She didn't knew exactly how she ended in the predicament she found herself in right now - sitting in the rain in a lone bench in the middle of Lima's biggest park, a bench that was practically in the middle of nowhere and secluded from everything else. To be completely honest, she was being stupid and irresponsible by being there at all. He might not come. He might have suffered an accident or maybe he never received her text. A lot of possibilities of why this might go wrong, but she doesn't care. She is going to sit there till he appeared and she could present him a piece of her mind that she has been keeping inside for far too long.
Besides, it was raining. That almost always cancels a date, especially if it's outdoors. But Rachel is feeling sad and bothered inside, so as the drama queen that she is she found it completely right for the weather to express her inner turmoil.
She is completely soaked to the bone, but she cares little about it since her mind is too worried on rethinking and looking over again and again all the little episodes that have led her to this specific huge moment of her life.
First of all, she thinks about when things started to get complicated…again. It was the detonator to all that was happening now and all that had happened in the last few days. It all started with a blank envelope that had her name on it.
Of course, Jesse St. James, being always the gentleman and the dramatic boy that he is, decides to apologize to her for all that he did through a letter (a very fine letter, written with the most beautiful calligraphy that she's seen in her life and with words and sentences that she knows no normal teen uses on a daily basis). He explained his actions and assured her that he was writing this piece 'out of pure and utter grief and regret and madness caused by the guilt and great affection he undoubtedly' still felt for her. The whole thing was so utterly perfect that it was ridiculous and even irritating, so she decided to ignore it. Not as if that had worked, soon more letters started coming and she started to get used to them and even expect them to come. It wasn't long till she started answering them and before she knew it she had started forming a bond with a certain Jesse St. James who she once had desired to be thrown to the lions.
Letters soon turned into e-mail –once they had run out of paper and good pens- and that into IM chat sessions, then to text message to phone calls and even to webcam chats. In a few weeks they had left all the past behind and they found themselves again in the lives of each other but this time in a new kind of relationship: a friendship. And what a good friend he turned out to be. Even though there was always and underlying tension between them, he never tried to push things beyond of the limits she had established once they realized this was being born. He was always there and always listened, really listened instead of just pretending to do so once the topic turned boring. He was a shoulder to cry on when things were too rough and someone she could rant with about the unfairness of life and Glee Club. Maybe she hadn't had a lot of friends to compare this to, but she knew that what they had was extremely real, extremely good, and something she had extremely and desperately being looking for her whole life.
Yes, she had the Glee Club and Finn and her dads. But the Glee Club seemed to always find more reasons to hate her than to appreciate her. Finn surely loved her; however, the differences between them and their difficulty to work it out made her think twice when she was asked if it was worth the effort she put into the relationship. Though she adored her dads, she felt as if they were entitled to love her because she was their daughter. Besides, parents aren't friends - they are parents.
So Jesse became the friend she always wanted and needed. This is why when he told her he was going to drop out of UCLA to transfer to NYU next year and that he was going to spend the rest of the year in Ohio until he had to go to his new college that she got so excited. She was going to have him close and was going to be able to see him more. In secret, of course, otherwise Finn and the Glee Club would kill her. And that's how these little reunions in the park late at night had started. They would meet here every Thursday and every other day they were available to do it and just talk the hours away.
This had been and improvement in their relationship. It's not the same to have a conversation on the phone than in person. There was a whole different energy from having him in front of her. Also, this brought more problems to the whole deal. The underlying tension they had felt while communicating through the Internet or the phone was nothing compared to what went on between them in person. This time there wasn't miles to separate them. Neither phones nor computer to act as mediators to this tension, so now it ran free whenever they saw each other, causing more than just a little confusion in her.
Soon she started doing again something she had forced herself to stop doing once the summer was over: she started comparing Finn to him. A horrible habit she had once she had started dating Finn that she had attributed it to the fact that she had barely "ended" things with Jesse when she jumped into this new relationship. But now, without that excuse, it was clear that there was something more to it. Finn started to look more and more ineffective to her and Jesse more and more perfect for her. To say her feelings were a mess would be an understatement.
To top it all off, there wasn't anyone in this world she could talk to about it. No one in Glee Club would be accepting of her friendship with Jesse. Her daddies didn't really know about the whole terms of their separation and ask for their advice would be in dire need of an explanation she wasn't ready to give, mostly because she would have to forgo every connection with Jesse once they knew about the egg incident. Mrs. Pillsbury (now Pillsbury-Howell) hadn't been of much help the last time she went to her for advice and Mr. Schue was out of the question, of course. And, though she would like to go to her, she didn't feel strong enough to face her mother again, especially for something like this. That left her alone to mend by herself with the confusion and turmoil she felt inside.
