This is a shift day. There are two updates today.
"It's the Story of a Girl"
3. And There Was a Wish
When they had come in to class the first time that year, Santana had pulled her along to make sure they could get to sit at the same two-seat table. Brittany did not resist, didn't need or want to. She simply smiled about it, because that was exactly what she would have wanted deep down.
As they sat side by side though, there was still something sitting in between them, an invisible barrier made out of secrets and fears. Sometimes she wouldn't even realize her hand was trailing to her left, like it intended to find the other girl's fingers, until she'd accidentally brush against a book, or a pencil, or Santana herself would give a discreet cough, and then she would sit up straighter, bringing her hand back to hug the side of her notebook, like it would keep her from doing it again.
There were days, more and more of them and closer and closer together now, where she wished they could just tear down all those walls in between. She really cared for Santana, in ways she had never liked anyone else. Part of it was that she was her best friend, and she was aware of it. But there were other things that went far beyond the parameters of friendship, and even she could understand what it might mean. But she couldn't even do anything about it.
If she could have her deepest wish come true, it might not have seemed like much to others, but it would have meant the world to her. All she truly wanted was to be able to take Santana to her home with her, not her father's home – she had been there many times – but her mother's. She wanted to take her through the front door and not immediately go up and hide in her room, only to have her forced to climb down the side of the house. 'One of these days I am going to break a leg,' she would hear Santana say sometimes as she rushed to make her exit.
Brittany wanted to be able to take her home, to sit at the dinner table or on the couch, anything, and have her mother on one side, and Santana on the other, both of them knowing they were the most important women in her world.
But there was her mother on the one hand, with their secret. She had asked her about what would happen after high school, because she really did need to know. She knew the deeper reasons behind this secret of theirs, whether her mother thought she did or not, and being her mother's daughter, she did understand them to some degree. But there would have to come a time where she could own up to who she truly was. Some days it felt like she was supposed to be ashamed of where she came from, because why else would she have to hide? She was not ashamed. She loved her mother very much, and she knew her in ways no one else did. That did not seem fair. For all her failings, her mother was a much kinder person than they made her out to be. Her mother herself did nothing to discourage these assumptions about her, and Brittany was sure she had her reasons for it, but… Those were the reasons she could not understand.
Would she end up an adult, living out on her own, sneaking back to visit her mother? She loved her stepmother very much, but she was never going to be her mother, not like Sue Sylvester. Except most people assumed Charlotte Pierce was her mother. And being that she could not correct them without letting out this secret of theirs, every time someone assumed it, she had to let them. What would happen when her mother died? That particular scenario had become more and more of a presence in her thoughts these days, and she hated it so very much. Would she have to attend her own mother's funeral as a former Cheerio, manning the glitter cannon salute like she wasn't a daughter who'd lost a parent? She couldn't do that. But then what place did she have to demand they stop lying?
That was one wall, but behind it there was another, one she had to understand in other ways, and that was Santana. Whatever they had done and shared behind closed doors, that was one thing. But Santana was still not ready to let the world know, least of all McKinley High and the rest of their hometown. Brittany was ready to stand tall by her side, whenever she should give the word, but pushing her would get them nowhere.
Brittany could not tell her how she hated feeling like a secret, how it felt sometimes, between Santana and her mother, that no one was willing to tell anyone that they loved her. She was a secret daughter and a secret lover. Santana should have realized it, as she did know about who her mother was, and Brittany suspected she did know. But knowing about it did not change her circumstances. So all Brittany could do was be patient, and wait, and play the finger crawl across a desk. She wouldn't even have to tell everybody, if she could only take Santana home with her, to her mother. That could be enough to hold her, not to have to play run around with the two of them.
TO BE CONTINUED (WEDNESDAY)