Being that they were on a week-long break from their class, Lauren didn't have to see Matt again until Monday. For now, if she wanted to avoid him, she could. And she did. In doing so, she hoped to send him a message, one that she couldn't send on Wednesday, when the happiness of an innocent little girl was at stake...

She didn't know what she wanted to do about the daughter and, more importantly, the lying, but whatever she did, she didn't need to make it easy for him. He could have just been honest from the start, and she would have been a lot more understanding about Mariah.

"Are the smoothies any good?" Artie inquired, interrupting her thoughts as she wiped down the counter, trying to look busy. Lauren knew he was actually just stopping by to see if she'd help him with lifting. A few days earlier, she'd wandered over to him and given him some unsolicited advice, because she couldn't stand to watch him potentially hurt himself with his crappy technique. Now he'd come looking for more of that. She knew her way around a weight room, it was true, and she was glad he'd noticed her expertise.

"They taste like strawberry-banana flavored chalk," she told him, as she untied her apron. "Looking for a spotter? I have a break... now. I can break now. No one's stopped by in the past hour."

"That would be great," he said, confirming that this was the reason he'd come by. She trailed along behind him as he weaved his way back through the weight room, past a few spots that were nearly too narrow for his chair to fit through, and stopping next to the bench press.

"I can ask them to make a little more space between the machines in here," she offered, noticing how narrowly he'd missed scraping his knuckles against a machine a couple of times.

"That would be great, too." He grinned over his shoulder at Lauren, who just shook her head over how passive he could be. If she were in his situation, she'd raise hell about this kind of stuff. But he'd always just taken crap from people back in high school, she'd noticed, except for that time she saw him and Tina Cohen-Chang having a loud and embarrassing fight in the middle of the hallway. He'd been rolling himself backwards while he raged at her, and Tina had looked ready to go all Lucy Liu in 'Kill Bill' on his ass. Lauren later learned it was over which of them would be Valedictorian. Second only to fighting over who would get a solo in glee club, that had to be one of the stupidest things ever to get in an actual fight over.

Artie got himself onto the bench, vacating his chair in one swift motion. After meticulously placing each leg straight out on the bench, he leaned back and got ready to lift. Lauren watched him do a few reps, and then stepped in to modify his technique and helped him figure out exactly how much he needed to be lifting to maximize his overall benefit. It was more than you'd expect, for a guy his size, but given that he used his upper body for everything, it wasn't all that surprising.

"You should do this," Artie said, as he took a break for some water. "You know, train people? You clearly know your way around the weight room. Maybe if you keep working with me, someone will take notice and promote you out of that smoothie stand."

She scoffed, though she supposed she ought to have thanked him for the compliment. "This is just a temporary thing anyway," she said. "I don't plan to hang around here forever. Not that I know what I'm doing with my life yet, I still don't have a clue. But definitely not this."

"Personal trainer? Physical therapist?" Artie suggested. "You'd be good at that, the therapy thing, I mean. You'd have to be able to lift people. I'm sure you could lift me."

"I don't intend to try to lift you." Lauren didn't know why she was being so rude when he was being, well, not rude. He was just trying to help her, she knew that, but the nastiness just spewed out of her anyway.

"And I wasn't asking." Artie could be sort of snippy, even if it was a rare moment for the typically laidback guy. He reached for his chair and pulled himself back into it, leaving Lauren feeling like the absolute worst person ever.

"Sorry," she muttered, watching him slip those gloves that he wore all the time back on.

"I heard you say to Puck that you had a head injury and you were in the hospital awhile," Artie went on. "I assume that's what brought you back home?"

"I cracked my skull in a wrestling match," she explained, and then went on to say way more than she meant to. "Lost the whole semester, lost my scholarship, lost my entire plan for how college was supposed to be for me and what I was going to be doing."

"So you make a new plan," Artie said, shrugging. "Life goes on."

If it were anyone else but him saying that, Lauren would have found it to be condescending and highly presumptuous, but from that chair, he seemed to be the authority on that subject of having one's plans altered by an accident.

She sighed, defeated by his eternal optimism. "You're right," she said. "Look, I'm sorry I'm in a such a foul mood and you had to be the recipient of that, okay? It's just that last night I went over to Matt's and..."

"He broke up with you?" Artie guessed.

"And why wouldn't you assume it was me who dumped him?" Lauren challenged, and at least Artie looked properly ashamed of himself. "Anyway... no one's dumped anyone... yet. Of course, we'd have to be an official couple for someone to get dumped, and yet both of our Facebook statuses still say 'single.' No... it's just... it's complicated."

