okay, so this is my baby. my favorite piece of this story. if you guys don't like it i may actually cry. truth be told i had some of this part written right after i wrote the very first chapter. obviously through out i have tweeked it up a bit. this was just as emotionally exhausting as Santana's breakdown just to warn you.
i'm very excited to post this chapter, obviously because i'm already posting two chapters in one day, but i'm sure you won't mind much:)
so enjoy my favorite chapter, well so far anyway... and let me know how you feel about everything afterwards. thanks dudes:)!
After that incident of liquor, not so spoken and spoken confessions and Rachel Berry's house it seems Santana seeks my presence rather than just dealing with me going after her. She tries to make it seem like she is sitting with me at lunch because she has nothing better going on and I'm her last resort. But we both know I'm her only resort. And she gives me an escape from my own lonliness.
Luckily though, getting spend time with her during free periods like study hall or lunch gives me an excuse to not have to pay attention to Sam. It gives me ignoring him a reason and that I'm not doing it because I'm a bitchy cheerleader.
Sometimes we sit in silence just biding our time until the bell rings and then move on our way until we see each other again. Other times instead of talking we use one of our notebooks to have a conversation without giving anyone the ability to over hear us.
We talk about school, and Glee, and Coach Sylvester but no matter what the conversation starts with it always ends up going in the same direction. A comment about Artie being no good for Brittany to which I respond with full agreement or she writes about how she's pretty sure Artie is telling Brittany to stop hanging out with her. This usually prompts me to ask if she tries to make plans with Britt anymore and then the conversation ends.
And I leave super top secret notebook in hand with questions that I never get the answers to.
It wasn't until a couple of days ago, when I had asked that very question again that I thought of something. Maybe I never get the answers because Santana hasn't figured them out yet. I always watch her face contort into various emotions as she reads my question always glancing in the same direction before writing her response.
The other day is when I finally looked over my shoulder to spot Brittany sitting at a table with Artie, Mike and Tina. Like always Artie was trying to get Brittany into his most likely super boring topic of conversation. He noticed she wasn't paying attention and then followed her line of vision and spotted our table. I then looked to Santana and noticed her actually fidget under his stare. She tore her eyes from their table and moved back to our notebook of secrets.
The bell had gone off and I turned to see her still furiously writing for a few more minutes. The café had started getting very empty by the time she flipped it closed and handed it to me. She said she'd see me later and I nodded. I watched her walk out of the lunch room and when I was sure I was alone I sat back down at the table opening the book to find out what she had written.
I love her. I love her. I love her. I love her. I love her.
But I can't do this and it breaks my heart.
She deserves better than me and that's why she is doing this to me.
I deserve this I guess. Do me a favor, burn and toss this book.
I just need to get over this.
I need to be done.
I could feel my eyebrows shooting up. I couldn't believe what I was reading. It was but a few days ago that Santana had confessed her love for her best friend. Even now, here, in this book she is telling me she loves Brittany.
It only makes me wonder what the rest of the story really is. Maybe Rachel was right in saying that Brittany had really done a number on Santana. The seemingly sweetest person in the entire universe had somehow cut the biggest ice queen to ever grace the halls of a high school down to tears and drunken emotional declarations.
That day as I walked out of the lunch room I felt like I was holding a treasure and a top government secret all in one. I could feel her secrets burning into my skin just through the touch of my fingers over the cardboard cover of the marble notebook. I knew so much now, but I still knew nothing at all. Sure I had been brought into a world that no one else would believe existed, a place where Santana Lopez felt things, nice things for another human being. I had been witness to a breakdown and a breakthrough. Yet even with this book of secrets and untold truths, I felt I had nothing.
I know that when I was younger and going through those weird preteen problems I used to write in a diary. Maybe that's what all this is for Santana.
I used to tell my diary anything and everything. My hopes and dreams, my wants and desires, my fears. So many things were written by a young Quinn Fabray that no one else saw but me, and so many of my dreams and wants were never followed through with. It just felt good to let them out.
