The trip to New York caused more stress than I had originally thought.
Quinn spent two hours on deciding what to pack and she would've taken much longer if it weren't for me forcefully closing her trunk and telling her that whatever she needed, we could buy in New York. And then she argued that she couldn't just buy all the missing clothes there and I retorted that I preferred her wearing nothing at all anyway, and then she playfully hit me and said she might consider wearing that option. Just to tease me to death.
So when she went to find her passport, I quickly texted Santana and asked her what the hell they were teaching in the Celibacy Club and minutes later, I got a very helpful text of 'It's all about the teasing, not the pleasing', followed by a 'Why? You having blue balls again?'.
I grumpily typed back a 'Just wondering'.
'I'll take that as a yes' was the instant answer.
The next big obstacle was the flight itself because Quinn had never flown with planes before, and the crushed bones in my right hand could attest to that. But after half an hour into the flight, she slowly relaxed and even managed to put her head on my shoulder, lowly humming to herself whenever a turbulence made the plane shake.
But still, it was a relief when the tires of the plane touched the landing strip of the JFK airport. Releasing a sigh I didn't know I had been holding, I took Quinn's hand and guided her out of the plane, marching with all the other flight attendents toward the next passport control station. I sent a quick message to Jake on the way, notifying him that we had arrived. He had happily offered to fetch us from the airport, impatient to see me and Quinn again.
Kate and Nikki tried coming, too, but they were forced to stay the weekend at their grandparents in another state before their real vacation started.
To be honest, I was kind of glad they couldn't come. Kate would immediately try to use this opportunity to make things awkward between Quinn and me, and Nikki would bombard my girlfriend with thousands of question, just to see if she was right for me.
Though Jake wasn't any better than the other two, he at least had the decency to interrogate the shit out of me when Quinn wasn't around. I bet he was almost crapping his pants in curiosity.
After we had claimed our luggage, we neared the exit and I was kind of nervous of what to expect.
Lots of people were already standing there, waiting for their friends, lovers or relatives and others stood there with signs of unfamiliar names. I couldn't spot Jake in this mass of people.
But apparently, he could spot us.
"Hey! Rae! Quinn! Hey, here, I'm here!" a loud, excited voice drowned out the others, and I frantically turned my head to find the source of the voice.
Quinn tapped my shoulder and pointed to somewhere behind me, making me whip around, and before I could see Jake, my face was pressed flat against his hard chest and I was trapped in his strong arms.
"Damn does it feel good to smother you like this!" I heard him chuckle and my growl went unheard since my face was still pretty much attached to his chest.
"M, l'me go!"
"And good to see you, Quinn, you're even prettier than I remembered you!"
Finally, air filled my lungs again as I dazedly stumbled back a few steps, watching through a blurry vision how Quinn had to go through the same welcome reception. Clumsily, she patted him on his back as he embraced her tightly.
Rubbing my nose, I still managed to smile and softly said, "I missed you, too."
Jake laughed and let go of Quinn, giving her a friendly pat on the shoulder. "You know, Rae, when you first left us, we all thought you wouldn't last a month before you come back flying to us. But seems like you found someone worth staying a year."
I didn't know why we both blushed. It shouldn't be news anymore. And if Jake only knew that I had planned to stay for another year in Lima.
"Let's get going, then. We still got a long ride before us."
On the whole ride to my apartment in Manhatten, Jake kept ecitedly filling us in with all the stories that I missed, mainly about Kate and Nikki and embarrassing stuff.
While I laughed and gasped at his stories, Quinn was busy staring out of the window and I watched the skycrapers of New York reflecting in her wide and curious eyes. She seemed to not get enough, she had her neck craned in all various directions, staring up at tall buildings and flashing billboards. Her mouth was half open, from time to time tracing words she read on signs.
Jake's voice slowly faded and all I could take in was Quinn's face.
The excitement. The curiosity. The amazement. Just everything on her face made me want to grab it and leave kisses all over her.
"Rae? Rae!"
Reluctantly, I pulled my gaze away from Quinn's face and I turned to Jake who had stopped driving and turned around in his seat to face me. I didn't comment on his knowing smile and he didn't comment on it either, just shortly saying, "Welcome back home."
I quickly looked out of the window, staring at the entrance of my apartment's building.
I was home.
