Disclaimer: Glee characters belong to the creators, original characters are mine.

At 7h16 pm.

In a small, chic Bistro.

In the middle of a busy street.

On the island of Manhattan.

Time seemed to be standing still for Doctor Quinn Fabray.

The soft jazz music entertaining the restaurant's guests seemed to fade into the background.

The sounds of glasses clinking and utensils scraping against china plates died down.

The chatter stopped.

Everything froze.

Hazel orbs staring into brown.

Brown locking onto hazel.

It had been nearly seven years.

But Quinn Fabray and Rachel Berry were now meeting again.

Under the most surprising circumstances.

A date.

Suddenly, it was like the restaurant disappeared altogether and they were back in high school, in the girls' bathroom where they had shared many memories. Good and bad.

"Everyone keeps talking about staying in touch...and I want to make sure that we do."

She had said that, right before handing Rachel a Metro Pass.

It was the same thing that had happened in her dream. That's why she had woken up with a sense of déjà vu.

She had been dreaming about Rachel.

She swallowed thickly, remembering the warm hug, Rachel's sweet perfume and the promise of staying in touch after graduation.

And they did.

For a while.

They exchanged texts when they could, and a few emails here and there.

They even visited each other once or twice.

But after barely a year... It all stopped.

They drifted apart.

Or well, Quinn stopped answering.

She distanced herself from the small brunette. Not because she didn't want her in her life, no.

It was quite the opposite. She had realized back then that perhaps she wanted Rachel in her life just a bit too much and hadn't been quite ready to admit to herself why that was.

She hadn't been at that stage yet in her self-discovery and journey towards acceptance and self-love.

So she created space between them in order to allow herself time to think and figure things out.

But by the time everything came to light, Rachel had stopped emailing her.

The brunette had stopped trying to contact her after Quinn had cut her off.

And then she had been off to bigger and better things.

Like Broadway and...boyfriends.

And now here they were, seven years later.

She could feel all those buried emotions rushing back until it felt like she was suffocating in them, her eyes growing wide in panic.

"Quinn...?" She heard a soft voice enter her realm of thoughts and realized she had been staring in shock for the past two minutes.

She blinked owlishly and then suddenly everything began to move again, the various sounds floating around the bistro coming back to her and the scene from high school faded back into her memory.

Rachel was here. In front of her.

Holy crap.

Hazel hues couldn't help but rake over the small woman's form.

The years had certainly been good to Rachel Berry.

She had always been skinny, but now she looked somewhat slimmer somehow. Like she had lost the remainder of her baby fat. It showed in her facial features.

She had grown nicely into her curves. A real woman now.

Where she was once cute and pretty, she was now...sexy.

Quinn gulped. And that dress...

Damn.

"Quinn!" The voice said a bit more firmly this time and the blonde realized she hadn't said anything else since uttering the woman's name in complete shock just a few moments ago.

She probably looked like an idiot, just standing there. Staring.

She finally allowed herself to once again look into the chocolate pools that were Rachel Berry's eyes, the eyes that had haunted her dreams and her memory throughout the day.

She took a deep breath, trying to collect herself and allowed her lips to curl into a small, slightly nervous smile.

"Rachel...", she began softly, noticing how the brunette was staring at her like she didn't quite believe that the blonde was there.

That would make two of them.

Maybe this was all an illusion. Or she had fallen asleep from exhaustion after her shift and this was all a dream. Her real date was somewhere waiting for her to show up.

But something told her that wasn't the case. This was quite real.

"This is quite... unexpected." she said lamely, frowning at herself for being unable to formulate a better opening line than that. But who could blame her? The last person she had expected to be set up on a date with was Rachel freaking Berry of all people!

She felt her cheeks heat up as she struggled for words while self consciously smoothing down the front of her dress, praying for Rachel to say something. Anything that would make things less awkward.

But instead, a waiter appeared beside them with a wide smile.

"Can I offer you ladies anything to drink?",he asked cheerfully.

She briefly wondered if the restaurant served vodka. Or anything stronger.

This couldn't possibly be real, Rachel thought.

It had to be a dream.

When her date still hadn't shown up at 7h15, she had resigned to the fact that maybe she really was cursed and that blind dates were just a recipe for disaster.

So she had stood up with a deep sigh, trying to pretend like she didn't notice the people around her staring at her with a pitying expression.

Had they never seen someone being stood up before!?

She huffed softly and smoothed out her dress, but just as she was about to grab her purse and leave, she heard a voice.

A voice that was all too familiar, but that in recent years, she had only heard in dreams.

Or in memories she replayed in her head.

Then she looked up and her breath caught in her throat, brown eyes widening in shock as she stared at the girl who had disappeared from her life all those years ago without an explanation.

Quinn Fabray.

All of a sudden, memories from the last times they had seen each other came flooding back into her mind.

