(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
07 - Perpetual
08 - Halcyon
09 - Anomaly Calling Your Name
Title: Groove ♠ Heaven Scent [10/14]
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mark/Addison
Summary: In which there are cute vignettes but then we skip nine years in one sentence and thirteen year-old girls are the most fantastic people one will ever encounter and Addison and Mark have a serious communication misunderstanding.
After breakfast, Addison rubbed her face with her hands and let Juliet run outside and join a neighborhood-wide snowball fight in the snowy and closed off street in front of their house. She looked at Mark who had politely washed the dishes while Addison got Juliet into snow gear. “We should probably talk.”
Mark felt manly again once he hung up the dishtowel. He turned to Addison and looked at her.
“Okay fine. I need to talk.” Addison recognized the expression on his face as one that was seriously holding back an eye roll. “I didn’t tell you that you’re her father to somehow guilt you in to being all in with both of us. I did it because you were genuinely here for me, not with some secret motive to find out, and because you deserve to know. But Mark, none of that, none of anything means that - and I swear to God, if you kiss me to shut me up again I’m going to hit you - you need to dive in all the way. I know I said some form of yes last night, but it’s kind of distracting when your hands are up my shirt. I’m not taking that back but you need to...” Her rambling and increasingly rapid monologue was cut off by Mark who paid no attention to her warning. She slapped his cheek lightly, true to her word. “Okay, that has to stop.”
He ignored her. “Addison, I never stopped loving you. And even if she was Derek’s kid, I’d be all in.”
She bowed her head and nibbled at her lower lip for a moment before looking back up at him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He smiled at her. “And I’m still gonna kiss you to shut you up when you’re in danger of embarrassing yourself.”
--
“Is Mark your boyfriend?” Juliet asked a few nights later before Addison turned out her bedside lamp. Mark had left to go back to New York that morning.
Addison smiled and pushed her hair out of her face. “Sort of.” Spontaneity seemed to be her specialty that weekend so she took a breath and leapt. “Mark’s your dad.”
Juliet blinked and thought about that. She’d always wondered why her friends had fathers and she didn’t, but Addison always avoided her questions with I’ll tell you later or when you understand what... so she gave up asking and decided in her four year-old way that it was just how things went and it meant that she got more Mommy Time than any of her friends. “Okay,” she said softly, happy. She had wished on her birthday candles (because giving up asking didn’t mean giving up wishing) for a dad and she now believed in the power of wishes more than ever.
It only took a month for that one to come true.
“Sweet dreams, Juliet Marie. I love you.” Addison kissed Juliet’s cheek and turned out the light.
--
“You’ve been holding back news all night. How much of your lotto jackpot am I getting?” Ellie took a drink of her scotch.
Addison took a deep breath and made sure Ellie had swallowed before she said anything. “Mark showed up last weekend.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “We’re gonna make this work.”
“I think now is the right time for you to finally tell me who my niece’s father is.” Ellie dropped her voice, perpetually frustrated that Addison kept it from her and now slightly annoyed about the Mark revelation. Though she and Mark had ended their…thing years ago, she still felt for him. She wanted him to be happy, which she knew was going to happen only when he was officially and forever with Addison. But she also wanted her sister to be happy and she wasn’t sure that forever with Mark was possible or the answer.
“Mark.”
Ellie wasn’t surprised and finished her drink in one swallow. “As long as he doesn’t fuck up or hurt you again.”
“What’s wrong?” Addison waved away some smoke that filtered over from the bar.
“Nothing.” Ellie stood up to get a refill, not bothering to ask Addison if she wanted one - she’d barely touched the martini.
“If I don’t get to pull that shit with you, you don’t get to pull it with me,” Addison said once Ellie sat down opposite her again.
“I just remember the look on your face when you walked in. You forgave me because I’m your sister and I truly didn’t know. Addie, you were devastated. He hurt you to the point where you were about to abort his child, he was less than father or boyfriend material two years ago when he came out and now you’re letting him in her and your life. Pretty permanently.”
“What’s your point?” Addison chewed on an olive.
