Rachel sat down one of the seats in the front row of one of NYADA's smaller theaters and once she was relatively settled, she watched as Jesse placed their things on the elevated stage before he leaned against it as he turned to face her.

It was odd to face Jesse now, given their talk a week ago, considering their history and knowing how he had felt this whole time. She was usually quick to disregard their past since she had always been willing to overlook his past actions and some of hers, but realizing that some things were so tainted by their mutual actions - that she had not been so innocent in all this, even before Run Joey Run - made things a little more awkward and difficult.

But the truth - and the time apart - had given her perspective that she would not have gained on her own accord. The past week had allowed her to explore who she was, especially in terms of being a NYADA student, and to consider just what she really wanted.

Jesse exhaled, realizing that Rachel wasn't going to start things off. "I'm studying in the two-year Musical Theater program of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy."

Rachel looked up at the unexpected statement.

"I applied last year, and got the call after Nationals. My parents aren't bankrolling my stay in New York, other than helping me pay for my tuition and part of my rent." Jesse met her gaze. "I took the job in Vocal Adrenaline because it was the only job offer I could find that was going to give me enough money to be able to live in New York long enough without having to prostitute myself."

None of what he was saying was even remotely anything she had expected him to say, nothing she had considered in the past. It worried her, though, that he felt compelled to tell her all of it when this was the first time they were seeing each other since her heartfelt confession a week ago. "Jesse..."

"Well, that and I wanted to be in Ohio in the event that Rachel Berry decided she'd made a mistake and came to see me." Jesse continued his admission.

"That's not fair."

Jesse gave her a soft, bittersweet smile. "I can actually honestly say that it wasn't even romantic. I just wanted to be there when she realized she was bigger than anything Lima could ever offer her."

He had let her go, romantically, when she hadn't refuted the supposed Superman of Kisses, when he had stayed behind in New York after Nationals two years ago. He had resigned himself to thinking of her as the one that got away, but he couldn't help but worry that she had been on her way to staying in Lima and getting stuck there. In the few weeks he had been the show choir consultant for New Directions, he had seen some troubling signs that she was no longer as ambitious and driven as she once had been. He and Rachel Berry were probably never going to be the toast of Broadway together, but he still wanted her to succeed, he still wanted to see her fulfill her self-proclaimed destiny of becoming a Broadway star, and he had seen worrying signs that she wasn't doing everything she could to achieve those dreams. As a response, since he hadn't had any immediate plans in place anyway, he had chosen to remain in Ohio to ensure that the moment she realized that for herself and needed help, he would be available for her to go to.

Except she hadn't.

"I don't understand."

Jesse smiled wryly at her. "Sometimes I wonder if you ever did. I wanted you to look me up for reasons beyond the romantic, Rachel. I waited to see if you were ever going to realize that you deserved something bigger and better than Lima, Ohio. And you never did."

"I loved Finn."

"This isn't about Finn, Rachel. And I know I gave you grief that everything you've ever done has been about him, but that's the point I'm trying to make." Jesse replied. "I waited for Rachel Berry to pick up the phone and call me, but she never did."

Rachel stood up, annoyed. "You made it clear that if I was going to be with Finn-"

"No, you made it clear." Jesse corrected. "I wasn't willing to sit around waiting for you, but I could have been right there with you, Rachel. I could have helped coach you through Nationals, but you were so afraid of what your precious Finn Hudson was going to say, how hurt he'd be if we kept in touch, that you basically cut me off when you boarded the plane back to Ohio."

"And the next thing I knew, you were coaching Vocal Adrenaline."

"And the next thing I knew, you were engaged and getting married." Jesse returned. "And that wasn't even the worst of it: whining about having to audition for West Side Story? Fighting with Mercedes over sharing a role, running for Student Council president against your best friend, dropping half your extra-curriculars?" Jesse asked. "Getting suspended, choking your audition, and humiliating yourself at the foot of Carmen Tibideaux..."

Rachel's protest caught in her throat.

