The rest of the last week was school was better, because the glee club was back! Even though Mr. Schuester told them to take the rest of the year off, nobody really listened. But nobody listened to Rachel, either, when she suggested they start on Sectionals for next year. They just got together and just did more fun songs, like all the current songs that everyone was into.

Matt Rutherford treated them to his very first solo that week, and Quinn caught Mercedes staring intensely at him after that. He did 'Confessions Part II,' mashed up with 'Yeah,' both by Usher. Mike Chang danced with him, but he never uttered a sound, so his voice remained something of a mystery. But Matt definitely had a voice, plus the dance moves to go with it, and his talent was a treat for all of them. Maybe they'd just found someone new to feature next year.

That was all it took, and the next thing they knew, Mercedes and Matt were hand in hand the following day, on the last day of school. Quinn spotted them walking together down the hall to the last class of the day. Matt stopped by Mercedes' locker so she could get her things, as Quinn sauntered up to her and said nothing. She just lifted an eyebrow, glanced in the direction of Mercedes' new beau, and smirked back at Mercedes.

"Shut up," she muttered, blushing a bit, as she exchanged her books for the next classes' materials, with Matt lurking nearby and waiting for her.

"Suddenly not so boring, is he?" Quinn said, keeping her voice low. But she accidentally looked at Matt again, and this time, he caught her looking. As Quinn dissolved into giggles, Mercedes pretended not to notice.

"Can I carry your books?" Quinn heard Matt ask, a rare complete sentence leaving the jock's lips. Mercedes just nodded sweetly and handed them to him, then directed a sharp look at Quinn, who couldn't help herself. It was such a shame that those two had waited until the very last day of school. They were cute together. At least there was always next year...

"Ready to get out of here?" Tina asked, as she walked up, pushing Artie as usual, who seemingly forgot to remind her that he still had working hands today. These two were still dating, or so they called it. Quinn kept waiting to hear news of their breakup, but it never happened.

"Oh, totally, that bell can't ring soon enough," Quinn exclaimed. She'd just come from Ms. Pillsbury's office, and she couldn't say she'd miss hunkering down next to the filing cabinet, hoping that the custodian wouldn't accidentally barge in on her again. And she definitely wouldn't miss shoving her earbuds into her ears and avoiding looking at the students who visited the counselor's office as she came and went.

Forty-five minutes later, that last bell finally did ring. The classroom doors burst open like a dam, students pouring out like water into the halls. Quinn spotted Artie trying to navigate through the sea of people.

"May I?" she asked, before grabbing his handles. "People will just bounce off of you right and left, if we steer this puppy hard and fast enough."

Artie laughed at Quinn's determination. "Be my guest," he said, probably just glad she'd asked first. He half-wheeled and she half-pushed, half-hid behind him as they barreled their way through the crowd, being two of the first people to make it out to the parking lot.

"Is... is there anyone you want to say 'bye' to first?" Artie asked, looking back over his shoulder. "I mean, I don't know who all we'll be seeing this summer."

"Nope!" Quinn didn't particularly need anyone this summer. She just wanted two and a half months to work on getting her body back in peace.

"Me neither," Artie agreed. "To the Art-mobile!"

Quinn giggled. "That's clever."

When they were both settled in and the chair was dismantled in the back, Artie hurried to back out of the parking lot before it became a challenge to weave in and out of the hoards of students heading off to taste the first moments of summertime.

"Good-bye sophomore year," Quinn said, turning around in her seat and waving at the school as they left. "You sucked. I won't miss you."

"Why do you say that?" Artie asked, innocently, as he turned out of the parking lot and headed down the street, his hands skilled at doing the work of both hands and feet by now. He'd gotten a nifty device for his steering wheel recently to help him perform steering maneuvers with one hand. He made it look easy and natural.

"'Why do you say that?'" Quinn echoed him, shaking her head. "Artie, are you kidding me? I got pregnant, I got dumped, I lost the Cheerios and my rep. If I had any sense at all, I'd transfer next year. It sure would be easier to cheer someplace else."

"I guess there's always Belleville," Artie teased, at which point she actually gasped. He hadn't had the nerve to bring up Lucy in all this time, and yet there he went.

"Oh, no," Quinn said, aghast. "No, I can't go back to Belleville either. But thanks for the reminder I didn't know I needed."

"Whatever you do, promise me you aren't moving to Akron?" Artie asked, looking at her as they came to a stop at the only red light between school and Artie's house.

"Move to Akron?"

"Yeah, Amy said Shelby offered to let you move in and that you looked like you were considering it..." Artie trailed off. "Please don't do that. I-we'd all miss you too much."