“Mark and I, people like us...we don’t change.”
“Ellie, you’ve been dating the same guy for six months.”
“And I’ve cheated on him a lot. But I stick with him and I don’t let him find out because he’s a good, solid backup plan. I’m not saying that Mark’s going to do that, because there’s a good chance that he’s broken the mold for you, but I’m saying be careful.”
--
Sharing was not Addison’s strong suit. She said she was good at sharing but in kindergarten she’d willingly share every crayon except the one she needed next and in college she labeled all the food that was hers even if it was something her roommate would go into anaphylactic shock if she ate. Someone once pointed all of this out to her but she refused to believe it. After all, she was generous in the hospital and had been sensible about sharing cases during her internship and residency. She knew she wasn’t Wonder Woman.
Even if Addison got better with the sharing as she got older, Juliet was the extreme exception. Addison had Juliet to herself for four years (over four, if you counted nine months of pregnancy) and suddenly had to learn to let Mark have some kid time on his own. She found herself consciously holding back; Juliet didn’t need two parents to get her into bed, she didn’t need two parents to help her tug on her bright purple snow boots (though Addison still took Juliet to ballet Tuesdays and Thursdays at five) and reading children’s books didn’t work so well with two parents. Addison hoped that later on, when they’d moved past Harold and the Purple Crayon, they could work on alternating; maybe every few pages and letting Juliet take a turn or two.
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself, Addison remembered the opening line to her favorite (and last) shared book, read with her mother when she was nine.
“Why does it take ten minutes to pick out pajamas?” Mark’s voice shook Addison out of her thoughts as he came back downstairs from tucking Juliet into bed.
“Because I’m her mother,” she answered.
Mark sat down next to Addison and gently settled his arm around her shoulders. He nodded in understanding; he’d seen Addison’s morning routine enough times to know that ten minutes for pajamas was nothing. As Addison leaned her head on his shoulder with a soft sigh, he wondered how hard this was for her. He was still officially living in New York and coming up to Boston on weekends until he could get everything in order about financial affairs for his practice in the city, dealing with his apartment and remembering how things worked in hospitals. Mark supposed it was better that way, not immediately showing up in Juliet’s or Addison’s life full-time, but only getting two days was difficult. But for Addison, she’d had her life all settled down and organized and now she had to share it all. Daughter, house, toothpaste because he kept forgetting it, everything.
“You okay?”
Addison nodded. “Bear with me while I get used to someone else getting rid of monsters in her closet.”
--
Coming into the kitchen from unpacking his last box, Mark watched Addison neatly pop a birth control pill out of its foil and take it. It wasn’t, she said, to avoid getting pregnant again but to keep away the debilitating PMS that somehow came back a few years ago. He believed her since she was on it when he showed up and she’d informed him that she’d unfortunately gone without sex since the last time he was around. But it reminded him of something.
“Weren’t you on that in New York?” He distinctly remembered her going through a revolving door of birth control for a while trying to find the one that wouldn’t give her migraines in exchange for not curling up in a ball against pain, though he couldn’t remember when.
She looked at him sadly. “I was. I went off it about four months before Derek and I split.”
“You guys were trying.”
Addison shook her head and looked at the kitchen floor and made a mental note to vacuum it when she got home from work. “He didn’t know.”
Mark blinked slowly as a wave of realization came over him. “You were trying. You thought if you could have a baby...”
She looked up at him and took a shaky breath. “I might be able to save my marriage.”
“Addie...” he said and hugged her gently. He knew, because he was the one she actually talked to near the end, that she wanted a baby and was willing to do almost anything to keep Derek. He just never put the two together.
Addison simply shrugged and let him hug her. She didn’t know what she would’ve done had Juliet turned out to be Derek’s (besides curse the universe and its idea of a cosmic joke) so in the end it worked out in her favor. Though he was fairly absent, she and Derek still had sex. It was somewhat methodical and routine but the occasional night of making love kept her going. She gave up near the end; after four months of no baby, she began to wonder whether it was something about her. Conceptually, she knew that four months wasn’t terribly unusual if both parties weren’t actively working on it but that didn’t calm any of her fears.
