You're really too old to be out this late. Forty-one is too old to be anywhere near this much alcohol and conviviality after 10pm. Especially when you've been up since six, running back and forth from your yoga studio to the Whitney-Malik theatre where you're consulting, to the UCLA campus where you're adjuncting... So you're exhausted and you have to teach an advanced modern choreography seminar tomorrow morning. At nine am.

But it's only 11:15 right now and this party is incredibly laid back, as Laura, your Whitney Malik co-choreographer assured you it would be. You and the cast of "White Lily Fences" were all invited back to Paula's LA suburb ranch, to sit on the cool flagstone steps of her crazy huge deck, bask in the flickering citronella torches, and inaugurate her new several-thousand-dollar slate fire pit. Someone hung Chinese lanterns. Someone else uncorked a few bottles of wine, and everyone fell on the crudités like it was the last supper.

About an hour ago you thought you might have smelled marshmallows roasting over by the fire pit. A few of the dancers had also sniffed the air, looking all panicky at the prospect of hot delicious sugar products entering their bodies by inhalation. You chuckled at their paranoia. Must have been someone in the crew.

You are now bemusedly watching Laura feed CDs into Paula's new sound system. Laura is by far your closest friend here tonight. Or really any night. You have been working with her at the Whitney since she was an intern and you were a backup dancer. Has it really been fourteen iterations of "The Nutcracker?" (And one ill-advised R&B interpretation that year the Whitney tried to be more 'experimental')

"Shit, there's one stuck in here."

Laura jams her thumb against the buttons mercilessly. She looks about six seconds away from a covert act of rage damage. Paula comes up behind her with a placating glass of chardonnay.

"Here let me. Xan might've left one of her mix CDs in here. She's kind of finicky about the bass levels."

Laura begins rifling through the plastic bin of CDs next to the tower speakers.

"When did you get a new housemate Paula?"

"About six months ago. She moved down from the hills. Something to do with a break up or a divorce, I forget. I thought when Jen moved in with Erick, I'd be cool picking up the rent and living on my own you know, but oh my god I hated it. Xan's so great to live with; she's out before me in the morning, in after me at night, and like, the funniest, most work-driven person I've ever met. It's kinda perfect."

"Are all these hers?" Laura asks, holding up a bouquet of hand-labeled plastic CD sheaths.

"Yeah. She's a producer on the side, so she gets some really interesting, if not always GOOD, music. Last week I caught her out here smoking cigars and playing electropop remixes of Johnny Cash classics. Wild."

Laura laughs then pauses, "ooooh. Here's one I wanna hear. Amy Winehouse Covers Through the Ages!"

She tosses the CD at Paula who effortlessly cues the soundsystem before joining you in a good leg-stretching sit on the flagstones.

The first track is an instrumental cover of "Fuck Me Pumps." Tepid at best.

"Have you met my friend Charice, Brittany? She's from Ohio too, well originally from Peru, but she lived in Ohio for..."

She's doing this because she always does this because once at some meeting or party or something you let it slip that you've pretty much been unattached for nearly twenty years. Maybe unattached isn't quite the right word. Solo. On Your Own... You're not sure how an ill-conceived pre-"apocalypse" wedding to Sam, the sweetest high school boyfriend ever, had somehow turned into a five year attempt to "make things work" and then slowly faded into a sad but quiet six-week-long divorce suit. But it did. And here you are.

That's not to say you haven't had lovers.

You're just. Busy.

You have a masters degree in astrophysics from MIT. You have a PhD from a Russian technical Institute where you worked for three years, suffered from terrible seasonal depression, and won craaaazy awards for your work. You have a box in your room with one silk ballet slipper in it from the beautiful Russian Ballerina who forced you to start dancing again with your body and heart as well as your mind. In that box you also have a copy of your letter of resignation from the field of astrophysics folded into a copy of your acceptance letter from Julliard. And what's more, you have a long and successful career in choreography, which has blossomed into a teaching career, which you love just as much- if not more.

Granted, that box under your bed also holds a unicorn pendant, about fifty photographs of you and a scowling fresh-faced Latina cheerleader, an unused plane ticket to JFK, and a yellowed t-shirt with the word "LEBANESE" printed on it. There's no real reason for those things (if anybody asked, you'd just say "high school").

