norway | mark sloan

⇥ CHAPTER 33

.A NIGHT LONG AWAITED FOR.
— season four —

     IF THERE WAS one thing to know about Marcela De La Cruz, it was her inability to easily tell people she loves them. Perhaps it was the reason she loved Valentine's Day so much — it being the only day in the year she allowed herself to spread the love she has for others all day unapologetically and without worries of being cast-aside for being lovey-dovey. Along with the reason it took her a year to platonically tell her best-friend she loves him.

Definitely the reason she left her boyfriend alone in the middle of the night after he professed his love for her.

And while she knew excusing herself because there wasn't enough cookies in Meredith's house felt like the worst lie ever thought of, it was the only thing she thought of in the moment.

So why was she at the hospital?

"Sweets?"

She heard his voice — that was sure — but she didn't turn to face him, even when every fiber of her being begged to turn, to talk, to cry.

She felt guilty — guilty for leaving, guilty for not feeling the same way her boyfriend felt for her, and guilty for eating four out of the six bags of cookies she bought on her walk from Timothy's apartment to Seattle Grace.

She sat on the bench in front of the parking lot — her eyes locked on the concrete floor below her shoes as her hand moved from the cookie bag to her mouth and back on an endless loop. It wasn't until Mark's shoes came into view — scrub shoes pointing at her worn-down converse — that her loop stopped.

"Cookie?" She asked, reaching the sugary dessert out to him.

"Thanks..." He sat beside her. "Are those all yours?"

Her hand, the one not tasked with feeding her cookies, moved toward her hair before twirling it between her fingers. "No..."

Mark chuckled. "Hair."

Marcela broke her gaze on the concrete floor and turned to him, eyebrows furrowed. "What?"

"Your hair... You always twirl it in your fingers when you're lying."

"Oh." She nodded, and went back to staring a hole in the concrete floor.

"So, what's—?"

"Don't look at me like that." Marcela sighed, flicking her eyes between his own and the floor.

"What?"

"Your alarm is wrong, Mark." Marcela laughed half-heartedly, knowing that was why he was there. "I feel like everything is collapsing, and I really don't want to face that right now."

"Okay." He nodded, grabbing another cookie from her bag. "Then, what do you want to do?"

That was the question — what was she going to do? It was one she asked when she entered Timothy's apartment, when she saw his romantic dinner, when she saw his dreamy eyes stare back into hers with unspoken words of affection she had seen since a week before Valentine's Day when she thought she could grow the same affections.