AN: Hello all, happy summer! =)

I hope you enjoy this chapter AND that you guys have been sooo great. I’ve never really ventured into writing ensemble pieces with multiple characters, so I was worried about them ringing true. But everyone’s positive feedback has made me so happy I tried, not to mention grateful to have such supportive readers!

Also, Poroto and others who may listen to the music: This chapter definitely went along with the live version of "Reason to Believe"; I don't think I've even listened to the studio version of this song.

Chapter Thirteen: Reason to Believe

Now Mary Lou loved Johnny, with a love mean and true

This time Lexie didn’t bother thinking they were pulling her leg. “No,” she said instead, her voice immediate and unequivocal.

“Oh, come on,” Izzie wheedled.

“No.”

“Trust me,” Callie said. “He’s good.”

Lexie didn’t want to think about that. “No.”

“Two nights with him and it’ll be “O’Malley who?”,” Cristina took another sip from her beer bottle, her eyes switching over to a spot behind Lexie every few seconds.

“No.”

“Why the hell not?” Callie slapped the table with her palm in frustration. “You’ve already spent the night with him.”

The entire table, sans Cristina, swung their heads toward Callie. “What?” their voices rang in unison.

Then they turned to Lexie, who was still gaping at Callie. “How did you know that?” she demanded.

Callie bit her lip. “He told me,” she admitted.

“We didn’t sleep together,” Lexie said, her voice verging on bitter.

“What?” This time Cristina joined the rest of the women.

“I know,” Callie added. “He told me,” she repeated.

“Wait.” Izzie shook her head as if to clear it. “You already spent the night with him?”

Cristina stared. “You didn’t sleep with him?”

Meredith frowned. “When was this?”

But Lexie’s attention was still on Callie. “He told you?”

Question unanswered, Izzie tried again: “You already spent the night with Sloan?”

Cristina turned to the blonde. “But she didn’t sleep with him.”

Lexie wasn’t letting Callie off so easily. “He told you?” She covered her face. “What else did he tell you?”

Meredith joined in the smaller circle consisting of those working with limited information. Leaning toward Izzie and Cristina, she said, “I still don’t get when this happened.”

Cristina sighed her impatience. “The night of the wedding—er sort of wedding.”

Meredith’s blue-green eyes widened. “You knew?”

Cristina’s brow furrowed. “You didn’t?”

Izzie waved her arms. “But why was she even with him? She’d never even met him before.”

They all turned to Lexie and Callie, who were still talking.

Lexie groaned. “I had no idea you two were friends.” Opening her palms to the rest of the table, she said, “I had no idea he knew any of you.”

Meredith asked, “He didn’t tell you?”

Cristina snorted. “Please, Mere, Mark Sloan doesn’t exactly sit around making small talk when he’s got a woman in his hotel room.”

Lexie didn’t want to share her own personal evidence of how untrue that was. It wasn’t exactly the most flattering of admissions. Luckily, Callie did it for her. “He said all they did was talk.”

“Talk?” Cristina repeated, as if it were a foreign word.

“Talk.” Izzie said slowly, her mouth forming the word slowly as if trying it out for the first time.

“Talk,” Meredith said, staring ahead in concentration.

“People talk,” Lexie cried out, taking umbrage. “Sometimes they just talk.”

“Yeah, people, but Mark Sloan?” Izzie shrugged. “He’s walking sex.”

“Izzie,” Callie said out of the side of her mouth.

She went on, “I mean the man practically wrote the book on gross anatomy, if you know what I mean.”

Watching Lexie’s face, Meredith tried to get the blonde’s attention. “Uh…Izzie?”

“Oh, come on, Meredith,” Izzie retorted. “He was all over you when he first came around, even with Derek breathing down his neck.”

“He tried to sleep with you?” Lexie turned to her sister.

As if realizing her words, Izzie snapped her jaw shut. And then opened it again in an endeavor to backtrack. “No. Not really. Only a little.” She looked around the table. “It was a long time ago.”

Lexie snatched up Meredith’s glass and took a longer gulp of her scotch. Pulling a face after setting the drink back down, she wheezed out, “He didn’t even try to kiss me,” she said bleakly.

“He didn’t?” Izzie couldn’t help the question or the disbelieving gape that accompanied it.

“I seem to remember someone spazzing when Alex didn’t kiss her good night,” Meredith reminded her wryly.

Izzie frowned. “Very true.” Nodding her encouragement to Lexie, she repeated. “Very true.”

“Lexie, you’re looking at this all wrong,” Meredith said. “Clearly, he liked talking to you. Otherwise he would have hit on you just to shut you up.”

When Izzie stared at her with a slackened jaw, Meredith lifted a shoulder in her defense. “What? I think that’s helpful.”

Callie patted Lexie’s hand. “He did like talking to you,” she confirmed. “You’re…special.”

“Yeah, special as in un-doable.” Glum and shoulders slumped, she took another drink, this time from Izzie’s glass. “I can’t even get the grand poo-bah of sluts to sleep with me.”

One day he up and left her and ever since that

“This is your brilliant plan?” Lexie glowered. She tried not to think of that night in the kitchen. “Beg someone who finds me hideous to have sex with me?” Wry and self-deprecating, she added, “Because my self esteem hasn’t taken enough of a beating?”

