Okay, I was bored and listening to music, so this is what came out of that boredom. And because I'm still bored, I've decided to make it a little game for all you Broadway buffs. Here's the game:

The story is based on a certain Lerner and Lowe song from a Broadway musical, but I'm not going to tell you what. You get to guess, if you want. If you need an extra hint, the song starts the same way as the story.

I would just like to take a moment to dedicate this to Gigi for managing to use three of my favorite words in one review. And I did promise a chapter or short story dedication for such a feat.

I don't own anything.

Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn.

He stalks down the hallways and the scowl on his face tells everybody to get out of his way.

What the hell is she thinking, leaving? What the hell does Los Angeles have that Seattle doesn't?

He supposes it's more what Seattle has that Los Angeles doesn't. But still, it doesn't matter.

She's gone and there's nothing more to it than that.

He should be happy that she's gone. He should be shouting her departure from the rooftops. He can go into Plastics without that specter of disappointment hanging over him. Not that he would care if she were disappointed in him. He doesn't give a damn about the woman.

And yet…

This is getting him absolutely nowhere. He didn't like her; she spent her life trying to make him miserable. There were days he was certain that he was going to end up in jail for strangling her. And now she's gone. She can't make his life hell anymore. She's gone and he's happy about it.

Eventually Meredith musters up enough courage to find him sitting in the tunnels. "You want to tell me?" she asks after awhile.

He stares at her stonily. There's nothing to tell.

She'll have to come back eventually; no one ever gets out of this place completely. She'll come back and she'll try to explain and he can have the immense pleasure of completely shutting her out.

"I'm not going to sit around here forever," Meredith asserts, trying to cajole him into talking. It won't work.

She can rot in hell for all he cares. In fact, with that adultery on her record, she probably will. So what? He doesn't care. He doesn't care about her any more than he cares about one of their patients. He doesn't care about her at all.

"This has something to do with Addison, doesn't it?" Meredith deduces. No shit.

He doesn't care; he's happy she's gone. He's glad that he won't have to deal with her again. He's happy; he hopes she's miserable.

But if he doesn't care, then why does he hope she's miserable?

"Don't make me get Izzie," Meredith warns. "I don't want to, but I'll do it. You know I will. Don't make me."

"I just got used to her, okay?!" he finally explodes. "I got used to her being around and now she's not. It's not that big of a deal."

"You miss her."

Does he?

His mornings aren't the same without the whiff of her coffee and perfume. He doesn't have anyone to spar with. There's no one testing his will, testing his temper, testing his skill.

Does that mean he misses her?

He listens for the sharp beat of her heels against linoleum. He keeps seeing flashes of red out of the corner of his eye. He keeps waiting for the harsh bark of his last name.

He's gotten used to her. He knows her moods; he knows what days she'll give him a little latitude, he knows when she needs to just be left alone. He knows how she takes her coffee. He knows what she eats for lunch. He knows the little tune she hums when she's happy. He knows how she says good morning on a truly good morning. He knows how her tongue will treat his name in different moods. All these things are practically second-nature to him now.

And, yes, he misses her.

So he misses her? That's not surprising. He spent months with the woman. But it won't be hard to forget her, to scrub her from his mind. Give him a couple of months and he'll barely remember the letter her name starts with.

"You're in love with her," Meredith accuses him.

Now that isn't true. He just misses her, that's all. He just misses seeing her smile and that swelling sense of pride a compliment from her creates. He just misses her laugh and biting comments. He misses the sparkle in her eyes, the sense that there could be much more to this thing than they were admitting. He misses the eyesex and the real sex, the almost kiss in the NICU and the real kiss in the bar. He misses the angry look on her face when he did something against her will. He misses her good mornings and he misses her rants. He misses her.

Does that mean he's in love with her?

He's always been happy without a woman in his life. He's always been happy with multiple women passing through his life. He's never been a one-woman sort of guy. So his life has been kind of consumed by this one woman? That doesn't mean he can't go back to his old ways.

But he doesn't want to.

He's in love with her.

And she's gone.

Well, that sucks.

If you think you know what song this is based on, feel free to say so in a review. Or if you want an extra hint. Or if you want one more chapter (I don't promise that it will be long, but I do promise that it would be not terribly sad). Or if you just want to say hi. Feel free. I'm not antisocial; I would love to hear something, even if it IS just "hi"!

-Juli-