As my teammates cheer with me, I collect the trophy into my arms and stand tall (I'm 6'2", you know) as Andrea flings herself onto me to give me a hug that looks like she's draping herself over me and basically having sex with me while our clothes are still attached to our bodies. I'm a bit uncomfortable like this, but Shelby saves the day as she always does by a fleeting look, directing Andrea's suggestive position on me away. People gather to lift me up, the only one in the performance who had the perfect showcase, up into the air to hoist the trophy for all the audience to see. Before I can even think about it, my thoughts and eyes drift over to look at New Directions. I know that come next year (with the placement they received at Regionals this year), they won't be here again. New Directions won't even exist at the next Sectionals for them. They just don't have a second chance at having a Glee Club. I know that there were rules for them that weren't applied to any of the other teams today: If they didn't even get a second place at Regionals, there wouldn't even be a New Directions come next year for the socially shunned Glee Club at McKinley. They're forever out of the running now. I feel a little ashamed, but not much. This win means nothing to me, but to the people who run the scholarship program at UCLA it means tuition, room, and board.
I feel a little bad for them all, but my energy can't be bothered with that, so I num my thoughts by running my eyes down Rachel Berry's petite figure that is looking murderously in my direction. She doesn't say anything to me about her utter loathing, but she knows that her work is done when I let my head slump a little. She's inspired compassion in me, and I don't like it. I've never felt anything like it before I went to that music store and met her. If it weren't for the fact that Jesse St. James never gets terrified, I would be.
All the same, amidst her clumsy ex-boyfriend who somehow reminds me of a monkey I saw at the zoo sixteen years ago (really, does he always have to dance like he's drunk and sing with a facial expression that suggests he's constipated?) and her surrogate mother who is just as calculating and cold as she is cruel, I know that I love (or have loved, at the very least at the end of this) Rachel Berry as best that I possibly can (could). She's the one who didn't break me. No one has broken me, but she just got too close. She made a crack, a dent, a snap, or something in my indestructible armor and for that I will never be able to forgive her. I will never forgive her for getting close to me. I don't allow people to get close enough to hurt me.
I still love her, in an odd way. I love her because I know that if we had a chance to be away from the broken promises Shelby proposed, the ex-boyfriend who pined over Rachel as acutely as he knew how, the opposite show choir teams... If we could be away from those, we could work. We will work, in fact. One day we will meet on the stage of Broadway, and we're going to work out. I will do everything in my power that I possibly can to get her back when we meet again because I know I love Rachel Berry, even if she can't see it, and she loves me, even if she doesn't know it yet. I know that; I just know.
We're going to have an epic love story one day. We're going to have the most epic love story one day, no matter what anyone says or thinks of us for it. In fact, our love story will be so epic that our high school romance of only a few months will only be the first chapter when they do our joint biography. We need to grow up and learn how to love before we can learn how to love someone back. I know that Rachel loves me and I know that I love Rachel, but I know that returning a love is different then loving something. I'm not emotionally mature enough yet to even think of returning a love. I barely know how to love someone; much less return theirs for me. So, we have to grow up and then have our paths cross again. It isn't enough for us to meet in our lives just once, no. We need to know that our lives will (without a doubt) be intersecting at least once more. But, that's an inevitability there. We'll play our parts on Broadway until we run into each other and then we'll just have ourselves the most epic love story that was ever told.
But, you see, that really isn't the point of this (whatever this may end up being). There isn't really much of a point to this at all. My thoughts are just making sure that there will be a continuation of the relationship that Rachel and I shared. There's going to be a second round to us (preferably a second round without odd family problems and exes who still want us and make it known). Part two is coming later. Part two will be without faults—I'll make sure of it.
I don't know if we'll last forever like I know we could, and I don't know if we'll even want to get back together when the chance comes along. We're going to meet new people while we're away from each other, and maybe we're going to love them. Maybe we're going to return their love. Maybe we won't.
The point (or lack thereof) is that Rachel Berry and I (as stubborn as we are) know that we are simply people that are meant to be, if only because we love each other as best we know (and have known) how to. Because of this, we will end our romantic histories with each other. I know that we'll date other people while we're apart, but I inevitably know that whoever I date will be compared to the likes of Rachel and I'm sure that Rachel will do the same for any man that she dates. There just can't be any other solution.
We're without faults, Rachel and I. Sometimes we do things with too much of ourselves in them, and that seems to be the biggest problem. We'll fix it, though.
We always do.