But as Mark smoothed out her hair, she remembered that it all worked out for her anyway.
--
“I have a dilemma.”
Mark looked up as Addison came out of the bathroom and leaned on the doorframe. “Yes?”
She twisted her hair up and out of the way in preparation to wash her face. “Do I call Derek or do I just let him figure it out from hospital grapevine? I feel kind of obligated to tell him that he doesn’t have to worry about a kid finding him in fourteen years.” She went back in and started running the sink but left the door open.
“Grapevine. If he whines about you not telling him that your kid isn’t his, just say that you didn’t want to do anything to the high of his engagement to Meredith.”
Addison turned off the water and patted her face dry. “This is why I like you.”
“I hope there are other reasons than sketchy morals.”
“Yes. But right now?” She squeezed out the last of a tube of toothpaste and wrote a note on the mirror with dry-erase marker to buy more. “Sketchy morals is why I like you,” she said around the toothbrush.
“I thought you were supposed to write in lipstick.”
Addison stuck her head out and took the toothbrush out of her mouth and gestured. “Have you ever tried to clean lipstick off a mirror?” She spit in the sink and blinked and remembered what kind of guy Mark was when she first met him. “Actually, don’t answer that.”
--
Nine years later, Mark and Addison have recently celebrated their five year wedding anniversary and Juliet is that wonderfully cooperative age of thirteen.
--
Addison sighed and looked at Mark. “You want to talk to her?”
“You’re the one who saw her.”
“You’re the one she recognizes as existing.”
“Are you sure that’s what she was doing?”
“Yes.” Addison leaned her elbows on the table and rubbed her face, careful not to ruin any makeup. She’d gotten lost trying to navigate a detour and passed her daughter’s school in the process. Addison had looked for Juliet to see if she wanted a ride to ballet practice instead of walking. She found her, but in a far corner of the track field near the street sitting with a group of friends who looked very suspiciously like they were passing around a joint. Addison wasn’t stupid, she knew these things happened and often at a young age but thirteen seemed a little young. Juliet had hit adolescence with ramming speed and Addison suspected that none of it was helped by Juliet physically maturing faster than anyone else. Both Mark and Addison knew that they were probably in for it in the next few years.
Cheery goodbyes filtered through the open windows and a car door slammed and then the car drove off. Mark and Addison looked at each other and shrugged as Juliet opened the front door and morosely announced her presence.
Juliet stopped two steps into the kitchen, catching her parents’ looks. “What did I do now?” She asked and dropped her bag in a corner and opened up her water bottle for a long drink, still red in the face from practice.
“Thirteen is a little young to be starting in on pot, Juliet.” Mark ignored Addison kicking him under the table.
“What? I wasn’t...”
“Then what the hell did I see you doing after school today?” Addison jumped in.
“Why were you driving around school?”
“I was in the area and was going to offer you a ride to ballet.”
“I can walk.”
Mark clenched his teeth and took a deep breath. “Julie.”
“Look. I tried it once and coughed up a lung. It hurt, it’s not like I’m going to try it again.”
Addison took one look at Juliet’s face and knew she was lying. “Forget killing your lungs, do you have any idea what that stuff can do to you?”
“Is it possible for you to drop the doctor thing for five minutes? Honestly!”
“She’s not being doctor, she’s being Mom. And she’s right.”
“Okay, fine. I said I wasn’t going to try it again. Give it a rest.” Juliet grabbed her bag and stomped off to her room and slammed the door. The shower started up shortly after.
Addison dropped her forehead on the table. “That went well.”
“You didn’t need to be that hard on her.”
She looked up. “Really.”
Mark knew Addison was about to snap but he’d had a long day too and it was like a train wreck and he couldn’t stop. “You know her better than I do, I’d think you would’ve figured out how to talk to her.”
“Oh, so this is all my fault? Because it was just me for four years?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Jesus, Mark. Did it ever occur to you that if you had been around from the beginning this would still be a pain in the ass?”
