"Santana, don't worry, I'm sure she's fine," Tina says, but it irritates her because there's a small dose of doubt in Tina's voice.
She jiggles her foot and crosses her arms tighter over her body. She glances out the rainy window of The Lima Bean, trying to ignore Mike and Tina shooting glances at each other next to her.
"Should you maybe call her house phone?" Mike suggests.
"I did already."
She has half of her coffee left but she's too on-edge to drink it. If Brittany was here, she'd tell her to "take a pill vitamin," and then she'd grin at her and bump her shoulder. She doesn't want to think about Brittany because she's too worried about her, but she can't think of anything but Brittany right now, and this feeling of worry overwhelms her like a paper bag over her head.
"Artie hasn't seen her," Mike says, looking up from his cell phone.
"Of course he hasn't," Santana snaps. "Why would she have stopped by Artie's place?"
"Just thought I'd try."
"She probably just ran out of gas or something," Tina says softly.
"She never runs out of gas," Santana says. "It's the one thing that makes her nervous because her mom did that once when they were on in the interstate and it really scared her. She never lets her car get below a half-tank."
"Well maybe she fell asleep."
Santana shakes her head. Mike and Tina look at her nervously. "This wouldn't happen again, right?" she asks, and she hates the unblanketed fear in her voice. "This can't possibly happen again so soon after…"
She trails off, but they understand. "She's fine," Tina assures her. "She's fine."
…
Finally, finally, she sees Brittany's car pull into the parking lot.
"Oh," she sighs, breathing out more than she intended to.
"See?" Tina says, smiling at her. "She's fine."
Santana doesn't respond to her; she grabs her cell phone and wallet off the table and storms out into the rain, rage and relief pounding in her chest.
"Is there a reason," she shouts, seeing Brittany climb casually out of her car, "that you decided to be almost an hour late?"
Brittany gapes at her, her mouth falling open in surprise.
"And is there a reason," Santana continues, shaking her fist out in front of her body, her phone clutched tightly in her hand, "that you couldn't answer your fucking phone when I tried to call you to find out where you were?"
"I'm really sorry," Brittany says hastily. "My mom asked me to run a bunch of last-minute errands, and I was late leaving my house, and then I realized I'd forgotten my phone-"
"How did you forget your phone?" Santana yells. "You never forget your phone!"
"I changed my jeans and forgot to put it back in my pocket."
"And you couldn't think of some other way to communicate with me?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know!" Santana throws her hands in the air. "Maybe a pay phone? Maybe…I don't know, maybe you could have turned around and gone back for your cell phone!"
"That would have been silly."
"No, that would have been considerate!"
"I was already at Kroger though before I'd realized I'd forgotten it."
"Didn't you realize how late you were running? We've been waiting for almost an hour!"
"I'm sorry, Santana. I wasn't thinking."
"Well that much is clear," Santana spits.
Brittany's eyebrows draw together. "I don't appreciate you talking to me like that," she says evenly.
"And I don't appreciate the fact that I just worried myself sick over you because you left your damn phone at home."
"Yeah, well, I can definitely feel the I'm-so-happy-to-see-you vibes that are oozing off you like the pollution in Fern Gully."
"Is this a joke to you right now? Is this funny?"
"No, and neither is the way you're talking to me."
"I wouldn't be talking to you like this if I didn't feel like I'm currently recovering from a massive heart attack. A heart attack caused by you."
"You know what, Santana, I should probably just go, because I know how you are when you get like this, and I don't want to say something I'm going to regret." Brittany pulls her lips together and shrugs her eyebrows, then backs away with the air of being the bigger person in the situation. It's so infuriatingly familiar that Santana throws her wallet on the ground in anger.
"Yeah, please do go! Run from the conflict, Brittany, instead of trying to work it out like a real relationship!"
Brittany halts her steps and turns around slowly, blinking through the rain. Her jaw juts out from her face and her tongue is between her teeth like she's still evaluating whether or not Santana actually said that.
"This is a real relationship," she says in a low voice. "It's always been a real relationship to me. Which is why I don't ever speak to you with the kind of disdain you're showing me now."
Santana huffs and crosses her arms across her chest.
"Don't call me tonight," Brittany tosses at her. Then she walks coolly to her car and drives away without looking back. Santana presses on her thumb with her fingers, then stoops to pick up her wallet. It's wet and dirty from the rain on the asphalt.
"Fucking shit fuck," she mutters to herself.
…
It takes her eight minutes to wash her ice cream bowl that night. Her mind hopscotches from She's in the wrong to I'm in the wrong to I should call her anyway as she scrubs at the bottom of the pretty ceramic. The water's hot on her hands and all the soap has gone out of the sponge, but she doesn't notice. She keeps thinking she hears the chime of her cell phone, but it sits black and unlit on the counter behind her.
