Our Spot

Chapter 29
Assignment from Dr. Peprah

Gil and Sara,

I think I have settled on Gil instead of Dr. Grissom. I was torn by professional courtesy, but that would necessitate that I call Sara, Ms. Sidle, and that seems very prim and very unlike her.

I digress.

This week's assignment is as follows:

Each of you will write - not type Sara - on an appropriate personal stationary of your own choosing a letter to the other that will include the following:

The first time you saw the other person.

The first time you realized you were in love with the other.

The first time you suffered rejection from the other person and how that made you feel.

What you need in a relationship.

How you hope your relationship will differ from your familial and romantic relationships. Might be the same as number four. In fact, I suspect that it will.

Three things you are most afraid of in this world.

Five things that you love about the other. You two will probably have more. The list may contain physical or emotional qualities but the list cannot be comprised of solely one or the other.


Finally, the list does not have to follow the above specific order. Exchange the letters the night before you come in for your next appointment. Savor them, love them, study them but don’t discuss them. This will be the first of what I hope will be many love letters between the two of you.
Dr. Greer


My Grissom,

I have always thought of you that way. Since the first time I walked into the lecture hall all those years ago, late, irritable and sleep deprived from a long night of chick flicks and wine coolers with Sadie and Becca.

I had never heard of you. I did not want to go to a lecture on bugs, but Dr. Baptiste told me I had to because he thought I might be interested in forensics. I plodded to the back row, something I never did. I didn’t even have my notebooks or my trusty micro recorder.

Then I heard your voice, that wonderful lyrical voice, so masculine and strong. The first word I ever heard you say was “larvae.” I turned it over and over again in my mind as I tried to duplicate the cadence, and I trembled.

Finally, I summoned up enough courage to look at you. You had a beard then too, dark and trimmed neatly. Immediately and foolishly, I wanted to run my hands through it. Even at the distance, I saw those eyes. Those clear, beautiful, impossibly blue eyes. I am sure I turned a thousand shades of red and pink, and I suddenly understood what I had never really known. I had the first flush of attraction, of infatuation.

Honey, I must admit something. I have no idea what you said during that lecture. I looked over a stray handout so that I could ask a semi intelligent question at the end of your talk. I bought your book from the campus bookstore the next day. I didn’t want you know that I was not paying attention. I always wanted to be your star pupil.

When you seemed to like me, even care for me, I was thrilled and scared and I wanted to please you even more. I wrote the perfect paper. I asked the right questions. Impressing you became my project.

I was never very good at the dating-mating game. By instinct I knew that you wanted to make the first move. The first hand touch, the first kiss, the first whatever had to be your choice.

I never suspected that you were married. You never talked about a wife, and you wore no ring. I just assumed. I probably should have asked, but I didn’t want anything to interrupt the fairytale I had concocted in my head.

When you left without a hug or a kiss on the cheek, I locked myself in my tiny apartment and I cried and cried and tried to figure out what was wrong with me. Why didn’t you want me? Wasn’t I smart enough or pretty enough or girly enough? What had I done wrong?

When you called it was like the sun bursting through the clouds and I decided that your friendship would be all the love I ever needed. I didn’t need to get married or have real relationship or have babies. It let me off the hook in way. It let me put what I was convinced were silly notions out of my mind and out of my heart.

Then you sent for me. You said you needed me. As always, I came running. I quit my job, my life, the sweet fellow I was dating, and ran because you said you needed me.

Again, I waited. I waited for you to tell me that you cared for me that you wanted to be with me. You didn’t. Instead everyone else around us, my first real family, got sucked into the tornado that was Grissom and Sara.

Matthew, Brass and Catherine stood behind you. Nick and Warrick stood behind me. Both sides pushed us towards one another as if we were children on a playground. God bless them all. If they hadn’t done that I might have left. They validated my feelings constantly telling me that you were gun shy and didn’t know what to do. I was not insane, there was something between us.

I waited. Nothing.

My third year in Vegas was awful. You were difficult and moody, and I couldn’t understand what was happening. I was sure that your foul mood was related to something I did or did not do.

The harder I tried, the angrier I seemed to make you. Our friends were certain it was Hank that had sent you to this dark place. I was relieved when I found out about his girlfriend. It gave me graceful, if thorny path, out of the relationship. I did it again. I let someone else’s behavior determine my choices. I did not love Hank. We had no future. I should have broken it off long before.

We couldn’t know that you were struggling with your illness. We couldn’t know that you were scared and afraid. I am grateful that you told Catherine, and that she was able to be there for you. She never told us exactly what happened, but we knew it was serious. It hurt that you didn’t confide in me, but understandable that you confided in Catherine.

Rejection. I summon this word up now despite all the other times you appeared to reject me because this was the year of Heather. Never mind that I was dating someone at the time. I didn’t say it was reasonable. I didn’t say it made sense.

Again, I locked myself in my apartment and cried because I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t yell at you or scream. We didn’t have a relationship. At that point, we barely had a friendship.

In the past, I told myself that you were treading lightly because I worked for you. You were careful and deliberate. You wanted to make sure. You were putting both our careers on the line.

Then you slept with a suspect. You could have had me, but you didn’t want me. You wanted someone else.

All the insecurities I worked so hard to overcome assaulted me again. I wasn’t pretty enough. I wasn’t sexy enough. SARA wasn’t enough.
I am not sure how I summoned the courage to ask you out. It wasn’t the lab explosion. I planned on doing that before then. The explosion reinforced my urgency. Perhaps, it was one last ditch effort. I knew that we belonged together. I just had to convince you of that.

