After

Part Two

“You will need to speak with my wife about that.”

Sara frowned at the phone cell that Grissom handed her. “Hello. No. No. No. You have a week to finish. One week Mark.” Sara disconnected the phone.

Gil could sense her agitation. The contractor working their deck was dragging his feet but that wasn’t why Sara was irritated. He was doing it at every turn now, calling her his wife. She wasn’t his wife. She was his live in partner, the beneficiary to his insurance, his emergency contact, his life, his heart but she was not wife.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Tell people I am you wife.”

He had never thought about. The first time he’d done it had been during a doctor’s visit to make sure that his hearing was still intact from the surgery

“I guess because it’s easier. We are too old to be girlfriend and boyfriend. It best explains what you are to me.”

“No it’s a lie. I am your live in lover, your girlfriend, your friend but according to the state of Nevada and all powers that lie there in. I am not Mrs. Gil Grissom.”

“The powers that lie therein?”

“Don’t change the subject. I want you to stop that. It’s deceptive.”

He went to say something but she stopped him. “And don’t give me that bullshit about not needing a piece of paper.”

Sara put the paper back to her face and read the sport’s headlines.

~~~~~~~

Nick was watching Jim shake the life into a martini. “So why shaken and not stirred?”

Jim looked at him with pity. “Kids.”

The phone rang and Gil called from the kitchen. “Get that Nick.”

Nick reached for the land-line . “Hello…..One Sec.”

Nick pressed the phone to his chest and called out. “Sara phone for you.”

Sara picked up an extension from some other place in the house. Nick hung up on his end.

In a few minutes Sara’s bare feet made no sound as she moved into the living. She stood next to Nick.

“Who did they ask for Nick?”

Nick speared an olive and moved it through the frigid liquid. “I thought you were making me a Gimlet….Huh.” He looked at Sara.

“Who did the person on the phone ask for?”

Nick sipped. “That is good stuff Jim. Where’s the pizza Gris?”

Gil looked over his glasses at Nick. “I am Italian. It’s not just toss some sauce on it and few crumbs of cheese. It takes time. Is Greg on his way?”

“Greg’s with Warrick. I think I just heard them pull up. ”

Sara raised her voice. “Nicky!”

“What?”

“Who did the caller ask for…specifically.”

“They asked for you.”

“They asked for Sara Sidle?

Nick shrugged.

“What exactly did they say Nick.”

Nick’s eyes shifted left. “They asked for Mrs. Grissom.”

Sara’s eyes were slits and her mouth was pursed into a thin line. “I am not Mrs. Grissom. I am not married.” She pointed at Gris and then at herself. “We are not married. I am not Mrs. Grissom. I am Ms…” The ‘s’ in the word sounded like a chainsaw. “Sara Sidle. I wish every man is my life would get that straight.”

She stomped from the living area. Gil watched her disappear down their long hall.

Brass stopped shaking and poured. “You gonna follow her?”

Gil shook his head. “Oh no. She has been raising hell about that all week. I think she feels like she’s loosing her independence.”

Brass’ small meaty hand filled the canister again as Warrick and Greg entered. “You think that’s it? You think Cookie’s afraid of loosing her independence?”

Gil sliced the pepperoni paper-thin. “Why else would she freak out like that?”

Brass poured for Warrick and a giddy Greg. “Real drinks with real men talking about our women. It’s so good to be a CSI.”

Brass stopped pouring. “You have a woman Greggo?”

“Well if you keep talking I might get one.” Greg pulled his glass towards him and took a healthy sip.

Brass started talking again. “So Gris you think that a woman who shoots better than you on a firing range is afraid of loosing her independence?”

“What else would it be?”

Warrick shook his head. “Gris, do I look you to you like a counsel for the wise? You can’t believe that is the reason!”

“I do believe it, why else would she get testy when people refer to her as my wife.”

Greg shook his empty glass at Brass. “Even I know better than that big guy.”

Gil waited. Brass took Greg’s proffered glass. “You need to slow down.”

“So Gris what’s the plan? You quite your job. You start teaching again. You buy her the fancy smancy house, you start acting like a normal person, having us over and hanging out.”

“Sara doesn’t care about a piece of paper.”

Nick grinned widely. “I can’t believe that I know something that Gil Grissom doesn’t know. Gris if a woman sets up house with you and she washes you dirty underwear and listens to you snore she so wants the piece of paper.”

Gil shook his head. “Sara’s not like that.”

“Then why did I just get yelled at for calling her to the phone in her own home.”

“Sara yelled at you?” Warrick asked.

“Oh she was all like I’m not Mrs. Grissom! You need to tell him Warrick.”

“You know why Cath and I got married?”

“I am sure you are going to tell me Warrick.” Gil reached for his own martini.

“We got married because my shit was sitting on the lawn and she changed the locks.”

Nick nodded. He’d dropped Warrick off at home and had seen his friends designer dudes folded neatly on the lawn. His underwear however was dangling form various trees throughout the neighborhood.

“You know I thought everything was fine. I thought things were going great but “Cath I am so jaded about marriage Willows Brown” did not think so. She had been waiting on the ring for a year. She thought it was coming at Christmas, then Valentine’s Day and when her birthday passed again my ass was sleeping on Nick’s pull out couch instead of on my perfectly calibrated side of the Sleep Number bed.”


“Don’t get to the point I got to Gris. It took me weeks to get her to even talk to me let alone back into house.”

Warrick put on his announcer voice. “Dr. Gil Grissom don’t let this happen to you.”

