Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 64th cycle. Now cycle 65!

"Red in the Face"
(Older Rachel) & Chloe (OC), George (OC)
Red series
(no listing yet; sequel to "This Could Have Been")

The second day of the workshop had been a lot more demanding than the first and, when it had ended, Chloe and her new friends had decided to celebrate the day's end by going out to dinner, all of them having gone back home first to shower and change and 'look like normal non-sweaty people,' like Tara had declared.

Chloe thought she was getting so good at navigating the New York streets by now, but then as she'd gone off on her way to the restaurant, she had gotten lost. If that wasn't enough, her phone's battery had died, when she had been sure she'd charged it enough earlier. That meant no directions, and no one to call. All she needed was for one more thing to go wrong, and then she would probably just give up and go home, whether that was back to Rachel Berry's house, or all the way to Indiana, whichever one was less shameful at this point.

"Are you lost?" a voice asked, and she looked up, trying to find where it had come from. She saw no one, turned around… Still nothing.

"Hello?" she blinked, and there was a laugh.

"Up here," the voice told her, and she turned her eyes up, feeling slightly exposed. She didn't see him at first, but when she did, she stopped dead in her tracks.

She didn't know if it was the backlight effect, hitting his head of brown curls, or the pale eyes she couldn't tell from gray, blue, or green, except to say that they were light colored and kind of stunning, but she might have pegged him for an angel.

"H-hi…" she didn't know what else to say, and she hoped he couldn't see how red her cheeks had turned.

"Do you need any help?" he asked.

"My, uh… m-my phone died." She had no idea how to speak intelligibly anymore, and the fact that he didn't seem to mind was both the best and worst thing. "I'm not sure… where I am anymore, or how to get to where I'm going."

"Hold on," he told her, disappearing from the window where he'd been leaning.

"No, you don't have t… Okay, he's already coming," she mumbled to herself. Her heart had start going so fast she wondered how much more it could sustain.

The angel at the window appeared to be a boy, seventeen, maybe eighteen, human and nothing short of a Greek statue come to life. He reached into his back pocket as he approached, and she had half a mind to just turn and start running, no given side in mind, just 'away.' And then she saw he was only pulling out his own phone, which he handed to her.

"Here, you can use mine." She looked him in the eye as she took the phone… They were green, oh why did his eyes have to be green?

"Th… Thank you," she looked at it, like she didn't know how to use a phone anymore, even though it was the same kind as hers. When his screen lit up with the picture of a dog, her face instinctively lit up. "Is she yours?"

"Good call on the 'she,'" he told her with a white-toothed smirk. "And she is, or she was. We had to put her down last winter," he revealed.

"I'm sorry," she gasped, hesitating for a moment. She should just get her directions and go, the others were waiting for her… "What was her name?" The boy had an odd little smile, the kind where you knew what you were about to say would make the other person laugh.

"Princess Boo," he told her, and the laugh was so sudden that she snorted, covering her mouth. "I didn't name her, my sister did. She was four at the time, and she refused to have it be anything else. Between me and her though, it was just Boo."

"It does kind of fit her," Chloe nodded. They were silent for a beat, so she got to look up her directions. "Okay, I think I got it," she breathed, returning to home screen before handing the phone back.

"Are you sure?" he asked, checking.

"Yes, got it," she promised.

"Good," he smiled, then, "I'm George, by the way," he held out his free hand. It took her a moment to come to her senses, and she held out her own hand, put it in his. When their palms touched, she had no concept of speech for a second. "This would be where you tell me your name," he helped.

"Chloe," it came back to her, maybe a little too suddenly; even he'd startled, then smiled.

"Nice to meet you, Chloe."

"You, too… George, that was… It's not every day I meet someone with solid curls like me," was the only thing that came to mind, and she wanted to kick herself immediately, but the Greek statue was not done being all perfect, as he treated her to a good laugh.

"Why do you think I helped you," he joked, and she chuckled. There was a moment, silent and yet so filled with words unspoken. He was going to ask her for her number, or if they could hang out sometime, she could see it in his face.

And that made her afraid. He was from here, and she wasn't. When her workshop was done, she would go back to Indiana, and then what? They could see each other until then, sure, and it would be great, it would be wonderful, she knew… She'd known him for all of five minutes, and she already knew she would never have felt for anyone the way she did for him. But one of two things would happen, if they did hit it off. Either she would be torn about going home and end up making things worse with her family, or she would go there and they would try to keep it going, but it wouldn't work. Long distance didn't work.

There she was, standing in front of a boy she hardly knew, and still she was confident, absolutely certain, that if they saw each other again it would be the start of something, and that something could only end badly. Maybe she was just scared, too young, but she didn't want that to happen, she wanted to keep this beautiful moment like this for all her life.

"I should go," she'd spoken. "My friends are waiting, they'll think I got abducted or something."

"Wouldn't want that," he told her.

"Right," she had never hated herself more.

"Maybe I'll see you around, come to the rescue some other time."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm kind of hoping for a 'not needing to be rescued' scenario." That had left the face she last saw him with as a smile. She could do with that.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!