Warmth settled in my heart when I saw a familiar doorman approaching us, opening the door for me. When he recognized whom he was opening the door for, a friendly grin appeared on his round face and he quietly said, "Welcome back, Rachel. I missed your face going in and out of this building."
I smiled at him and replied, "And here I thought you were tired of opening police car doors to find me sitting in them."
He laughed and wordlessly went to open the trunk of Jake's car, pulling out our luggage.
"It's definitely a nice change," he muttered and walked off with each of his hand holding a bag.
Jake stepped out of his car as well and threw his keys to another approaching doorman who was responsible for parking the cars. "Park my baby somewhere safe."
The doorman blankly looked at him and stretched out his hand with the keys, wanting to give it back to Jake. "It's a private parking lot. Guests are not allowed to use it."
"It's okay," I interjected while helping Quinn out of the car. "He can use my parking place."
"You live here?" he said in a bored tone, unimpressed. I narrowed my eyes at him. He seemed to be new here, didn't have this job for very long. And probably won't be having this job for long, I was going to make sure of that.
"Yes," I sharply retorted, stretching the 's'. I ignored Quinn tugging at my shirt to let it be, and I fully faced the snobbish doorman. "It's the parking space with a golden sign above it, with the name Berry. Actually, there are five parking spaces with my name on it, you choose wich one."
He scowled, but didn't reply, entering Jake's car with a huff and driving away.
"Thanks, Rae," Jake smirked and entered the building, but Quinn held me back.
"What was that for?" she asked with a frown.
I growled under my breath. "His attitude annoyed me."
My girlfriend sighed and took my hand, pulling me along with her to finally enter the building.
She stood still, her face struck with amazement once again.
I could understand her expression, I had looked exactly the same when I had first seen the entrance hall of this luxury building.
I had been eleven, two months after my fathers had made it big with their company, they had decided to move to a more noble surrounding in Manhatten. It wouldn't have been appropiate for two CEOs to live in a shabby two-rooms apartment somewhere in the outer lines of New York, that would've been a huge image loss.
So they had taken the risk of moving into a place way beyond their league, because their business had just started to bloom and no one had been able to tell if it was going to stay this way in the near future, but this time, luck had been on their side.
After another six months, they had been able to fully pay back the apartment just as their company had climbed into the world wide's top ten list of most valuable companies.
It had been just another six months when I had lost my fathers to the world of money and power.
"You don't look too thrilled to be back home."
Quinn's soft voice guided my brain back to reality.
I shook my head and managed a weak smile. "No, I'm actually beyond happy to finally be in New York again. But this place holds some bittersweet memories for me."
She didn't ask further, she seemed to understand. Giving me a soft smile, she tugged at my hand and motioned me to move with her, because Jake was waiting at the elevator and waving at us to hurry.
The elevator music was strangely comforting, playing me a familiar tune of home. The tense muscles in my face relaxed again and I watched with a small smile how Quinn eyed the numbers of buttons with awe.
"32 levels!" she whispered to herself. Jake and I shared an amused look. Oh how much I loved that girl.
The elevator came to a stop at the 27th floor, smoothly opening the door for us and I nodded to Quinn for her to go first. She almost tripped when she went out.
The door to my apartment wasn't hard to find with our bags already waiting in front of it.
Reaching into the depths of my wallet which was unnecessarily large, I fumbled for my keys. I couldn't wait to enter my beloved home, couldn't wait to see the busy streets of New York from above.
After dropping my keys for the third time, Jake took them out of my hands and opened the door himself, unlocking it in one swift motion. He pushed the door open and motioned us to go first.
Everything was just as I could remember it. A modern interior design, a mix of clean white and wine red. This place seemed to glow because one wall was all glass, allowing a beautiful look over the city and at the same time letting in the sunbeams, and all the white furniture helped reflecting the light.
My eyes swept over the living room, taking in the small things.
The remote still lied on the couch the way I had left it, a flipped open magazine was still left on the same page last time I had read it, and I could spot an old t-shirt of mine hanging over a stool.
My smile almost splitted my face. Little things which seemed insignificant to anyone else but meant a lot to me. Because it felt like my life in New York had paused to wait for me to come back and continue the story the way I wanted it to.
The remote was waiting to be fought over by Quinn and me, the magazine was waiting to be read by us both and the old t-shirt was waiting to be worn by Quinn.
I came back to continue my story with Quinn.
