Lately, Quinn feels stuck and she can't pinpoint the reason.
She loves her job. She's still the new girl at the PR firm downtown, but she's been told, she's got potential for big things. And she wants those promotions; wants that corner office on the forty-second floor.
Early on, she found a real love for Chicago. It's a city full of possibility and new discoveries, things she missed out on in Ohio.
Some nights, after a long day of juggling clients and supervisors, she wanders the lamp-lit streets. She watches people as they return home from work: couples greeting each other on doorsteps; friends laughing through pub windows;
children racing through parks for their parents.
And maybe that's the problem. Lately, she's doing more watching than actual doing.
She has friends in town; people she's collected from work and school, but still, she feels this nagging sensation like something's missing. Like her collective momentum forward from Lima has slowly tapered off.
She realizes this is no new feeling. It's a sensation that's ebbed and flowed inside her for years.
It's half the reason she slept with Puck, half the reason she could never really say no to Finn, half the reason she bounced from guy to guy in college.
What irritates her now is that she's not the same girl. All her past mistakes helped her get to this point; pushed her out of Lima, forced her to verbalize and prioritize dreams and goals she barely recognized before.
And still, that feeling of being stuck, it's there, in the back of her head, reminding her of a scared girl she once knew.
They run into each other at a bar. It's clichéd and Quinn instantly feels sixteen again, like none of the social graces she's learned in the last ten years actually embedded in her vocabulary.
He looks better than she remembers; which is startling, since Quinn told herself she gave the memory too much thought, painted him and their short lived romance in too much nostalgia.
He smiles at her, real and genuine, and she feels off balance.
She heard he lived nearby. They even exchanged messages, but now, seeing him in person, in this life she created with her own two hands; it feels simultaneously like coming home and entering an alternate reality.
He tells her of the church he attends. He heads the youth ministry; sings and plays at the Sunday service. He manages a local health food store, and Quinn finds herself grinning at the perfection in the ways his new life fits him.
Quinn's in the middle of telling him of her adventures abroad, when the bartender hollers for the last call. She feels pushed off balance again. Time passed quicker than she realized, and she likes the corner of the bar they carved out for
themselves.
Sam hugs her; tells her he hopes to see her tomorrow at church.
Half-way home, she realizes she's smiling a little more brightly than usual.
