Quinn thinks she must be becoming immune to being woken at ridiculous times in the morning by her phone ringing. She must be because she no longer nearly falls out of bed anymore, never feels that deep set panic like she used to. Now she doesn't even really wake up, doesn't even open her eyes, instead she blindly reaches out for her cellphone and answers it without even needing to check the caller ID.
This is a problem this morning however as she isn't at home. Instead all she manages to do is knock over the lamp that had up until now been sitting innocently on the hotel desk. Thankfully it doesn't sound like it breaks though. She can do without a bill for damages to the room.
"Wha...?" He stirs beside her.
She shushes him, sitting up and opening her eyes so she can actually see where her cellphone is. "Go back to sleep." Following that advice by turning on the lights might be a little counterproductive but the damage is done the second she hits the switch. For once she considers not answering, but she knows from experience that Santana will only keep calling until she does pick up. "What?" She knows she's being rude, she hopes that means Santana might get annoyed and hang up on her. A girl can dream, right?
"You slept with Sam."
Quinn's eyes drift across to the said Sam Evans who pulls an arm across his face to try and block out the light. "How did you know..." She really hopes Santana hasn't developed some kind of psychic powers. That would just spell disaster for pretty much the entire human race as Quinn can't imagine Santana ever using those powers for good.
"He told me."
"He told you?" Quinn frowns, wondering just when Sam had found the time to call Santana to fill her in on tonight's events. If she's honest, she's a little insulted that she wasn't able to hold his full attention.
Santana's about to enter rant mode. "Something you clearly had no intention of doing. You were supposed to be in town to see me and Britts, but the minute our backs are turned you bailed on us to seduce Trouty Mouth and..."
"Wait, you're talking about San Francisco?" Quinn sighs as relief sets in.
"Of course I'm talking about San Francisco. What else is there to talk about?"
"Nothing." Plenty. San Diego. Los Angeles. Seattle. Portland. Luckily Quinn's company has several west coast clients, which has given her excuses to fly out there and meet up with Sam. Sam doesn't seem to have told Santana about any of those at least. But if Santana only knows about San Francisco, then it doesn't make any sense for her to be yelling at Quinn about it now, six months after the fact. Santana can be irrational, but not that irrational. "Santana, why are we having this conversation now?"
"Why not have it now? Unless you have something better to be doing?"
Quinn's eyes flit across to Sam, who's sitting up now and frowning at her. "No, nothing better to do."
"Where are you anyway?"
Quinn hesitates. "Erm...at home."
"No, you're not." Maybe Santana has developed psychic powers after all. "Now, seriously, where are you?"
Quinn's not awake enough to think of any other answer but the truth. "Glenwood Springs."
Sam's eyes widen and he makes a frantic cutting gesture at her. Clearly it's far too late for that.
"Glenwood Springs?" There's a dangerous edge to Santana's voice. "The same Glenwood Springs where Trouty Mouth told us he's spending the weekend? See I don't usually pay much attention to whatever he's babbling on about, but this I remember because for the past three weeks he hasn't shut up about white water rafting. Guess it wasn't the rafting he was excited about after all."
"Must just be a coincidence."
"Oh come on. You're really going to try and keep this up? Okay, fine, let's for a minute assume that Trouty actually is there for the rafting, for what possible reason are you going to claim you're there?"
"Business." It's vague enough that it possibly might work.
"Bullshit." Or not. "You're with him now, aren't you?"
"No." Quinn doesn't know what makes her lie, she's clearly lost this one already.
"Really?"
Quinn's about to lie again, out of habit more than anything else at this point, but she's interrupted by Sam's cellphone which conveniently, too conveniently, starts to ring, his ring-tone far too loud to hope Santana won't hear it.
He scrambles to answer it but Quinn knows it's all over.
"Wait, hold up, is that the Star Wars theme I can hear? Now why would that be playing in your hotel room, Quinn?"
Sam still hasn't answered his phone and Quinn is starting to get a headache. She turns and glares at him. "Aren't you going to get that?"
He looks reluctant to do so. "It's Brittany."
"You want to take Santana instead?" She holds her phone out, but he quickly shakes his head and answers his own phone.
"Hey, Brittany." He slides off the bed and paces over to the other side of the room where he sinks down in the armchair.