"You can unpack later," Jake said, closing the door behind him after he had carried our bags inside. Then he pushed us both towards the couch. "You owe me a juicy story about you two getting together because last time I checked, you both were pretty stubborn about being just friends."
"Jake," I sighed and looked to Quinn for help who smiled sheepishly. "Maybe not now and not today? We're kind of tired from our trip."
Jake scoffed and replied, "C'mon, these few hours of flight. I remember how you used to fly half a day to Europe and still find the power to go clubbing the same night."
"Give me a break, won't you? I'm getting older, too," I jokingly said and Jake threw up his hands into the air.
"Alright, alright. I'll let you off the hook for now, but when Kate and Nikki come back in two days, I want to hear every detail about you two. I mean, judging the pictures from Facebook, it seemed quite spectacular."
I awkwardly laughed, standing up from the couch to avoid looking at Quinn.
"Let's order in, okay?" I tried to distract from the topic. "Chinese? Pizza?"
"How about...the truth?" Jake suggested with a smirk.
"Pizza it is. And when I'm already making a call, I'll notify Jerry that I'm back," I said to myself. I had sent the butler to vacation when I had left New York, but I had smartly required a stand-by mode, expecting him to be always ready to come back to work when I needed him. Though I was never particularly close to him, I was still grateful for him to be one of my constants in my life. At least I knew I could count on him to do the things I was too young to understand or too lazy to handle.
After making two important calls, I went back to the living room to find Jake and Quinn lazily spread out on the large, white leather couch, laughing over something that I had missed.
"...and I was like, 'erm, Rae, I'm standing behind you' -" Jake couldn't finish his sentence, coughing on his own laughter, making Quinn laugh even louder.
"Haha," I dryly said, plopping down next to them on the couch, propping up my feet on a foot cushion. "Ha. Really funny. What story are you making up right now?"
"Remember Christmas, two years ago?" Jake gasped out before he doubled over with laughter again.
I blankly stared at him, trying to recall what the hell had happened.
"In Central Park, the massive snow fight with dozens of people that we started because we were drunk and bored?
I squinted my eyes, rubbing the side of my head. "Yeah, what about that?"
Quinn let out a snort and I found it strangely endearing, almost missing what Jake was trying to tell me.
"...and my snow ball hit you in the middle of your face and you got so angry that you reached out to hit me, but the snow in your eyes blinded you and you were totally drunk anyway, so you broke the nose of a police man instead who had been trying to stop the snow fight."
I cracked a nostalgic smile. Good memories. Though I had been terrified at that time, I mean, realizing that you had hit a police officer in the face was a pretty horrifying experience because it wasn't something you could get out of without harsh consequences, but now it belonged to one of my treasured memories.
"How did you get out of this?" Quinn managed to ask through her wheezing.
"I used my charm and calmly explained the situation," I said, only to have Jake interrupt, "She begged him to forget the incident, but her whining made him realize that she was drunk. We got arrested."
"No way," Quinn gasped, though her eyes were still twinkling with laughter.
"No big deal," I shruggingly said, "My fathers' money bailed us out."
At this, Jake and Quinn fell silent, suddenly looking anything but jovial. I raised my eyebrows at them.
"What?"
I wanted to hear them say it. I knew they were trying to be respectful but they made it worse by falling silent because now it was inevitable.
"I'm not made of glass. We can talk about my fathers, I won't break." But the bitter tone in my voice hinted otherwise.
"Rae," Jake sighed and he ran a hand through his hair. "I don't like being the one to tell you this, but I think you have a right to know."
Now he had me becoming nervous.
Quinn looked apprehensive as well, but she moved to lie next to me to show her support. Grateful, I snuggled closer to her and took her hand.
"I got a call from one of your fathers," Jake lowly said, fearing that a louder volume would shock me more.
It wouldn't matter. My whole body froze and my initial urge was to push Quinn away and leave this apartment for a mind-clearing walk on the streets of New York. It was what I had always done when thoughts about my fathers had troubled me. I had pretended to be one of those busy New Yorkers, with full schedules keeping their minds preoccupied, always something to do and think about, leaving behind the world of painful emotions.
But I wasn't that girl anymore, I was trying to move forward against the opposing wind, not going backwards to avoid battles I needed to fight. I used to run away and drown my sorrows by creating other ones, I used to ease my hurt by hurting others. Now I was trying to understand and solve my problems without pulling others into this mess. There was nothing to gain if I pushed Quinn away. I would be worse without her.
