It was a relief, being back in New York.
Once Rachel and Shelby were safely back on Manhattan ground, Rachel made her excuses, heading out to meet her friends while Shelby went to pick up Beth from one of her friends, who had babysat the toddler while she and Rachel had been in Ohio. Shelby didn't argue, or force Rachel to stay, because they both knew they needed a breather from each other.
Because Shelby had questions. Questions, Rachel was sure, that pertained to her decisions during her senior year in high school. After all, almost everybody in attendance of Finn's memorial service had been there for that tumultuous year, and Rachel had even seen Shelby talking to Coach Sue Sylvester, so she was sure Coach Sylvester had dropped a bomb or two on her unwitting biological parent.
But to her credit, Shelby hadn't pressed. She didn't ask any of those questions, just let her weighted gaze on Rachel do the asking, trying to discern where to start and ask for clarification, for an explanation, for any kind of clue as to what had been going through Rachel's mind during a year where bad things seemed to have outnumbered the good. For once Rachel was relieved of her mostly-strained relationship with Shelby, because it meant Shelby trod on the extremely cautious line, careful not to do or say anything that could trip her relationship with Rachel and cause the young woman to lock her out, or bolt.
The unasked questions lingered, however. Rachel admittedly didn't know Shelby very well, but she knew the other woman enough to know that the questions would not leave, that one day they were going to have to sit down and talk it out, because she may be generally awful in her role as Rachel's mother, but neither could deny that Shelby cared for Rachel, and Rachel's decisions during that time needed explaining.
For now, they dealt with the silence, the strained words that kept the questions at bay, resorting to polite exchanges so that the words would not come out wrong.
So, a few hours apart was probably just what they needed, to ensure they didn't start arguing with each other. And Rachel needed to take some time to readjust to being back in New York. Or maybe just again being away from Lima.
The best part about being back in New York was the feeling of constraint and claustrophobia that had followed her around Lima slowly leaving her as Rachel made her way to the coffee shop that Jesse had told her to meet him at when she'd sent him a text asking where he was.
Funny, how in a matter of a few short weeks, the sight of Jesse went from being one of trepidation and weariness to nothing short of absolute relief, as if Jesse was the summation of everything that her life in New York was supposed to be, and the sight of him was a comforting reminder that she was back home.
And his embrace was a physical feeling of that comfort.
"That bad?" Jesse hazarded, once he realized Rachel had no intentions of releasing him from her hug.
"No." Rachel reluctantly admitted, because it hadn't been. People had mostly steered clear of her, thanks to Shelby's presence, and she when Shelby wasn't around, sitting with Quinn prevented most people from talking to her extensively about Finn. Even Kurt, once he'd realized that she was trying to distance herself from being seen as a part of the grieving family, had only sat with her when there weren't too many people around. Once she'd conceded to the fact that people grieved in different ways and the New Directions' way of grieving Finn was to focus on how much they had come to depend on Finn's presence, everything had been easier to deal with.
Not that it was easy, to face the fact that she still didn't feel quite right about how she was dealing with the loss of Finn Hudson, the fact that she couldn't quite reconcile her grief of losing him months previous to the current feeling of the fact that he was really, truly gone.
But that nagging feeling wasn't quite as oppressive in New York as it had been in Lima. And seeing Jesse, being held by him, helped make the feeling become less of a weight on her shoulders and more of a gentle reminder, that there were still some issues she needed to deal with.
Probably because Jesse didn't look to her to have the answers on how to live without Finn, didn't look at her as if she was missing a six-foot-three figure on her side.
Reluctantly, Rachel eased away from the embrace, and smiled faintly at her boyfriend. "Have you been waiting long?"
Jesse smiled wryly. "No. Coffee run." He indicated the number on the table, which indicated he was waiting on an order.
"Coffee run?" Rachel asked.
"It was the only way your friends were going to let me leave without asking too many questions." Jesse explained. "Claire, Amy, Anton and Parker are in rehearsals nearby. Tommy and Christian are there, too, but doing music stuff."
Rachel furrowed her brow. "And you?"
"Tommy and I were working on something." Jesse answered. "I can drop off the coffee and tell them something came up, so, you know, your call if you want to hang out with them or want to hold that off until classes start."
