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 61st cycle. Now cycle 62!

TOP 15 COUNTDOWN - Something I do once in a while, if you will recall, where I take my favorite characters, ships, friendships, series (from my daily stories) and put them in order, the number 1 of which gets a seven-chapter story in the end :)
Coming in at number 8: Sunshine Girls series

"Grand Suns"
Rachel & Quinn, Rachel/Puck, Quinn/Finn, Berry dads, baby Nora (AU!Beth)
Sunshine Girls series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

She'd just nearly lost her composure when Puck had said it, when he had asked her to go out with him. Neither of them had ever really broached the subject of reuniting, not in all the time since their breakup, since she had broken up with him, but then on that day… It could not have been more of a surprise, and it was just as well that he had made it very clear she could take her time to think, because she had no idea what to tell him.

Her heart would have said yes right away. She had missed him, there was no denying. But missing him had caused for her to ache, and no matter what she couldn't forget this.

She wanted to believe that they could turn things around, make it work again, but then what if they couldn't? Sometimes she would think about them getting back together and, even if it was only pretend, there was this possibility that existed somewhere in the universe. If they tried and hit another wall, she would lose that ability to pretend, and that would hurt more than she could say. If she didn't try though, she might miss out on happiness, on their story picking up and never letting go.

On the way home she had tried to text Quinn. With how twisted and curved their whole history had been, with Puck, and Finn, it should have felt weirder than it did to turn to her with this. But their friendship had grown to a place where she knew she could trust her on the matter.

She'd had no response yet by the time she arrived, and so the matter had turned to her fathers. She wouldn't have even mentioned any of it to them except she was wearing her conflict on her face and they asked her what was going on.

"I thought you were going over to Noah's house," Hiram had asked.

"I did," she tried to go for the stairs so they might leave it.

"Is his mother alright?" Leroy asked.

"Yeah, she's fine, all better, it's done," she rattled off, and Hiram stopped her.

"What happened?" he asked. She sighed, looking at them both.

"Puck… asked me out," she revealed, unable to lie to them. Her fathers shared a look, which she took as them disagreeing. "I haven't said yes… or no, I'm still thinking it through. I know how you two felt about me and him dating, and…"

"Rachel," Leroy shook his head. "If you want to be with him, if you feel that way about him, then we won't stand in your way."

"You… you won't?"

"Sweetheart," Hiram touched her arm. "We never said you should break up with him."

"How'd you know I was the one to…"

"He told us. We ran into him, weeks ago…"

"Yeah, he told me about that."

"He assumed we already knew you were the one who put an end to the relationship, but it was all of our surprise to learn."

"I couldn't… Look, it doesn't matter."

"I think it does," Hiram looked to his daughter. "I'll admit, in the beginning, neither of us wanted to consider what might happen, and we hate to think that this would have been the reason you let go of him."

"He's shown us how wrong we were," Leroy continued. "He's been a great father to that little girl, even to Sarah, with his mother's situation these past few weeks."

"What we mean to say," Hiram carried on. "What we mean is, if you're going to choose to see him again, it should come from what you want and, as far as we're concerned, we don't matter in the decision. If we do, then know that you have our blessing."

"It's all up to you," Leroy finished, putting his arm around her.

Returning to her room with these thoughts now, she saw Quinn had responded. As she had explained the latest 'developments,' all Quinn's responses boiled down to the fact that in the past few months, since the breakup, both of them had been miserable, hadn't moved on, and that told her all they ever wanted was each other. She knew Rachel still wanted Puck, and she knew Puck still wanted Rachel, and if neither of them did a thing about it, then they would be missing out on something that should have been theirs. Rachel replied she was scared to screw it up. Quinn returned that, if she wasn't scared, then it wouldn't get anywhere.

Rachel had stared at her phone for what seemed like an eternity. She closed her eyes and tried to think about them, the two of them as they'd been before they had broken up. They had been happy, properly happy. The breakup had been so out of the blue, and it had sent everything in shambles before they knew it was happening. They didn't want it to happen, but it had. She thought about how they had been since the breakup, and Quinn had been right on this, they had both been miserable. She'd seen it in Puck as much as she'd seen it in herself but, whenever they thought about that they would have to think about why they broke up, and then they were back where they had started.

Puck had known her fathers didn't object to them, not anymore if ever at all. Was this the reason why he'd suddenly decided to ask her out again, or was it just about him?

Her fathers had said to not make it about them, to focus on what her heart was telling her.

She picked up her phone, hit the speed dial for his cell, and she waited. Puck's sister had picked up the phone. As she waited for her to bring the phone to him, she could hear their voices, and she swore she heard Sarah say something about 'not being an idiot.'

"Rachel?" he finally came on the line, and her heart flipped, took the plunge.

"So when do you want to go out?"

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!