A smile played on her lips, over how Artie had quickly revised himself. "That's not happening," she said. "And the offer was just for the summer. But like I told Shelby, I couldn't even stand to spend a whole summer there. It's too painful to be there with Beth her but not be her mom. I'm just going to visit. And I'm keeping my visits short."

"Okay, good," Artie said, keeping his eyes on the road but giving his usual twisted smile of satisfaction. "Also, Glee club would miss you."

"In all my water-breaking glory?"

"That was a little dramatic of you, but yes," he teased, and Quinn laughed, surprised and pleased to actually be laughing about this four weeks later.

As they approached his house, and Artie continued to tease her about the scene she'd made at Regionals, Quinn couldn't help but wonder about something. And, never one to shy away from telling it like it was, she decided just to say what she was thinking, as he parked in the driveway and prepared to reach over his shoulder for his chair parts.

"Do you think, um, that Tina, um..." she began, getting his attention with her tone and hesitancy as he paused to look at her. "Do you think she minds me living with you? I mean, you're dating her and another girl is living with you. It's just, I wouldn't want to cause problems between the two of you."

Artie looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. "Nope," he said, opening his door and going about the task of adding his wheels to the frame of the chair, reassembling it beside the open door. "She doesn't even mind. Which should probably tell me something."

"And what's that?" Quinn wanted to know.

"That maybe she doesn't feel the way a girl is supposed to feel about her boyfriend. At least, not when it comes to me." He continued to keep his back to Quinn as he methodically completed his task of readying the chair. "Maybe she never did."

"Artie..." Quinn tried to come up with something tactful to say, finally settling on, "you know that's not true."

"Well, you bring up a good point," Artie shot back. "Why isn't she threatened by the presence of another girl sleeping in my old bedroom? Pretty eye-opening, when you think about it."

As he moved into his chair and wheeled inside, it took Quinn a minute to recover from his bluntness and figure out how to react. She composed herself and quietly followed him inside, wondering what on Earth to say to him now.

Finally, as he tossed his keys and headed into the living room, she just got in his way and he fixed her with an exasperated look. "What?"

"Do you want her to dump you?" She didn't know a better way to say it, other than to just spit out the thought that crossed her mind in the midst of his rant. "I mean, you kind of act like you do."

Artie went around her and she let him. He didn't answer right away, and at first, she thought he was just going to ignore the question. But he pulled up by the sofa, set his break, and moved methodically from one seat to the next. As she shrugged and turned to go up the stairs, it was then that he finally spoke up and stopped her in her tracks.

"It's just that it's really not appropriate for me to confide in you about stuff with Tina," he finally said, focused on positioning his legs now, maybe just as an excuse not to make eye contact with her. "Like you said, she's my girlfriend and you're... the girl living with me." He paused. "With my family, I mean."

Quinn moved towards the couch and perched gingerly on the edge of it, just staring at him. "Artie, you deserve..." she pressed her lips together tightly, unsure if she was crossing a line but it had to be said. "... a girlfriend who treats you like a boyfriend. And respects you as an equal."

Artie said nothing at this. He actually rolled his eyes at her and turned on the TV, in fact, and Quinn realized she'd really struck a nerve now. Since she didn't see this going well, if they continued talking about it, she headed for the stairs again. She was halfway up when he spoke once more.

"You think I don't know?" he muttered, and she almost missed it, but she stopped and turned to be sure she'd heard him correctly. Their eyes met. "You think I don't know why she won't just dump me?"

Quinn opened her mouth but closed it again before she dared to speak. She didn't dare try to guess.

"It's because she can't do that, not to someone like me," Artie said, bitterly. He flipped channels absently as he spoke. "And if she does, then she's a bad person, in everyone else's eyes and maybe even her own. So, instead, she's going to wait on me to dump her. And if I just let her go to camp with Chang the Wonder Asian and ignore her all summer, well, then at least she's got a reason to call it off, and everyone will side with her."

Quinn just sat down on the step she'd been standing on and rested her chin in her hands, staring at him and maintaining a stunned silence. It wasn't that she didn't think he already knew that things weren't going well with Tina. She just never expected him to lay it all out like that.

"When does she leave for camp?" Quinn decided to ask, thinking that a question was safe enough.

Artie frowned. "Sunday," he said, and after a brief struggle with himself, he added. "Oh, and um... there's something I should probably tell you about."

Remaining there at a distance on the steps, Quinn decided she couldn't lie or play dumb about it. She'd already deduced that surgery was Monday, based on a few clues she'd found lying around the kitchen and the day marked off on the calendar with no explanation written by the notation.

"About your surgery on Monday?" she asked, innocently, and as his lips parted and he opened his mouth to ask how she knew, she just explained herself as fast as she could. "Your grandmother told me about it. At the lake."