Rachel smiled thankfully at him, for considering her own readiness to face her friends, and for not trying to push her either way.
"But you should know," Jesse said suddenly, reluctantly, glancing briefly at her. "Parker saw Jacob Israel's website. And I think so have Anton and Amy."
Rachel's smile faded, as this was the very thing she had been hoping to avoid with her new friends. "What?"
"You left without much of an explanation, Rachel." Jesse reminded.
"That doesn't give them the right to just pry into-"
"They were concerned." Jesse cut in. Yes, it had been intrusive for them to do it, but he could understand, given how Parker had explained her own curiosity, that they had wanted to learn why the death a friend from high school, who had been so curtly told off on the phone just a few hours prior, could warrant such an immediate and urgent trip home. And he told Rachel as much.
Rachel frowned. "I didn't want them to know about that."
"Rachel…"
"Jesse, that girl, the one Jewfro wrote about on his blog? She was… the worst of me. Rachel Berry in high school was unpopular, and self-centered, and was more focused on her future ambition than being kind, and I didn't want them to find out about her."
Jesse sighed. "I know."
"And now? Now they've read all about her, and that's…"
"Now they know how far you've come." Jesse reminded.
Rachel frowned.
"Rachel, we were all our worst selves in high school. Probably. I mean, let's face it, none of us would be where we are now if we didn't suck just a little, if we hadn't been just a bit self-centered and focused on where we wanted to go." Jesse assured her. "But they know just as much as you do that we're not the people we were in high school anymore. Claire just stepped in, against all her wishes, because Amy pretty much asked her to take over the preview performance. Before NYADA, you know she would have taken over that spot if it meant more eyes on her to get to the schools she wanted to go to. Amy could have chosen her actual understudy, because she knew that once she took the lead back, she could shine brighter. Anton and I could hate each other for the roles we're inevitably going to be competing over. Everybody's a bit of a jerk in high school, it's the easy way to survive."
Rachel looked down, letting Jesse's words sink in, before she looked back up at him. "What have they said about it? Parker, and Amy?"
Jesse sighed. "Parker's just concerned about some of the things Jewfro wrote about you on his blog. I haven't actually talked to Amy about it, but from what Park's told me, it's pretty much the same."
"And they don't think I'm awful?"
"Rachel, Parker talks to me and looks me in the eye. Trust me, if there's anyone she would hate without reservation, it's not gonna be you." Jesse reassured her.
Rachel conceded that point.
"And, you know, everyone has a thing about high school." Jesse reminded. "And they all still told me to tell you where they'd be today so you could go see them if you came home early."
Okay, she kind of preened a little at that. "Really?"
Once Jesse collected the group's coffee order, and Rachel got herself a chai latte, the two of them headed to the studio where, according to Jesse, Claire and Amy were rehearsing.
The address was a building straight out of every gritty New York City-based television show or movie she had ever seen; structurally sound, but rundown was to put it mildly, and just on the dubious side of being functional. Rachel wondered what her friends were doing in such a questionable location, but there was a sign in front that announced the location as a recreational center, so Rachel took the sign's word for it and went inside, hoping that the world wasn't conspiring against her and paying her back for her… shall we say, "prank", on Sunshine Corazon two years previous.
The interior, thankfully, was a whole lot better than the exterior, and from the first few rooms Rachel managed to peek through, the rooms were bright and well-lit, and reasonably clean.
And decisively not a crack den.
The center was busy, and as Rachel and Jesse climbed the stairs to the third floor, Rachel spotted not a few children's dance lessons and there was a cacophony in the hallways that indicated an unrehearsed music class, and the sight of not a few girls in mismatches tutus and dance gear made her smile, because it was easy to forget, sometimes, that everyone had to start somewhere.
Finally, they came to a hallway where Tommy was standing outside one of the rooms, talking to someone Rachel had never seen before, and as she and Jesse approached, Claire's boyfriend gave her a friendly grin, indicating for her to head inside.
In the room were Amy, Anton, Christian, Claire, and Parker; Amy and Claire were in the middle of the studio, clearly going through choreography, while the other three sat in a circle, with Anton shouting remarks to Amy, who kept on shooting him glares, while Christian played guitar as Parker sang along.