I swallowed and tried to be strong. Just for once. For once, I wanted to be able to talk about my fathers without getting bitter because I tended to do that without knowing.
But still, it hurt. It hurt a fucking lot, knowing that in all these years, they had never tried to contact me, yet they had personally called one of my best friends.
"It was Hiram," Jake softly went on.
I closed my eyes, trying to remember him. It was blurry, a black and white picture of him in my mind, like a faded photograph, barely recognizable. It wasn't that I was fighting against remembering him, it wasn't denial that made his face a riddle to me. I truly couldn't remember his features, for I had forced myself to never picture my fathers when I thought about them.
My mind had a self-defense mechanism. It had learned to block out their faces because their sight was just too painful, reminding me of what I had and what I lost. All I could remember of Hiram were his expensive suits, his glasses and a short hair cut with graying hairs on the side. But he remained faceless. Just a spectacled man in a suit.
"I didn't believe him when he said who he was. I hung up on him twice, thought it was a bad joke. But then he told me some things about you, things only someone close to you could know...only someone who used to be your parent could know."
In this moment, I came to appreciate my friendship with Jake over and over again, because when I saw him looking at me, his eyes were full of pain. Pain that I was feeling, pain that he was reflecting because he felt with me, he was my best friend and he shared my pain. It amazed me how my feelings could touch him that much as well. He genuinely cared about me.
His expressive eyes became too much and I needed comfort, turning to Quinn to find her staring at me, completely lost.
She didn't know. She couldn't know. She couldn't know how much this had been a big, miserable part of my life. Though she knew I was quite sore about this subject, I had never told her the complete truth. I had never let on just how much this had been killing me. I had always played it off, making it sound like another mistake of my past. And she had been respectful when I had asked her not to question.
But now there was no way out anymore. She was finally going to learn the last big part of my life.
"What – what did he say?" I choked out.
I was desperate to know. Did he still remember me? Did he still remember my favorite food and drinks and movies, did he still know the expressions I would make when I was excited, angry, sad?
"He wanted to know about you. How you are doing. If you're having a good time in Lima. If you ever mention him." Jake let out a long breath. "I told him to piss off. He had no right knowing that about you, not when it's his own fault that he knows nothing of that. I told him to call you himself, I wasn't going to play the messenger."
I felt Quinn squeezing my hands and I inhaled deeply. "Go on."
"I was going to hang up again, then he started talking again...about how your first words were 'Daddy' and how you started singing before you could even talk. How you used to wonder why others celebrated Mother's Day and you couldn't. And I couldn't hang up, I just couldn't."
The lump in my throat was growing with every second. The urge to escape, to run away, to flee was grabbing me and shaking me, but I remained motionless.
So he still remembered me.
"He said he misses you. He doesn't want much, he just wants to know if you're alright, if you still love to sing, if you still love doing sports. He wants to know if you still rub your neck when you're nervous, if you still massage your head when you're stressed and if you still chew on your bottom lip when you feel guilty." Jake looked down. "And I told him you still do all of these things. I told him before I could stop myself."
The impulse to run away was now stronger than ever, almost overwhelming me, suffocating me. I felt like I couldn't breathe.
"Rachel," Quinn softly said, stroking my cheek, placing a tender kiss on it. It was merely a raindrop on a huge flame, yet it managed to diminish some of the fire.
"Go on," I rasped out, but Jake seemed unwilling to continue. "No, I think it's enough for today, Rae, I didn't even plan on telling you until Nikki and Kate are back -"
"Jay, I need to know," I pleaded my voice not to fail me. "Please," I whispered roughly. "I need to. I haven't heard from them in years, I … want to know if they're alright, too."
At this, Quinn and Jake stared at me with wide eyes.
My eyes nervously twitching, I said, "I may hate them or never want to see them again, but – they're still my parents. My parents, Jake. Even if I keep saying that I don't care about them anymore, it's impossible not to, so I really need to know if they're okay, if they still love each other, if they still celebrate their wedding day with lots of cake and champagne. Even if I'll never get to meet them again, I want to be sure they're doing fine."
At this, Jake shot up from the couch.
"Of course they're not fine!" he aggravatedly hissed, more to himself than to me, starting to pace in circles. "They never will be, not with the guilt of leaving you weighing down on their shoulders."
"How do you know?" I weakly asked.