It wasn't till by a chance meeting (a chance meeting that conveniently was in the April Rhodes Civic Pavillion, just after Glee practice and some weeks before Regionals) with a certain petite Filipino girl that she was able to let out everything that was on her chest - everything that was starting to crash her and poison her little by little.
Glee club had just finished and she had stayed behind to practice a song and let out some stress, not that it really worked, but it helped her go on with the day to day. When she first saw Sunshine there, she felt the urge to scream to the poor girl to get out of there. What did she think she was doing spying on HER alone time? But when she noticed the look in her face (that look of being caught like deer in the lights) she didn't feel like she could offer the girl a piece of her mind about the incident. Besides, it was obvious that this wasn't her idea at all.
"I'm so sorry… I … eh … I… " She started but lost her nerve midsentence and had troubles trying to finish it.
"Ugh, don't worry. Anyway, you are late. Glee Club ended like ten minutes ago." Rachel said with a tired look on her face. "What are you doing here? You don't exactly look like the kind of girl that sneaks into the competition's practices."
"Well, yeah… I'm not. But this incredibly bothersome senior, that let me tell you is repeating this year, began saying how I was so useless and no good and that I never made any contribution to the team so I thought that if I gave them some information about you she would stop talking like that and I would be really… I don't know, accepted" Sunshine said with her look fix to her feet while her hands grab each other in a nervous movement.
"You know, you shouldn't let any of what Giselle says get to you. She thrives on making people feel like they are the worst trash of this world. Oh! And she loves making people more talented than her feel like they are beneath her, when she can't even hold a candle to them."
Sunshine lifted her face in an abrupt motion and looked at Rachel with all the surprise that hearing that had caused. Rachel Berry, THE Rachel Berry, had called her talented. And that was saying something. Maybe they had started with the wrong foot at the beginning of the year, but she kind of admired the girl that had sent her to a crack house. Not precisely because she had done that, but she had spied to enough of her rehearsals to know that the girl had a talent beyond compare.
"You think I'm talented?" Her voice was practically breaking and she had the small feeling that her eyes were starting to fill with tears.
"You're very talented. I should know - I'm very talented myself." She started with that Rachel Berry air and that tone in her voice that was distinctly hers. However, soon all that façade fell when a thought hit her with full force from the back of her mind. "I…I'm really sorry about what happened when we first met. I know I don't seem so sometimes, but I have a lot of insecurity issues, and I was feeling threatened by you, you know? Well, anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry and I would like, if you want of course, to make peace with you"
Sunshine smiled from ear to ear and she could feel all her cheerfulness return to her. "So we can be like friends now?"
"Yeah… I would like that" A little smile slipped of her lips when she said those words "I've needed a friend lately."
"Really? Why?" Rachel could see the etch of worry in her features and that made her feel a little more comfortable with telling her what she so desperately wanted to tell.
Just like that, they started a strong friendship and she got the so much needed advice she was looking for.
After this conversation she was settled in something: she had to talk to Finn. Figure out everything that was going on with them and decide what she wanted for herself. She could stay with him, in a relationship she knew that wasn't working; stay with him when she was more than just doubting her feelings for him. Or she could go with what her heart was stubbornly saying - that she belonged with Jesse and that she should take the risk again, because it was worth it.
So that's how she ended up in a huge fight with Finn, because it was almost impossible to talk to him without fighting lately, and when the subject of feelings arose, Finn used his best defense against his own insecurities: shouting and attacking her.
"I love you! Why don't you ever say it back?"
"Because I don't feel like that about you." She lets it go in the heat of the moment. One of her biggest and best kept secrets out in the open in a heated fight. The moment the words roll off of her tongue, she feels like the weight of a thousand Titanics have been lifted from her shoulders (well, at least some of the weight), but when it reaches her conscious that she has finally say it her face contorts in horror. She is aghast, she can't believe it herself and if Finn's face says anything at all she knows he can't believe it either.