“Do you ever think about how things would’ve turned out if you told me from the beginning?”
“Yes. And given what you were then, I made the right choice. I can’t believe you’re still that worked up about it. This is not my fault!” She stood up.
Mark stood up too and caught her arm, forcing her to turn and look at him. He would apologize later for the roughness with which he tipped her chin up. “Addison, that is not what I meant.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears that she was sure weren’t entirely his fault. “That’s what it sounded like,” she said softly. “I have a flight to Seattle in the morning, I have to pack.” Addison slipped out of his grasp and headed upstairs. Seattle was the other reason she was sure she was on the verge of crying. She had been called out for a case and seeing Derek was inevitable. She’d heard rumor that there was trouble in paradise between him and Meredith and that Meredith was somewhere in Europe for a conference the same week Addison would be there. Addison had her concerns.
As she stood in front of and stared at her closet, Addison just wanted to curl up in a ball. In eighteen hours she would be getting on a plane for a week, leaving behind a daughter who was even more pissed off at her than normal and a husband she was suddenly not very thrilled with and heading toward an ex-husband who had never done anything actively wrong to her and was having marital problems. She exhaled deeply and just grabbed whatever she saw first and packed it. Moving to another side of the closet, she started staring at shoes instead and idly wondered why heels weren’t used as murder weapons more often. She pulled out her comfortable surgery sneakers first, not wanting to have to navigate Seattle to find a shoe store if she forgot, and then spared glances to the chosen random clothing and found shoes to match.
Part of her wondered if what she heard in Mark’s words was true. How would things have turned out if she had told him from the beginning and he had been around? Addison braced her hands against the wall and twisted her back and winced, emotionally and physically. Teenagers were supposed to be a pain and drugs and things did happen but Addison had always imagined having the perfect straightedge child who sailed through puberty with few incidents and had a phenomenal mother/daughter relationship. She knew reality would hit and she knew reality had a lot to do with hormones and that no one could control that, but that didn’t stop her from wanting it to go away or wanting to be able to fast forward the hormones and get it over with in three days.
And she flashed back to her sister’s warning (and made a mental note to call her soon). Mark hadn’t given any indication that he was using Addison as a backup plan, but they had been married for five years so maybe she was the backup plan that just stuck. She smacked herself on the head and told herself to just shut the hell up already because Mark loved her, he just slipped up a little. And for all the times she’d verbally slipped up, she owed him a few freebies. The smacking halfway worked.
Mark called up the stairs that dinner was ready and though the food was good the air was definitively silent and awkward.
Mark woke up to the bed shifting. He looked at the clock even though it was still dark out and nowhere near when Addison needed to leave. By the time he blinked enough to be adjusted to the darkness, the bathroom door was shutting quietly and he heard the sound of soft sniffles filtering through the door. He thought about just staying in bed and letting her do her thing on her own; he wouldn’t say anything in the morning and would pretend to have had a good, solid night’s sleep. That’s something Derek would’ve done, a voice piped up in his head. And it was something Derek had done; Mark had heard both sides of that story the next day. So he sighed and rolled out of bed.
Addison stood in front of the mirror in shorts and a tank top, her hands bracing herself on either side of the sink against the counter. The lights were off. She didn’t look up from staring at herself in the mirror, even when Mark said her name. She just simply blinked and let tears fall however they wanted. She shook her head when he asked what was wrong; it wasn’t worth bothering him.
He smiled sadly at her, even though she wasn’t looking, and mimicked her posture by the other sink, covering her hand with his and giving her a comforting squeeze. After a few minutes of silence, he kissed her temple and said goodnight, shutting the door behind him on his way back to bed.
“Enough of this,” she whispered to herself as she heard the church bells down the street ring four in the morning. “Go to bed.” Addison wiped her eyes and washed off the salt on her cheeks and crawled back into her side of the bed. She felt an arm tug her close to the center of their bed and she smiled as she realized that Mark had stayed awake for her.
