Quinn's POV

I strolled alongside Rachel through the parking lot towards her car. I held Caroline on my hip, and Rachel had her diaper bag slung across her shoulder, slumped down and looking at the cracks in the concrete.

"I say we go out and celebrate," I suggested.

"I don't really feel like celebrating," Rach mumbled.

"Why not?" I skipped a few paces in front of her. "You're not pregnant! If I found out I wasn't pregnant at sixteen, I would have gone crazy! Rachel, you have nothing to worry about now except for finding an apartment in New York and finding out if you got an audition for Juilliard!"

She huffed in exasperation and shook her head at me. "Whoop-de-doo… I'm not pregnant. That solves all my problems!"

"Well, it doesn't create more! First you're in hysterics, you can't stop crying, and now you're depressed. How much longer am I going to have to put up with this?"

Rachel didn't answer. She got to her car, opened the trunk, threw the bag in, and slammed it. Caroline startled against my side. "Loud, Auntie Rachel!"

"Sorry," Rachel stomped around the side of the car and got in the driver's side, closing the door pointedly quietly. I settled Caroline in the back and climbed in beside Rachel. As she drove towards Mr. Schuster's house, she kept her eyes on the road and her mouth shut. I wasn't blind; I knew that this was about Puck. That boy did have a way of messing things up with women in his life, but this was worse. Before, he'd gone through girls like he went through Pepsi's: one after the other, tossing out the bottles when he was done with them. But Rachel was something different. She'd changed him. He wasn't the same Puck whenever Rachel was around. He was more careful around her, more cautious, as if she were delicate, and didn't want to hurt her. He'd helped her build up her dream and built up her trust of him. He'd let her lean on him whenever she needed to, or whenever she just wanted someone there for her.

None of us had ever seen him that way around a girl.

I don't think anybody would have expected it to end, ever. I don't think Rachel expected it to end. I couldn't image what she could have been feeling right then.

"Rach, talk to me," I coaxed softly.

She kneaded the steering wheel under her fingers. "He hasn't spoken to me since last week. He hasn't even come to say sorry."

"He's an ass."

"He told me he loved me. He wanted to be with me. He said that."

"He's a dickhead."

"We were going to move to New York together… we were going to have a future."

"Yeah… well… he's a liar. You wouldn't have wanted to live with him anyway, after a while."

"Quinn, you're not helping at all! I know that you never loved him, but I do! I mean, I did. No, I do! I don't know… why am I doing this?"

"You love him," I say for her. "You want to be with him. You need to talk with him, Rachel."

"I can't talk to him. I wouldn't know what to say, because I'm still so mad I'm shaking, and I don't know whether I hate him or whether I'm in love with him, and I don't know whether I still want to be in New York with him, or whether I just want to abandon this whole thing, and now I don't even know what I'm saying because of course I don't want to abandon it. That's what I wanted… I mean, want. What I want. I want to be with Noah."

"You sound like you're trying to convince yourself," I scrutinized.

"I'm not. I love him…"

"You still sound like that."

Rachel eased the car to a stop and pulled over onto the gravel shoulder of one of our lovely Lima roads.

"Why we stop?" Caroline called from the backseat.

"Auntie Rachel needs to figure some things out. We'll be home soon, baby, don't worry," I told her, silently willing her not to start crying.

Rachel reclined her chair, laid back, and closed her eyes.

"What is this, your therapist's office?" I joked.

"The whole time I thought I was pregnant I just wanted to run to him and tell him, because I knew that he would know what to do about it. I was scared. He's usually the one that's there for me during that kind of thing. I missed him. I miss him."

"Okay, I don't want to risk sounding like a broken record, but you still sound like you're trying to tell yourself that you miss him and you love him! What's going on, Rachel?"

"I do miss him… I do love him… you can't just stop loving somebody after all those years," she brushed a coil of hair away from her eye and caught a tear with it.

"Then talk to him. Forgive him. Work something out. You don't have to throw everything away just because of one little setback."

Suddenly, Rachel reached down and pulled the lever on her seat, making it snap back up on its 90 degree angle.

"You know what? He hurt me. I can't just forgive him like it's nothing!"

"Whoa… enough with the crazy mood swings, Rach!"

"Yeah! 'Nuf with da cwazy mood sings, Auntie Rachel!" my daughter echoed from the back.

"No! I knew what he was like when I got into this. I never should have trusted him. You were right, he is an ass."

"He a ass!" Caroline clapped her hands together.

"Caroline!" Rachel and I scolded in unison.

"Oops!" she giggled from her car seat.

"Sorry," Rachel said sheepishly, "that was my fault."

"No, I said it first. So, what are you going to do? Are you going to talk to him?"

"He broke a promise," Rachel's face was crumpled in pain; "he said he'd move to New York with me… we made plans. And then he goes and says that he's going to stay in Lima so he can be close to him family. His real family. I was nothing more than one of 'Puck's Girls.' A stupid high school fling. The only difference is that I lasted longer than the others. He doesn't really care about me!"

"Rachel, you know that's not true!"

"It is true, Quinn. I put everything on hold for him. I was an idiot. I mean, planning things around him? What was I thinking?"

"You loved him! It's nothing to be ashamed of, Rachel! And I can vouch for the fact that he still loves you, and he would do anything to be able to talk this over with you right now."

"No," she snapped coldly. "He had his chance. He told me that we'd be together, but he lied! If I'd just blown him off back in the tenth grade, none of this would have happened!

I would have been living my dream by now!"

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, even you know that's not true. He never did anything to keep you from reaching your goal. If anything, he helped you get here."

Rachel raked her hand back through her hair so hard that a few strands got pulled out. "I'm tired of waiting for him," she clenched her teeth. "I'm not letting myself be distracted by him anymore!"

"Rachel…!" I started to feel aggravated.

"No! He's stood in my way long enough. I never should have gotten caught with him! I need to focus on me know. I have enough to concentrate on… I don't need him now. I need to do this alone. This is the way it was supposed to be in the first place! I don't need him!"

"So what… you're going to dump him? Rachel, first of all, that's stupid. Don't do that. And second of all, if you're going to end things with him, you have to at least tell him."

She shook her head at me. "All due respect Quinn, but I really don't think you know what you're talking about here. I'm going to New York alone. I'll find an apartment. For one. I'll work the chorus job, I'll go to Juilliard, and I'll take a frickin' cooking class. Alone. That's how I planned on doing it in the first place. I shouldn't have changed things around him anyway! See, Quinn? I'm perfectly fine without him. I'll be perfectly fine." She hugged her arms around herself tightly.

I sighed. "Rachel, if I knew how to talk you out of this, I would, but we both know you're too stubborn for that. You have to talk to him."

"No. I'm not talking to him. He was a mistake. This whole thing was just a stupid mistake."

"You're wrong…"

"No I'm not," Rachel started the car again, swerving back onto the empty road. "I knew you wouldn't understand this, Quinn, but you've got to believe me. I need to focus on my future now. That's what I should have been doing all along."

She pounded her foot on the gas pedal.

"I'll drop you two off. I'm going home to ask Dad and Daddy if we can go up to New York this week to go apartment shopping, just the three of us."

I let my head fall into my hands. Now, on top of everything else, I'd have to fix Rachel and Puck too.

Great.

Oooooh… drraaaaammmmmaaa.

You know what else is dramatic?

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