Maybe I'm just Santana's diary. She just needs to get all of this out until she can move on. Maybe that's what she is doing. Moving on.
I thought about it. Burning the book and getting rid of the evidence that would point to the fact that Santana Lopez does in fact feel. But as the day ended the book only burned more into my skin, etching the words into my body to forever be memorized which would only make it pointless to burn the book. All of the secret truths are not going to fade away. They are now known.
There's a knock on my bedroom door stirring me from the marble notebook of whispered thoughts and desires. I hastily shove it in to the back of my underwear drawer shutting it softly as to not bring attention to the fact that I had just stowed something away. I move to the door and am more than surprised who is standing on the other side of it.
Brittany is standing in my hallway with her hands tucked into her Cheerio's jacket and a strange look in her eye. I can tell she is fidgety and so I move to the side offering her to come in. I'm not really in the mood for pleasantries with the normally bubbly blonde because of everything I have heard from Santana.
I close my door and follow her form as it goes to the window casually looking out and I can tell all she is trying to do is calm herself down. I move to my bed taking a seat knowing that I'm probably going to be involved in a long conversation in a few seconds. Either that or a really long and silent torturous stare down with a blank look on Brittany's face the whole time.
Brittany looks from the window and around the room before settling her eyes back on my door and she walks towards it. I wonder if she's done here. Perhaps she hasn't found what she's looking for, which is fine by me but she stops at the door and turns around and looks at me but not in my eyes.
"What are you doing with her?" Brittany asks finally breaking the oddly long silence between us since she got here. Her eyes dart to the floor when I don't automatically answer her and I see her chest rising and falling a little faster than when she arrived.
"I don't know wh…" Before I can finish she cuts me off.
"Santana." Her voice is a little louder than when she had first spoken.
"Why do you care B?" I challenge her and I see her shoulders tense up a little at this question that I don't really intend on getting an answer to, nor do I really want one. "You've been so busy lately I'm surprised you even noticed." I nonchalantly dig in deeper checking out my nails.
It's not that I'm that cruel. I have always thought that someone being purposefully mean to Brittany was like kicking a puppy into a busy street. But she's been selfish. She completely abandoned Santana, a twelve year friendship for a stupid high school relationship that probably won't end up going anywhere.
"That's not fair Quinn." Brittany tries to defend and I sideways glance her catching her hang her head which only proves to me that she knows she's guilty of pushing Santana away.
"Well life's not fair." Even as I'm saying it I can feel my eyes roll because this is so something my mom would say, I actually distinctly remembering Santana's mom saying this to her daughter sometime back in middle school.
"She's still my friend. And a while ago you said she was sad." She brings up that one time when I told Brittany exactly what I thought, prior to all of this information I have acquired. "I still care about her, but every time I try and talk to her she…" Brittany sighs out and I can hear it in her chest that tears are being held back. "I just figured that since she is talking to you that you could tell her I..."
"She's fine now." I spit back at her cutting off her sentence that was trailing off into nowhere land anyway. I see her swallow hard and she has still yet to make eye contact with me. "She's over it. Like whatever it is with you two." I cringe a little as the venom that is normally used by Santana comes dripping off of my tongue and into words that I am using towards Brittany Pierce. But in all honesty I can't help but glance back at my underwear drawer that has Santana's declarations and goodbyes inscribed within the margins. I catch her nodding and she sniffles.
"Oh." That's all she says. I tell her Santana is getting over it, or is over it, I don't even remember what said and all she says is 'oh'. I wait for a few more minutes wondering if that's how she plans on leaving the conversation. I watch her sniffle once more and wipe her eye with the back of her hand and some of her Cheerio's jacket and turn to the door. But I don't let her get far.
