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“Do you have a half hour to meet me for a coffee?”
“Everything okay?”
He paced the length of his front porch imagining her frowning at the unexpected Sunday morning call.
“Aye, just need to talk to you about something. And it should be in person.”
He felt guilty for being this secretive about it because he knew that if she called him and said the same thing he would be imagining the worst possible things.
“We’re just leaving for the park. Can you meet me there?”
“That should work. I’ll go for a run and stop by. Text me the coordinates?”
She hung up the phone and he held on to his for a while. He looked at it like it was a bomb that might go off in his hands anytime, wishing that he never had to make the call.
But now it was done, he had to go in and change his clothes, put on his runners, start to pound the pavement and come clean.
She saw him approaching from the west, over the hilly grass. The sweat rolled down the sides of his face, he had a sleeveless muscle t-shirt on that clung nicely and she appreciated the view and thought about how she would like to see it more often. Him in something other than scrubs and a lab coat. Even though he looked more than fine in those also.
“Morning!”
He said it cheerfully but his face didn’t really match up with the tone of his voice. She started to imagine all kinds of strange things and a lot of them took the shape of Addison which was not only ridiculous but also pretty offensive given what happened to the only wife he had.
“Hey.” She greeted him with a big smile.
“You look nice.”
She did, sun kissed cheeks from sitting outside a bit too long in the late summer sun and her hair was more golden than in the industrial lighting of hospital hallways. He wished that he’d made his move earlier, like right after that wedding or even at the wedding so they could have had the summer to be happy. Except, that wouldn’t have worked either as he now knows.
“I had a great date on Friday night. But don’t tell anyone.”
She flirted, the way they did for such a long time before he got his act together.
“Anyone I know?” He flirted back.
“I can’t tell you, he’s a pretty great catch and I don’t want you getting any ideas.”
He laughed, a short, tired laugh through his nose.
“Don’t be anti-social, come sit with us.”
Amelia waved Hayes over to the table she was sitting at with Meredith in the lounge as he put a container in the microwave.
“Are you seriously brown bagging?” Meredith asked him.
“What?”
“Did you cook that? Whatever it is? Leftovers? Or too much takeout?”
“Oxtail. I made it. And rice and peas.” He explained.
“You cook Jamaican food?” Amelia asked very skeptically.
“I cook anything, really.”
“Pass it over.” She ordered.
Meredith shook her head at him. “I didn’t raise her.”
Before he could decide, Amelia grabbed his clean fork that he hadn’t yet used and took a bite.
“Oompf. Mmm.” She moaned happily.
“Good?” Meredith guessed.
“The real deal.” Amelia told her and wiggled her eyebrows. “You might even say he’s a keeper.”
Amelia then turned to Hayes. “Tradesies?”
“No.” He said, frowning at the sad salad that sat in a plastic take out container in front of her.
“Well where’s the fun in that?” Amelia wondered for a second before her pager went off.
He shook his head and stood up to get another fork.
“Just as well.” She huffed and collected her things and then passed behind Hayes with her hands squeezing his shoulders much harder and more aggressively than necessary and “whispering” in his ear so loudly that anyone in the room could hear.
“She’s single AND she’s available AND she has a sister who loves home cooking. Okay? Okay!”
He stared at Meredith, blushing even long after Amelia ran out of the lounge. But it was now or never.
“So, you heard the woman.” He said with a wink. And before he got up, he had himself a date, his first date in twenty years.
“About that…”
“Uh-oh?” She guessed correctly. She worried about the aftermath of his first date and so she outright told him that she preferred to keep it PG rated so she didn’t end up in the same scene she already lived through once.
He took and let out a big breath.
“I sat the lads down yesterday to let them know that I’ve met someone and I’d like to start seeing her. That I thought I was ready and we were already friends and she understood what it was like because she also went through the same terrible thing.”
“And how did that go?”
Even as she asked the question she knew that the answer wouldn’t be anything good.
“Awful. Hell.”
He shook his head and wiped away his sweat with his forearm.
“Well, Liam was alright. I think that he said, and I quote, ‘okay but so long as I don’t have to ever see you being gross together’. Austin started to hyperventilate. Couldn’t breathe. Never saw him like that, collapsed on the kitchen floor and started rocking back and forth.”
“Oh my God.” She did not see that coming.
“He kept repeating that he couldn’t breathe and that he thought that he was going to die.”
Just thinking about it made Hayes sick to his stomach.
“Forty minutes of that and he was so exhausted he went to bed. At 3:30 in the afternoon. I thought he was just trying to get away from me, but no, he actually passed out and slept. Then when he got up I told him that I loved him and I was so sorry that he felt so terribly and that while I had hoped to date, I wouldn’t until we could get him sorted.”
He couldn’t even look at her for a long time after he said that from a mixture of embarrassment and guilt.
“I’m really, really sorry.” He said, picking at the corner of the wooden bench where the stain chipped and the wood started to rot.
“You keep doing that and you’ll end up with a splinter big enough that I’ll have to surgically remove it on the ground here.”
She joked because she didn’t know what else she should say. This sucked. This really sucked. She had been ready for him to freak out and run and hide and for her to have to throw him the life jacket but this turn of events took her by surprise.
He pursed his lips and looked at her. She thought about how he actually had fuller lips than she’d remembered, and she definitely spent some time thinking about them lately.