"When I made the comment in Chicago about finding the remnants of your dignity, I was appalled to realize what it was that you had become: a mere shadow of who you used to be." Jesse told her. "I was in love with you once, and I admit I've made my share of mistakes, especially between us, but I would never have been able to watch all that happen to you. And the worst part? You didn't even see why it was so wrong."

"I think I've more than made up for all those mistakes," Rachel protested.

"You shouldn't have made so many of them in the first place, Rachel!" Jesse argued. "You were supposed to be better than all of that. I kept wondering, what was going to be the final straw that was going to make you realize what was happening, and you just kept on making these choices that are, honestly, questionable at best."

Rachel glared at him. "If you were so worried, why didn't you call? Why didn't you crash one of my rehearsals and forced me to listen? If you were so worried, why weren't you there?"

"Because you chose Finn!" Jesse snapped. "You knew, from the start, that you deserved better than a guy who would always choose football over you, who would always choose his status over you, and you still chose him. Maybe that's not all he ever was, but you can't deny that so much of the guy you were going to marry was someone who would always choose himself over you, and you were seemingly incapable of making the same choice for yourself. Maybe I wasn't the guy you fell in love with at the start by the time I came back to Ohio your junior year, but I was trying. But I guess you didn't care."

"I care! All I ever did was care!" Rachel shot back. "It wouldn't still make me flinch to see an egg if I didn't care. It would have been so much easier, if you were just a guy I was passing time with until Finn wanted me back, but you chose, too! You chose your oh-so-important victory lap, and your stupid teammates, and you didn't even bother apologizing until you lost everything you gave me up for and I was just supposed to want you back?"

"You weren't supposed to do anything! But you could have been honest." Jesse answered.

"I was! I was being honest when I told you I wanted to focus on Nationals. I had spent almost the entire year single, with almost nothing remarkable about it, and all I wanted was to have Nationals to show for it, so when you showed up, and I told you I wanted to concentrate on it, I meant it!"

"If that was true, why did you kiss me?"

Rachel scoffed. "I'd hate to sound schoolyard, but you kissed me first."

Jesse shook his head. "You're unbelievable."

Rachel shook her head in annoyance. She couldn't believe how easy it was for Jesse to rile her up, but she had to admit, it was nice getting some of this off her chest, realizing how she hadn't been able express herself quite like this in ages.

Nobody has questioned her like this in a long time. Nobody challenged her like this, or pushed her to express herself in this manner in a very long time.

In retrospect, she hasn't allowed herself to be like this in a while.

"Okay, fine." Jesse finally acquiesced. He knew there was no way for the two of them to resolve the emotional residue of what had once been their relationship, but if he wanted the clean start he hoped this latest round of interaction to be, he couldn't let anything that had bothered him all these years to merely lie between them. "If that was true, why weren't you even the tiny bit angry at Finn for screwing up your shot at Nationals?"

"That's different."

"No, it isn't. You just said you wanted to have Nationals to show for a lackluster junior year, but Frankenteen went and screwed that up for you. Why weren't you angry?"

"Who said I wasn't?"

"You stood there and nodded meekly at something as insipid as the Superman of Kisses. Why weren't you angry? If anyone else had pulled that stunt, you would have been tearing them a new crevice. Why was Finn excused?"

Rachel looked away.

"I don't understand why you're so willing to excuse his actions, Rachel. Why does he get forgiven, and everyone else have to constantly be reminded of their mistakes? Why am I the guy who cracked an egg on your head when he and his buddies threw eggs all over your home? Why am I shallow for wanting to focus on Nationals instead of having a memorial for a woman you don't even know and probably have never met, but it's OK for him to have walked out on your Glee Club enough times to have risked disqualification due to lack of members?"

"That's not-"

"Yes, it is!" Jesse cut her off. "If you want me to believe this time is different, then you're going to have to at least own up to the fact that you're willing to overlook his mistakes even when you know it's unfair."

"He was willing to marry me!"

