Secret smile

26

Christmas sucked. Meredith had decided that long enough ago that she wasn't about to change her mind. It was an overblown holiday with stupid happy people and stupid happy decorations and stupid happy fake elves and fat guys dressed like Santa. It was stupid and someone should make sure the holiday stopped coming. Because her house looked like Santa's freakin' village, her awkward family dinner had been...awkward, and now she was driving away from her mom's nursing home, once again reminded that she basically had no one. She was pretty sure she had places she could go if she wanted too. Izzie was going to be doing something with people and Meredith could join in on that. Sophie had said something about her going over there if she wanted to but that wasn't...it wasn't right or something. It wasn't where she belonged and she was pretty sure she would just be intruding.

It wasn't that she actually didn't have anyone, she knew she did. She knew that technically she had people, except she didn't. Her mom was...not her mom and even her mom before she got sick was better than her mom who had no idea who she was and ordered her around like a nurse or an orderly. Her fake family was enjoying Christmas with each other, and she wasn't sure she was really a part of the family yet to spend Christmas day with them. So she was basically alone. Which was stupid because usually, the alone thing didn't bother her this much. She had good friends and she liked her sister and she liked her life most of the time even if things kind of sucked with the daddy thing and her mom but she wasn't one to mope, not really. Which is exactly why Christmas sucked. Like Derek said, for people that were alone, it was a big fat reminder.

Of course, thinking of Derek made her feel guilty. Because he was actually, completely alone. She had been the one to tell him he wasn't, because he had his brother and his sister and her; but she had a feeling that Derek really was alone. He didn't have his family, and shopping with him yesterday had been hard. He hadn't been able to talk sometimes as he thought about his dead family and being alone. She couldn't begin to imagine what this day was like to him. Because she knew Sophie and every now and then she saw this really happy side of Derek and she could only imagine what Christmas had been like for him before everything had gone to crap. She had never actually had anyone at Christmas, not that she remembered, so she couldn't imagine having someone and then not. She didn't want Derek to be alone. She hated that he was probably in bed, like last year, crying or something. Derek was one of her best friends and she was definitely feeling...something for him. So it wasn't good for him to cry. It was the last thing she wanted. And that's why she had told Mark that she would spend Christmas with Derek while Mark and Lexie spent the day at Sophie's.

Derek had no idea. And he'd probably be less than happy that they were planning like this without him but he wasn't going to be happy about anything so this was definitely okay. She would go and...she had no idea what she would do. But she would do whatever it was that he needed her to do. If it was give him a hug while he cried or just sit there in silence, she could do it. Mark had told her he was worried about Derek. He had sat there during the awkward family dinner, an outcast like her, and he had whispered that he was afraid to leave Derek alone. She thought Mark was probably over reacting; Derek wasn't suicidal. He wasn't going to jump from any tall buildings or anything, but she got it. Derek didn't need to be alone today. He needed someone. So she could be that someone. And then they both wouldn't have to be alone, at least not completely. She was pretty sure she wasn't exactly what Derek needed but she could be there and he'd have someone and Mark could go introduce Lexie to his sister, which was insane but that was a different thing to think about on a day where her best friend wasn't hurting so much.

And this would get her mind off of her mom. She realized it was selfish. It was beyond selfish to think that she would be able to avoid thinking about her mom by helping Derek, whose shit was worse than hers. Definitely selfish but she wasn't going to think about that. She was going to think about helping her best friend. She pulled into Mark's driveway and walked up to the door, ringing the doorbell carefully.