The Way It Ends

Author's note:

Cheers to another :).

bobbiejelly

The Way It Ends

You call her, because you don't know who else to call; who else would understand this but her, anyway?

You call her years past the time you've last seen her. Decades, even, or at least more than one of those.

You call her in the evening, even though you've known since the morning.

Known that the person you thought you'd spend the rest of your life with had been cheating on you.

You think it's your fault, but then again, you always do.

If you had been more focused on him, less selfish, less of a cowboy, then maybe he might have stayed.

It feels like when you were an intern still, back when you were begging him to pick you. Begging him to choose you. Begging him to love you.

And that was before he even called you a whore.

At the end of the day, when you look back, you realize that some of the most romantic moments had been full of deception, much less adultery.

Damn, one of the first things you'd ever said to him was 'you really like yourself, don't you?' and now you realize he's in love with himself more than he was ever in love with her, much less you.

And you even have kids with him.

And you have a post-it with him.

And you have a marriage with him.

Had a marriage with him.

You always thought somehow you'd have been the one that stuck for him.

But now you realize you might have needed the warning bells sooner.

You saw him fail to choose between you and Addison.

You saw him fail to choose between you and Rose.

And now, you fail to see him choose between you and a perky little woman that you've never met.

You've seen him angry; he nearly ended it with you when you messed up that clinical trial.

You've seen him overconfident; he took all of the credit for the other clinical trial.

You've seen him pass you by for his work time and again.

And yet, you've settled. And what that says about you, you don't really care to know.

You thought you were past 'dark and twisty Meredith,' stage of your life, but as it turns out, you've never ever left it.

At this point, you realize you've hardly dated before him. You met him your first day as an intern, hell, the night before that, and you'd never really had a relationship.

And maybe that's why you didn't realize that yours wasn't wholly healthy.

You drove Cristina crazy for years with your troubles.

It's only now that you wonder if you put her through hell for good reason.

And now she's gone, or at least she's not just next to you like she used to be.

Cristina's in Switzerland now, and you're still in Seattle.

And now you find yourself calling her in Los Angeles.

"Hey," you start, and your voice breaks immediately, and you almost hang up before she has to answer.

"Meredith?" her surprised voice rings into the evening.