Title: Facing Tomorrow

(Meredith/Derek)

Disclaimer: The characters are just that, and don't belong to me.

Summary: This picks up where episode nine left off for the summer.

Please cut me some slack here, this is my first time writing. Constructive criticism and ata boys appreciated.

Meredith stood there in stunned silence. Did this woman just say what she thought she had? Maybe this day had been too long and now she was hallucinating. One minute she and Derek were talking about steak, wine and rules, the next some stranger was introducing herself as Derek's wife and accusing her of "screwing her husband". How could this be? And what did it mean? It was almost too much to process at that particular moment. Even on a good day with a full night's sleep it would seem like too much to process. What was happening to her world? And why was Derek just standing there saying nothing. Well, he had said one thing the moment before this Addison person walked up, right? Yeah, he said, "Meredith, I'm so sorry". This must be true then, why else would he have said that? As Meredith's mind raced with these questions and realizations, the only thing she suddenly wanted to do was to get out of there!

As calmly as she could, almost as if she was in an altered state, Meredith turned and spoke to Derek.

"Could I please have the keys to the car and the house?"

Her cold calmness unnerved Derek and it took him a moment before a reply came.

"Meredith, please give me a moment and we can go home together like we had planned."

Slightly irritated this time she said, "Derek, just give me the keys to MY car, so that I can go home to MY house, by MYself, and you can have all of the moments you want."

"Mer we need talk, remember? We need to talk and I want to talk, so please lets just go together like we planned five minutes ago."

"Five minutes ago you didn't have a wife as far as I knew, so I think it would be safe to say that things have changed a bit since then. Now, I have had a very long day, and we are not going to talk because I don't have the time nor the energy right now to listen to any more of your crap that you might be spewing! I want the keys, and I want them now!"

Derek quietly took the keys out and handed them to her. As he placed them in her tiny hand, he said in no more than a whisper,

"I really am so sorry".

Meredith quickly left down the hallway without so much as acknowledging this woman claiming to be Derek's wife. As she fought between anger and tears, she made her way out of the hospital, and one word kept repeating itself in her head again and again, "UNBELIEVEABLE!"

Meredith just sat, sat in her car, didn't know what to do, where to go, or even how to react. After a few minutes she decided that she wasn't ready to deal with this at the moment, and that meant that she couldn't handle the roommates right now because they would want to know what was wrong with her. George and Izzie meant well, but Meredith just couldn't handle it right now. Many times before in Meredith's life, when she was having a tough day, things were going badly, or she just needed some space to think, she would drive. So she put the keys that Derek had just given her moments earlier into the ignition, started the car, and drove off.

Meredith drove for what had to be hours. She played one scene after another through her mind. They were scenes of her and Derek over these last few months since she arrived at Seattle Grace to start her intership. She replayed the first time she met him at the bar, that hazy first night together after too much to drink, the first time she spotted him at the hospital, and all the times he tried to persuade her to just go out with him. She thought about the shared passionate kiss in the elevator and the way his intense eyes looked at her over the operating table. She felt such a connection to this man. She ran through the nights they had been spending together. When was the last time that they hadn't spent the night together? She remembered wanting more info about him as their relationship progressed, and his ultimate response being to "have faith", and she had. He had so many opportunities to tell her about this before now, why hadn't he? Why when he took her to his trailer that night had he not told her then when he was busy sharing so much else about himself? Why, why, why? She had come to believe in him, in them. So much so that she had shared her secret with him today. Admittingly, nothing compared to his little secret, but nonetheless she had. She remembered very vividly the last time they had made love, and she thought they were making love. They had never said those three little words to each other, but if she were being completely honest with herself, she knew she had wanted to. Again, why? Was this Addison right? Where her and Derek just "screwing"? She knew she wasn't, but apparently, he was.

Exhaustion finally started to take over as Meredith headed for the house. She quickly and quietly entered the darkened, silent house and went upstairs. As she sat on the edge of her bed trying to decide what to do next, the tears finally started to come, and once they had, she didn't think they were ever going to stop. She had been hurt before in the past, but something about this felt different this time, a different kind of hurt/pain. What was she going to do? How was she going to face her friends, her co-workers, and how was she going to ever be able to face Derek? How was she going to face tomorrow?