This means something very simple: she doesn't love him. It's not that she's not ready or that she can't say the words or that she is feeling troubled about her feelings. No, it was way more simple and way more tragic. She simply doesn't feel love for him at all; at least, not in the way he wants her to. A year or so together and she doesn't feel the same kind of affection for him as he does for her. He wasn't asking for the same level of affection, he knew that they would never want things the same way. When she wants something, she wants it too much and when he wants something most of the time it is something she doesn't care about. But he sure as hell expected her to love him at some level. They have been a couple for so long now, and all the past is finally behind them now, this should have been their time, their moment of happiness and freedom to live their love and be happy ever after. But she doesn't feel that way, at all.
She wants to cry, his face is still held in that dumbfounded expression and she knows that in his head the wheels are turning, putting the puzzle together –that's what she fears, but she knows that he won't be able to solve the puzzle at all. She wants to cry and to flee and to go away and disappear off the face of the earth in that exact minute. She wants to run to her room and hide beneath her extremely pink covers and cry until her eyes are dry, then drink a thousand water glasses. The images come to her mind and all the steps are followed by images and when she finally receives her beloved glass of water, it isn't her father's hand giving it. It is a strong, young, and skillful hand with thin fingers that are able to play piano as if it were a kid's game. Then her imagination starts working on her own: the glass of water soon forgotten, in it's place she jumps on him and hugs him tightly, trying to bury herself in him and the tears start coming again but now they aren't painful and she feels real comfort reach her soul.
She's retrieved of her unconscious daydreaming by Finn's voice. Though it's just a simple ghost of his voice, actually, a thin thread of sound coming out of his lips
"What? What did you say?"
She wants to lie. She wants to keep the farce on for as long as she can, to live her simple life again, without problems, without drama. But she knows that there are enough lies going on in her life to keep with this one, this one that has lasted way more time that any lie should have. She thought that if she kept going along with it, the time would come when she would start believing it and everything would turn real, but it seems that as much as she wants things to work that way they can't.
She has known since the very beginning that they weren't going to work. Not only because they share very little in common or because they aren't that interested into getting to know each other's likes. She knows because he'll never be able to understand her or to see things like she does, no matter how much she deludes herself she knows he will never like musicals or theater or culture or anything like that - all the things she thrives on. More importantly, he'll never understand why she thrives on them and if he doesn't understand that, will he be able to really support her, to be there when she needs him? No. Not like Jesse, who even from the distance, had been able to help her cope with all that was going on in her year. Not like Jesse who had returned to Ohio to be closer to her instead of going directly to New York and wait there till college started. Not like Jesse who really cared to be there for her.
"I said that I don't feel that way for you, Finn. The truth is that…I don't love you, and I'm through with trying to fool myself and everybody else that I do. I'm sorry." That was the last she said and turned around leaving him there looking shocked to her retreating form.
After that, she went straight to the park - to their bench. She sat there for hours until she finally decided that she was ready to do what she had to do and sent him the text message asking him to come. That had been almost three hours ago and less than half an hour after that it had started raining. After an hour had passed, she should have taken her things and gone home. She was putting too much at risk for him, when he might not even come, when he might not even feel the same way about her as she felt for him. But still she had faith. So she remained there. After all, they were made for each other and they belonged together - of that she was sure.
When two hours had gone by she was completely pissed, soaked to the bone, and wanting to kill a curly-haired boy. Still, she waited and waited and waited. Drowning in the rain and in her thoughts.
"Rachel! Oh God! You are still here, I didn't know if you would. I'm so sorry I didn't come earlier, I was in Akron visiting some friends and you know it's two hours away and I tried to come as fast as I could but…" Jesse's voice brought her out of her thoughts. Finally, he had arrived.
"I hate you."
"…You what?" He was shocked and she could see how a thousand emotions flew by through his face. She had obviously caught him with his guard down.
"I have something to say and it's very important so I would appreciate if you would just listen to all of it," she said with an expression of total professionalism and calm.
She took a big breath before speaking again. "I hate you. I hate you because you listen to me when I talk, even when I ramble on and on about unnecessary things and you pay attention to me and help me stop rambling and get to the point. I hate you because you remember everything that I say to you and keep in mind everything that I like so you can surprise me with a Green Tea and a vegan chocolate muffin when days are gray. I hate you because you sit with me when I'm sick to watch all the musicals that I have and you never complain when I want to watch 'Funny Girl' a second time around. I hate you because you always understand what goes on with me, even when I'm being childish and you still aren't afraid to speak your mind to me. I hate you because we have so much in common and we're still completely different.