The Metro Pass, the hugs she didn't need to ask permission for to receive, the laughs, the few times they visited each other at their respective colleges.

And then... nothing.

Quinn had seemed to fall off the face of the earth. She didn't answer her emails anymore, or her text messages.

The friendship she had been promised was taken away from her and she had been crushed.

She had always cared more for Quinn that she had let on, and the blonde had just walked out of her life.

So Rachel eventually moved on with hers and stopped answering.

And now she was here. Standing in front of her. In the flesh.

Quinn seemed to be lost in thought, most likely under the same shock and disbelief that she was in. The blonde kept staring at her, like she believed she was dreaming.

She took the moment to look at her.

Really look at her.

Quinn looked a bit flustered, most likely because she had been rushing to get here. She remembered her saying something about her shift ending late at work before the awkward staring contest started.

But she was still as breathtaking as ever in that light green dress that matched her eyes.

Just like her corsage for Junior Prom. She had picked it out but let Finn take the credit since he was dating her at the time.

A secret she had never told the blonde.

Finn had told her that the look on her face had been incredible.

Anyway. Quinn looked stunning.

Even more so that she had remembered, and just looking at her made her feel weak in the knees and her heart swell up.

She tried calling the blonde's name a couple of times to get her attention, since Quinn was so clearly lost in thought, as if she was in a complete different place.

When the blonde finally snapped out of it and looked at her, her response made her raise a brow when she finally remembered what this was.

A date.

Yes, it was quite unexpected.

She had been set up on a date with Quinn Fabray. The girl who had stopped talking to her seven years ago after promising that they'd finally be friends.

A waiter appeared beside them and she just frowned, remembering how upset she was at Quinn for just cutting her off without an explanation.

Before Quinn could say anything, she took a step to the side, away from the table.

"Actually, I should just go.", she said as she looked away from the blonde, and the waiter who was slowly backing away upon realization that he shouldn't have intruded.

Quinn had been about to ask the waiter what kind of alcohol they served until Rachel spoke and she found herself frowning deeply, looking back at the girl with a puzzled expression.

She wanted to leave?

"Wait, what? No, you don't have to go...",she said quickly, side-stepping from the table as well so she could block her path. She hadn't seen Rachel in seven years, she wasn't about to let her walk away now when they finally had the chance to reconnect.

Rachel simply scoffed and rolled her eyes at her, looking at her feet as she crossed her arms over her chest, shaking her head. "Quinn, do you realize what this is?", she asked the girl, frowning deeply. "It's a date. We've been set up on a date. Do you know how weird that is!?"

"It's not weird...", the blonde lied, rubbing the back of her neck as a nervous habit.

Another scoff.

"Out of all the people in New York City, I got set up with you. It is weird. I didn't even know you liked women Quinn!", the brunette said in a tone that was probably a bit louder than necessary.

Quinn felt her cheeks turn a deep shade of red at that as she ducked her head shyly. Of course Rachel didn't know. They were already out of each other's lives by the time she came to terms with everything.

"Rachel, I-..."

"Not to mention the fact that you walked out of my life seven years ago without so much as a legitimate explanation! Did you think I would forget about that? What happened to 'I want to make sure we keep in touch'? Did that mean nothing to you!?", Rachel said, once again in a loud tone.

Quinn swallowed thickly and looked around the restaurant. Rachel was causing a bit of a scene and people were staring at them.

She was overwhelmed. She never thought that of all people, she would run into Rachel after all this time and now she felt like she was put on the spot. Because how on Earth was she supposed to explain to the girl that she left because she liked her too much?

How messed up was that?

If she had known that she would be seeing Rachel tonight, she would have spent at least two hours in front of the mirror, rehearsing what she was going to say to the brunette.

That and she would have had a major anxiety attack.

But she would have been ready.

Now she just stared at the brunette, at a loss for words.

"Every blind date that I've been on in the past year has been a complete disaster so I'm going to leave before this turns into the worst one yet. Clearly you didn't expect to see me tonight. And seeing as you stopped answering my emails seven years ago, I'm probably the last person you want to see tonight. So I'll save you the trouble and just leave. Have a nice life, Quinn. We can pretend this never happen.", the girl said in a bitter tone as she walked around her.

Quinn felt a pang of guilt in her heart at Rachel's words and sighed deeply. She knew that in the brunette's eyes, she was probably the worst person in the world for ruining their already tentative friendship all those years ago.

She knew she had to explain.

She had to fix things between them and make them better.

Starting by trying to make Rachel's stay.

This was probably her only chance to redeem herself for the mistake she made in the past, and if she let Rachel walk away now, who knew how long it would be before they would speak again.

Another seven years? Maybe longer?

She couldn't let that happen.

"Rachel, wait.", she said as she reached out, her hand gently curling around the woman's bicep. Not to hurt her, just to keep her in place so she wouldn't walk out of her life forever.

