A/N: un-beta'd, all my apologies for the mistakes
Queen's Lace
You are familiar with recovering from an addiction – on some level at least. You've seen your mother get through it during your senior year. You've seen her – and sometimes even went with her – got to meetings, you've seen her talk about her struggles to stay off the booze, you've seen her cry on bad days, but you've also seen her get better, happier, healthier. You've seen your mother slowly get back to you, and it felt good.
You also had to deal with that, granted you weren't addicted to smoking for as long as your mother was with alcohol. It just became a habit and your body got used it, to the point where you felt a difference when you didn't smoke during the day. You could feel yourself get irritated more easily and all you could think of when people where talking to you was getting away from them and light up a cigarette. It didn't exactly took you very long to lose the habit, but you felt the consequences.
Loving Rachel Berry was far worse.
It creeped on you while you weren't paying attention, it grew under your skin without you noticing, and just like an addiction, by the time you realized, you were already screwed. You can't pinpoint the exact moment when it happened, somewhere along sophomore year you think. You were too busy trying to hate her. But if can't tell exactly when you fell in love with Rachel, however, you remember the moment where you realized it. It was during senior year, when you were 'kind of friends', but you knew it was more than. Why else would four little words feel like a knife through your heart? ''I'm gonna marry Finn''. It was the moment when it hit your in the face, and you couldn't even process it properly with everything that happened. You could only stand there helpessly and watch her as you felt like you were suffocating.
You only truly accepted it and stopped fighting it during your freshman year of college – denial has always been your dearest friend. Being away from everything you knew, from Lima, from all the bad vibes of this town, all the bad memories, it gave you clarity. You are in love with Rachel Berry. The first step of recovery is admitting your problem. But now... now what? How does one stop to hoplessly be in love with their best friend? They say 'out of sight, out of mind' and you believe it's true. It's easy to let people get away when you're not constantly with them like when you're in highschool. But the problem is, Rachel is both away and present at the same time. She visits you – and you her – she e-mails you, she calls and texts you. You not out of her life, but you're not completely in it either, not like Kurt or Santana are. You're merely gravitating around her and you can't get her out of your head.
In a way, it's even worse than having to face her every single day. In highschool, you had practice in repressing your feelings. You did it on a daily basis and it became a second nature. But now that you only see each other every two weekend, it became so much harder, when she hugs you, when she links her arms with yours as you are walking, when she says ''I love you'' and you know she only means it in a friendship way. You lost the habit of controling yourself and you had to catch yourself from slipping more than once.
You made a list of your options once.
Rachel how you feel
2. Let her drift away slowly. Take more time to respond to her calls and texts, forget to e-mail her, find excuses to not visit etc. After all, that's what happened with some other friends from highschool. It's life.
3. Wait it out until your stupid crush passes
It's not very glorious. As you wrote it, you knew you would never do the first two. One, because you can barely admit it to yourself, let alone say it out loud or to Rachel herself. The second because you cannot imagine a world where Rachel Berry isn't in your life.
And this is why you are sitting on your bed on a Saturday evening, staring at tiny letters on your computer screen, calculating your next move. Rachel's Funny Girl opening night is next week and of course she invinted you. If you just go, like you do for the visits, you know how this is going to end. She will be thrilled to see you, jump in your arms, you will wander around the city as she shows you the nex exciting places she discovered this week, she will carelessly link arms with yours and you will feel like someone is punching you in the guts when you will see your reflection on a store window, she will act like the best friend she is and you will be left drowning in your feelings and crying on the train home. You can't do that anymore, it's not healthy. You're tired of feeling miserable. It's time to do something about your Rachel Berry addiction.
You let out a deep sight and run your hand through your fingers. You can feel the intrigued and probably slightly annoyed look of your roomate. You know she thinks you're weird, and considering the fact that you've been staring at a computer screen for ten minutes without moving, you can't blame her.
You consider asking for advices for a second. You can't call Brittany because you know she would inadvertently tell Santana and you cannot let Santana have that kind of leverage against you. You can't call Mercedes because so far, your conversations has been generic and you can't just drop ''I'm in love with Rachel and I don't know what to do'' on her like that – same with Kurt. You're just not ready to admit it to your friends yet. You think about talking to Amy – a girl in your English class you've sympathized with. She doesn't know the whole story, but she knows about someone from highschool you love and have a lot of history with. But you also know she's a hopeless romantic and she would probably urge you to make a 'grand gesture' to 'sweep them of their feets' and there is no way in hell you're going to do that.
It's time to change your behaviour, break the nasty habits. No more passive suffering. It's time to do what's best for you and for your heart. As you're typing your respond, it ironically hurt just as much.
''Rachel, I am so very sorry and it kills me to have to do this but I can't come to your opening show next week.''
When you're finished with the e-mail, you press send before you can change you mind, and you go out for a run to clear your mind.
You didn't cave in. No. Not exactly. Well, maybe a little. You just couldn't help it, you couldn't miss Rachel's opening night. But you didn't tell her. You don't know whether your should feel proud or ashamed of yourself – you kinda feel like a creep. The only thing you know is that it doesn't matter because you have to be there. If not for her, for yourself because as much as you want to get better, you also know you could never forgive yourself if you weren't there to witness Rachel's life dream come true.
You sent her flowers, Queen's Lace. You looked up the meaning online: 'sanctuary'. You tell yourself it's because Broadway is Rachel's sanctuary, but part of you know you're lying to yourself. You ignore the sly voice in your head pushing you to admit the real meaning of those flowers.
The show is wonderful just like you know it would be – even though you felt furious at those two jerks who get up and left during Rachel's number. You couldn't see their faces from where you are sitting, but you think you've rarely felt so much hatred in your life as you did in that moment. But soon you forget about because Rachel is magnificient. Just like in highschool her voice transports you in an other place, time is suspended and it's like you're in a trance. She's shining and you don't realize you're crying at the end of the show until the old lady next to you hands you a tissue.
It takes you all you've got to not go backstage to surprise Rachel. For once, you have to think of yourself first and you can't put your heart on the line anymore because you know there's only heartbreak waiting for you. Rachel is meant for New York, for Broadway, and you're not meant to have her. Not in the way you want. Now is time to let go, let her go – not like you actually had her anyway. You force yourself to get out of the theater without looking back because you know if you stop for just one second, you're going to turn around and run to her.
You don't even cry on your way back, you feel too numb and empty for that but you know you did the right thing. That's what you tell yourself anyway, and you hope that one day, you will actually believe it.