"Santana," her mom says, watching her, "what's wrong with you?"
"Nothing."
"Well then turn that water off and leave your dish to dry. Unless you want to pay the water bill this month?"
Santana rinses the bowl and turns the sink off. She looks around to her mom and offers a grudging "Sorry" before she crosses the kitchen, intent on heading up to her bedroom to sulk.
"Uh, no no, hold on," her mom says. "Something's bothering you. What is it?"
"Other than the fact that you're watching reruns of The Waltons again? Nothing."
"Always my little ray of sunshine." Her mom inclines her head, patronizing her moodiness. "Okay, let's play Multiple Choice. A: School. B: Cheerios. Or C: Brittany?"
"D: None of your business."
Her mom raises her eyebrows at her. "Santana," she says, waiting.
Santana drops her hand to the back of a chair and sighs. "C," she admits. "Brittany."
"What happened?"
"Nothing," she says, shrugging her shoulders. "We…had a fight."
"About what?"
Santana clutches the back of the chair and sighs. "Mom, do you ever just-does Dad ever piss you off you so much that you want to throw something?"
Her mom laughs. "All the time."
Santana cocks her head to the side. "But then-why are you with him?"
"Because I love him, sweetheart. I love your father." Her mom smiles. "Brittany will never get on your nerves the way other people do, but on those occasions when she does something that annoys you, it'll seem ten times worse because it's her and because your emotions are tied so strongly to her."
"She drives me crazy."
"Always?"
"No, but like, today she didn't have her phone on her and she was 45 minutes late to meet us and I kept calling her but she didn't answer and-and after everything that happened with Quinn-"
"Ohhh, Santana." Her mom clicks her tongue in sympathy. "You thought something happened to her."
"It was raining really hard outside, and I was worried about her driving in it," Santana explains, her voice breaking. She hangs her head and blinks through the tears forming in her eyes.
"Honey," her mom says, pulling her into a hug, "it's okay. You were worried."
"Yeah," Santana says thickly.
Her mom pets her hair and gives her a minute to cry. Santana breathes in and out, grateful for the release but embarrassed by its necessity.
"Did you react badly when she finally got there?" her mom asks.
"How did you know?"
"Because I know you. And because that's exactly the kind of thing your father would do, and it would irritate me to no end."
Santana laughs against the tears in her throat. "I made her really mad. She told me not to call her tonight. And she hasn't texted me."
"Give her time," her mom says. "And then apologize."
"What if she doesn't forgive me?"
"Santana," her mom laughs, "of course she'll forgive you. She loves you."
…
Santana goes to bed early, tired from crying and worrying, but it takes her hours to fall asleep without her normal Good night, I love you text from Brittany.
…
She hopes to find a morning text, but her phone shows no activity except for a new e-mail from Piperlime.
She distracts herself by facebooking, going to JoAnn fabrics with her mom, and going for a run late in the afternoon. By dinnertime, she's so restless she can hardly speak to her parents.
"What's wrong with the teenager," her dad says to her mom. Santana ignores him and stares at the chicken on her plate.
"Teenage love problems," her mom says after a pause.
Her parents smile at each other and she feels a pang when she imagines Brittany and her making fun of their kids one day.
"Cheer up, buttercup," her dad says. "Lopez's always work out matters of the heart."
…
At 9:37, when she's watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with her parents, her phone finally chimes.
I'm still mad at you, but I'm also sorry. Let's hash it out tomorrow. I love you.
She closes the text and stares at the television screen, unsure of how she feels. She gets tired of watching Jack Nicholson's face so she excuses herself to bed, running through a dozen possible replies-or the ultimate passive-aggressive option of not replying at all-as she climbs the stairs. She crawls onto her bed and stares up at her ceiling, at the glow-in-the-dark stars that she and Brittany taped up there when they were 12 years old, and reads the text message again.
And she's still mad, but she's somehow calm, too. Like her brain can differentiate between feeling angry at Brittany for now but feeling love for Brittany forever. She thinks about her parents, and about the time they got into a huge fight when she was seven years old. How her mom was hurt because her dad wouldn't spend time with her great aunt and uncle; how her dad felt that her mom's aunt and uncle judged him but her mom refused to see it. How they shouted at each other in the family room, how Santana's father dropped the F-bomb for the first ever time in front of her, how her mother insulted every member of her father's family with the most colorful adjectives Santana had ever heard. How she cowered in the laundry room and then ran upstairs in tears after her father stormed downstairs to his office.