"Don't you see?" Jake exasperatedly exclaimed and Quinn sat up, ready to calm him down in case he got too upset. "They left you, neglected you, forgot about you and yet here you are, wishing them the best because you're being... you."
He stopped to look at me with exasperation in his eyes, shaking his head at me like I had done something wrong with me being me. "And maybe they start feeling guilty now, but it's never going to make up the shit that you've gone through."
Quinn stood up, trying to get Jake to sit down again but he shook her hands off, ranting, "You don't think we never noticed you crying when you thought we were asleep? When Kate, Nikki and I slept in the guest room, we could still hear you shouting in your sleep, we knew whenever you had a nightmare. You never wondered why you found us sleeping next to you in the morning, hugging you? You never wondered why we insisted on sleeping with you in the same room since then, to keep an eye on you?"
My eyes got teary as I stared at him and I could barely contain all the gratitude I felt for him right now. Even Quinn seemed too overwhelmed to react, she stood frozen next to Jake with her hands still in mid-air, about to touch him. Her head slowly turned to me and her eyes screamed in pain.
"I just can't forgive your fathers for doing that to you, not when you were too young to understand and we were too young to really help you," Jake angrily said, gripping his hair. "We were twelve, damn it! Twelve, and we knew nothing of the world, nothing. We were scared and alone, we couldn't tell anyone that you lived by yourself or the authorities would've taken you away from us, placing you somewhere only God knows."
He raised one hand, starting to tick off of his fingers. "You had no relatives, you had no mom, you only had us, Rae." He forcefully pointed to himself with a trembling hand. "We were your only family; Kate, Nikki and me, we were all you had. And maybe even Jerry who took care of the difficult stuff, but he didn't emotionally care for you."
My mouth opened and closed, and I shook my head, wanting him to stop because he was upsetting himself so much, but Jake loudly sighed and tiredly continued, "You see now why I'm so pissed about your fathers? I mean, how can three twelve-year old kids be a substitute for parents? We didn't know shit ourselves, we didn't have any idea what we were supposed to do and shit, our own parents were too fucked up to really care. And this is what made us strong, what made us a family. A real family."
There was a reason why they were my best friends. I couldn't thank the higher powers enough for giving me them, for placing them in my life.
"Even as the years passed by, when you turned sixteen and told us you were over them, we just knew you weren't," Jake said in a rush, and it seemed like he had wanted to get rid of this all along. "You said you were okay and that's when all the partying and dating girls started. And we let you do it, because it really seemed like you were getting better, the nightmares have stopped and you turned out to be self-confident and independent. But deep down, we all knew it wasn't going to go well for long."
Dumbstruck, all I could do was stare at him. They knew it wasn't going well for long. I knew it as well.
"And we didn't know what to expect when we visited you in Lima," Jake continued. "We were afraid that Shelby would trigger bad memories. But when we met you again, you've changed. And we found out about Quinn."
His eyes landed on Quinn and she gazed back, unafraid. One corner of Jake's mouth twitched.
"For the first time, we had hope. Though Kate didn't trust her at first, I had a good feeling about her. She did you good. I thought to myself, she can be the one to help you the way we never can. And guess I was right."
I didn't know who I was staring at more. My eyes flickered between Jake and Quinn, and the warm feeling of love swelled beneath my chest, blowing up my heart.
"Jake, I -" I tried to show him my gratitude, show him my love for everything he had ever done for me, but he gently shook his head.
"No, Rae, let me finish," he softly said. "We were young and stupid. We didn't know much at that time. But we knew that you needed us, that you needed us to stay sane. And I know you would've done the same if it happened to either of us."
He turned to Quinn again who looked at him with gratitude and appreciation as well.
Jake was too upset to manage a smile, but his tone was warm and genuine when he said to her, "So please take care of her. I know that most of the people think it's Rae who's gonna screw up because of her past, but that doesn't mean she can't get hurt as well. You mean a lot to her and I hate the idea of having to give you hell if something happens."
Quinn nodded. "You can dismiss this idea, Jake. Though I can't promise to never hurt her, because sometimes it just happens unintentionally, I swear to you that I'll never do anything to purposely hurt her."
At this, Jake managed to form a real smile. "I knew I liked you for a reason."
And I knew I loved Quinn for a reason. For thousands of reasons actually and I could never decide which asset of her I currently loved more.
I just loved everything she was.