A/N: This story is dedicated to Egypt-chan, who has been waiting for me to write this. If you like Will/Shelby, then go check out her stories. Seriously, they are the best :D
This is told from Shelby's perspective. Since we don't know too much about her character, I took the liberty of creating her character myself. You'll have to let me know if I did her justice. I hope you enjoy!
She's been staring at the empty stage for…thirty-six minutes, she confirms as she glances at her wrist watch.
The lights have been dimmed, and there's a draft in the empty auditorium. She shivers slightly, glancing down at the sweater she's holding in her lap, but she makes no move to place it over her cold skin. She likes the numb feeling the chilly air gives her; the lack of feeling in her body is a nice change to the turmoil of emotions her heart's felt in the past few weeks.
The auditorium doors click, but she doesn't bother to turn. She only rubs her arms, feeling the delicate goose pimples under her fingers. A body slides into the seat beside her, and though she doesn't turn her face, she stiffens slightly as the musky scent of an all too familiar cologne fills her nostrils.
"You know, practice ended over half an hour ago." His voice is soft, but she can hear the melancholy tone laced in his words.
She still doesn't turn.
"At least, that's why the sign on the door says." He fills the empty air with mindless chatter when she doesn't speak. "I was afraid you wouldn't be here."
Now she turns, and as soon as her gaze falls on him, she wishes she hadn't. She gathers her bearings, an icy tone in her words, "You could've have called—would've saved you a trip."
He looks like a kicked puppy, and for a moment she takes pleasure in his pain—after all, he's the reason she's been falling to pieces these past few weeks.
Shelby makes it a rule to never express emotion. It makes things easy when her affairs are kept strictly platonic and she forms lasting bonds with no one. Because as soon as her heart becomes involved, she always ends up getting hurt.
Shelby was five when her father died. She had loved her father more than anyone in the world. He hadn't been able to give her much—his job at the steel mill could hardly support the small family. But he gave her his love, and that was always enough for Shelby.
She still remembers the day—the day he did not come home from the mill. She waited by the small, grimy window of their apartment as she did everyday. She waited, and waited, and waited.
Her mother was having one of her "bad days"—at least that's what her daddy called them, where she'd end up locked in her room, moaning about a headache because she'd had too much to drink. She promised she'd stop, but they were empty promises, and Shelby's daddy loved her so much that he'd never fail to offer her chance after chance.
So Shelby waited—alone, in the cold dark apartment, a hunger pain in her gut from the lunch her mother had forgotten to feed her.
But he never came.
It wasn't until very late in the night, when Shelby had begun to doze with her cheek pressed against the cold glass of the window, ignoring her full bladder because she wanted to be there the second her daddy walked through the door, that Shelby heard a knock on the door.
She jumped up, eager to open it, and she was so beside her that she didn't even think to wonder why her daddy would be knocking on the door of their own apartment.
It was one of her daddy's co-workers from the mills. Shelby hardly understood a word he said; she just wanted to know where her daddy was, and her annoyingly full bladder was making it hard to concentrate on his words.
He was asking for her mother—it took a minute for the words to register in Shelby's mind, and when they did, she practiced her well rehearsed line, that Mommy was not available, but Shelby would deliver a message to her when she could.
And that is when the man's face crumpled. And as gently as he could, he told Shelby that her daddy wasn't going to be coming home.
Something about a stroke, something about an ambulance, something about gone before he even made it the hospital.
Shelby doesn't remember anything after that. She doesn't remember the small shriek she let out, or her vain thoughts of denial, or how after the words finally sank in, the shock caused her to lose control of bulging bladder.
But she does remember her heart breaking—and her decision to never let it break again.
She had realized from a young age never to have much faith in her mother, even on her "good days." After the death of her father, this task became easier. Her mother deteriorated to the point that everyday became a "bad day," and soon Shelby could count every rib in her chest. When she was rushed to the ER after passing out in the middle of class from severe dehydration and malnourishment, her mother was not even in the right state of mind to join her seven-year-old daughter at the hospital.
