Where You Belong

108

Thursday

Meredith walked by the open door to the small conference room with her head held parallel between her shoulders, pretending not to glance at the figure sitting with her back to the door. She stopped several feet past the door, turned, and repeated the exercise in the opposite direction. The figure hadn't moved; not that Meredith expected her to. She had been repeating this behaviour for the better part of ten minutes, and the dark haired intern doing charts at the table had barely moved at all.

After turning around again, Meredith paused in the doorway, trying to force herself to simply walk through the door and say what she had come to say. It had been a week since she had last spoken with her half-sister, and she knew it was time to say something. Five somethings, actually.

Lexie meant well, and wanted to be Meredith's sister. She had put herself out there – several times, in fact – and now it was time for Meredith to do the same.

Losing her nerve, Meredith stumbled away from the open doorway and paused to take a breath.

"Come on, Grey," she hissed at herself. "You can do this."

After three confidence building breaths, Meredith squared her shoulders and marched into the conference room.

Lexie didn't look up from her charts.

Meredith hesitated, wanting to turn and leave, telling herself that Lexie would never know, but instead forced herself to pull out a chair two down from Lexie and take a seat.

Lexie looked up, and her shocked expression told Meredith she had expected another intern to be joining her and not the half-sister who had pretty much been avoiding her for three and a half months.

Meredith held up a hand before Lexie could say a word. "I hate Chinese food," she started. She had spent the last week trying to come up with five appropriate things to say to her half-sister in response to Lexie's list; hatred of apples, Etch-A-Sketch artistry, playing of the trombone, enjoyment of math, and the hand thing that they shared in common.

The younger Grey looked surprised at Meredith's words, but remained silent as understanding dawned on her face. She knew what Meredith was doing, and with it, knew the significance of the older Grey extending this olive branch.

"I love strawberries," she continued, "Especially strawberry ice cream."

Lexie smiled softly, meeting Meredith's eyes.

Meredith swallowed, struggling to maintain her resolved of get in, say the five things and get out. She looked down at the table for a moment before meeting Lexie's eyes once more. "I'm not artistic, like, at all. I can't draw or paint or whatever to save my life. Seriously, I can't even draw a freaking stick figure." She paused. "I also can't cook. I'm not even allowed to cook at home. Things just happen when I'm in the kitchen. Things get set on fire, things burn, things just don't turn out like they're supposed to, even with supervision. Seriously, Derek's given up trying."

Lexie laughed.

"And five; you said that you noticed that we both do the hand thing... Well, I noticed that we both do the rambling thing, too, so that's about us, and because you used an 'us' thing, I thought I should, too."

Having finished her small rant, Meredith exhaled shakily, now realizing she had not thought this through because she now had no idea of what to say. Lexie was staring at her with hope, and Meredith was fighting the urge to simply stand up and run from the room. It had taken her a long time to build the nerve to take this step, and an even longer time to decide to make an attempt with Lexie. She was still scared of being hurt again, but she'd realized now that was no way to live. Susan had died, and Thatcher had just about shattered her, but that didn't mean she couldn't try with Lexie. That didn't mean she shouldn't try with Lexie. She had a chance to add to her family.