Quinn turns her attention back to Santana. Lying isn't getting her anywhere, so Quinn tries the next best thing, changing the subject. "Why are you calling, Santana?"
"Apparently so you can lie to my face."
"Technically it's not lying to your face when it's over the phone."
Santana ignores her. "You're sleeping with Sam, and you've been sleeping with Sam since the last time you were in San Francisco."
Quinn knows there's no point in denying it any longer. "Okay, but why are you mad at me? Santana, you're the one who suggested I sleep with him in the first place."
"All these years and you choose now to start taking my advice? Seriously, what the hell, Quinn?"
Quinn's not in the mood for whatever this is all about, especially as she doesn't understand why Santana suddenly has a problem with her seeing Sam. "Why is this an issue?"
"Because."
"Because? That's your reasoning here? You're mad at me just because? What is this high school all over again?" She's getting angry now and it's only Sam moving to sit next to her and placing a hand on her arm that gets her to stop and take a breath instead of saying something she'll regret.
He's still talking to Brittany and Quinn moves her own phone away from her ear to listen to him instead of Santana. "Look, Britt, will you tell Santana that while it's cool she cares about me enough to chew Quinn out over this, I'm a big boy and she's gotta let me make my own mistakes."
Something stings inside of Quinn to hear him call this a mistake out-loud, even if the voice inside her head has been telling her that very thing since San Francisco.
Sam takes hold of her hand. "Me and Quinn, we know what we're doing, okay? So Santana needs to just butt out and mind her own business."
Being at the other end of a phone-line must have made Sam braver than usual as Quinn suspects he wouldn't dare say that to Santana's face.
She can hear Brittany in the background now, no doubt passing along Sam's message. Hopefully Brittany won't relay it word for word.
Santana sighs, signaling that Brittany is done. "Fine, Quinn, it's your life. If you want to spend time kissing those guppy lips, then it's your choice. And I suppose at least he's a slight improvement on your usual boyfriends."
"Santana..."
"No, I'm sorry, okay? It's just you're my best friends." Quinn knows what it takes for Santana to actually admit that out loud. "And I don't want to end up losing either of you when it all crashes and burns and I'm stuck in the middle of a war zone all of a sudden." It's good to know Santana has such faith in her. "And I don't want to see either of you get hurt over this. Especially as it was my stupid idea in the first place."
"That's not going to..."
"Quinn, don't make promises you can't keep. The only thing we both know for sure is that you're not going to marry him and have lots of creepy blond children. So let's not pretend otherwise, okay?"
Quinn doesn't even know what to say to that, so she says nothing.
Santana sighs. "Look, I need to go. Things to do, you know?" She hangs up before Quinn can say anything else.
Sam holds his phone out to her. "Britt wants to talk to you."
This can't be good. Quinn slowly takes it from him. "Hey, Brittany." She tries to sound cheerful. It doesn't work.
Brittany at least gets straight to the point. "Don't hurt him, Quinn."
So apparently it's not only Santana that doesn't trust her not to screw up a relationship. "Brittany, I won't..."
"I know you never mean to, but whenever you date a nice guy that's kinda what always ends up happening. But just try really hard not to this time, okay? For us?"
"I'll try, okay?"
"Thanks." There's silence for a few seconds as if Brittany is debating whether to say whatever else is on her mind. Eventually, she says, "You know why she's really mad, Quinn? Because you two have been sneaking around for months and neither of you trusted her enough to tell her. You lied to her, Quinn, and that's not cool."
It's not like either of them deliberately kept it from Santana. They hadn't told anybody about it. Well she hadn't. She's less sure about Sam now that she knows he told Santana about sleeping with her the first time it happened.
"Quinn, I'll tell you what I told Sam. Lie to her again and it'll be me you need to answer to, okay?"
Quinn swallows. "Okay."
Brittany quickly hangs up and Quinn gives Sam his phone back. He attempts a smile. "Isn't it awesome having friends that care about us?"
She can't help asking, "What are we doing?"
Sam looks like he has as much of an idea as she does. Eventually he says, "All I know is I like spending time with you. You're cool and we have fun together. And I really, really like having sex with you. So does anything else matter?"
Maybe it should, but when he's looking at her the way he is right now and they have a perfectly good hotel room to make the most of, Quinn finds he's right, nothing else does seem to matter at all right now.