Santana dug her nails into her palm as she walks up to him. Sam's eyes were just looking away from Quinn Fabray's ass when he turned to see her. She inhaled slowly, trying to remember the instructions she'd ignored from her mother's yoga instructor for so many lessons. Sam just grinned at her, and she felt the urge to slap him so hard that he lost teeth. After several moments of silence, his grin faded away slowly.
"Did I do something?" he asked hesitantly, thinking back to try and see if he'd done something wrong over the last few days that could make Santana this upset with him. He couldn't think of anything, and she hadn't given him any indication before that she was mad at him. When she still wasn't talking, he repeated, "Did I do something?"
Tears jumped to her eyes, unbidden. The reality of what she was about to say crashed down on Santana, and suddenly every memory she'd ever had was then under a veil of what had been going on beneath the surface at that time. "You still want Quinn," she acknowledged, mentally daring him to contradict her. At his silence she barged on, "Of course you want Quinn. Everyone I have ever wanted would choose Quinn over me in a heartbeat. I have spent my entire life under the shadow of Quinn Fabray except for the glorious nine months where she had that kid inside of her. Even then, I spent those nine months in her shadow. Every guy I've liked has always Quinn Fabray, and for once I thought I had met someone who was able to see through her as well as I was. She cheated on her when all you did was love her, and you would still pick Quinn over me. Brittany was Quinn's best friend before Quinn didn't want her anymore. Puck cheated on me with Quinn when he knocked her up. For a little while there, I thought Finn might have been able to see through it when he found out that she cheated on him and got her pregnant, but of course not. I slept with him, and after a few months of confusion where he dated the hobbit, he runs straight back to Quinn. Quinn Fabray is the one girl who I would give anything to see her knocked off the top of her tower, and I honestly thought she had been shot to the bottom of the food chain when she got pregnant. You know what though? She just bounced right back up there. She even got back her position as head Cheerio! I spent years trying to get that position, only to have it swept right back out from underneath me."
Sam paused, processing all of what Santana had been telling him. "She cheated on me, and I know that. She's really a sweet girl, though. You'd be able to see that if you stopped hating everyone in your life so much," he said, surprised by the truth he felt was in his words. He said it again with more conviction, "You would be able to see that she's a good person if you stopped hating everyone and everything in your life so much."
"She's a good person?" she screeched, taking a quick step back. "Don't give me that shit, Evans. You and I both know that she's a liar, a cheater, and a bitch!" She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. "How can you stand there and say that when you know what she's done? With what she did to you, you should hate her. Why doesn't anyone see that behind the blond hair and ski slope nose, she's just some manipulative bitch who does everything to get her way? She doesn't even have boundaries to stop herself," she exclaimed loudly.
He bit down on his lip before exploding right back at her, "How are you any different from her then?"
Fisting a hand in her hair and releasing it slowly, she tried to calm herself down. "I don't cheat. I don't lie. I tell the truth, even when it hurts other people, but at least I don't lie about it so everyone gets hurt. Quinn... She doesn't have boundaries. Don't compare me to that piece of shit. That's what she is, don't lie to me and tell me that's not true. Quinn goes around cheating on people and dumping them when she's done with them, and they forgive her! That's how we're different! I have boundaries! Sure, it takes a while to reach those boundaries, but at least I have them," she snapped at him, glaring at him. "You're just like the rest of them, aren't you?" she asked softly, after a few beats of silence. He stayed silent, so she took that as an initiative to keep talking. "I thought, for just one minute, that you could have been different from them. But, no, you're just as brainwashed as they are. I just want to ask though, because I'm fairly sure you're the only one who would answer me honestly. What is it about Quinn that makes people just want to forgive her for all of the shit she's pulled?" Santana asked, looking him in the eyes.
He paused, taking a moment to take in everything she'd said. "We all just want Quinn, and we have to forgive her before we feel like we can want her again," he said softly.
"Fuck off," she hissed through clenched teeth, spinning around and taking off down the hallway. When she'd gotten all the way out of the school, she realized he hadn't followed her. Probably too busy staring at Quinn's ass again. She tried to shrug off the feeling of defeat hanging over her, but it stayed. She was always pulling up at second place, eating Quinn's dust.