*Author's Note: This is a really short chapter, more of an introduction really. Anyway this is set in New York City a year after Rachel graduated high school. That's really all I have to say. Please review!* PS Sadly, I don't own Glee
Rachel Berry pushed open the door to Tone Deaf, the cheesy karaoke bar not too far from her Manhattan apartment. Her girlfriends waved her over to where they were sitting. Normally, she would never set foot in this place. Too much off key singing made her depressed. But Erin had insisted the best way to celebrate surviving their first year at Julliard was to go to a place like this and show all the drunk losers how it's really done. The rest of her friends had quickly agreed, and Rachel had to admit it sounded like fun. So here she was in a place she'd vowed she'd never go after hearing the howling that someone was trying to call "singing" when she walked by for the first time a few weeks after she moved here. But Julliard had kept her so busy, she hadn't gotten out much, so spending time with friends at a karaoke bar was better than nothing. Besides, the guy who was singing now actually sounded like he would be good if he wasn't filled to his eyeballs with alcohol. She didn't glance at the stage though, just made a beeline for her friends.
"Hey roomie. Geez you take so long to get ready. You were already out of the shower when I left like an hour ago," Erin teased. Rachel and Erin had become fast friends when they met at a freshmen orientation the summer before. They shared an apartment to save money instead of paying Julliard's ridiculous room and board.
"Forty five minutes," Rachel replied defensively. Their friends just laughed.
"Well you've been missing out. This guy's really cute and he's actually good even though he's totally wasted," Theresa, another of her friends, informed her. The guy on stage was belting the last note of his song. Rachel looked up just in time to see him fall on the floor. The entire bar started laughing. The young man on stage tried to get back up but failed. He somehow managed to half crawl, half trip his way over to a trash can in which he promptly threw up. The bartender groaned and pulled the guy up out of the mess and Rachel finally got a look at the boy's face. She gasped in the dramatic way that she had worked so hard at perfecting that it was second nature.
"Does anyone know this guy?" the bartender asked, clearly annoyed. Still shocked, Rachel slowly rose from her seat.
"I do," she said. Her friends looked at her in surprise. She walked to where the bartender was holding the boy up. His glazed over green eyes widened in surprise.
"Rachel?" he asked. She bit her lip and sighed.
"Hello Jesse."