So far, this year has really not gone the way Santana's planned at all.
For one thing, she totaled her car because some moron swerved into her lane like his ass was on fire, and now she's driving an old, used Ford instead of Roxanne, her pristine Mercedes Benz, which is now banged up and sitting in the garage till she can afford to get it fixed.
For another, she's eating Spicy Cheetos with a good shake of Tabasco sauce to speed up her metabolism because her tyrant of a coach weighs them every week.
In addition, she never planned to join cheerleading again, but Britt had offered them joining together as an olive branch after a summer of stilted conversations and ignored calls. She missed her best friend, so yeah, she took it.
Right now she's driving around because her house is too quiet and big: even if she blasts music, she can hear the not-silence, the hum of the fridge and the heater that spells loneliness and gives her too much room for her own thoughts.
This shitty car, however, is small enough that the music thrums into her chest, and the chill autumn wind blasting through her windows drowns out anything else.
She checks the dash for the time, and figures that her parents are probably done with couples counseling by now.
When she sees the Burger King up ahead, she decides that a Coke slushie would be the perfect remedy to her fiery throat.
What the fuck is that? Santana thinks as she walks toward her car, bending down to a gross, cloudy brown-red liquid underneath the wheels. She coughs instantly, a burnt odor filling her nose.
"What," she hisses to the truck, "did you have your period or something?"
When she gets no response, she sighs, gets in her seat, and drives somewhere she really doesn't want to go.
"Ray loaned this to me," she bellows while driving, taking intermittent sips from her slushie, "as a favor. He's a very respectable used car salesman- an oxymoron if I ever heard one… Isn't that nice, Sanny? It's already sort of banged up, so if you dent it again, so one will be any the wiser. Who cares if it's a death trap?"
She pulls in to the autoshop, grateful to see that the lights are on at this hour.
Finn is hunched over some papers near the front, brow furrowed, the way it always is when he reads- dude probably has the reading level of a 4th graders, given all the stupid stuff he says.
"Where's Burt?" she calls out, careful to walk around the dripping whatever-the-fuck it is.
He looks up, eyes lingering on her longer than is relatively normal.
"Look," she sighs, "I know I look like crap. Can you get past it and find him to fix my car or whatever?"
So sue her- it's a Friday. She's allowed to wear sweats and a sweatshirt, her hair a mess around her makeup free face.
"You don't- um," he pauses, putting his pencil on the card table beside him, "he's not here. He's on a date with my mom."
"How adorable," she says, lip curling a little (whatever, they actually are cute together, but their wedding was not fun for her).
"I work here, though," he says, pointing at his stitched name tag (God, what a dork), "so I can take a look."
"Great," Santana says flatly.
As Finn walks to her car, Santana walks away from it, sitting down in his vacated chair.
"Transmission leak," he mutters, grabbing a stool and then popping open the hood.
Bored, she sifts through the papers on his table. Most of them have squares and measurements, but some of them have notes: "get 10 feet of cedarwood, 3 cans blue paint, 1 can white for trim"…
"Are you building something?" she asks.
"Yeah…birdhouse. It's homework for Woodshop."
Santana laughs. "You have homework in Woodshop? Really?"
"Whatever."
He's being entirely boring. Not a surprise, given that it's Finn, but the not-silence of whatever he's doing in her engine is just as bad as the not-silence
With that in mind, she saunters over the passenger side, leaning against it with her elbow, hand tucked in her thick mass of hair.
"So…how'd you get the job?"
"I dunno…," Finn trails off, taking a damp washcloth out of his back pocket and wiping his forehead, "Burt trained me, and I got, like…good at it."
"Right. I'm sure that's it."
"What?"
"Oh, I don't know," she says with a shrug, "I thought it had something to do with the fact that you're Daddy's little hetero-he-never-had."
"Don't talk that way about Kurt," he snaps.
"Why not?"
"Because it's really mean, especially, you know…considering ."
"Considering what, Finn?" she asks, her voice suddenly higher and airy, lips curling like the cat that got the cream but eyes hard as diamonds.
"Considering that you're…not," he mumbles, turning back to her engine with sudden intent.
"Not what?"
"I need to jack this up, so could you just-"
"Don't assume you know anything about me, yeah? Thanks."
"What are you doing now?"
"Changing the gasket on your drain plug."
"You're, like, filthy."
"It happens."
"Were you right?"
"About what?"
"The transmission being all effed up."
"Yeah."
"Huh."
"What?"
"I guess you are actually good at this."
"Thanks," he says, a smile dimpling his cheek.
"Are you gonna do this in New York?"
"…noooo."
"I see."
"What?"
"Does Rachel know you're not doing this is New York?"
"I don't- I'll probably go with her."
"And she's all-on-board with you being an auto mechanic?"
His jaw clenches visibly, smoothing out any vestige of the dimples that indented his cheeks from her compliment.
"Shocker," she says, flicking her manicured nails against the hood of her car.
"You look tired," he mentions as he rings her up.
"So you do think I look like shit."
"No…actually, I think you look nice- you should wear your uniform less often."
"Don't really have a choice about that."
"Yeah you do. You could quit," he says, like it's that simple.
"No," she says, signing the receipt, "I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because."
"It's not like you don't have anything else."
It's said with such clarity and innocence that she's actually a little taken aback.
"Like what?"
"Glee. It's the best part of your day, right?"
She honestly can't believe he remembers that. Two years ago. They were sophomores. She took his virginity, Glee Club took her cool factor, Quinn had her baby…it all seems like a lifetime ago, already.
"What's to keep Schue from kicking me out again?"
"You set fire to the piano, Santana," he says like she's an idiot.
"No, actually, I had my minions pour gasoline over the fire and Quinn set fire to the piano."
"OK, so…I don't get it. You both got back in."
"I had to pledge my freaking allegiance. All Quinn had to do to get back in was look like she used to."
Finn opens his mouth, as if to refute this, but then closes it again.
"Thanks for fixing it," she says grudgingly, turning around to walk back to her car and get home.
"Wait-"
She shrugs the hand off her shoulder, gets into her car, rolls down the window and snaps, "What?"
"What do you think I should do about Rachel?"
"Talk about it. Don't talk about it, whatever. But there's really no use in delaying an inevitable."
And with that, she peels out onto the road to her less-silent house.