♠ Beachcoma
02 - Girls Like Us
03 - Champagne Beat Boogie
04 - You're the Lucky Ones
05 - Duke's Up
06 - 20 Minutes of Disco Glory
07 - Perpetual
08 - Halcyon
09 - Anomaly Calling Your Name
Title: Groove ♠ Heaven Scent [10/14]
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mark/Addison
Summary: In which there are cute vignettes but then we skip nine years in one sentence and thirteen year-old girls are the most fantastic people one will ever encounter and Addison and Mark have a serious communication misunderstanding.
After breakfast, Addison rubbed her face with her hands and let Juliet run outside and join a neighborhood-wide snowball fight in the snowy and closed off street in front of their house. She looked at Mark who had politely washed the dishes while Addison got Juliet into snow gear. “We should probably talk.”
Mark felt manly again once he hung up the dishtowel. He turned to Addison and looked at her.
“Okay fine. I need to talk.” Addison recognized the expression on his face as one that was seriously holding back an eye roll. “I didn’t tell you that you’re her father to somehow guilt you in to being all in with both of us. I did it because you were genuinely here for me, not with some secret motive to find out, and because you deserve to know. But Mark, none of that, none of anything means that - and I swear to God, if you kiss me to shut me up again I’m going to hit you - you need to dive in all the way. I know I said some form of yes last night, but it’s kind of distracting when your hands are up my shirt. I’m not taking that back but you need to...” Her rambling and increasingly rapid monologue was cut off by Mark who paid no attention to her warning. She slapped his cheek lightly, true to her word. “Okay, that has to stop.”
He ignored her. “Addison, I never stopped loving you. And even if she was Derek’s kid, I’d be all in.”
She bowed her head and nibbled at her lower lip for a moment before looking back up at him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He smiled at her. “And I’m still gonna kiss you to shut you up when you’re in danger of embarrassing yourself.”
--
“Is Mark your boyfriend?” Juliet asked a few nights later before Addison turned out her bedside lamp. Mark had left to go back to New York that morning.
Addison smiled and pushed her hair out of her face. “Sort of.” Spontaneity seemed to be her specialty that weekend so she took a breath and leapt. “Mark’s your dad.”
Juliet blinked and thought about that. She’d always wondered why her friends had fathers and she didn’t, but Addison always avoided her questions with I’ll tell you later or when you understand what... so she gave up asking and decided in her four year-old way that it was just how things went and it meant that she got more Mommy Time than any of her friends. “Okay,” she said softly, happy. She had wished on her birthday candles (because giving up asking didn’t mean giving up wishing) for a dad and she now believed in the power of wishes more than ever.
It only took a month for that one to come true.
“Sweet dreams, Juliet Marie. I love you.” Addison kissed Juliet’s cheek and turned out the light.
--
“You’ve been holding back news all night. How much of your lotto jackpot am I getting?” Ellie took a drink of her scotch.
Addison took a deep breath and made sure Ellie had swallowed before she said anything. “Mark showed up last weekend.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “We’re gonna make this work.”
“I think now is the right time for you to finally tell me who my niece’s father is.” Ellie dropped her voice, perpetually frustrated that Addison kept it from her and now slightly annoyed about the Mark revelation. Though she and Mark had ended their…thing years ago, she still felt for him. She wanted him to be happy, which she knew was going to happen only when he was officially and forever with Addison. But she also wanted her sister to be happy and she wasn’t sure that forever with Mark was possible or the answer.
“Mark.”
Ellie wasn’t surprised and finished her drink in one swallow. “As long as he doesn’t fuck up or hurt you again.”
“What’s wrong?” Addison waved away some smoke that filtered over from the bar.
“Nothing.” Ellie stood up to get a refill, not bothering to ask Addison if she wanted one - she’d barely touched the martini.
“If I don’t get to pull that shit with you, you don’t get to pull it with me,” Addison said once Ellie sat down opposite her again.
“I just remember the look on your face when you walked in. You forgave me because I’m your sister and I truly didn’t know. Addie, you were devastated. He hurt you to the point where you were about to abort his child, he was less than father or boyfriend material two years ago when he came out and now you’re letting him in her and your life. Pretty permanently.”