When she recovered, she did not go back to the small apartment. Instead, she went to a nice home with an elderly couple. Foster care, she soon learned was what this cozy home was called, and she would stay there until her mother could "clean up her act."
But she never did. Shelby lived with the elderly couple for a year before the old man's health problems became too demanding, and they could no longer care for a growing girl.
Shelby didn't mind. Though the couple had been kind, she did not love them, and when she left with her small bag securely in her grasp, she was determined to keep her detached outlook on life. After all, her future only held disappointment.
In high school, when she was living with her fifth foster family, she was placed in the choir to fill in the empty elective spot in her schedule. Shelby had hardly ever had the chance to sing before, but as soon as the choir rehearsed their first song, Shelby realized she had finally found the placed she belonged.
She loved singing—and she gave herself permission to feel passion for this new found hobby of hers—because her voice was one thing that no one could ever, ever take away from her.
She got a full scholarship to Berklee School of Music, more than she could've ever hoped for. But after school, she was left penniless and jobless and with no one to turn to but herself.
She was desperate when she stumbled upon the ad—surrogate mothers needed, and the sum of money listed was too good to be true.
The couple she was paired with—two gay men longing for a child—was extremely interested in her vocal talents and her drive for excellence.
Two months later, Shelby found herself in the bathroom, puking her guts out and a positive pregnancy test in her hands.
From the moment she had agreed to carry the child, the baby already belonged to the two men. As her belly grew, it felt foreign to her, like an unwanted mass growing in from of her.
But as that tiny life began to kick inside of her, when she went with the couple to get an ultrasound and she discovered it was a girl—a little girl!—it became harder and harder for Shelby to think of her round belly as a detached alien. Instead, she was fondly beginning to regard her growing stomach as a piece of her.
She sang to that baby, tears springing from her eyes as she affectionately rubbed her belly. She sang all the time, as she arranged her new apartment she had been able to purchase with the down payment the couple had given her. She sang as she opened her acceptance letter—the choir teacher at Carmel High and the director of their prestigious glee club. She sang in the morning, feeling hope as she dressed for the day, placing her new clothing—the best quality she had ever been able to afford to purchase. She sang as she curled up under the covers at night, not feeling so alone as the little baby turned somersaults in her womb.
But when she gave birth, after thirteen hours of brutal labor, she refused to even look at the child, who already seemed to have quite a set of pipes as her first breaths turned to loud shrieks. She only glimpsed her daughter as the doctors whisked the baby away into the waiting arms of her fathers.
And all at once, Shelby regretted the bond she had formed with her unborn daughter, and she bitterly reminded herself why she always tried to stay detached.
She did date in the following years, but they were fleeting relationships that mostly consisted of physical contact. The heated make out sessions and the passionate sex left Shelby feeling a little less alone but without the danger of forming an emotional attachment.
She was even cold with her students—taking a brutal, all-business approach that molded them into an even more prestigious group than they had been before. She took the talent and pushed her students so hard that they had no choice but to be the best. She renamed the group Vocal Adrenaline, a name that would soon instill fear to those who heard it.
But now there's Will. How could one person, after a lifetime of detachment, suddenly have her swimming in a turmoil of emotion?
He was cute—that dimple, those warm brown eyes, that mop of curly hair were enough to break her heart.
It hadn't started out that way. Will had invited her over to his place after Vocal Adrenaline finished rehearsing, and she had agreed, in need of some good sex, desperate for someone to touch her.
But he had pulled away.
He didn't want what she wanted; not at all.
And then she really looked at him, the confused man who kept messing up, the confused man who allowed himself to feel all the emotions Shelby denied herself, the confused man who only wanted to make things right.
And Shelby's heart fluttered a little.
She had given her card to many men before, but as she handed the lavender rectangle to Will, a part of her really wanted him to call, and not just so they could hook up, but because, well—she reluctantly admitted to herself—maybe she was beginning to care.