~~~~~~~~
Gil,

I need a little time to revaluate what I want from this relationship. I am staying a few nights in a hotel. It’s nothing you did. I just have not been honest with you or myself about what I need from a relationship, from this relationship.

Also:

1. Your clean t-shirts are folded and washed on the top of thy dryer.

2. Mr. Ziti said is still angry about the lab accident from last year. He’s holding your suit hostage until you promise not to bring him any more mysterious stains. Remember he is the best dry cleaner in town and he’s already banned Warrick. He mumbled something in Italian about crazy CSIs.

3. Your mom called. The DeMarco brothers invited her and your aunt to Italy. They don’t know when they will be back. Apparently Mario DeMarco wants to marry Aunt Silvy but she wants to check out his villa and winery first. She also is going to make him stop wearing that weird toupee.

4. We bought an ad for Lindsey’s senior program. We owe her a $100.00.

5. Mrs. Barka across the street likes to spy on you with your shirt off. Keep the curtains closed at night

6. I over-nighted your contracts for the Seattle conference and the Chicago Seminar. You should get your hotel and ticket confirmation via email. I did some bargaining and Rita agreed to pay twice your normal rate if you bring the tarantulas to Chicago.

7. You have your annual physical on Monday. I know you don’t want to go but you have too.

8. That tramp Molly Townsend called. She wants to know you can meet in her office for a meeting about joint research. I told her that the only research you do is with me, at least for now.
! He dialed Sara’s cell phone number.

“Sidle”

“Honey where are you?”

Sara bit her lip. “At the Luxor. I just need some time Gil.”

“Time to do what?” panicked seeped through the phone. He looked around there home. He was simply a visitor with Sara not there. She was doing what he had always been afraid of. She was leaving him. He wondered if there was another man.

“Time think.”

“And you have to do that away from me.”

She closed her eyes. She wondered what his pulse was. “Gil...”

“Honey will you please come home?”

“Gil…”

“Sara please.”

“Gil please.”

He sighed heavily determined to let Sara decide what she needed of him. “How long to do you need?”

“I don’t know.”

“What am I supposed to do while you work through this?”

“You can have all the poker parties you want,” she said lightly.

“You let me have all the poker’s parties I want anyway.”

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too,”

~~~~~

Sara woke with a start. She reached across the cool sheets. No Gil.

“Sara open the damn door!”

Sara sat up confused and barely awake. She looked at the door. Shit.

“Gil?”

The pounding picked up momentum. She walked too the door and pulled it open. Gil stepped into the darkened room.

Gil looked around the room pulling the door to the bathroom open and flinging back the shower curtain.

Sara watched him and something dawned on her. “You think I am cheating on you? Aw Gil.”

Sara sat on the bed and watched him prowl the moonlit room. She put her face in her hands only looking up when Gil began to pull her clothes from the dresser drawers and closet.

“What are you doing Gil?”

His hands never stopped moving. “What am I doing? Taking you home,” he said in low growl that had a sing song Italian cadence to. He slipped into the accent of his mother and aunt when he was dancing the line between cursing in Italian or English.

“Gil…”

“This is no way to solve a problem, leaving our home, our life.”

She watched as he threw a pair of jeans in her suitcase.

“You’re right.”

Sara had fallen into a fitful sleep away from Gil. She had planned on returning the next day so that could work through their issues together.

He sat next to her, most of the steam run out of him. He took his hand in hers and kissed her forehead. “You drive me crazy Sara. I feel like a fool. How could I have missed that you were upset about something. I am sorry that I missed it.”

“You can’t read minds Gil, not even mine.”

He kissed her ear and ran hand up and down her back. “I thought I was missing a t-shirt.”

“When did I become helpless? I used to wash for myself you know.”

“About the same time I lost track when garbage day was.”

“How did my Sara become so terribly conventional?”

“The same time you became so terribly protective.”

“Honey if you need to stay here. That’s fine.”

She leveled him with her brave I am completely rational and level headed gaze and blurted out the words that had rattling in her brain for months.

“I want to get married and have babies…your babies…our babies…I want us to get married.”

Gil sat looking at her for a long time. His mind ran through images of her from Boston, vibrant defiant daring any man to tame her, anyone to tame her. Her hot eyes sending him spinning off of his ivy covered pedestal challenging him to want her, to need her.

She had been the one in control then kissing him so passionately on the day he left that had neared a climax in his office.

Just doing what you always wanted to do Professor. Have a good flight. I’ll be seeing you around.

In Vegas he was wiser more adept at how to maintain the illusion of control that came so effortlessly for women and he had been quite good at it until she had seen through what he was doing and slowly and naively with an instinct that would have impressed the most vicious predator she had broken through his carefully constructed façade.

The chalk on his face.

The blanket around his shoulders.

The jealousy over Terri.

Hardly any jealousy over Heather.

The way she stood up to him.

The way she stood up for him.

If he had a father, a real father he would have raised his hands in defeat a long time ago but the naivety born from being raised by a woman who had willed things in fruition had led him to believe, had given him the allusion that his will could attain that same kind of control.

“Okay, Let’s go downstairs and do this.”

“Now?”

“Yeah the chapel stays open twenty fours hours. I checked.”