"At the..." Artie trailed off, his eyes narrowing. "That was over a month ago. You mean you've known about it all this time?"

"Yes, and I haven't told anyone," she hurried to tell him. "Amy knows that I know, and she said you're hiding it from everyone. I'm gonna go ahead and assume 'everyone' includes Tina."

Artie's shocked face changed to an angry one, and Quinn just hoped he wasn't going to be mad at Mimi for this, because she hadn't meant to tell.

"Of course it includes Tina," he said, his voice shaky. "I don't want her coming home from camp to come here or to the hospital and coddle me more than she already does."

"I guessed that might be the reason," Quinn said, gently. When Artie just closed his eyes for a long time, she sighed and made her way back down the stairs and back to the couch to perch on the edge. "Mercedes will definitely find out, you know. She's just a few doors down, and there's no way she's ignoring you all summer long."

Artie just nodded, his eyes opening and landing on hers again. "I just figured," he began, in that shaky voice once more before clearing his throat and collecting himself. "That... I could have a few days or maybe even a week or so before someone finds out. I need some time to heal in peace. The last time I was in the hospital like this was the accident."

Quinn nodded. "I can leave," she offered. "Not for good, I mean, but I could go to Shelby's during that time. Get out of your way."

"But you just said it was hard to stay with Shelby," he argued, immediately shaking his head. "I don't mind if you're here. Just, um... just maybe don't come around all that much at first."

"I can do that," she said, fully intending to respect his wishes. But she couldn't help being a little curious about why he was being so very guarded. "Are you... are you worried?"

"I'm just a terrible patient." Artie cracked a smile. "Like seriously, the actual worst. Last time I was in the hospital, I was throwing things. Sometimes throwing the things at people. I was mean. I wasn't myself. Pain brings out the worst in me."

"I'm pretty sure labor brought out the worst in me." Quinn didn't talk about herself to make it about her. Rather, she was trying to relate somehow and also to joke with him, to try to ease his obvious anxiety that he'd been enduring in private.

"Hence why you didn't want an audience, I'm sure," Artie related right back, and Quinn had to agree to that with a nod.

"You can tell people it's happening and ask them to please leave you alone," Quinn suggested, but Artie was already rejecting this by shaking his head vehemently. "No? Well, fine then. Look, my lips are sealed. But people will find out."

"If I can have a week, two weeks, then that's fine," Artie countered. "But I need my space to recover. And people just don't give you that. People don't go out of their way to be understanding about everything. Not even people who are supposed to be close friends."

Quinn bit her lip and just nodded. "It's our secret," she said, then paused and added, "I do think you should call your girlfriend and hang out with her one more time before she goes off to camp. You don't have to tell her about surgery, but you do need to see her."

Artie nodded at this. "I was already thinking about asking her over to swim this evening," he said. "The pool's ready now."

"Sounds good," Quinn said. "I'll go over to Mercedes' house and hang out with her, give you and Tina some privacy and all..."

"Thanks," Artie said, giving her a grateful smile. "Oh, hey, um, Quinn? We're going to the lake on Saturday. It's kind of short notice, because we just decided to go, but... would you like to come along? I mean, I don't know if you had plans to go to Akron."

"Shelby was going to come here tomorrow," Quinn began. "I suppose maybe we could just let her into the garage to access the deep freeze? I don't have to be here..."

She wouldn't see Beth though. But maybe it would help her, to go a little longer between visits and see how she felt about it.

"Dad will be here," Artie was saying. "It's just me, Amy, and mom going. One last lake trip before I'm stuck in a bed all summer. Dad has to work but it'll be from home. So he can let Shelby inside to get it."

"You sure Tina won't mind?" Quinn asked.

Again, Artie looked frustrated. "I'll tell her," he said. "I guess I can even invite here to come along, if she wants. But no. She should mind, probably, but she won't."

"I'm sorry." Quinn felt like they were forever comforting one another over all of these heartaches over their lost loves.

"You know what makes it hard?" Artie countered. "Is the fact that she's my best friend. I couldn't have asked for a better friend to get me through junior high. And now that we've started dating, we've actually drifted apart. I really miss when she was just my best friend."

Artie didn't want to talk about it any more after that, so Quinn let him drop the subject, and they watched TV together until his parents and his sister got home for dinner. The family welcomed her into the fold, not as the homeless postpartum teenager they were helping, but rather, as one of the family.

Quinn couldn't ask for much more than that.

Tina came over as she was leaving to go hang out with Mercedes for the evening. She passed the other girl on the way out the door. Tina was entirely too relaxed about Quinn being there, Artie was right. If she really saw him as her boyfriend, then she should have at least been uncomfortable with the idea.

And that just made Quinn even sadder.