Falling Apart, Barely Breathing

Chapter 3: Something To Talk About

Chapter 3: Something to Talk About

"Just so you know ladies it's the last call so if you want anything more to drink then ask me now, and after three-thirty, we close the bar so you'd best be calling yourself a cab by then so you're not stuck outside in the rain," Joe says softly as he's sympathetic to both women's plight.

"Do you want another?" Addison offers to Meredith. "I think I owe you one" She answers her own question and Addison motions for Joe for one last refill for both Meredith and herself.

"You know this has been kind of nice" Meredith admits to Addison in her drunk and weary state. "You're really not as bad as I wish you were" she sighs and Addison smiles softly at that and doesn't press her to tell anything more about that.

"You're not too terrible yourself" Addison sighs to herself. "Normally I don't do my drinking with interns but normally I don't drink myself under the table either," she says.

"You're getting a divorce," Meredith says emphatically. "You're allowed to drink yourself under the table for days if you want to," she offers.

"I don't think I want to drink myself under the table for days" Addison answers Meredith sympathetically.

"The first time I was drunk for an entire two weeks the first time my mother didn't remember me" Meredith sighs.

"I'm sorry," says Addison simply.

"Doctor Ellis Grey was not an easy woman," says Meredith. "She was tough on everybody. Wanted them to only be ordinary so she could be extraordinary' she says, or at least that's the way it felt to me, being her daughter and all" Meredith concludes.

"My mother was not an easy woman either" Addison replies as she realizes she hasn't really told many people that ever. "Bizzy Forbes," Addison begins and Meredith is trying to wrap her head around whether or not she's heard that name but she can't place it right now. "She had the highest standards for our family as well. She would never let us cry in front of other people and she would never want us to cry outside of our rooms" she sighed. "And I guess I've picked up on that habit," Addison says with a humph.

"Well I guess somehow we do have something to talk about," says Meredith weakly.

"I guess we do," says Addison, sounding sort of surprised at herself.

Meredith takes another gulp of her tequila now, not bothering to nurse the drink in tiny sips as Addison had been.

"Thank you for letting me know that I'm not a total washout for wasting all my time here staring at nothing as my name changes from Doctor Addison Adrianne Forbes Montgomery-Shepherd to Doctor Addison Adrianne Forbes Montgomery-Nothing" Addison sighs.

"Jesus, Addison! If I had a name that was that long I swear I'd be jumping for joy if I were losing the one at the end of it" Meredith exclaims before she can think better of saying something as absurd as what she just did say.

"Well you see my parents they wanted to hyphenate but then they never added the hyphen and the Adrienne part is only my middle name and most people don't ever say that one out loud anyways and the Shepherd part was for Derek because we wanted to be all grown up and cool when we married and the Addison part is just for my first name" she explains.

And Meredith swears she starts laughing alongside Addison because if that's not the longest explanation she's ever heard for an even longer name then she's not sure she'll be able to keep breathing if she hears about Addison's drunken explanation about a deeper meaning of the "Forbes" and the "Montgomery" parts.

The laughing vibrates deep into their chests now and if there had been a ten-tonne stack of bricks that had hit them over the head earlier at least now it might feel like at least a few of them had been lifted up and away.