“What’s your point?” Addison chewed on an olive.
“Mark and I, people like us...we don’t change.”
“Ellie, you’ve been dating the same guy for six months.”
“And I’ve cheated on him a lot. But I stick with him and I don’t let him find out because he’s a good, solid backup plan. I’m not saying that Mark’s going to do that, because there’s a good chance that he’s broken the mold for you, but I’m saying be careful.”
--
Sharing was not Addison’s strong suit. She said she was good at sharing but in kindergarten she’d willingly share every crayon except the one she needed next and in college she labeled all the food that was hers even if it was something her roommate would go into anaphylactic shock if she ate. Someone once pointed all of this out to her but she refused to believe it. After all, she was generous in the hospital and had been sensible about sharing cases during her internship and residency. She knew she wasn’t Wonder Woman.
Even if Addison got better with the sharing as she got older, Juliet was the extreme exception. Addison had Juliet to herself for four years (over four, if you counted nine months of pregnancy) and suddenly had to learn to let Mark have some kid time on his own. She found herself consciously holding back; Juliet didn’t need two parents to get her into bed, she didn’t need two parents to help her tug on her bright purple snow boots (though Addison still took Juliet to ballet Tuesdays and Thursdays at five) and reading children’s books didn’t work so well with two parents. Addison hoped that later on, when they’d moved past Harold and the Purple Crayon, they could work on alternating; maybe every few pages and letting Juliet take a turn or two.
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself, Addison remembered the opening line to her favorite (and last) shared book, read with her mother when she was nine.
“Why does it take ten minutes to pick out pajamas?” Mark’s voice shook Addison out of her thoughts as he came back downstairs from tucking Juliet into bed.
“Because I’m her mother,” she answered.
Mark sat down next to Addison and gently settled his arm around her shoulders. He nodded in understanding; he’d seen Addison’s morning routine enough times to know that ten minutes for pajamas was nothing. As Addison leaned her head on his shoulder with a soft sigh, he wondered how hard this was for her. He was still officially living in New York and coming up to Boston on weekends until he could get everything in order about financial affairs for his practice in the city, dealing with his apartment and remembering how things worked in hospitals. Mark supposed it was better that way, not immediately showing up in Juliet’s or Addison’s life full-time, but only getting two days was difficult. But for Addison, she’d had her life all settled down and organized and now she had to share it all. Daughter, house, toothpaste because he kept forgetting it, everything.
“You okay?”
Addison nodded. “Bear with me while I get used to someone else getting rid of monsters in her closet.”
--
Coming into the kitchen from unpacking his last box, Mark watched Addison neatly pop a birth control pill out of its foil and take it. It wasn’t, she said, to avoid getting pregnant again but to keep away the debilitating PMS that somehow came back a few years ago. He believed her since she was on it when he showed up and she’d informed him that she’d unfortunately gone without sex since the last time he was around. But it reminded him of something.
“Weren’t you on that in New York?” He distinctly remembered her going through a revolving door of birth control for a while trying to find the one that wouldn’t give her migraines in exchange for not curling up in a ball against pain, though he couldn’t remember when.
She looked at him sadly. “I was. I went off it about four months before Derek and I split.”
“You guys were trying.”
Addison shook her head and looked at the kitchen floor and made a mental note to vacuum it when she got home from work. “He didn’t know.”
Mark blinked slowly as a wave of realization came over him. “You were trying. You thought if you could have a baby...”
She looked up at him and took a shaky breath. “I might be able to save my marriage.”
“Addie...” he said and hugged her gently. He knew, because he was the one she actually talked to near the end, that she wanted a baby and was willing to do almost anything to keep Derek. He just never put the two together.
Addison simply shrugged and let him hug her. She didn’t know what she would’ve done had Juliet turned out to be Derek’s (besides curse the universe and its idea of a cosmic joke) so in the end it worked out in her favor. Though he was fairly absent, she and Derek still had sex. It was somewhat methodical and routine but the occasional night of making love kept her going. She gave up near the end; after four months of no baby, she began to wonder whether it was something about her. Conceptually, she knew that four months wasn’t terribly unusual if both parties weren’t actively working on it but that didn’t calm any of her fears.
