Tonight's the night she's been waiting for her entire life.
Rachel sits in her dressing room, staring into her giant vanity mirror. The giant bulbs, makeup brushes at the base, the notes of encouragement pinned on the sides - it's everything a mirror should be. The whole room is everything it should be on an opening night. Flowers. Balloons. Huge styrofoam golden stars with "Our perfect Fanny!" written on them. Built for a star.
She's all ready to go. Makeup on, hair fixed, fitted into her opening costume. They're giving her a few minutes to gather herself, to call her loved ones and get one last wish of good luck.
Her gaze, however, travels over her phone and falls to the box next to the mirror. Big. Hot Pink. Bedazzled with every fake jewel known to man. Classic Rachel Berry. Her hand reaches to the bottom drawer, but she hesitates as a scowl paints her face. She's all too familiar with the heartbreak that lies inside.
A beat.
Rachel opens the box and sifts through the clutter. She's made sure to make this drawer her "extra things" place, so she can hide the memorabilias from her past not only from the dozens of prying eyes walking in and out of this room all day but also from herself. Out of sight, out of mind, right? If only.
Her fingers graze the glossy paper and, steadying herself, she grabs the picture out of the box. Her breath catches.
There he is.
She smiles at his smile. His giant hoodie. His hair. Even when he cut it short, it still managed to have that rustled, just after sex look. Kurt always gave her so much crap for that, but honestly, she was only responsible for its messiness half of the time. It's not a perfect picture by all means - she snapped it with her phone in the choir room when they were practicing "You Get What You Give" for the juniors - but it's all Finn.
She runs her finger over the photo. As her head rocks back, she looks up at the ceiling and a tear escapes her as she whispers, "You better be watching tonight."
"Oh believe me babe, I've already had that talk with him."
Rachel jerks back to reality, her eyebrows furrowing and paralysis taking her body as blood rushes to her face. She jams the photo between her thigh and the chair. Nobody has ever walked in on her conversations with him before. Ever.
Leave it to Noah Puckerman to mess that up.
"Noah, what the hell you can't just walk in here," Rachel stammers, standing but not trusting her legs to carry her any further across the room. "There's security guards and men with guns and you know I'm the star here right because there's supposed to be security guards-"
"Relax, my Jewish-American princess," says Puck as he saunters forward out of the doorway. "I'm just here to relay a message, nothing more nothing less." As he looks around the room, he eyes a platter of veggie chips lying on the table. "Okay, maybe a few of these suckers as well." He grabs a handful and jams them in him mouth.
"PUCKERMAN," Rachel yells, but he stops her.
"Quiet. For a second. I beg of you." Before Rachel can protest, Puck swings his backpack, embroidered with the Air Force logo, around his body and begins to unzip it. "You know how much we all love you," he says, gesturing to the cluster of framed photos on Rachel's side table. It boasts plenty of familiar faces - Finn, Kurt and Rachel chatting around Kurt's locker, Sam gazing at Mercedes in the choir room which Puck and Finn jam it out, Santana and Brittany slung over each other in the girls' bathroom, Blaine playing the piano at the diner. "And you know how much we all tried to be here tonight."
"Yes, exactly. Which is why you gave me a heart attack, Mr. I'm-in-the-big-fancy-Air Force-Colorado-man. You're not supposed to BE HERE."
"I snuck out-"
Rachel rolls her eyes and crosses her arms, interrupting, "Of course you did."
"BECAUSE," Puck snaps back as he digs in his backpack, "there are more important things than following the rules. Or I guess in my case breaking them just to break them."
Rachel purses her lips as Puck continues to dig in the bag. She wants to kick him out. She goes on in ten minutes. She needs to center herself. She needs to put Finn's photo back in her hiding place. She opens her mouth to yell at Noah Puckerman for what feels like the millionth time in her life and, suddenly, as she turns her head back to him, there it is.
The jacket.
Even Puck, with his rough hands and even rougher attitude, holds it gingerly.
"I," Rachel starts. The blood, minutes ago coloring her face, vanishes and leaves behind a ghostly white complexion. Whispering, she sticks her hand out, not quite reaching the jacket fully.