"Santana, sweetheart, what's wrong?" her mother had asked her the next morning at breakfast.
"Are you and Daddy going to get a divorce?" Santana had asked, her voice wavering.
Her mother had looked at her funny before answering. "No, Santana, Daddy and I love each other. We decided a long time ago that we will always love each other, no matter what. It's just that…sometimes-" she had paused then, her eyes twinkling- "Sometimes, your father is a complete ass. And sometimes I'm one, too."
Santana turns the memory over in her mind and wonders if Brittany's explaining to Ashley that Santana is sometimes an ass. The idea makes her smile just the tiniest bit.
She's still pissed; she's still self-righteous. She's angry at Brittany for making her so angry. But the crazy thing is that she can still feel that deep well of love down in her chest-the one that would make her give her life for Brittany-and it moves her to respond.
Me too. Okay. I love you too.
…
The next morning, she wakes up to another text message.
Can I come over so we can talk?
After deliberating for five seconds, she writes, Yeah. Please.
There's a knock on the backdoor twenty minutes later and she opens it to find Brittany standing there in her blue raincoat. She has two McFlurry's in her hands.
"What's that?" Santana says without thinking.
Brittany raises her eyebrows at her. "McFlurry. Oreo. Your favorite."
"We're fighting, and you brought me a present?"
"It's a peace offering," Brittany says tersely. "Do you want to criticize me for that too, or are you going to invite me inside?"
Santana huffs but stands aside. Brittany walks past her, not making eye contact, and marches past the kitchen and living room and straight to the stairs. Santana follows her wordlessly, dragging her feet, mentally preparing things to say to her.
Brittany kicks off her TOMS and climbs onto Santana's bed. She sits cross-legged, wiggling a little bit to get comfortable, and then holds out the McFlurry.
"Thanks," Santana mutters. She's not sure where to sit, so she takes the ice cream treat and leans against the wall of her closet door, a good five feet from Brittany.
Brittany takes a bite of her Butterfinger McFlurry and glances around Santana's room, like she's trying to entertain herself while she waits for Santana to start the conversation. It makes Santana hold her silence for even longer.
Eventually, Brittany sighs. "So?"
"So?"
Brittany stares at her like she's the most impossible person on the planet. "Are we both still pissed at each other?"
"Looks that way."
"Well…can we talk it out?"
"I guess."
"Santana," Brittany says impatiently. "Come on. This isn't like when we were just best friends. We're in a relationship now, like you said. We need to work this out."
Santana sets the McFlurry on her dresser and crosses her arms. "Fine. How do we work this out?"
Brittany blinks up at her, her cat eyes narrowing. "Maybe you should say whatever it is you need to say, since you're the one who was initially upset."
"Are you blaming me for-"
"I'm not blaming you for anything," Brittany says calmly. "I'm saying that you felt angry before I did, so maybe we should work through the reasons behind your anger before we work through my reaction to your anger."
"Fine."
"Okay."
Santana crosses her arms more tightly across her chest. She glances around at all the clothes on the floor and the posters on the wall.
Brittany frowns at her. "Are you gonna…"
Santana drops her arms and cradles her hands between her body. "I'm not good at this. You know that."
"Just…talk to me about why you got so upset the other day."
"Don't you know why I got upset?"
"Because I was late and I didn't let you know I'd be late, and that was really rude of me."
"No," Santana says clearly. "That wasn't it at all."
"So then…because…"
"Because you scared me," she says, emotion rising and falling in her voice. "You scared me so much. Couldn't you see that?"
Brittany studies her curiously. "I could tell you had been a little worried, and I felt bad about that, but it seemed like you were overreacting."
"Of course I was overreacting! I thought something happened to you! The weather was bad, and you almost never run late, and I couldn't get in touch with you…I kept picturing you getting hit by some big SUV on Jefferson Highway and EMT guys loading you into an ambulance…" Her voice breaks and she casts her eyes down to her hands, trying to steady herself. She breathes deep and tilts her head up. "I was just scared," she finishes lamely.
Brittany's eyes are large and soft. She holds her McFlurry in her lap but the only part of her that moves is her chest, inflating quickly with pained breaths. "Santana…" she says softly. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
"Especially after everything with Quinn…"
Brittany nods. "You're right. I would have felt the same way." She looks tenderly at Santana. "I'm sorry."
"I need you to communicate with me when this kind of thing happens," Santana pleads. "Don't leave me wondering and worrying."
"I won't, I promise."
