Chapter Seven

In Which the Heroine Gets It Over With

   The drive to the trailer doesn’t take very long. The whole time, we both sneak glances at each other, but neither of us can think of anything to say. It should be awkward, but it isn’t. The thing is, we get that there aren’t any small talk topics to use with your ex-married ex-now-current-boyfriend. Well, none besides “How’d your wife take it?” and “So, do you still think I’m a whore, or does sleeping with you fix all that?”, and I figure we should wait until later before starting those conversations.

            Derek pulls up in front of the trailer and takes the keys out of the ignition, but neither of us moves to get out.

            “So, we’re here,” he says.

            I nod. “Yeah.”

            He looks at me. “I guess we should get out now.”

            I nod again. “Okay.”

            But then, suddenly, everything isn’t. Okay, I mean. Because we are sitting together in this car, and while I might be insanely happy that we can finally be together, there is a whole year’s worth of history sitting between us that neither one of us wants to go over.

            “We should get this over with,” I say.

            “Does having dinner with me sound that bad?” he jokes, but I can see he’s hurt. “There would be wine, Ramen noodles, a little bit of light conversation.”

            “That’s the problem,” I explain. “The light conversation. We can’t do the light conversation until we get the heavy conversation out of the way. So I think we should just get it over with.”

            “Ah, yes, It,” he agrees. He looks serious for a beat, then – “You made that sound pretty dirty.”

            I smack him in the arm. “I’m being serious.”

            “So am I,” he protests. When I refuse to say anything else – not as long as he’s still got that grin on his face, it’s too distracting – he sobers up. “Where do we start?”

            “I don’t know,” I confess.

            He nods at that. He seems to be thinking about something.

            “How about Mark?” he finally suggests.

            I’m surprised, to say the least. I had thought Mark would be the last thing he’d want to talk about.

            He catches sight of my expression and chuckles. “What? I can talk about him without there being a crisis at hand.”

            “Crisis, huh?” I say, giving an involuntary smile at his choice of words.

            “Crisis,” he says firmly. “Now do you want to get this over with or not?”

            I take the hint and shut up. For now, anyway. There’ll be plenty of time to tell him everything I want to say after he’s done.

            And, just so you know, that decision had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I feel seriously curious right now. Nothing at all.

            He gives me another look and then says, “Addison knew. When I got home she could tell. She said -,” here he gives a short, bitter bark of laughter. “That I was an ass, and that it was the first time I’d looked happy in weeks. And then she threw the papers on the table and left.”

            He interprets my questioning look perfectly.

            “She wasn’t mad,” he clarifies. “Not exactly. She was mostly…sad.”

            “So you called Mark,” I conclude.

            “Yes,” he agrees. “I didn’t want her to be miserable. She might not be my wife anymore, but she is still Addison. I can’t just leave her like that, sad and alone in some hotel room.”

            He looks at me quickly, trying to gauge my reaction to this. I nod to tell him it’s okay. Except the beast (you know which one, THE beast) is looking up at hearing him say that and it feels territorial…and jealous. Even though it shouldn’t be, because he left her for me.

            Right?

            He gives me a teasing grin, sensing my reservations. “And I didn’t want her making you number one on her hit list.”

            I return it. “I don’t want that either.”

            “And since Mark is the horniest bastard in the country, I was fairly certain he’d keep her in a good mood,” he finished.

            “So you’re motives were purely selfless, huh?” I asked.

            “Of course,” he says indignantly.

            So you didn’t want a chance to fix things with your best friend? I want to ask, but even if that is one of his reasons for calling Mark, I don’t think he’s ready to admit it – not even to himself.

            He looks at me expectantly, and I sigh.

            “Is it my turn?” I ask.

            “It’s your turn,” he confirms.

            I close my eyes and lean back in my seat. Where to start? After a moment, I start trying to explain what happened in the past few days, starting with Finn and ending with what happened earlier today. I carefully avoided looking at him while I spoke. I didn’t want to see what I knew I would find on his face – worry, regret, guilt.

            It feels good to have all of this out in the open. There aren’t any more secrets or lies – or there won’t be once we clear a few other things up. But to do that, I have to turn and face him, because I can’t ask my next question without looking him in the eye. It’d be too easy for either one of us to lie so we won’t be uncomfortable.

            “Do you think I’m a whore?”

            He freezes. His expression still says “I’m here for you,” – all concern and affection - , but his eyes are saying “I’d hoped you forgot about that.”

            “No more than I am,” he says after a pause.

            He’s telling the truth, I can tell, but it isn’t that comforting.

            “You called me a whore,” I press.

            He winces. “I was jealous,” he protests.

            That isn’t enough, and he knows it.

            “You were sleeping with someone else!” he continues. I have to smother a grin. He sounds so…immature. Like someone just told him they were taking his favorite toy and never giving it back. “Several someone elses. How was I supposed to react?”

            “By not calling me a whore?”  I ask, raising an eyebrow – I think it might stay raised throughout this entire conversation.

            “I’m sorry,” he offers.

            Derek widens his eyes in a “sad face” imitation that makes me want to grab him and kiss all of our troubles away. I don’t, though, because we have to get this over with.

            “You really think that’ll cover it?” I ask.

            “No,” he says. “Would this help?”

            He leans over and kisses me. Mmm. Maybe we can put the talking off for a few minutes…

Just as I start to get into it, he pulls away, an infuriating look on his face. He looks smug.

My eyes narrow, before I say, “We are supposed to be talking about this,” with as much dignity as I can muster when my cheeks are still red and my lips already feel a bit swollen.

“I think we’ve talked enough tonight,” he says matter-of-factly.

I’m about to protest, when he kisses me again. This one is just as mmm-inducing as the first, all tongues and teeth and hands and –

He pulled away! He pulled away from me again. Seriously? I was just about to start unbuttoning his shirt and he pulled away.

“What was that?” I gasp. There’s no way I can pretend to stick to “getting it over with” now.

“So you agree, then?” he asks.

It takes me a moment to figure out what he’s talking about. When I do, I really think that I could kill him – except then there would be no one left for me to have sex with. Well, there would technically be someone left, but it isn’t nearly so much fun with them.

“Seriously? You’re just going to- You didn’t – You just – Seriously?” I sputter.

“Seriously,” he agrees, nodding sagely.

So I kiss him. It’s not like I can let him go around kissing me whenever he feels like it. Okay, so I can, and probably will, but not without getting in some kisses of my own. We should have an equal opportunity relationship. And let me just say, I am a damn good kisser. There is definitely no pulling away this time.

Which, in hindsight, might have been a bad thing, but only because I started the evening by not wanting to have sex in Derek’s car (last time that led to bad things) and ended up wanting to have sex in his car. Which was closely followed by actually having sex in his car.

Yeah, I know. No self control.

After a while, we finally leave his car to have dinner. It was, as promised, Ramen noodles and Merlot, since Derek had almost nothing else. It’s actually what we probably would have had at my house, if I didn’t live with Izzie, since most of our meals end up being hospital cafeteria food, something from Joe’s, or dinner at a restaurant near the hospital.

The best part of the evening wasn’t the sex, or the whispered apologies for everything we both screwed up, or even the “little bit of light conversation”. It was when Derek grabbed his old brown leather messenger bag, filled it with clothes and his toothbrush, and left for the house with me.

Did I mention he also added a box of condoms?