"Rumor has it that in the big world of Broadway, the robe you wear right before going on stage has a lot to do with your performance. Now, I'm not sure about the validity of that claim because the Puck man don't need any special clothes to woo the ladies, and God knows you don't need any help killing it out there tonight but," he says as he softens his voice, "I didn't want to leave it up to chance."
He unfolds the oversized letterman jacket. Rachel, with a rush of familiarity running over her, can barely take it all in - the worn out, cherry-red fabric, the extra long arms, the ever so small pink lipstick stain on the collar that Finn's mom, for the life of her, could never wash out. Rachel apologized a million times for that smudge, but to her surprise, Finn never seemed angry about it. He had smiled and whispered that he liked everyone in school to know he had her lipstick on him.
Puck drapes the jacket around her shoulders. Magically, somehow, despite all of the grief stricken people who have worn this jacket in the long months since he passed, his scent still lingered on it. Rachel barely let herself feel it.
"I was in Mr. Schu's house snooping around on my way out of town," Puck says. "You know, gather supplies for the Air Force. Toilet paper, toothbrushes, some frozen burritos. I saw it hanging in his closet."
Rachel barely brings her eyes up to meet his.
"So I took it back," Puck continues. "Wasn't exactly sure why. Everyone gave me crap about stealing it so I thought I might as well actually go through with it."
"Noah," Rachel begins, her voice breaking. "I don't…"
"I know. You don't need it. You don't need anything of his. I just." Puck stammers. "I wanted him to be a part of tonight, you know?"
Rachel finally meets his gaze. Fighting back tears, she nods.
"Anyway," Puck laughs. "Still fits his girl like a charm."
Rachel allows herself a small smile as she looks down at her hands, which barely peek out the ends of the jacket arms. "That's a lie and you know it."
Puck, hands in his pockets, smiles as he watches her. "Okay amiga, I'm off."
That breaks Rachel out of her trance. "What?"
"I'm outie, Fanny," he says as he moves to the door. "Hitting the open road."
"You're leaving. You literally just gave me a speech about how bad you felt that you couldn't be here and now you're here and you're not staying."
"Not my style."
For the one million and oneth time, Rachel feels the urge to punch him square in the face.
"And I'm gonna leave those," Puck says as he swings his backpack across his shoulders and passes the chips on the table. "There's something wrong about making chips out of veggies. Not kosher." Even then, another handful vanishes into his mouth.
It might have been her emotional exhaustion, but instead of reading him his rights, Rachel smiles, big and broad this time.
"Get out of here, Noah."
He turns to face her as he walks through the doorway. "Give 'em hell."
And with that, Noah Puckerman vanished.
Rachel slowly retreats to the vanity mirror, looking down at the jacket. His jacket. She's almost afraid to look at herself in it, to allow herself to see her reflection as something that belongs to him again. She'd been walking around in armor since he died, not letting anyone see her grieve in fear that it would make his absence all too real. But this time is different. She's about to take the stage, the Broadway stage, the one she dreamed about. The one they dreamed about together. He should be here.
She looks up.
It really does look like a robe on her, it goes down so far. She smiles, remembering the looks she got when she wore it to school. She had feared buttoning it up because people would assume she wasn't wearing anything else. Pulling it tight around her, she picks up the picture that she left on the seat. Carefully, she places it in the crook of the vanity mirror, thinking perhaps it deserves to live outside the sparkly pink box for a while.
"Miss Berry!" yells a PA at her doorway. "I don't mean to interrupt, but, uhm, there's one minute until showtime and I'm supposed to bring you, uhm, a change of shoes and the latch just broke and I'm so scared of everyone here and I'm really scared of you I'M JUST GOING TO GO!"
She makes her way to the PA and takes him by the shoulders.
"It's okay. Breathe. What's your name?"
"I forget."
"You forget?"
"Ben."
"Ben."
"I think so."
"Alright, Ben," she says, taking the shoes out of his hands and starting down the hallway toward the main stage. "Let me give you a little advice about the big time. Ready?"
"R-r-ready," he stutters, as he matches her quick stride.
"Are you listening?"
"For dear life, ma'am."
"The show," Rachel says, turning the corner as she buttons up her letterman jacket and pulls her hair into place, "must go all over the place, or something."