Three of them spoke at the same time:

“He does not think you’re hideous,” Meredith reassured.

“You are not hideous,” Izzie corrected.

“Don’t insult the plan,” was all Cristina offered.

“It doesn’t matter.” Lexie shook her head. “I’m sure he’s left town by now anyway.”

“He hasn’t,” Callie said quickly. “Still at the Archfield; same room.” At Lexie’s arched brow, she amended with a more casual: “I think.”

“So what do you guys want me to do? Go over there and strip?” Lexie laughed.

Izzie nodded.

“Okay.” Patiently as she could, Lexie tried to explain. “Maybe I’m not making myself clear. I’m going to throw myself at someone who has made it painfully obvious he’s not interested.”

“He is,” Meredith blurted out. When the heads turned her way, she looked at Cristina out of the corner of her eyes and continued. “He was actually going to ask you out to dinner, but—uh, I, well I made Derek stop him.”

“What?” Callie asked.

“Yeah, well, see I figured you didn’t need him seducing you, but then Cristina said getting laid was exactly what you needed.”

“It’s true, you do,” Cristina chimed in. Looking past Lexie once again, she sighed. “I waited way too long.” Another sigh, followed by: “Waayyy too long.”

“If you’re just going to have eye sex with him, you might as well go over there,” Izzie snapped.

Cristina’s eyes immediately shifted. It was the guiltiest Lexie had ever seen the woman look.

“Anyway,” Meredith said. “He definitely wants to sleep with you.” She nodded. “Definitely.”

“You asked him to stay away from me,” Lexie repeated carefully. Alcohol swimming in her stomach, she blinked and leaned back. “Why would he let Derek tell him what to do?”

Callie snorted. “Are you kidding me?”

Izzie laughed. “After what he did to Derek, he’d walk through fire if it meant getting on his good side again.”

Frowning, Lexie angled her body closer to the table. She didn’t bother to disguise her piqued interest. “What do you mean?”

“Addison,” they said in unison.

“Who?”

Meredith filled her in. Her description had just cleared the double board certified neo-natal part, when Lexie interrupted.

“Wait,” she said, holding a hand up. “Not Addison Montgomery?”

“Montgomery-Shepard for a while,” Izzie supplied.

“She was married to Derek?” Lexie’s mouth unhinged so fast, her jaw clicked. Slapping her forehead harder than she had intended, she blew out her breath. “I read an article about her in JAMA. She operated on these conjoined twins who—”

“Yeah,” Meredith said, her voice wry. “She’s kind of fabulous. We know.”

“Adultery and salmon-colored scrubs aside,” Izzie added.

“Really?” Callie’s highly arched brows rose. “You’re going there?”

“Okay, seriously, who here hasn’t gone there?” Izzie asked, looking around the table.

Cristina raised her hand and Izzie thanked her bitingly.

Lexie’s brows crept up closer to her hairline. “You’re not saying…Dr. Montgomery and….Mark?”

Meredith nodded. “While they were still married. In their bed.” With an incline of her shoulder, she finished, “Derek walked in on them.”

“But Mark and Derek have known each other forever.”

Callie glossed lips curved back into a slow smile. “You two really did talk.”

Cradling her forehead in her hand, Lexie tried to get the image of the article out of her head. There was no way she could compete with Addison Montgomery. The eidetic memory didn’t just help with the page numbers of medical journals; it also supplied her with a photo of the doctor in question. The thick burgundy hair was one thing. The endless limbs were another. The lab coat Addison had worn in the photo couldn’t begin to hide her legs.

Sufficiently deflated, Lexie said to herself, “This is nuts.”

“No,” Callie answered. “What’s nuts is letting Mark Sloan leave town without getting yours.”

He’d leave town, Lexie told herself. He’d leave town soon enough, but he wouldn’t be leaving her. His departure, unlike her fiancé’s, wasn’t a rejection; it was merely fait accompli. That knowledge…it served as preparation, it was a crafted exit.

It wouldn’t be smartest thing she’d ever done, but it’d be the safest. A small part of her warned her her logic was askew, but she ignored the voice of prudence. People breaking character was the theme of her life lately.

She wasn’t the kind of girl who slept around. But George hadn’t been the kind of boy who crushed hearts.

Feeling strangely warm and courageous, Lexie stood up. “I’m getting mine,” she echoed.

She waits down at the end of that dirt road for young Johnny to come back

After Callie offered to drop her at the hotel on her way home, the remaining girls ordered another round, since Lexie had polished off their last one.

“Just so we’re clear…” Izzie started. “She’s drunk, right?’

“Oh, yeah,” Cristina confirmed.

“Definitely,” Meredith said.

“I’m pretty sure that man’s never going to see her sober,” Cristina sighed.

Izzie gnawed at her full lower lip. She waited a beat and then asked, “Did Sloan really tell you he wanted to ask her out?”

Meredith dodged her eyes. “Er—well, I mean, when do men ever really come out and say what they—”

“Meredith.”

“Okay, no,” Meredith admitted.

Izzie sighed. “Meredith…”

“It got her over there!”

The blonde groaned, letting her head hang. “I knew we should have stuck with karaoke.”

Still at the end of every hard-earned day

People find some reason to believe

AN: Please review!

“Reason to Believe” is written and performed by Bruce Springsteen.