Overall, you have a full and mostly content life.

You can live with coming home to an empty bed.

But Paula doesn't seem to think so, and as the second or third lukewarm song winds to a close she's still going on about some girl you need to meet because she's "bubbly, like you!" You smile politely and breathe a sigh of relief when Paula's super sharp bat senses catch the sound of gravel turning over in her driveway and she bolts off to greet whoever the latecomer is.

Then several things all go down at once and you're still not sure how it happened.

The opening refrain of the next song starts playing and you recognize the arrangement. It's actually a cover of a cover of "Valerie," with the music slowed down a beat or maybe a beat and a half. To make it more danceable. Your mouth quirks up because the first song you ever choreographed all by yourself was also a slowed-down upbeat version of "Valerie."

Paula appears and starts introducing the newcomers to the people by the firepit. You can't really see what's going on but you're also not looking because Paula's friend Charice might see.

But then. All the skin and hair on your body prickles and feels like it's standing on end. You maybe even stop breathing because you KNOW that voice. Belting out "Valerie" over the scratchy background noise on the CD. It's a poor recording. but. You know that voice intimately and deeply. And yeah, it's been two decades, and she probably doesn't sound like that anymore, but you'd be willing to bet your entire mini-cacti collection that the singer on track five or maybe six is Santana Lopez at nineteen or twenty.

And you have so many questions, like how did she get a spot on that shitty CD and why did she record Valerie and how did Paula's roommate get a copy and how can YOU get a copy?

And then, abruptly, in the middle of "did you find a good lawy-" the sound cuts out.

You scowl and get up to see if you can covertly steal the CD and that is when you see a woman angrily jamming buttons on Paula's bass adjuster. Oh. Dear.

She is standing with her back to you, shoulders rigidly hunched; she is playing with the levels of the sound system. Her legs are fit, toned, clad in dark slacks. She's also wearing heels and some kind of blazer and her hair is pulled behind her ear in a loose, messy French braid. The prongs of a pair glasses stick out behind her ears.

"Um, I don't think Paula wants anyone messing with that. Apparently her housemate is particular about the levels or whatever," you say.

A string of Spanish you have no desire to repeat floats up to your ears.

"- I am the damn 'housemate' - don't appreciate people playing my goddamn track on my goddamn CD that's for personal use- didn't even ask- and what's more-"

She turns around and you ready yourself for an earful but then she catches sight of your face. Her whole expression freezes and then, as if all the strings animating her facial muscles had been snipped at once, her mouth and eyebrows and cheeks and ears just sag. And she gawks at you.

It takes you a full minute, you are embarrassed to admit, to fully recognize her. She looks so different from the hurricane of a girl you watched board a bus to New York, all flying hair and fire-eyed determination. Her hair is shorter now and maybe a bit duller than you remember, and there's a silver wisp in it just along her left temple. There are so many more lines around her eyes and mouth than you remember, so much more sleek definition to her jaw and cheeks, such a sharpness at the corner of her eyes... but time will do that.

You gawk right back her. Never in a million years had you ever expected to see...

"Santana," you whisper.

"Brittany S. Pierce." She says. Is it a question? You honestly can't tell.

Her face comes to life again.

"It's so good to see you!" She tells you, brightly moving in for a loose hug, "What, what in the world are you doing here?"

"I work at the Whitney with Paula. Cast party, yknow."

She laughs, "I meant in LA. Last I heard you were in Russia or something."

"Oh. Russia, yeah. I retired from the physics circuit and moved here about fifteen years ago."

"With Sam?" It's a bland question. Her face isn't giving anything away. Neither is her voice.

You chuckle. "I haven't talked to him in about as long. Um, I think he remarried and had some kids a few years ago. They live in Kentucky. Or Kansas. I forget."

She just kind of stares at you. You realize she's still holding the CD.

"When did you make a record? I feel like someone in Glee would've told me about that."

"I didn't. Not really. It was just an undergrad project with some friends." She waves at the plastic crate of CDs "This is a terrible music selection for a party. That's actually my throwaway bin."

You reach over, take the CD away from her. She doesn't really resist. You tuck it into your purse.

"No." You say, simply, "you don't belong in a throwaway bin. Ever."

Notes:

1. This is a multi-chapter piece

2. This is my first/only fanfic story