was on the couch instead of in bed but not having the energy to ask. Addison smiled and scooped her up, Juliet immediately falling asleep again on her shoulder, and took her upstairs. After washing up and a miraculously easy pajama decision, Addison pulled the light blanket up over her soundly asleep daughter and kissed her cheek, wishing her sweet dreams.
As she clicked off the lamp, she reminded herself to stick to normal bedtimes from then on: getting a half-asleep child into bed was harder than it should have been.
--
Addison rolled her eyes in frustration at her cell phone. It blinked to tell her that she had a new voicemail but she never heard it ring. It was nearing ten at night and if it was the hospital they would’ve called the house but she picked it up anyway.
“Hey, Ads, it’s El. I don’t know why you even need to know this, but I feel obligated to tell you that Mark and I are done. I ended it, he was never going to give me what I want and I didn’t really want it from him so...that’s over. And you really should go back to him, Addie. I know you think he’s a jerk, which he is, but he’s a good guy. He’s grown up, you know, so...give him a chance. Because he says he’s in love with you but I don’t think he’s lying. Right, yeah, so...I’m gonna hang up now.”
Addison found her sister more entertaining sober than drunk so shook her head at the message instead of laughing and promptly deleted it. She had never understood the relationship between Ellie and Mark but had always suspected that there was something more than sex behind it (mostly because exclusive “just sex” relationships just don’t last for two and a half years) and after a while had just assumed that it was one of those things that would continue forever simply because it defied all logic.
Addison knew the rules (which really turned into guidelines which then deteriorated into concepts) of the strange relationship but also knew that after almost three years there was no way either of them still felt nothing toward each other. It might be minimal, but it was there and definitely a sense of loss. Hell, she had felt that way about leaving Mark after two months. So she understood that, even if she was the one to end it, Ellie wasn’t feeling so hot. But calling her back now would be useless and a waste of time; Ellie was impossible to deal with drunk.
So Addison simply sighed, wrote call Ellie on the whiteboard on the fridge right next to orange juice and went to bed.
--
“He’s still in love with me?” Addison finished off her wine and topped off Ellie’s glass with whatever was left in the bottle.
“Yes. And he’s going to do what he can to get you back. Thanks.” She took a relatively large gulp of wine. It wasn’t her favorite coping drink - gin from the bottle was - but Addison didn’t drink hard alcohol anymore so it was either wine or room temperature beer.
She looked hard at her sister. “I’m not going to take him back.”
Ellie sobered up for a moment and made sure Addison knew she was serious. “Look. He’s a good guy, Addie. He’s messed up and he has issues but he’s a good guy. He knows he screwed up with you and he knows exactly how he screwed up with you and he’s determined to not do it again.”
Addison hesitated, glass halfway to her mouth. “Why should I believe you?”
“For one, because I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“You didn’t tell me that the two of you were back together.”
“Because it really wasn’t important at the time. And for two, he’s grown up in the past two years. We weren’t officially a couple, but he never cheated on me. He had every opportunity, every right, and he really had nothing to lose by doing it, but he didn’t. He hated it, but I kicked him into actually talking whether it was emotions or, you know, the fucking Yankees.”
“Hey now.” Despite living in Boston for almost three years, Addison was still a diehard Yankees fan. Closeted, because she liked her life, but diehard. Addison reached out and covered her sister’s hand with hers. “Ellie, did you fall for him?” she asked softly.
Ellie shook her head. “No. I ended it before I could. I don’t want to go through life knowing that I was the second choice.” She looked up at Addison. “You’re his first choice, Addie. You always have been and you probably always will be. He’s a decent guy. He just needed to grow up a little.”
Addison waited a few minutes, absorbing her sister’s words and giving herself time to figure out what she wanted to say. “I’m not going to make the effort to go to him. He has to come to me.”
--
“Jane Doe, approximate age 32...” an intern rattled off statistics and vitals and tests just like Addison asked.
But Addison wasn’t paying attention. She was seeing a pregnant woman in her third trimester with severe brain and craniofacial damage. Which meant that she was seeing two phone calls in her very near future to two men she really didn’t want to see.
“Dr. Montgomery?” The intern prodded, knocking his attending out of her reverie.
“Yes. Keep up the current treatment and keep me updated every hour and a half unless something radical happens. I’m going to call Dr. Derek Shepherd from Seattle Grace and Mark Sloan from Mount Sinai. They’re the best in brains and plastics and this woman is going to need the best.”
“Plus you’re the best and working on her, too.”
“Flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere with me, Goldman, you know that.” She smirked at the eager and promising intern and walked out of the room. She stopped at the doorway and turned back with her trademark flashy smile. “But thank you anyway.”
--
Phone calls made, Addison leaned back in her comfy black chair and twirled a pen. As expected, she got Derek’s voicemail. The time difference almost guaranteed that he would be in surgery at the time. She hadn’t actually planned it that way, but liked the way it turned out. Mark, on the other hand, who never answered his phone when he was at work, picked up on the second ring and she was forced to talk to him.
In ten minutes of pure medical and factual conversation, Addison slowly realized that Ellie might be right. She managed to slip in at the end a somewhat concerned question about him and how he was about the demise of his and Ellie’s relationship. He sounded legitimately like he was okay and made Ellie even more right (which Addison hated, though had come to expect it to be one of the constants of the universe) when he genuinely asked how Addison was and seemed interested in her answer.
He was, however, not thrilled when she told him Derek would be there as well.
And when Derek called back, he was not thrilled to learn that Mark would be there.
♠ Halcyon