But as Mark smoothed out her hair, she remembered that it all worked out for her anyway.
--
“I have a dilemma.”
Mark looked up as Addison came out of the bathroom and leaned on the doorframe. “Yes?”
She twisted her hair up and out of the way in preparation to wash her face. “Do I call Derek or do I just let him figure it out from hospital grapevine? I feel kind of obligated to tell him that he doesn’t have to worry about a kid finding him in fourteen years.” She went back in and started running the sink but left the door open.
“Grapevine. If he whines about you not telling him that your kid isn’t his, just say that you didn’t want to do anything to the high of his engagement to Meredith.”
Addison turned off the water and patted her face dry. “This is why I like you.”
“I hope there are other reasons than sketchy morals.”
“Yes. But right now?” She squeezed out the last of a tube of toothpaste and wrote a note on the mirror with dry-erase marker to buy more. “Sketchy morals is why I like you,” she said around the toothbrush.
“I thought you were supposed to write in lipstick.”
Addison stuck her head out and took the toothbrush out of her mouth and gestured. “Have you ever tried to clean lipstick off a mirror?” She spit in the sink and blinked and remembered what kind of guy Mark was when she first met him. “Actually, don’t answer that.”
--
Nine years later, Mark and Addison have recently celebrated their five year wedding anniversary and Juliet is that wonderfully cooperative age of thirteen.
--
Addison sighed and looked at Mark. “You want to talk to her?”
“You’re the one who saw her.”
“You’re the one she recognizes as existing.”
“Are you sure that’s what she was doing?”
“Yes.” Addison leaned her elbows on the table and rubbed her face, careful not to ruin any makeup. She’d gotten lost trying to navigate a detour and passed her daughter’s school in the process. Addison had looked for Juliet to see if she wanted a ride to ballet practice instead of walking. She found her, but in a far corner of the track field near the street sitting with a group of friends who looked very suspiciously like they were passing around a joint. Addison wasn’t stupid, she knew these things happened and often at a young age but thirteen seemed a little young. Juliet had hit adolescence with ramming speed and Addison suspected that none of it was helped by Juliet physically maturing faster than anyone else. Both Mark and Addison knew that they were probably in for it in the next few years.
Cheery goodbyes filtered through the open windows and a car door slammed and then the car drove off. Mark and Addison looked at each other and shrugged as Juliet opened the front door and morosely announced her presence.
Juliet stopped two steps into the kitchen, catching her parents’ looks. “What did I do now?” She asked and dropped her bag in a corner and opened up her water bottle for a long drink, still red in the face from practice.
“Thirteen is a little young to be starting in on pot, Juliet.” Mark ignored Addison kicking him under the table.
“What? I wasn’t...”
“Then what the hell did I see you doing after school today?” Addison jumped in.
“Why were you driving around school?”
“I was in the area and was going to offer you a ride to ballet.”
“I can walk.”
Mark clenched his teeth and took a deep breath. “Julie.”
“Look. I tried it once and coughed up a lung. It hurt, it’s not like I’m going to try it again.”
Addison took one look at Juliet’s face and knew she was lying. “Forget killing your lungs, do you have any idea what that stuff can do to you?”
“Is it possible for you to drop the doctor thing for five minutes? Honestly!”
“She’s not being doctor, she’s being Mom. And she’s right.”
“Okay, fine. I said I wasn’t going to try it again. Give it a rest.” Juliet grabbed her bag and stomped off to her room and slammed the door. The shower started up shortly after.
Addison dropped her forehead on the table. “That went well.”
“You didn’t need to be that hard on her.”
She looked up. “Really.”
Mark knew Addison was about to snap but he’d had a long day too and it was like a train wreck and he couldn’t stop. “You know her better than I do, I’d think you would’ve figured out how to talk to her.”
“Oh, so this is all my fault? Because it was just me for four years?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Jesus, Mark. Did it ever occur to you that if you had been around from the beginning this would still be a pain in the ass?”