"Complicated how?"

Lauren raised an eyebrow. "How about you tell me your story and I'll tell you mine," she suggested. "C'mon, if I'm going to pour my heart out, I want to know what made you quit that fancy film school you were so proud of."

Artie appeared to struggle with himself for a moment. "Fine," he said. "But don't think less of me when you hear it."

He began wheeling back over to her smoothie stand and she followed, assuming he did this because the story might take a minute and she was supposed to be working. She took her seat and promptly began making him a smoothie. "On the house," she said. "I'm allowed to give a free sample for first-time customers."

He nodded, running his hands over his thighs and looking anxious, like it cost him something to tell the story. "I guess I'm not used to having people think I'm cool," he began. "And... a lot of people did think I was cool. They liked my films, my clothes, some of them even seemed interested in me because of my chair, the very reason everyone avoided me in high school."

"That's in your head," Lauren argued, but he shook his head, stubbornly. "Well, whatever. People ignored me for being a fat chick. So I get it, to some extent. Go on."

"When I say people, I mean girls." He paused. "Some guys, too, who I guess were under the impression that I was gay."

"Wonder what gave them that idea." Lauren couldn't resist, as he'd just handed that one to her, but he fixed her with a look that clearly meant he was going to stop telling his story if she didn't stop interrupting. "Okay, sorry, keep going."

He took a deep breath, then continued, albeit reluctantly. "So, first semester, I started dating this girl, Jessica," he said. "And then I started dating Vanessa, but Jessica said she didn't want to be exclusive anyway, so I was dating both of them. And we were..."

Lauren nodded in full understanding. She was tempted to comment, on how gross that was, but she said nothing and merely stuck a straw in Artie's smoothie and passed it down to him.

"Thanks," he said. "So, anyway, it turned out that one of them — probably Jessica — gave me Chlamydia. Don't look at me like that, this is why I don't tell people."

"Sorry, it was just... unexpected," she said. "But you said this happened last year. What happened this year to make you want to leave?"

"I went back to Jessica," he explained, looking especially sorry. He made a face as he tasted the smoothie. "Man, that is... chalky. Why do people like this?"

"It's got a lot of protein," she explained. "Helps people who wanna bulk up."

"Ah." Artie continued sipping, then went on. "Anyway, I went back to Jessica, plus I started dating Michelle and... and Hillary."

"Just collecting all the First Ladies?" Lauren couldn't help herself. When he scowled at her, she had to apologize again. "Sorry, I'm sorry, go on."

"My Chlamydia came back," he revealed, looking anywhere but at Lauren. "And this time, Vanessa found out about it from my roommate and beat me to telling the other girls. It's not a big school. We all know each other. With Vanessa going around telling everyone I was 'Patient Zero,' I just knew... I had to start over. I didn't even know myself anymore."

"So, do you still...?"

"No." Artie paused. "At least, I don't think so. I found out, it can come back, so now I have to get checked regularly. It's... yeah, it's not my proudest moment. I'm just going to get as far away from that place as I can. I didn't much like the snowy winters anyway. I'm looking to go someplace down south."

"They do still have slutty girls who can give you Chlamydia in the south." Judging by his scowl, she owed yet another apology. "Sorry."

"Your turn," he said, and she'd almost forgotten that she said she'd share her story next. Only he was going to be disappointed, because four girls and Chlamydia was a heck of a lot more dramatic than her issue.

"He has a daughter," she said. "Matt told me he had a four-year-old half-sister, but that was a lie. Turns out, he dropped out of high school to raise the baby because the mom didn't want her."

As expected, Artie looked disappointed. "That's it?" Lauren pretended to be busy wiping the clean countertop. "You're mad because he had a baby with someone four years ago? Meanwhile, he's still totally into you and he didn't sleep with four different girls and contract venereal disease?"

"I'm mad about the lying!" Lauren said, in her defense. "Though, if Kitty could forgive you..."

Lauren was shaking her head now, still unable to believe the story she'd just heard about the innocent-looking kid in the wheelchair. Maybe that was just it, he'd just wanted to dispel the myth that he was completely harmless.

"Exactly." Artie tilted his head to the side, thoughtfully. "Listen, Tina and Mike and some of the others in our class wanted to get together tonight. You know, one more time before everyone goes back to school? You wanna join us?"

Lauren normally would have turned down such an invitation as this, but truthfully, she was lonely. There were only so many times she could bug Roderick to include her in things.

"Sure," she said.