Mercedes must still have that dazed look on her face, because after glee practice on Wednesday, Santana corners her.
"Let's have a little chat."
Mercedes raises her eyebrows in confusion and watches the rest of their friends exit the room. None of them pay her any attention. Santana has that look on her face that says Mmhmm, this is gonna happen. Mercedes stares at her expectantly.
Brittany hesitates as she passes them; she looks between Santana and Mercedes, wondering what's going on, but Santana lightly touches her fingers and says, "Give me a sec. I'll meet you at your locker."
Brittany smiles - she and Santana do that lovesick glance thing that Mercedes witnesses so often now - and files out behind everybody else.
Santana turns to Mercedes.
"Okay, spill it," she says, raising her eyebrows.
"What?"
"You're still torn up about this boy situation."
Mercedes rolls her eyes. "And what, you think you can help me?"
"Yep."
"Look, Santana, no offense, but this isn't exactly your territory anymore, is it?"
Santana folds her arms. "And you're so good at navigating it?"
Mercedes sighs, figures there's no use in hiding her dilemma, and drops down into a chair.
"It's the Shane and Sam thing, right?" Santana continues.
Mercedes nods listlessly.
"You still don't know who's right for you?"
When Mercedes doesn't respond at all, Santana takes a step closer to her.
"Look, Wheezy."
She pulls a crumpled piece of notebook paper from the pocket of her Cheerios jacket, unfolds it, and hands it to Mercedes to read. Mercedes takes it curiously, wondering why Santana is trying to look so unconcerned about letting her read it.
There are four lines of verse scribbled across the page in bright green gel pen:
Roses are red
violets are blue
you're super cute
one day I'm gonna marry you!
Mercedes looks up at Santana with a frown on her face.
"Why are you showing me this?"
"Look, you read this, and you probably think it's dumb, right? But when I read it, I just…" She trails off, licks her lips. A smile overtakes her, and she shakes her head at the miracle of it all. "I fall in love with Brittany just a little bit more."
"That's cute, Santana, but it doesn't really help me."
"It should, though!"
"How?"
"Oh come on, think about it. Do you think I'd be carrying this around in my pocket and pulling it out to read at all hours of the day if Puck had written it? Or Finn? Or your boy Trouty Mouth?"
Mercedes looks revolted at the thought.
"No, I wouldn't be," Santana says. "And I know it's silly. I know that if I saw any other person at this school carrying around a note like this, I'd strike them down so hard with my angry, perfectly-executed insults that their ears wouldn't work right for weeks. But I can't help myself." She half-smiles; her voice goes soft. "I'm in love, so I do weird things like this now."
"I still don't follow you…."
Santana huffs with impatience. "Okay, let me break this down for you. You need to be with the person who makes you so happy, so giddy, so damn silly that you can't help but act smitten all the time, even if it's totally lame. If Shane's that guy? Hey, go for it. But if it's Sam? Then you need to be with Sam."
Mercedes looks away from Santana; her pained eyes rove all around the corners of the room.
"Mercedes," Santana says quietly.
"Don't do that," Mercedes snaps, looking back at her. "Don't start calling me by my actual name now, like you take pity on me or something."
"Fine. Wheezy," Santana says, clearing her voice. She sits down in the chair next to Mercedes and orients her whole body toward her. "I don't give advice much, other than to tell Rachel to burn her entire wardrobe, so you might want to listen up."
Mercedes stares her down, but Santana recognizes the angry facade as insecurity.
"Don't make the same mistake I did," she implores her. "I knew-I always knew, deep down-that Brittany was the one for me. I've always been so in love with that girl that my heart was chasing her even when my brain wasn't. And the first time she made it clear to me that she wanted me, I turned her down. Because I was scared. Or…thought we didn't fit, somehow." (Mercedes crosses her arms.) "But that was the biggest mistake of my life. I wasted months feeling unhappy, and making other people unhappy, when all I wanted was to be able to give in to my feelings and love her. And it took me so long to sort out those feelings and make it right with her."
"And how do you feel now?" Mercedes asks, though she already knows the answer.
Santana looks shyly at the floor, but Mercedes can see the calm smile that spreads across her face. Santana raises her head triumphantly and says, so earnestly that Mercedes practically reels from it, "Like every day is the best day of my life."
Her joy is so contagious that Mercedes can't help but smile; and as she does so, she feels something shift into place. Something she can't quite name-something she has to examine later, in the quiet space of her room, when the world is shut out and she has no one but her heart to answer to.
"Thanks, Santana."
Santana simply smiles, stands up, and grabs her book bag off the floor. "See you later, Wheezy. Good luck."
Hours later, when Cheerios practice has ended and Santana and Brittany are the last ones out of the locker room, Santana will walk Brittany to her car and will kiss her like she's the greatest thing God ever made. Brittany will grin, and Santana will kiss her again, and then Brittany will get into her car, still smiling at Santana, and drive away with the promise to call before bed. Santana will walk to her own car, throw her bag in the backseat, and unfold that note from Brittany one more time. She'll re-read the poem, and then she'll flip to the underside of the note-the side she didn't show to Mercedes-and she'll swallow the I love you forever and forever and forever down into her soul.
Hours after that, Mercedes will organize her backpack to make sure she has all of her assignments for the next day. She'll unzip the front pocket, the one where she keeps her pens, her lipgloss, her lotion, and her cell phone, and she'll retrieve a note from Shane.
I love you baby!
She'll stare at it and wonder why she wasn't keeping it in her pocket, like Santana was doing with Brittany's note, so that she could have pulled it out at any time of the day.
And then she'll walk quietly over to her nightstand, her bare feet padding on the carpet, and she'll open her bottom drawer, the one where she keeps special things. She'll dig through a few items before she unearths the piece of paper she's looking for.
And in his messy handwriting, on a torn Lima Bean receipt, will be the words he wrote to her that one afternoon in late June:
Making you smile is my favorite thing.
And that night, she'll sleep with it under her pillow.