The music is deafening, and she's sure she's dragging her feet with every step. He's waiting for her at the end with a smile, the same charming smile he'd worn the night of their first date, and almost every day after. It was the reason she'd fallen for him, she tries to tell herself, suddenly far too aware of the attention on her. She'd fallen in love with him because he's a good man, and he was good to her. He's everything she's wanted and everything her parents wished her to have. It was perfect, they were perfect.
It almost makes the dread lift from her stomach, almost, until she catches Santana's gaze with sweeping eyes and it all drops back down. Santana's giving her that same look she had the night of her bachelorette party, when they were both way too drunk and said things they shouldn't have. She had told herself neither would remember in the morning, but they had.
Another foot forward and she's nearly to the steps, too shaken to bear looking at Santana, but not brave enough to look away. She knows she should be looking at her fiancée right now, that the tears should be starting, that she should be happy.
But, she isn't. She isn't happy. She's sick to her stomach, and it's only getting worse.
She risks a look at him just in time to see his smile slip away, and it's not words of encouragement echoing loudly in her head. There's nothing telling her that she could do this, to just take the last few steps and kiss her fiancée and live happily ever after. It's her wedding and all she can hear are Santana's slurred words, repeating like a drum.
'You can't marry this guy, Q. You don't love him!'
Oh god.
It's true.
She knows it is. She could always feel it, but knowing it...
She's breathing way too fast and the stares fixed to her back are way too hot, and she's haunted by the one that's missing. The invitation that had been sent and ignored. She doesn't know how long she's been frozen at the bottom of the steps, but he looks nervous. Like he'd been scared this would happen.
"Santana."
She almost chokes on it, and finally she's crying, but not the way he wants. It's the way Santana held her through after her party when she'd sunk down in the middle of the kitchen floor.
Santana is down the steps in an instant, and a firm arm around her waist helps her retrace her steps all the way back through the double doors and to Santana's shiny, black Lexus in the church's parking lot. The startling white of her dress is a painful contrast to the dark leather interior, almost as much as the crimson of Santana's dress next to her. Santana's fumbling with her phone and she knows who she's calling before anyone picks up, and for some reason the familiarity lets her unclench her muscles for the first time since she'd put on the dress.
The door behind Santana opens with a click, and Brittany all but launches herself inside, beaming proudly at her through the rear-view mirror. She manages to get her hand to Santana's, entwining their fingers in a way that had made her feel like an intruder since they were teenagers. Now, though, it just makes her feel lonely, and the tears don't stop.
Drunken rambling on the kitchen floor.
The ignored invitation.
"Where are we going, Q?" Santana's halfway to smiling the way she only does with them, and the stinging in her lungs is quelled, overwhelmed by the beating of her heart. And, for once, she just lets it slip out. Not in drunken sobbing, muffled against Santana's shoulder. Not in the silence of her bedroom, blanketed by darkness. Not in her head, every time she'd heard her sing.
"New York."