AN: This is for my dear friend, who knows who she is.
I don't own anything.
He's on his way home from the garage when his phone vibrates in his pocket. He couldn't ignore it, so he wiggled it out of his right pocket and tapped the message indicator, keeping one eye on the road.
Finn: Quinn's getting married.
He's glad he's alone on the road and no one saw him almost take out the guardrail with his Chevy.
Quinn hadn't been with him for a long time, but he always thought they'd find their way back to each other, and she would be with him in the end. She wasn't supposed to marry someone else. Of course he wasn't even sure that he was cut out for marriage, but he always saw himself married to her, with their second chance at kids. He meant it when he told her all those years ago that he wanted them to be a family.
But she always wanted something else.
Someone else.
Puck sped the rest of the way home and got online. He checked out the Lima Herald's site for the announcement.
There it was. Casey Moore and Quinn Fabray.
"Quinn Moore," he muttered aloud, scoffing at how ridiculous it sounded. Quinn Puckerman on the other hand...
What kind of name was Casey, anyway? Sounded like a chick if you weren't looking at a picture of them. Besides, the dude looked like a prick. She had her forced prom queen smile on. He knew her smiles with him were never forced. Her whole face lit up with him.
He still had a picture of her with him somewhere in some box from when she lived with him in high school. He had been singing Britney Spears to the baby on his mother's couch, Quinn was actually laughing, so he pulled out his phone, slid up the couch and snapped a picture of them having fun. He loved that picture.
He read the text underneath the portrait on the screen saying that their engagement party was at the Fabray house this Saturday evening. Looking at the calendar in the bottom corner of his laptop, he realized that was tomorrow.
He picked up his phone and typed a reply to Finn.
Puck: wtf dude? The guy looks like a douchebag.
Finn: I know. What can u do tho?
What could he do? He felt like he had to do something, though. This was the girl he still thought of every day, the mother of his child.
Puck: nothing
Finn: dude if u hadn't told me to go after Rach in NY we wouldn't be 2gether right now
That was true. But Finn and Rachel were both single then. Sure, he wasn't above being "the other man" especially where the blonde was concerned. He'd done it before, and if he was honest, he'd have done it all over again…maybe changing a few things along the way (like wearing a condom), then maybe he'd be the one reluctantly posing in those fake ass pictures on the website, but he'd still do it. For her.
That was it, then. He was going to do nothing, because there was nothing he could do. Quinn deserved the clean cut All-American guy he suspected she'd pictured she would marry of since she was a little girl. The Prom King to her Prom Queen. Puck would always just be the jackass that showed up and ruined her life when she was 16. And again, when she was 17, with his hand in revealing the Lucy Caboosey shit. He'd never be that guy to her. But damn it, he kinda really wanted to be.
He grabbed a beer from the fridge, plopped down in his recliner and turned on SportsCenter.
Quinn stared at the Lima Herald in her mother's kitchen. She hadn't been back in Lima in over a year, always making excuses for her mom to come visit her in Indianapolis; she had a project at work, her car needed an oil change and she forgot, etc. She just honestly didn't want to run in to anyone from her past. Specifically one person.
Casey insisted they go to Lima, and her mother insisted they have the engagement party at the Fabray house. Quinn, the Queen of Avoidance, had run out of excuses.
So there she was, at her mother's kitchen table, staring at the picture of her and Casey.
Casey was perfect. A high school quarterback turned lawyer. He'd certainly never been arrested for stealing an ATM. He was the blonde hair, blue eyed, clean shaven, short haired, Catholic guy she saw in her dreams when she watched Disney movies as a child. Her own Aladdin, Hercules, Prince Eric all in one… She'd fallen for the Beast once, and that didn't work out, he never turned into the prince. But that was the past. Her knight in shining armor was sitting at the kitchen table sipping coffee and reading the sports section of the paper next to her.
His parents adored her. Judy adored him.
Life was perfect.
Except that she concealing a major chapter of her past: high school. She conveniently never mentioned to Casey the fact that she had a child out there somewhere, with the only other guy she'd ever been in love with. When was that something you brought up? First date? Second date? A random Wednesday? When he proposed? The honeymoon? Tenth wedding anniversary?
It wasn't her fault the timing was never right.
The timing in her life had never been right, though. Except for meeting Casey.
She met him at a coffee shop in Indianapolis when their coffees were mixed up. Even she thought it was cliché, but he asked her out the same day. He had a stable job, was handsome, and a gentlemen. It didn't take long for her to fall for him.
So when he proposed on their one year anniversary, she only hesitated for a second before saying "yes".
But being back in Lima was stirring up everything. Even just being in her old house again. Her old room reminded her of too many things. One thing in particular. The day in August where she changed her mind about oh so many things.
Quinn had never liked dealing with the past. That's why it's there...so you don't have to deal with it, right? What's done is done and all that. Lima just presented her with unwanted feelings of being on edge from the possibility of the past slapping her right in the face.