Repressed.
Nearly ten years of therapy had boiled down to that one word and led to the conclusion that every failed relationship Rachel Berry ever had was a direct result of completely denying the fact that she was gay. Super gay. Really, really gay.
Her engagement to Finn Hudson hadn't lasted much past him putting her on a train and shipping her off to New York. Her summer fling with Noah Puckerman survived right up until she left for NYADA (except, of course, for the lapse in judgement when she fucked him standing up against the washer/dryer combo in his apartment over winter break of freshman year - that didn't count and was only, in hindsight, her attempt to prove to herself that she wanted him, or any man at all).
Relationships in college were relatively non-existent for her, which she could attribute to constantly being in the process of auditioning, rehearsing, or performing in a one-act, a workshop, a play, a musical, or any other staged production she could throw herself into. Rachel had flirtations and one-night stands with her co-stars and leading men, but nothing ever made it out of the gate. She kept telling herself that it was because of her focus on her career and her ambition and notdue to the fact that she had absolutely no desire to even kiss any of them, let alone go further.
Since graduating from William McKinley High School, Rachel's longest relationship had been with Dr. Sheila Rabinowitz, a psychiatrist specializing in anxiety disorders. At first they had spent their sessions dealing with nothing but the four years of complete and utter bullshit she had been forced to endure at the hands of the cretins and neanderthals she grew up with. They worked through slushie attacks, nicknames, backstabbing, and boyfriend stealing. They tackled being the daughter of two gay men in a small town. They faced insecurity about her talent, her appearance, and her self-worth head on. But for 9 years and 244 days they avoided what Rachel liked to call "the big one" - the fact that was unable to sustain an intimate relationship of any sort for much longer than twenty-four hours. Then, like a bolt of fucking lightning It happened.
It was Yael David, a dancer in the traveling troupe of the Israel Ballet who she had met at a party for the dancers after a performance of "Serenade" at Lincoln Center. It was the first time that she had, after four glasses of champagne in quick succession, allowed the tingling feeling to creep up her legs and into her stomach as another woman laughed at a snarky comment she made, leaning in, tracing her bare shoulder. It was an accent that dripped sexual tension, a kiss in the back of a taxi, a tongue, lips, breasts, hips, curves, soft moans and one hell of a hangover. She woke up alone, naked, tangled in sheets with a sticky wetness and a faint trace of perfume her only proof that It was real.
So, after a double session in Dr. Rabinowitz's office that involved a lot of crying and a lot more swearing, a 28 year-old Rachel Berry found herself flying back to Lima to break the news in person to her dad and her daddy that their daughter was a lesbian. It wasn't that she didn't think they would take the news any way but graciously, but Rachel couldn't stand that there was even a glimmer of a chance that anyone would think of them as lesser parents as a result. Dr. Rabinowitz pointed to that fear, fear of disappointing Leroy and Hiram Berry, her most stable support system and her biggest fans, as the reason she had denied her attraction to women for so long. Rachel had told the doctor to fuck off and slammed the office door loudly enough to rattle the framed credentials on the wall (or at least she hoped so).
As soon as her flight touched down in Dayton she pulled out her phone, powered it on, and surreptitiously sent two text messages. The first was to her agent and read simply, "Went to Ohio for a while. I will call you when I am back in New York." The second, to her roommate, Steven, was shorter. "Landed in Hell." Her agent never responded which meant that her audition for Hope Harcourt in the revival of the revival of Anything Goes didn't go anywhere and she would be taking catering jobs between chorus roles for a while longer when she returned to the city. Steven texted back, "Good luck, gorgeous. Drink. Heavily." Rachel laughed loudly at that, earning a dirty look from the man in a necktie and wedding ring who had flirted with her for the entire flight while she pretended to be incredibly interested in the SkyMall catalogue.
She shouldered her carry-on and pushed her sunglasses down from the top of her head as she walked off the plane, steeling herself for the inevitable questions around her impromptu visit home in the beginning of October. Rachel didn't think her dads would buy Columbus Day as a valid excuse. She looked around for the two men as she headed down the escalator toward the baggage claim and smiled when she saw Leroy pulling Hiram by the hand toward her. They enveloped her in a three-way hug and she inhaled the smell of their colognes commingling, an aroma that reminded her that she was home, even though she hadn't lived in their house for almost a decade.
They dropped their arms and Leroy looked down at her, lifted her sunglasses, and frowned at the dark circles under her eyes. "Rachel, not that we aren't happy to see you, but what are you doing here? You called yesterday and said you booked a one-way flight and now, here you are, looking like you haven't slept in days. You don't need a reason, but we are wondering what prompted this open-ended trip. Is this about a man because..." His voice had gotten higher and higher as he went until Rachel had cut him off.
"Daddy," she huffed, "let me get my fucking suitcase and we can talk in the car."
