4. The Star.
.
.
.
She was supposed to be a bitch. I could have handled it if she was a bitch.
Rachel moved out West and bought a house in the Hollywood Hills. That same weekend she invited all of us to dinner. Finn, Puck, Mercedes…
I couldn't make it. I'd booked a job – fill-in dancer for my friend Teri, one of the Bombshell Babies, in their standing gig at the Roxy.
Rachel tracked me down the next day. She insisted I come to her house. She wanted to cook for me.
I found another reason to back out. An excuse, really. I didn't realise it at the time – not really – but I was avoiding her. Seeing her all happy and successful in her mansion, literally looking down on the rest of us, it would have just brought my own life into stark relief.
And I couldn't handle that.
But one thing no one could ever say about Rachel Berry – she was nothing if not frikkin persistent. The Jewish dog with the kosher bone.
One day, at work, I headed over to a booth in the corner to serve a new customer, and there she was.
.
"Figured you'd find your way here. Finn says you're a lot more in favour of the hooters now."
"Well, that top you're wearing leaves nothing to the imagination."
"It brings in the tips."
"I'm sure. Sit down."
"I'm working."
"You can take a break."
"No, I can't."
"Why are you avoiding me?"
"Rachel, I'm not-"
"I know we weren't… close in high school, but…"
"It's not that. I've just been really busy."
"Oh, well, do you think you'll have some time this weekend? Maybe we could-"
"I don't think so."
"Santana, please…"
"Why are you making such a big deal about this, Miss Movie Star? Don't you have, lackeys, to hang out with? That big guy by the door scaring the customers, he's your bodyguard, isn't he?"
"And you think that's some kind of life? I'm miserable, Santana. I'm lonely."
.
She really was.
She guilted me into a coffee that first day. The coffee turned into a shopping trip. She had money now, and I was determined to fulfill my sworn duty to the goddesses of lesbianism and finally fix her wardrobe.
After that, it was dinners – mostly at her place, but she didn't have a problem slumming it in my new two-room walk-up at the ass-end of Highland.
Soon, we were spending all our free time together. I think she appreciated that I would never be like the 100 essential people that suddenly surrounded her, consulting her on business and massaging her ego.
I still called her Snouty the Jewish Dwarf, and I refused to stop.
That's how – shock and horror – Rachel Berry and I became best friends.
And then Brittany came to town.
.
.
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