"It can be one minute, one single second of a fleeting thought of a possibility and… it can be that one moment, a single moment, no longer than a half of a breath that you let go," I pause waiting for her to turn around and then to take notice of the look on Brittany's face. The look of guilt, despair, regret and something else I can't quite place. "And in that same moment somewhere else, maybe on the other side of the world, down the street, down the stairs or in the room right next to your own when that other person lets go too." I move to make eye contact, something the she has been avoiding since she got here. "Only, where for you it might have been just a fleeting thought of a possibility for them… for them it's a decision." I tell Brittany. And for the first time since she turned from the door she moves. The muscles in her face tighten, her jaw moves to unclench and her eyes widen a little as though my statement had struck a nerve somewhere in her senses. "I can't tell you what to do and I'm not going to. I can't tell you what to say and I'm not going to because I know that you have probably practiced some long speech that if you ever do wind up trying to say you'll forget anyway." I take a breath letting the brief seconds of silence dance between us perhaps giving Brittany a chance to say something, sigh, take a breath or even blink. But she doesn't. "She doesn't hate you." The simple thought of Santana remotely hating anything about Brittany is unfathomable. "She couldn't if she tried." I explain. "But she hates where you are, where you guys are, what you've become. She hates what you've become to each other, or unbecome as the case may be."
"Is she still sad?" Brittany's voice squeaks when she asks me this.
I'm kind of caught off guard because I truly believed this was going to be one of those one sided conversations that she pretends to be a part of. Where I was going to say this long speech exposing both sides or whatever and then she'd leave. I can feel the cold air hit the inside of my mouth indicating to me that it is most likely hanging open at the validity of the question. I close my mouth and slowly nod trying to find my words.
"Y-yes." I stutter and I can tell by my hesitation I had misled her into thinking that Santana is no longer sad. But truth be told anyone with eyes could see that the dark haired girl who has enough angst to cast her own CW show is still very much on the sad side. "She's still sad B." I repeat the words which is probably cruel and only jabbing the knife further in or whatever but she needs to know.
The once self proclaimed badass bitch of the school is broken. And not broken in a way that the old Quinn Fabray would even relish in. And not even broke in a way that Sue Sylvester herself would wish to bestow upon anyone, well except for Mr. Schu probably. Santana is broken in a way that sometimes never becomes unbroken.
Santana, in her defense, committed the only crime one can commit in a very mutual relationship that the two of them were involved in. She fell for her best friend. The worse part about it is that she knew but she didn't know she knew until it was too late. So maybe technically from the start her heart was already broken. Falling for someone and then not willing herself to be with them would break anyone's heart if they cared enough. Ironically, I guess, in some weird bizarre world where Santana Lopez actually cares, her heart broke because she cared too much.
"B-but," Brittany breaks me out of my own little inner monologue with her melodic soft voice that only cracks when she is in those clear moments of lucidity. My eyes meet hers and for the first time since she got here I notice the tears in her eyes. "But I'm supposed to be the sad one." Brittany says as though that is the answer to all of the world's mystery and I am to get someone important on the phone and tell them. I can feel her gaze on me and questioning my bewildered expression. "I'm sad." She enforces with more power behind her voice and points to herself and I can't help but become fixated on a lone tear peeking over the brim of her eye, daring to fall at any given moment. "I said things, and then she said things and then she left me alone. And then she wasn't there and Artie was there." Her eyes scatter around the room and I can see the way she looks, she is replaying whatever moment she is vaguely describing to me in her mind. She's telling it to me as though she is seeing it play out right now. "Then Artie and I, I took his virginity." Her blues look to me almost begging me to stop her from seeing what she sees and to ask her to not go on and that she can't erase it but maybe she can fix it. "She did this." Her face turns. It turns in a way I have never really seen it before. It's hard, a little cold and it shines something very similar to a fiery Latina I knew well once upon a time. "She's the one who pushed. I didn't do anything. She did this and if anyone should be sad it's me." To make her point she stomps her foot. Not too hard, but hard enough to emphasize and I can't help but think how similar the two estranged best friends are. They have tantrums like 7 year old girls who want that purse from the mall and mommy won't buy it so they have a hissy fit. "I love her and she just can't stand it. And I hate it cause I can't help it."
But Brittany isn't having a hissy fit. She's not even mad. She is quite sad.