"Because we can get into huge arguments trying to decide whether Bernadette Peters or Patti Lupone is a better Mama Rose. Because you actually read books and can debate about movies that are far deeper and more profound than 'Dumb and Dumber.' I hate you because your voice harmonizes perfectly with mine, because you know all the songs I love to sing and you are always ready to sing with me if I ask you to. I hate you because you can dance and act like the best of the best. I hate you because you actually care about me and my future and my dreams and passions, you don't pretend to understand them, you really do. You know how much what I do means to me and really believe that I can make it someday.
"I hate you because I can't forget about all of that when I'm with you and I start to think that as long as I'm with you I could live without being a star or famous…ever. I hate you because I'm myself when I'm with you and I don't have to pretend or take care of what I say, because I feel freedom and comfort when I'm around you and I miss you when you are gone. I hate you because you are you. Because you are perfect, because everything you do is perfect and no one or anything can compete you. I hate you because you are so much better than anyone in this town, you are even better than me. I hate you because you are so much better than Finn and make him look worse and worse with every minute I spend with you. I hate you because being your friend is the best and the worst thing that could happen to me. Because you create turmoil in my life and though the confusion almost kills me, it is one of the most beautiful feelings I've ever experienced.
"I hate you because being with you is a risk I'm not sure I'm ready to take, but I know that it is as sure as hell worth it and I'd like to take it anyway. I hate you because you make me love you and you keep doing things to make me fall in love with you. I hate you because I love you so, so, so much that nothing else matters more to me than knowing that you love me too."
They remained in silence, the tension all around them just like the rain. The only noise was that of the water hitting the ground fiercely.
"You had to be that dramatic, didn't you? You probably prepared that whole speech, the whole setting, for days!" He said looking a bit exasperated. She obviously wasn't expecting that reaction from him, so the surprise on her face was evident.
"Actually, the rain was a surprise," she replied innocently and he once again raised his arms to the heavens and let go of another exasperated sigh.
"You know, you could have come to me and simply said, 'Jesse, I think I love you,' and I would have been the happiest man alive but you had to set all this scene and throw me that bomb that almost gives me a heart attack. I really thought you meant it when you said you hated me. I was so devastated in those few seconds I thought I would die."
"It was never my intention to…" He cut her off to keep on with his own tirade.
"No! No, no, I listened to you now you are going to listen to me! I thought I was going to die when you said you hated me. I thought you had finally seen the light and were coming to your senses, realizing that I'm nothing more than a jerk that's trying more than he should to prove himself worthy of something he clearly doesn't deserve. I thought you had realized that I hurt you more than you are able to forgive and that you were going to be out of my life, this time for good. And those thoughts killed me inside, I saw little flashes of a life without you in it and I knew that it was going to be miserable and empty. Because I love you, Rachel. I love you so much that anything coming from you, even a snippet of your attention, makes my day. Because you are all I want and all I need. You are more than theatre and music and musicals all together, you are far above everything on my list of priorities, even above from being a star. Because I don't love you more than everything: you are everything. I realized that nothing in this world could fill the place that you have decided to take in my life. Nothing and no one would be able to replace you. I had to lose you once to fully understand it. I don't want to lose you again," he said looking straight at her, blue eyes marred by perfect eyelashes and damp, brown curls falling from his perfect head. A look of total adoration directed towards her, a look she knew and had no doubt was only for her and would always be for her.
There - standing in front of who she knew was the love of her life, her soul mate, the only person in this world that could make her feel this way - she felt like the movie stars she had always envy and wanted to be. It was like recreating a scene from 'The Notebook' or another cheesy romantic flick. She was soaked, had been for hours, she was cold and tired and emotionally exhausted and confused about everything in this world except one thing, and she knew that nothing could be more perfect that this moment between the two of them. With their eyes always locked on the other they walked the short steps that separated them and hooked their lips together in a kiss no one would ever forget.
And everything was forgotten, then and there, because even though they thrilled in the drama of the situation and were completely pleased with the movie-like sensation the whole episode triggered, nothing could replace the feeling of their love and passion coursing through them thanks to that kiss.
When they needed air, they parted with their eyes still firmly closed. He had an arm on her waist and the other on her cheek while one of her hands rested on one of his arms and the other on the back of his neck. They looked to each other once again and they knew that everything would be perfect with them.
"I love you," she whispered softly, so close to his lips that he actually felt the words rather than heard to them.
"I love you, Rachel." Their eyes shone with that spark that they only had with each other before they took off to find shelter from the raging storm.