This must have been a lesson I learned for Claire’s sake. I never thought I would feel this way, or say these words but a woman should never ask a man out. Watching Nick and Greg and Warrick taught me that when men want something or someone bad enough, they pursue. They pursue with a relentlessness that you never exhibited for me until later.

You felt no need to pursue or to make any sort of move because I was always there waiting. You had no fear of losing me.

Next came Dr. Lurie. By then, I was drinking to self medicate. I needed to sleep at the end of shift and not dream of you and your voice. You told this man what you never told me. You told a man who had killed his love, his obsession but you never told me. I gave up.

When Michael asked me out, I went because he was kind and sincere and because he liked gawky, gangly Sara. I reclaimed my old dreams. I wanted to get married. I wanted have babies. I wanted to wake up next to someone. I couldn’t have the fairytale, but I could have something. I could have a life with a nice man, who worked hard and understood my job and made me laugh.

Then you did it again. We made love. You drew me back in. Gil Grissom, if the sex had been okay or pretty good or even better than good, I might have gotten out. Instead, it was mind blowing, multiple orgasm, can’t breathe sex. It was all that I knew I'd ever imagined. I was torn between the steady reliable life that I longed for and our relentless, dangerous passion I was addicted to.

I found it odd that for the first time you exhibited some fear of losing me. You scared me a little then. You were so intense and dark. I didn’t know what to do with the gifts you bought, or the declarations you made and so I wore them both like a badge of honor. Gil Grissom wants me. He wanted me. Look at my diamonds. He wants me. Look at my pearls. He wants me. See, I was right.

I am going to tell you something that I have never admitted to myself. I got pregnant with Claire on purpose. I started taking those pills when I came to Vegas, believing that we would eventually make love. I took them after shift everyday for five years. I kept them in my locker so that if we worked late, I could still take them on time. I learned that little trick from Catherine.

When we started sleeping together, I suddenly could not remember to take them, doubled up, missed entire dosages, even had break through bleeding. I wanted your baby. If I couldn’t have you, I could have your baby. How teenagerish and foolish is that? Women do such silly things when they are in love.

Our daughter was my trump card. I knew how badly your father’s abandonment hurt you. You would never leave your child. You would never leave me.

I am afraid that I trapped you with Claire, that she’s the only reason you decided to settle down with me. I am afraid that you have kept these other relationships from me because you still want to maintain some connection with them. That they are some sort of insurance.

In the middle of the night or the day when you let me sleep because I am the one that is “working”, I hear you walk your daughter up and down the hall and tell her how much you love her and I wonder how Sara Sidle, product of a broken mother and a violent father, landed such a fine man.

In those moments, I am not afraid or scared.

That brings me to the things I love about you.

/Gil turned to another sheet of paper or rose colored paper./

Five Things Sara Loves About Her Grissom

1. Let’s start with the superficial. You are the most handsome man I have ever in my entire life laid eyes on. Your masculinity overwhelms me, and I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night just so I can stare at you.


2. You love fiercely and truly. It IS difficult to know you but once you decide to love, you do so with a relentless single mindedness. You have assembled a motley crew of brilliant, passionate, difficult people. Some of whom - me, Catherine, Heather, perhaps Warrick - have never really trusted anyone before we met you. Your care for them, open their lives up for healthy relationships. Truth is not a badge or a weapon for you. It is who you are.


3. I love your mind. I love that it is ever expanding and turning around life’s mysteries. I love that you see me as your intellectual equal. If I were as smart as you are, I am not sure that I would be able to do that.


4. I love your ability to change. In the last year, you have acquired a brother, wife-to-be, and a father. You have gone from a work-a-holism to a stay at home dad. Your house has turned from a quiet haven to a friends and lovers train station. You have not complained or balked. I know it must have been hard for you. You’re not used to so much intimacy, well, at least not that kind of intimacy. I am proud of you, and I want you to know that I appreciate it. I appreciate it because I need that. I need the people buzzing about, the laughter, and the love. I never knew I needed it until I had it. It reminds me of my cousin’s house. At her house there were always people about laughing and singing or sitting around the kitchen table playing cards. I hated leaving her house. It was safe and warm. That’s our house now. Claire will have what Raye had. She will run home from school to an uncle or an aunt or a Brass. Thank you.

5. Finally, and I hope Claire never finds this letter until we are both dead, I love you because you are my perfect lover. You are kind and generous without being unsure or timid. You are kinky and fun and you illicit sexual possibilities that I never knew existed. In your arms, I am beautiful. I have never felt beautiful, but you make me know that I am.
Now I want to tell you what I need to from this marriage. I need to feel safe. I need know that when I come home everything is okay and that you will always love me. I need to feel this physically and emotionally. I need you to be my soft place to land. Gil, please by my slayer of dragons and my knight in shining bug covered armor.

I love you Gilbert Isaiah Grissom. I don’t know when I started loving you. I do know that I will never stop.

Love
Your Sara


Gil put the lightly scented sheet up to his nose and closed his eyes. Rose oil. She bought the fragrance at a flea market. He loved the smell of it, the smell of her. He looked at her slender back as he slipped the letter under his pillow. He pulled his cotton t-shirt over his head. He wanted to feel as much of her skin against him as possible.

“I am sorry for everything I ever did, Sara. I promise to be everything you need me to be.” he whispered.
He kissed her neck as she gave a sleepy smile.