"Dorothy is very like me," Rachel says.
Rachel and Jesse sit on opposite sides of the couch, their legs spread between them, touching thoughtlessly. It isn't romantic, but there's a deep sense of intimacy that they share—everyone can see it. In front of them, the television plays The Wizard of Oz. They like to watch it once a week, because sometimes there's nothing else to look forward to.
They sit in a large room with pale yellow walls, and if they look up, they'll see an inky blue-black, startlingly realistic mural of the night sky, with the constellations mapped out in glow-in-the-dark paint. Kurt worked for months on it.
"I know," Jesse responds softly. He offers her a shy smile and says, "You're a better singer, though."
In these moments it's easy to tell that Jesse is being himself. At other times, he's very brash and outgoing and cocky, but right now he is introspective and quiet and kind. Rachel always feels a surge of genuine affection for that side of him. She smiles back.
"Thank you." She watches the movie silently for a moment, looking wistful. Then, she goes on, "If I'm better, I shouldn't worry so much about Regionals."
Jesse looks at her and frowns.
"That doesn't mean anything," he reminds her gently.
"Sometimes you just don't understand," she says, looking away.
"I'm kind of in love with you," Jesse said one day when they were kissing in his car.
The driver's seat was reclined all the way back, so Jesse was lying almost flat, and Rachel was lying on him, her knees planted around his thighs. They'd been kissing outside her house for what felt like hours, even though it was probably only thirty minutes or so. She'd invited him inside, but he knew her dads had rules about her shutting the door when she had a boy in her room, and so he really only liked to go in when they weren't there.
It wasn't that he had some grand dreams about getting in her pants (or up her tiny skirt), especially not after the mini-freakout she had last time he thought that was going to happen, but he wasn't going to make out with a girl with her door wide open, and she probably wouldn't be on him like this if her dads might see at any moment, either.
"What?"
"I'm in love with you," he repeated, and went back to kissing her neck without a thought, as though it weren't a big deal.
"I'm—I'm in love with you too," she said.
Jesse pulled back; he looked surprised. "I—thank you."
Rachel wondered whether that was the first time anyone had ever said it back to him, before. He seemed to not expect her to return the sentiment.
Jesse sits on one of the uncomfortable plastic yellow chairs, his elbows on the table in front of him, with his head in his hands. He's massaging his forehead and blinking rapidly, trying to hold back a wave of unexplainable tears. Just minutes ago, he was painting (albeit poorly) and looking sideways at Rachel and sharing in a joke that only the two of them ever really seemed to understand.
"This is pointless," he says angrily, standing so quickly and carelessly that he knocks his chair backwards, and a bottle of paint is smacked off the table, falling onto the floor and forcing a glob of purple paint out like a bruise against the mottled gray tiles. "I'm not fucking going to paint, and I'm not going to sit here with you anymore, and I'm not going to listen to you talk about your fucking delusions about life."
Jesse is pointing to Rachel, who looks dangerously close to crying. She knows this isn't Jesse, but the words are still ones she's heard from so many people before that she can't help but think it must be a little bit true. That she really isn't worth their time, for them to listen to her.
"I'm tired of being stuck in here," he says derisively, pointing to his head. "I'm sick and fucking tired of being held back. I could be—so much more!"
Rachel cries when Jesse is forced out of the room. She yells his name, but he doesn't respond to it.
She could feel him pulling away from her when the bomb about her mom was dropped on her; it was understandable, she thought. Rachel suspected that the only reason that Jesse had begun dating her at all was because Shelby was her mother. Shelby probably compelled him to do it. She should have known it, she thought to herself—nobody at McKinley liked her, so why would anyone else?
Rachel's self-esteem, admittedly, wasn't all the best to begin with, but once she felt him pulling away from her, it sort of hit rock bottom. She wanted to call him and ask him—what was so repulsive about her that after that long of dating, she hadn't even made him like her a little bit? But he would probably deny it. Jesse was a great actor, she thought.
She doesn't think about his side of it—that maybe that love wasn't a sham after all. It hurt her too much to even consider his side of the story. And it was just so much easier to fall back into Finn's arms. After all, Finn was waiting in the wings. He'd wanted her when Jesse courted her, right? At least—one person—one person found her desirable.
Rachel looked at him reproachfully across the choir room; he was behind the piano and she was sitting in one of the chairs. She hated herself for wishing that he would come closer to her, put his arm around her, and pull her to him. She hated herself for feeling like she was still in love with him, even though she'd deduced he was acting on Shelby's orders. She just—wished she could know if any of it was genuine. But there he was, across the room, looking intent on the adults and their business, even as Rachel stared at him—hoping that after practice, he would come to her and hold out his hand, and offer to drive her home.