The room looked like Martha Stewart's dream- pretty pastel colors covered the walls and pale pink bouquets adorned the shiny wooden tables. Rachel Berry, in all her exotic glory, looked a bit out of place in the neutured, daisy-like environment. The white dresses Emma had assigned to her bridesmaids(her rationale being that she was too old, though many believed she was the most appropriately innocent, to wear white on her wedding day) matched the creamy colors in the special-members lobby of the hotel she had OCD-picked, but Rachel's only emphasized her golden skin and blue-black hair.
She tapped her pen against her straight teeth, contemplating. She never did this. In high school, she had always outlined her essays weeks before they were due, and completed them early as well. Yet here she was, at 3 AM, her dress, makeup, hair, and everything else she could possibly need to be the maid of honor ready- except for her speech.
This was going to be a problem. Maybe she just needed to stretch?
As she walked out to the balcony, she noticed there was a little tent-ish canopy outside. That would work rather well, actually. She would get to distracted by the beauty of the darkness and the gardens below. She lifted a flap and sat inside, calves splayed to the right, and shut the two flaps behind her from the hanging tent…thing.
She hit her notepad several times, leaving angry little blue dots. She wrote "Love," hoping it would trigger something. Nothing happened, so she wrote the word again.
"Where does it leave you? Absolutely nowhere," she finally ended up writing.
"UGH!" she shrieked, throwing the notepad.
She had been racking her brain for hours- days, actually- for quotes on love. Nothing from her favorite musicals seemed to fit, there was nothing she could relate to, nothing that felt right. Not only did she need to write a speech, she needed to pick a song to sing- Emma wanted a "surprise", the only area of the wedding not totally controlled. The only songs she could think of that were appropriate for a wedding were duets. Who on earth was she supposed to get to sing with her, anyway? Of course, when she was still a stupid, naiive little girl, she would've begged Finn Hudson to sing with her, but she was trying to be more selfless now. Finn was with Quinn Fabray now, just like he should be, and Rachel wouldn't be so insensitive. It would, to Rachel, just be an enjoyable musical challenge, a duet, but to Quinn it would be an unbearable display of musical chemistry between her boyfriend and his ex-flame.
She breathed through her hands slowly, closing her eyes. She froze when she heard the balcony doors open.
"Is someone out here?" called out a familiar voice. A voice that sounded as if it belonged to Will's best man- a best man who had apparently called in to say his flight had been delayed by the not appropriately seasonal stormy weather. Come to think of it, there were quite a few thick clouds in the sky when she had first come out here- Rachel hoped, for Emma's sake, that they cleared up to give her a perfectly lovely, sunny wedding.
The man outside opened the tent flaps. His shoulders visibly twitched backwards in shock.
He found her sitting on the balcony floor, her hair in perfect tendrils, head down, staring at hands that sat in her cleanly white lap.
"Rachel?" he asked incredulously.
She looked up with wide, doe-colored eyes. A strand of hair brushed against the left side of her decolletage, and he found his eyes drawn to it. For some odd reason, his face burned when he had looked into her eyes, but for politeness' sake, he met her gaze again.
"Noah," she said demurely.
And then rain pounded down from an open sky.