He rolled his eyes and chided, "Language, Rachel. You are still my little girl."
They didn't end up talking in the car and instead spent the entire hour in a sing-along to the Wicked soundtrack, something Rachel knew her fathers couldn't resist when she pulled up the playlist. They didn't talk when they got to the house in Lima because Rachel needed to shower, and they didn't talk over dinner because her fathers had a business dinner that had been scheduled for months. By the time Rachel woke up the following morning, Leroy and Hiram had left for work, leaving a scribbled note on the kitchen counter that said, "Sweetie, dinner at 6. No more avoiding us."
That note is the sole reason that, at 6:00 pm, Rachel was drinking alone at a dive bar just outside of Lima sucking slowly on a gin and tonic and staring straight into her glass while hoping she didn't run into anyone who remembered who she was. Her daddy texted her and she ignored the first five messages, finally replying to the sixth with, "I'm at someplace called 'oes'" because that was what it said in neon over the front door (she was pretty sure the name of the place was Joes, but she wasn't going to make it easier for them to track her down). She practically ran out of the place at 6:35 when the unmistakable mullet-wearing Rick "The Stick" Nelson, who apparently really was a Lima Loser, walked up to the bar and glanced her way.
She was home by 6:45, poking at the arm of the new grey sofa in the living room, avoiding eye contact with both her dad and her daddy and quietly lying, "I just needed a break. I had a bad audition and I needed to be away from the city for awhile."
They both sighed and wrapped her up in their arms and said, "You will make it, Rachel Berry. It is just a matter of time." She cried, which they thought was related to her career, but was really because she lied to them, something she had never done about anything serious before. They cheered her up with schnapps from their recent trip to Austria, sipped from tiny glasses while they watched movies until she fell asleep. She woke up, hours later, with a throw blanket tucked around her and a feeling of dread pitting deep in her stomach. She slinked upstairs to her room and didn't open the door again until she was sure both her parents had left for work the next day.
When Rachel finally descended into the kitchen she found three beans left in the bag of coffee which is how she found herself holding her breath in line at the Lima Bean right behind Judy Fabray, hoping the woman didn't turn around.
Rachel contemplated escaping before she was noticed, but her raging caffeine addiction won out in the end and she waited while the woman in front of her ordered, paid for, and received her small black coffee. The blonde almost made it by her without looking in her direction but just when Rachel thought she had avoided an inevitably uncomfortable encounter, the woman raised her head and made eye contact, the corner of her mouth raising slightly as she tried to place the face in front of her. "Rachel Berry, right?"
In Rachel's head, her brain was muttering a mantra of profanity (fuck, fuck, fuck) but she put on her best show face and said sweetly, "Mrs. Fabray! It is so wonderful to see you."
Judy smiled back, though Rachel would classify it as "church-lady fake nice" and said, "Quinnie is in town for her sister's second wedding. You should come by the house. I bet she would love to see you." The disdain that surrounded the word "second" was impossible to not notice.
Rachel knew that Quinn Fabray lived in Toronto because they were both members of the Inaugural WMHS Glee Club Keep-in-touch Facebook Group, a group Rachel herself had created years ago. They exchanged birthday messages on each other's walls, and occasionally "liked" each other's posts, but their communication hadn't extended beyond social media for nearly five years. Sure, the pair had been tentative friends when they finished high school and they had emailed back and forth through college, seeing each other during breaks and occasionally when Quinn came to New York with friends from Yale or when Rachel used her train pass to New Haven, but when Quinn finished college she entered the Peace Corp, got posted in Namibia and effectively removed herself from Rachel's radar.
After NYADA, Rachel had been swept up in Off-Off Broadway productions and three on-call catering companies, followed by Off-Broadway roles and only two catering companies, which lead to actual honest-to-goodness Broadway chorus roles bolstered by the remaining catering jobs she still picked up to make the rent. She saw Blaine all the time (he was on-again, off-again with Steven since she introduced the two at her NYADA graduation party) and texted with Kurt and Puck. Other than that, she engaged in clandestine online stalking of the remaining Glee members, keeping up to date on their lives from a comfortable distance. When Quinn had returned from Africa, she had posted in their group, "Hey." and Rachel had liked the post.
Rachel shook her head, clearing her thoughts, and refocused on the woman standing in front of her. "Um, I don't even know her number anymore," she said, still smiling, hoping it would end the encounter and they both could forget they saw each other and move on. Judy, however, could not be thwarted.
"Rachel, she really needs a friend right now. Call the house. The number is listed." Before Rachel could process what those three sentences even meant, the blond was gone, spinning quietly on her heel and whisking out the door, and Rachel was sipping her iced soy latte as she wandered back toward her parents' house, her brain fixed on someone she hadn't really thought about in years.