“It feels a tiny bit like I led you on.”
“Hayes, that’s crazy and you know it. You know how I know that you know it? Because you’re not a drama queen.”
Even now she managed to make him feel warm and fuzzy on the inside.
“I should have talked to them before I asked you.”
His voice and face are both full of regrets.
“If I asked those three for permission for everything I did in my life that affected them I’d be locked up in an asylum somewhere by now, drooling into a bib. And maybe a lobotomy to go along with it.”
He smiled even though he really didn’t feel like it.
“But we had such a good time and to snatch that away feels awful.”
He looked at her wistfully like a kid who is about to make a wish before blowing out the candles on their birthday cake.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
She asked and even mustered a smile.
He laughed, not happily and through his nose as if he was poking fun at himself.
“It’s nothing, it’s stupid.”
“What?”
He liked that about her, the fact that she was curious about everything and he always thought that it made her the great surgeon that she was. He would never tell her, but her hands weren’t as skilled as Cristina Yang’s. That woman operated the same way that Yo-Yo Ma played the cello. But Meredith had curiosity and that was her strength.
“I’m just thinking how I regret that I didn’t kiss you.”
“On our date?”
“Then. Or another time since figuring out that I was interested. You know, it’s been quite a while.”
“If you weren’t ready then it wouldn’t have been a good memory.”
She pointed out something that he thought was probably true. But even so, now he would have to live every day without that memory. And it could have been something really nice to wake up to.
“Trust me on that.” She said and played with her watch while she recalled that day with Thorpe. Since then she wondered if he’s told everyone he knows about it or whether it was so embarrassing and awful for him that it will be a secret for the grave.
“I know, you’ve said.”
She covered his hand with hers and gave it a warm squeeze.
“I won’t kiss you now.” She said.
He snorted again.
“I didn’t think that you would.”
“But not for the reasons that you think.”
“Oh? And what are those?”
He didn’t know if he wanted the truth or if he just wanted to continue to hang out on this bench with her. What if it was the last time?
“When I kiss you, I want it to be a hello, not a goodbye.”
He’d become kind of cynical in the last 24 hours, he couldn’t help it. The whole thing seemed a waste of time and a waste of that feeling that good things were coming his way. But maybe she just gave him new hope?
“When?” He couldn’t help to ask.
“Don’t you think?” She asked back.
“I don’t know what I think anymore. I’m pretty sick of thinking that I have life figured out this time and then it turns out that I don’t.”
“Well I think that this is just a pause.”
“I would like to share your optimism, please send me some?”
It’s a small smile that followed the request but it sent her into a fit of roaring laughter.
“You are the first man, or even first person, who asked me for a dose of optimism.”
“Then you should have plenty banked.”
She laughed some more.
“My banked optimism has to be multiplied by the Meredith Grey pessimism factor and you probably know me well enough by now to figure out what that leaves you with.”
He didn’t have it in him to continue to joke so he watched her kids while they ran around the playground and fought over the seesaw and what was the best way to balance it.
“I should get going.” He said.
“Hayes?”
“Hmm?”
“You are an excellent father.”
He looked at her like he completely disagreed.
“It sure doesn’t feel like it.”
“Because it’s the heat of the moment. You are at the bottom of the pit now, so it’s a steep way out of there.”
“But let me guess, tomorrow is a new day? All’s well that ends well? The best is yet to come?”
He felt bitter, so his words were equally as bitter. And he knew that she didn’t deserve any of it but who else in his life did he have to vent to?
“I’m sorry.” He said.
“I get it.” She promised. “And I won’t lie and say that I’m not disappointed, especially after Friday. But I won’t take back what I said, that I think that you’re a great father. No matter how many annoying sayings you recite back at me.”
“Am I though? All this time I was thinking about how much I liked you. And how good it felt to be around you. And how happy I was that you were better and you were back and smiling. And then about how I could make a move and not feel like I was betraying my vows. Even though I know they don’t bind me anymore.”
She let him vent and then she watched him when he finished his bottle of water.
“I considered how to tell the lads. And I even did it almost right away. I didn’t hide anything. But I didn’t think it would go this way. So, father of the year here, thinking about his own readiness and not his son’s.”
“Stop.”
She said it softly but she held her hand up in front of his face.
“You know, when I had COVID, every minute was a struggle. It’s hard being tired of breathing. You know? If you’re tired of breathing then you’re tired of living. And I thought I was running out of time too. That was just so terrifying. But I made it and I even consider myself lucky. And now, it feels to me like I have all the time in the world.”
“Like a second chance?”
He hazarded a guess, not having experienced the same personal trauma that she did this year.
“A bit of that, yeah. And so Austin needs help. He needs to figure out how to deal with you living your life. And maybe that sounds so hard, but he will have to do it, you know? Not just so that you can have your own life too but also because he’s not enjoying any of this either. Nobody hyperventilates into a bag and wants to do it again and again every day. Been there, done that and didn’t even get the t-shirt.”
“I don’t know when that will be.”
He was nothing if not honest and straightforward. And she liked that a lot about him. Having to guess at what’s in another person’s heart is a game for youth and she was definitely not that.
“Then let’s hope that it’s sooner rather than later.”
There she went again with her optimism.
“And then you’ll kiss me?” He asked hopefully.
“Even better, I’ll let YOU kiss ME.”
“Gladly.”
It’s just a word but it feels like a promise.