It's at this point in time that I realize that Santana Lopez is not the only person with missing pieces. She's not the only one who needs to be repaired. And she is probably not the only one who was a little bit broken when all of this started. The look in Brittany's eyes that I was not originally able to grasp has now struck me. Along with the guilt, despair and regret lay a thick base layer of hurt and pain. And there's something tugging in me that tells me that base layer has always been there. Somewhere deep down in those piercing ocean like blue eyes a bright and shiny girl tried to hide from the world the hurt and pain she kept locked away with light and sunshine that sparkled from the earth to the stars.
On rare occasion, there have been moments I have been witness to that allow me to fully comprehend the world that is Santana and Brittany. Most have been unseen, meaning I have been unseen, and most have been the casual blink and you'll miss it. This is one of those times only the parties are privy to my knowledge.
But as I sat there and I thought about laying it all down for her telling her that she needs to just come clean to Santana about everything and then things will work out for themselves, I knew I couldn't do that. Brittany had this face and this weight to her voice that told me that she was not going to be the one. It wasn't her that was going to bend this time. She wasn't going to be the one to make a sacrifice for their relationship.
She has already given up so much.
I could tell from the way she stomped her foot and said 'I'm sad' that she isn't going to step up and be mature about this. This was her time to be greedy and selfish and want and want and not give. She doesn't want to always be the one to fix things when they go bad. She can't always be bright and shiny.
So I sat there and watched her stand there with her arms over her chest and her eyes fixed on a spot where the ground meets the wall. I watch her cheeks move as she chews on the insides and I listen as she sniffles trying to keep her tears under her control. We stay in our respective positions for a while until her body finally caves in and crumples to the floor, her back first hitting the door and sliding down. Her head finds her hands and she cradles herself as the tears can no longer be held back. I watch her as she brings her legs up to her chest and rests her arms around them hugging herself into a tight ball against the door to my bedroom.
I help her into the bathroom across the hall and drag a cool wash cloth onto her neck in hopes of soothing her uncontrollable sobs that soon enough turn into hiccups. I move her to the toilet where I pull down the lid so she can sit down and I rub small circles on her back to calm her down and I offer her a glass of water. I excuse myself for a brief moment only to return within seconds with a pair of sweats and a t-shirt for her to change in to.
I help her change because when I walk out the door to give her privacy she starts to cry again. I bring her back to my room and sit her on my bed, the crying subsided but the tears still very much there. I place her in the middle of my bed and sit behind her pulling her tight ponytail from its band and I brush her hair.
We sit there. It's silent but so loud.
After a little while I contemplate offering to walk her home considering she only lives around the block. But my inner voice tells me not to ruin this comfortable uncomfortable silence we have created between ourselves.
So instead of speaking with my mouth I speak with my motions. I turn around and pull my comforter all the way down and set the two pillows next to each other hoping to just lead by example. I lay my head down and pat the pillow beside me. She looks at it for a few seconds. Her face tells me that she isn't so much contemplating the offer but that she is remembering something. I'd like to think she is remembering my kindness and our friendship but I'm sure that's not the case.
Her lips try to make a smile but the sadness in her stops that from happening. I watch her lay beside me, facing me and she tucks her hands under her chin. Our eyes meet and I nod my head, I think I'm telling her that it's okay now and that she can close her eyes. And maybe I'm also telling her that everything is between us and no one, Santana, will ever know about her mini breakdown.
A noise in her throat makes my eyes widen and I get the feeling that the water works are going to start up again. I'm frozen and I don't know what to do. My mind races because we've been going so long without using words it's like I have forgotten how to speak. Luckily my body is in tune with the situation and my hand reaches out and grabs her hand squeezing it tightly. Her eyes, filled with wetness threatening my pillows, dart to our hands. Her breathing becomes erratic and her tears flow from her eyes drenching my pillow case in the process. Her sobs cause her body to almost convulse and she seems to not be in control of her body and I grip her hand a little tighter. I watch her lips turn a little upside down and for a second I think I've sent her further over the edge if that is even possible, but then she lets out a sigh that sounds like a whine and a sob and she looks me in the eye.
And then, she squeezes my hand back.