She watched as Rachel stopped in her tracks, her brows creasing into a frown as she looked up at the blonde expectantly.

Quinn sighed softly and slowly released her arm, taking a step back.

"Look...I know you probably hate me right now and you have every reason to do so. I know what I promised you, and I know I didn't come through on that. I shouldn't have left and I did.. and it's not because I wanted to.", she mumbled quietly, noticing the look of confusion on Rachel's face.

"I made the choice I made because back then, I thought it would be for the best.",she said softly, meeting those haunting eyes for the third time that night as she swallowed hard, wincing when her words only deepened Rachel's frown.

This was already going badly.

"You thought that walking out on our friendship was for the best? What the hell does that mean, Quinn? Was I that bad of a friend to you? Was me caring about you and telling you that you mean the world to me not enough?" Rachel snapped while Quinn visibly cringed, Rachel's words deepening her already present guilt.

Quinn stepped closer and hesitantly reached out, gently squeezing Rachel's hand, although as soon as the brunette flinched, she released it, swallowing hard.

"I know that nothing I say or do right now is going to make up for the last seven years, Rachel.", she murmured softly, ducking her head to hold her gaze.

"But a lot has changed. I've changed. I owe it to you to try and explain why I left. You deserve it. It'll be hard, but I'll try." she said, watching Rachel's hesitation. She knew that the brunette was angry with her, but this was her only chance.

"I want to know what the great Rachel Berry has been up to these past seven years.", she then added quietly.

Rachel scoffed and took a step back from her, rolling her eyes.

"You probably don't even care, Quinn. If you did, you had seven years to return one of my calls. But you didn't, and now it's too late.", she said harshly.

Quinn felt like she was going to cry.

She obviously deserved all of this, but it didn't make it hurt any less. She wanted to mend things, but Rachel wasn't having any of it.

And at any moment, she was going to leave the Bistro with Quinn standing there, like the woman with the mesmerizing brown eyes was nothing but a dream again.

Knowing very well that Rachel might slap her hand away, she reached up and gently put a hand on a tanned cheek, feeling a burst of electricity running through her as she touched the warm skin, breathing in deeply as she looked at the girl with pleading eyes.

"I know you hate me. But just let me buy you dinner, okay? One dinner. That's all I'm asking for. I'll tell you everything. Why I left, why I haven't called and what I've been doing all these years. I'll do my best to explain and then you can leave if you want to and never talk to me again, just... give me an hour. That's all I ask, Rach.",she begged quietly, holding her breath for the brunette's response.

Part of Rachel was telling her to leave. That part was the one that was still filled with anger and hurt because of what Quinn did to their friendship. That part of her was telling her to walk out without looking back and forget this ever happened before swearing off blind dates altogether.

The other part, the bigger part... The part that loved and cared for Quinn and missed her terribly... That part told her to stay. And listen to what Quinn had to say.

Even though she hadn't forgiven the blonde for leaving, she still felt like she deserved an explanation. And she had to admit that she was curious to know what became of Quinn Fabray after high school.

So after a moment's hesitation and a deep sigh, she resisted the urge to just lean into the blonde's touch and instead pulled away. But she did not leave.

She moved back over to the small, candlelit table for two and slowly sat down, a silent answer to tell Quinn she was going to stay and hear her out.

Quinn seemed to deflate as she sighed in relief, watching Rachel take a seat at their table.

The woman wasn't going to leave, not yet.

But then Quinn was faced with the realization that she now had to come up with the proper way to explain the past seven years in one hour, over dinner in a fancy restaurant.

Fuck.

She felt her heart begin to beat rapidly and her palms sweat nervously, trying to ignore the way Rachel was looking at her expectantly, like she was supposed to begin right then and there.

She noticed that the waiter was once again tentatively approaching their table and she licked her dry lips, turning towards him. "Get us a bottle of your nicest wine.", she said quickly, handing him her credit card before turning to Rachel.

"Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back. Promise.",she rushed out before turning on her heel.

And with that, she made a bee-line straight for the bathroom.

Leaving Rachel Berry once again waiting alone at a table for two while she went to give herself what she desperately needed.

A peptalk.

Wait, scratch that.

She had a better idea.

The blonde Doctor rifled through her purse until she found her iPhone and quickly unlocked it.

She ignored the five texts and two missed calls from Kate and hurriedly scrolled through her contacts until she found the number she was looking for and called it, holding the phone to her ear as she paced around the empty bathroom.

She held her breath as it rang, closing her eyes before stopping in the middle of the bathroom when the voice on the other line finally answered.

"Santana? It's me. I really need your help."

xxx

I'm posting this way, waaay earlier than I had intended to, so.

Hope you guys enjoyed it.

Next chapter: Quinn seeks help from Santana and attempts to explain to Rachel why they haven't spoken in seven years.

Please review, I've been getting lots of nice comments on this story. :)

xxx