"You're awful, just let the ringer take over." Anton declared.
Amy started to turn to make a snappy retort, but Claire grabbed her head to turn back to face her. "Ignore him."
"Listen to New York's best up and coming dancer." Anton told Amy.
"Anthony, you're not helping." Claire reprimanded. She nodded at Parker. "The next time he says something, stop him."
"Stop him how?"
"Threaten to take away his hair products, I don't know." Claire shrugged.
Anton and Parker glanced at each other, and when Parker lifted an eyebrow, Anton relented. Parker, after all, lived with someone who invested in hair product as much as he did, so he wouldn't put it past Parker to know how to make it count.
Before Claire could get Amy to focus back on her, Amy's attention was drawn to the newcomer, and she brightened. "Rachel!"
The group all turned, but Rachel was quickly swept up in a hug by Amy, whose hugs were a lot like the girl herself: warm and friendly. Rachel happily accepted the friendly gesture, since the very initiation of the hug proved wrong her earlier worries about how her new friends would see her, given the information of who Rachel had been back in high school.
After Amy released her, Rachel was similarly hugged by Anton, and Rachel would wonder later why she found the comfort of her new friends more welcome than those from the friends she'd had in the glee club.
As Anton led Rachel to sit with him on the floor, Rachel glanced at Claire, who still stood in the middle of the room, and who gave her a questioning tilt of the head – Rachel hadn't expected Claire to be a person who hugged, which was fair – and Rachel gave a slight nod, reassuring the tall girl that she was fine.
Parker glanced at Rachel as she and Anton sat down. "You're OK?"
Rachel nodded.
"Want to talk about it?" Parker asked.
"Not now, if that's okay," Rachel replied.
"On your own time, yeah?" Parker smiled warmly, and turned to Jesse, who had sat down behind Rachel and handed Parker a cup of coffee.
Christian took his own cup from Jesse, and turned to Rachel. "Your turn, Berry. Songs with colors in one- or two-word titles."
Rachel looked at him questioningly.
Beside her, Anton explained. "It started as Total Request Live - we'd name songs and have him play it - and then it downward-spiraled into trying to come up with a song that he can't play on the guitar."
Rachel glanced at him. "Ebony and Ivory?"
"Done."
"Red?"
"Sammy Hagar or Taylor Swift?" Christian asked. "Park and Amy have named those tunes."
"Who's Sammy Hagar?" Rachel asked, causing Jesse to chuckle and Christian to frown. To breeze past her music history faux pas, she went on. "Blue."
"Beyoncé and REM."
Rachel frowned. She did not want to lose this game, and by the sound of it her friends have been playing it for hours. "Velvet Green."
Parker snorted. "Jethro Tull? You're playing dirty, Rachel Berry."
Christian played the first few chords before stopping abruptly. "Please don't make me play Jethro Tull."
"It's useless, Rachel, he knows them all." Anton warned.
Rachel zeroed in and leveled a glare at Christian. "Red Light." Seeing Christian's smug grin, she quickly added, "Nadine Coyle."
Christian paused, faltering, and frowned. "I don't…"
"What is this?" Parker exclaimed, glancing from Rachel, to Christian, and back. "Is music nerd stumped?"
That drew Claire and Amy's attention.
Rachel looked smugly at Christian. "Former member, Girls Aloud."
"A girl group?" Amy exclaimed, laughing. "Christian, you got stumped by a girl group?"
Christian grumbled, and sipped his coffee.
Anton turned to Rachel, palm held up. "Rachel Berry, brand new music know-it-all champion of the room. High five."
Rachel happily obliged. She knew they were trying to distract her, glossing over the reason why she had been gone for a few days, and she appreciated their efforts in giving her back a semblance of normalcy. Because they may not know the whole story, but for now they took her at her word that she was OK, and they were willing to wait her out if she ever decided she wanted to talk about her trip back to Lima.
As she leaned back into Jesse, and listened to her friends discuss the pros and cons of conglomerates buying into entertainment studios, alongside the telltale sounds of Claire and Amy's movements on the hardwood floors, Rachel considered that moment, and smiled to herself.
It was good to be home.