“Do you ever think about how things would’ve turned out if you told me from the beginning?”
“Yes. And given what you were then, I made the right choice. I can’t believe you’re still that worked up about it. This is not my fault!” She stood up.
Mark stood up too and caught her arm, forcing her to turn and look at him. He would apologize later for the roughness with which he tipped her chin up. “Addison, that is not what I meant.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears that she was sure weren’t entirely his fault. “That’s what it sounded like,” she said softly. “I have a flight to Seattle in the morning, I have to pack.” Addison slipped out of his grasp and headed upstairs. Seattle was the other reason she was sure she was on the verge of crying. She had been called out for a case and seeing Derek was inevitable. She’d heard rumor that there was trouble in paradise between him and Meredith and that Meredith was somewhere in Europe for a conference the same week Addison would be there. Addison had her concerns.
As she stood in front of and stared at her closet, Addison just wanted to curl up in a ball. In eighteen hours she would be getting on a plane for a week, leaving behind a daughter who was even more pissed off at her than normal and a husband she was suddenly not very thrilled with and heading toward an ex-husband who had never done anything actively wrong to her and was having marital problems. She exhaled deeply and just grabbed whatever she saw first and packed it. Moving to another side of the closet, she started staring at shoes instead and idly wondered why heels weren’t used as murder weapons more often. She pulled out her comfortable surgery sneakers first, not wanting to have to navigate Seattle to find a shoe store if she forgot, and then spared glances to the chosen random clothing and found shoes to match.
Part of her wondered if what she heard in Mark’s words was true. How would things have turned out if she had told him from the beginning and he had been around? Addison braced her hands against the wall and twisted her back and winced, emotionally and physically. Teenagers were supposed to be a pain and drugs and things did happen but Addison had always imagined having the perfect straightedge child who sailed through puberty with few incidents and had a phenomenal mother/daughter relationship. She knew reality would hit and she knew reality had a lot to do with hormones and that no one could control that, but that didn’t stop her from wanting it to go away or wanting to be able to fast forward the hormones and get it over with in three days.
And she flashed back to her sister’s warning (and made a mental note to call her soon). Mark hadn’t given any indication that he was using Addison as a backup plan, but they had been married for five years so maybe she was the backup plan that just stuck. She smacked herself on the head and told herself to just shut the hell up already because Mark loved her, he just slipped up a little. And for all the times she’d verbally slipped up, she owed him a few freebies. The smacking halfway worked.
Mark called up the stairs that dinner was ready and though the food was good the air was definitively silent and awkward.
Mark woke up to the bed shifting. He looked at the clock even though it was still dark out and nowhere near when Addison needed to leave. By the time he blinked enough to be adjusted to the darkness, the bathroom door was shutting quietly and he heard the sound of soft sniffles filtering through the door. He thought about just staying in bed and letting her do her thing on her own; he wouldn’t say anything in the morning and would pretend to have had a good, solid night’s sleep. That’s something Derek would’ve done, a voice piped up in his head. And it was something Derek had done; Mark had heard both sides of that story the next day. So he sighed and rolled out of bed.
Addison stood in front of the mirror in shorts and a tank top, her hands bracing herself on either side of the sink against the counter. The lights were off. She didn’t look up from staring at herself in the mirror, even when Mark said her name. She just simply blinked and let tears fall however they wanted. She shook her head when he asked what was wrong; it wasn’t worth bothering him.
He smiled sadly at her, even though she wasn’t looking, and mimicked her posture by the other sink, covering her hand with his and giving her a comforting squeeze. After a few minutes of silence, he kissed her temple and said goodnight, shutting the door behind him on his way back to bed.
“Enough of this,” she whispered to herself as she heard the church bells down the street ring four in the morning. “Go to bed.” Addison wiped her eyes and washed off the salt on her cheeks and crawled back into her side of the bed. She felt an arm tug her close to the center of their bed and she smiled as she realized that Mark had stayed awake for her.
♠ Beachcoma