The following weeks had been agony, and she had fallen into the habit of staring at her phone as if it might explode any moment.
But he never called, and Shelby had visions of him kissing, caressing, loving that girl—whoever she might be—he had been trying to work things out with.
Was it awful that she didn't want things to work out? Was it awful that she wanted to matter? That she didn't want to be some detour—some mistake—on Will's journey to self discovery.
That maybe, just once, she wanted to be the real thing?
She looks at him, tasting her sharp words in her mouth.
And all at once, she cannot feel pleasure in his pained expression.
"I didn't think you'd pick up," he admits, referring to her previous comment.
For a minute, she's confused. If only he knew she hasn't turned her phone off once she handed him that card!
But then he continues. "Not after, well, New Directions practically stole Jesse from you."
Oh, that.
She takes a deep breath, looking him in the eye against her better judgment. "I was angry—at first. Vocal Adrenaline is my life, and Jesse was easily my best singer. And I could've dwelt on it and felt bitter, but that's not going to win us Regionals, is it? Besides, it's what Jesse wanted, and who I am to take him away from his heart's desire?" She says this last part regretfully, pulling her gaze away from Will's.
"I just can't figure you out," Will tells her, a little bit of a smile in his voice.
Honestly, she can't even figure herself out anymore these days.
"So why are you here?" she dares to ask. "Finally figure things out?"
He laughs then, bitterly. "Far from it. I've never had things so un-figured out in my life."
And then everything spills out. She can tell he's been dying to unload on someone, and as he finishes, she sees a wave of relief wash over him.
She considers his words before speaking. "So you're a slut—because you made out with me for all of five minutes and you shared the same bed with your high school crush?"
Will cracks a small smile.
"Seems to me that this guidance counselor girlfriend—" Gosh, she hates saying that word—"of yours might need to redefine her definition of a slut. To me, it sounds like she's really insecure, and that's certainly not a healthy way to start a relationship."
He looks up her, and she's afraid she might have crossed a line. After all, who is she to talk about relationships?
"I care about Emma," he tells her. "I care about her a lot, and I know she cares about me—or at least cares about something because she wouldn't have bothered to confront me that way if she did not. But is that enough? Is simply caring enough a reason to work out a relationship that's been as damaged as our?"
He looks Shelby in the eye.
She has his full attention, his entire trust. And she can easily twist her words to work out for her advantage.
But she sighs, instead uttering the words. "You tell me."
His brow crinkles; he obviously wasn't expecting this piece of advice. "What?"
"You tell me," she repeats. "It's not my relationship we're taking about. I don't know what motivates you, I don't know how much you really want things to work out with this guidance counselor. So you tell me—is caring about her enough for you to work through everything and sort things out?"
He looks at her. Then at his feet. Then up at her again. She can tell he has no idea what he wants—not unlike herself.
"You know," she tells him, suddenly breaking free of her own selfish desires for the man sitting beside her. "There was a reason I told you to wait to call me until you had things figured out. You obviously still have a lot to think about—and that's not a bad thing at all. In fact, I think it's great you're so confused because it does show how much you care. Will, everything is going to work out, even though things seem way out of your control right now. You're a great guy, and I mean that. Just because you've made some mistakes and hurt some people along the way doesn't change that. You still have my number—call me anytime you need to talk, and I mean that."
He smiles at her, surprising her when he leans over to embrace her. She leans into his broad shoulders, inhaling the comforting scent of his cologne. "Thanks, Shelby."
He's gone then, leaving Shelby alone with her thoughts. She smiles, though she hardly has anything to smile about. She's just pushed Will away for the second time, but she's starting to realize that's okay. Because there's that part of her deep down that she can't deny that really, really wants things to work out with him. And she's going to have to be patient if she wants to do things right.
Because after all, Shelby doesn't know what she wants anymore than Will does, and during this time he's trying to find himself, Shelby thinks it might be time for her to start reattaching herself to the world around her.