Santana pulls her lips into her mouth and looks down into her ice cream. "I didn't mean to react that strongly," she says quietly. "I guess I got super emotional because-" She pauses and waits for the deep ache to move up from her stomach and into her throat. "Sometimes you feel too good to be true," she says. "Sometimes I-this is really sick, but sometimes I convince myself that the universe is bound to fuck me over somehow, because there's no way I deserve all the happiness you bring me."
Brittany shakes her head, the faintest trace of a You are hopeless smile mingling with the protectiveness in her eyes. "Nothing's going to fuck you over," she says softly. "What we have is-it's special, but sometimes we're allowed to have special things."
Santana smiles. Brittany sets her McFlurry on the nightstand and rests her feet on the floor. She extends her hands toward Santana; her fingers are cold from the frozen dessert, but Santana presses warmth into them.
"You okay?" Brittany asks her.
"Yeah."
"Good." Brittany smiles up at her, but then her expression turns serious. "Listen, though. Even when I do something wrong, you can't speak to me like you did. You can't act like that."
"I know," Santana sighs, lowering her head. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."
"You didn't mean it, but it wasn't okay. I know you love me but-we can't ever stop showing each other respect when we talk to each other. Too many couples do that. They get so comfortable that they forget basic manners."
"Yeah," Santana agrees. "You're right."
"I know we'll always love each other, but we have to respect each other, too. If we have kids, I want them to grow up knowing how to treat people because of the example their parents set for them."
Santana smiles a watery smile and looks at her tenderly. "You're so wise," she says softly, spreading her hands out against Brittany's. "And you're right. I'm sorry. I promise I won't speak like that again."
"Welllll, I'm sorry too, and I promise to let you know when I'm running late from now on."
"Okay," Santana smiles.
"Okay," Brittany laughs.
Santana pulls her to her feet. They look at each other's smiles.
"I hate fighting with you," Santana whispers.
"Me too," Brittany says. "It makes me feel like I can't function until I've fixed things with you. Like how Mrs. Farrelly says she can't teach on Tuesdays unless she's seen the episode of The Bachelor from the night before."
"This one really scared me."
"The episode?"
"No, our fight."
Brittany places her hand along Santana's jaw. "Why?"
Santana closes her eyes against the fresh tears springing in her eyes. "It was too strong of a reminder of last spring. When we weren't talking. Same time of year, same ways of trying to distract myself so I wouldn't think about you…"
"Oh, Santana," Brittany says, resting their foreheads together. "We're never going to be in a place like that again. You know that, don't you?"
Santana closes her eyes again, heaves a big breath, tries to bury that old nightmare away forever.
"Santana," Brittany whispers, her voice catching on the last syllable. "Never again. We love each other and we know it and everything from here on out is about building our life together, okay?"
She lays her head on Brittany's shoulder. She can feel the wetness from her tears transferring to Brittany's skin. "Hold me tighter," she says, pulling Brittany closer to her body.
Brittany squeezes her close and drags her fingers up and down Santana's back, soothing her. She rests her whole palm against Santana's shirt and presses lightly, creating warmth on her skin. "I love you," she says into her hair.
Santana breathes deeply, intentionally, feeling her world right itself. "I love you, too," she sighs.
Brittany holds her, scratches her back, kisses her hair until she's ready to pick her head up again. She pulls back from Brittany and smiles at her.
"Britt?"
"Yes?"
"Would you say I'm an ass sometimes?"
Brittany's face breaks slowly into a grin. "Would you say I am?"
"Maybe once in a while."
"Well, I guess that's what I'd say for you, too."
Santana laughs. "And you still want to be with me?"
Brittany strokes her hair back. "I want to be with you when you're an ass, when you're grumpy, when you're bitchy, when you're sweaty, and smelly, and hungover, when you have really bad cramps, and when you're stressed…I even want to be with you when you do that thing where you don't shower for like three days."
"I did that one time. And it was because we didn't leave the house."
"You started to smell."
"No I didn't," Santana says, her smile growing.
"You did," Brittany insists. "I could hardly breathe for the stench." She tugs on Santana's nose. "But I still wanted to be around you every second."
"Sort of like how I want to be around you even when you're listening to Nickelback on repeat."
"I did that one time," Brittany echoes. "And secretly you liked it."
"I absolutely did not like that."
"A little bit."
"Not a fucking tiny bit."
"Look at this photograph," Brittany sings, "Every time I do, it makes me laugh."
Santana rolls her eyes. She places her hand on the back of Brittany's neck and interrupts her singing with a kiss. "Stop singing, sweetheart," she says quietly.
"Mm," Brittany says; it buzzes on Santana's lips.
"Thank you for loving me," Santana says, kissing Brittany's bottom lip.
"Thank you for loving me. Now how about we get to the make-up sex part?"