"And you think that's alright?" Jesse asked incredulously. "A guy with no college prospect, no job and no real future plans wanted to marry you and, what, ride your coattails? Have you stuck in your hometown with him? What, Rachel? What about that entire thing made it OK?"

"We had each other!"

"You were supposed to be bigger than Lima!" Jesse reiterated, his voice increasing as he conveyed his frustration. "You were a star, you were supposed to be the greatest star, but you couldn't even see that because he had you fooled that he was the best thing in your life."

"He said I was the only good thing in his." Rachel seethed.

"And, that makes it better?" Jesse asked skeptically.

"That makes me special." Rachel snapped.

"That's the problem!" Jesse exclaimed, his exasperation abundant. "You are special! You always have been!"

"Not always."

"Yes, always." Jesse smiled sadly, the fight ebbing momentarily. "Don't you get it? It's why Vocal Adrenaline went after you."

Rachel looked away.

She had always suspected, maybe even had always known, that Vocal Adrenaline had gone after her for a reason, that she was New Directions' strongest performer and weakest link. Since then, with the constant moves to undermine her role as the female lead of New Directions and with Mercedes, Santana and even Brittany being put forward in so many performances, she'd begun to question whether or not she was as strong a performer as she'd once was. She had stopped being a supernova of talent, with the increasing lack of opportunity to shine, and while she maintained she was a star in the making, she had begun to consider what other avenues were available to her just in case she wasn't.

Jesse walked away, heading for the opposite side of the stage while Rachel sat on one of the seats near the wall, close to the steps leading to the stage.

She looked up, and regarded the young man who had once been the boy who got away, the boy who had chosen to sacrifice her for his fame and fortune (and the approval of his friends).

"Why did you go back to Lima after UCLA, Jesse?"

"I told you."

"So you really did come back when you lost everything."

Jesse sighed. "Don't do that."

"What am I doing?"

"Undermining yourself." Jesse said quietly. "You're more than that."

Rachel didn't answer.

"I had to reconsider my options." Jesse admitted. "I wasn't the star of Vocal Adrenaline, and I didn't have a scholarship to college. Then we were hanging out, I thought we could get back together and if that happened, I couldn't rebuild a foundation with me in another state, so I chose to start a show choir consultancy."

"You would have stayed in Ohio for me?" Rachel asked curiously. It was strange to consider, even though that was technically what had happened, if Jesse was telling the truth. Jesse's dreams were also supposed to be bigger than Ohio, why would he be willing to change that for a girl?

For her, but still, she was just a girl.

"It was only going to be a year." Jesse pointed out. "I figured, I could do the job, make some money, reapply for colleges the same time you would be applying. We'd win you Nationals, and then we could take New York by storm together."

Rachel frowned. It sounded eerily like what she had planned to do, only for Finn and Kurt. What made their plans so different?

"I know you think that if you had stayed in Lima for Finn it was only going to be temporary, but the truth is, it wasn't going to be." Jesse said, as if having read her mind. "Me waiting for you wasn't unreasonable because you ending up in New York City was an inevitability. Finn getting out of Lima isn't."

"He's not a Lima Loser." Rachel said hotly.

"But he is a small town boy." Jesse pointed out. "And, Journey song or not, midnight trains don't always go anywhere."

"Maybe that's true. Maybe you're right." Rachel allowed. "But that doesn't give you the right to attack me for my choices."

"No, but I do reserve the right to be critical when I feel like you're throwing away your life for a boy who never deserved you!"

"You don't know that!"

"Rachel, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..."

"You never deserved me either!" Rachel exclaimed. "You lied! You told me to trust you and I did and you..." Oh no she could feel her tears, previously just building up in her eyes, actually roll down her cheeks. "You..."

"I thought I could do what I did and come back with a good enough apology and be forgiven." Jesse said quietly. "I never factored in that what I did would change you. At first I thought you were better off, maybe you'd be more careful with who and how you chose to love, but..."

"You walked away, Jesse."

"But I came back."

"Maybe you did, but you still walked away! You told me to trust you, you made me fall in love with you, and you just walked away. You betrayed me, in so many ways, and maybe I've hurt you, but you hurt me too! I loved you, but how was I supposed to love you again if you made it impossible to trust you?"

"And therein lies the problem." Jesse sighed. "You say you want me, but you don't trust me. And I've been trying to just be your friend because I'm not sure where we stand with each other."

Rachel glanced at him, watching as he moved towards the audience and sat on one of the seats. "I'm not the girl you first met, Jesse."

"I know." The defeat and exhaustion in his voice, usually brash with confidence and ego, was easily one of the most heartbreaking things she had ever heard. He slumped against the seat and tilted his head back to gaze up at the ceiling. "I think that's why it's harder for me to just have a go at this with you."

Rachel frowned as she sat on the top step of the stairs heading up the stage, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief from her pocket. "Because you wanted that naïve girl who couldn't see a trap even with it right in front of her?"

"Because I want the girl who wasn't afraid of being wrong." Jesse sighed, and tilted his head back to look at her. "You knew there was something fishy about our first meeting, but you were willing to trust that it was going to work out. I loved that about you, because I haven't had the luxury of that kind of trust in a while. Choosing Nationals over you was my one big regret, but the thing that keeps me up at night is knowing I'm the one who took that from you. And I can tell you I'm sorry until I'm blue in the face, and I really, really am sorry I turned out to be Jesse St. James, star of Vocal Adrenaline, and not the guy who would never hurt you, but that won't change anything."

Rachel gazed at him. "Would you do it again?"

"I don't know."

She scoffed her incredulity. "Not very comforting."

"You have no idea how much pressure I was under, Rachel. It wasn't just a fourth consecutive victory or my scholarship on the line, almost everyone in the team had some kind of offer dependent on our Nationals win, too. People sign up for Vocal Adrenaline and put up with the long hours and debilitating work for one reason, and that's to get out of Ohio. And they needed a star; They needed me." He sighed. "If it were just me, I don't know, maybe I would have been willing to risk it for you, to stay in McKinley and give it an honest shot, but your team, even on their very best day, were never going to beat the vision of Shelby when dealing with the work ethic of Vocal Adrenaline. I'm sorry if that's not the answer you wanted, but that's the honest truth."

Rachel sighed, because she did hate his answer, but she honestly couldn't blame him for his response. Especially since his ambition, which matched hers, was one of the things that had drawn her to him in the first place. A lot of people she'd met up to that point hoped to someday, somehow get out of Lima, out of Ohio, but few ever really saw the path as clearly as she had. Jesse, despite his choice to pursue his stardom by way of California, at least had the determination to see it through.

That was one thing, and there were a lot of things she felt they needed to discuss, but there was one very recent complication she needed to address.

"I saw you with Claire last Saturday."

"Did you?"

"I know you don't owe me an explanation-"

"Her boyfriend, whom I only very recently met, asked me to pick up his girlfriend, whom I had never met, from her dance class because she'd never been to the diner we were meeting at." Jesse told her. "I didn't know it was your Claire until she told me her name and that she was a second-year dance major at NYADA. We were going to call you to meet up with us, once we realized we had you in common, but I figured since Quinn was in town - we had a nice chat, by the way - you would rather spend time with her than with us, who you can see any day."

Rachel looked down and picked at the peeling paint on the edge of the floorboard of the step she was on. She wanted to ask him about his talk with Quinn, or press him for further details on his encounter with Claire, but that wasn't what she most wanted to talk about now. "So where does this leave us?"

"I don't know."

Rachel sighed. She heard Jesse stand up from his seat - the chairs in this room were notoriously noisy, which was why nobody liked using it - but she didn't look up.

"I know that Finn wants you back, and honestly, I can't blame him, because I'd feel the same way. I know that you have history with him that's not easy to dismiss, or to walk away from." Jesse said softly. "I know that the way I hurt you in the past isn't something I can just fix with a few well-placed duets or song dedications. I know that a part of me keeps looking for that girl I first met and worried that I might make the mistake of looking for her in the woman you are now."

Rachel looked up, and saw Jesse near where their bags were, a few feet from her. "What does that even mean?"

"I loved the girl I first met. But to overlook who you are now just for the sake of the girl I once knew, that's not fair to you."

"But you can't just dismiss how I feel for you, or completely disregard how I felt, even despite my actions, just because you want to protect yourself." Rachel argued. "You can't just tell me your interpretation of our past and ignore everything else just because you don't want me anymore."

Jesse smiled weakly as he corrected her. "I still want you, Rachel. I know I said that maybe I wasn't, or never was, but I still want to be the one for you. I never stopped."

"Then why..."

"Because I can't go through all of that again. I'm not like you, Rachel. I can't keep putting my heart on the line and hoping this time it'll be different. At least with other girls it's a different story each time, but you? I pride myself in being a quick study, and I can't say that if I keep falling in love with you and being thrown aside the minute Finn Hudson glances your way. I can't be that guy. I won't."

"He's not the guy I see beside me anymore." Rachel blurted out.

Jesse paused, and glanced at her. "What?"

"When I fulfill my dreams of taking the Broadway stage." Rachel said hurriedly. "When I saw it, I always saw him in the front row, with Kurt and my dads. That was the dream."

Jesse frowned, because how was that supposed to make him feel better?

"But I want you beside me." Rachel told him. "I want you right there with me. And I know that doesn't make up for anything in the past, but, Jesse, you mean too much to me for me to just accept that we can't... I don't know, have that anymore."

"I can still be there with you," Jesse assured her. "I just don't know if we can be that power couple we always envisioned ourselves to be anymore."

Rachel choked back a sob, her tears rising back to the surface, as she asked, "because you don't want to love me anymore?"

Jesse stopped, and sighed. "Because I don't think I can bear to have you break my heart a third time."

It was a tiny, tiny thing, but the spark of hope it created lit Rachel up and filled her with warmth.

Jesse glanced at her. "I don't know what happens from here, but I do know this: I miss you. And it goes against everything I know to be logical, but I'm willing to give this a shot if you are."

Rachel stood up and descended the steps, quickly making her way towards Jesse as if any delay would make him change his mind. "You mean that?"

"If you feel the same."

Inner squeals of happiness drowned out her earlier sorrow, and she knew it probably showed on her face, but she needed to get some things out on the table first. "That depends."

Jesse paused, and turned to regard her, his amusement evident in the smile that tugged on his lips. "Are you negotiating?"

"Well, it's us, so we can't make this that easy, now can we?" Rachel said, her tone just a little joking, underlying the truth of her statement.

Jesse conceded that point. Besides, it was kind of nice to see some fire back in Rachel.

"I'd still like to work with you on my vocal training," Rachel admitted.

"Of course."

"And I want to know more about what's going on in your life."

"A given."

Rachel hesitated as she stopped in front of him. Up close, she realized, Jesse showed a maturity she'd never noticed before, or had overlooked in their past interactions. He still had the same boyish good looks, the same cocky smile, and those same blue eyes, but his face was... kinder. Less arrogant. She still recognized the boy he once had been, but this young man in front of her had grown and evolved to someone she really wanted to get to know, to learn more from, to learn more about. She reached up and brushed a lock of hair from his forehead.

"Are you doing The Way We Were, because that didn't end well for Redford and Streisand."

She missed the way he got her, how any Barbra reference was always off the top of her head.

Rachel's gaze flickered from her hand to his face, and smiled as she lowered her hand to her side. "I've missed you too, Jesse."

Jesse smiled back, and they took a beat to bask in the moment, their moment of reconnection.

Rachel stepped back, undoubtedly startling Jesse, and extended her right hand out to him. "I'm Rachel Berry."

Recognizing the throwback, Jesse took her hand and shook it. "Hi Rachel, I'm Jesse."

A reintroduction was one thing, and with all their cards on the table, really, they were aiming for a fresh new start.

Rachel grinned, and gave Jesse a broad, heartfelt smile. "Hello."