"I can't believe my costume fits you better than it does me!" Amy whined, glaring at Claire. "You're like... Like..." She turned to Anton for to elaborate on her description. "Finish my thought for me."
Anton turned to Claire. "You're like a machine programmed to become a world-class ballerina."
Claire paused, frowned, and turned to Rachel. "I don't know if I should be insulted or flattered."
Rachel laughed, careful not to choke on her drink.
Anton ignored them and glanced around the music club's second floor, where they had opted to sit away from the main dance floor, before he turned to Rachel. "Where's your boyfriend?"
"He had to wait for his roommate." Rachel replied, sipping her drink. Jesse had sent her a text message earlier informing her of his tardiness. She turned to Claire. "Is Tom joining us before his set?"
"If they manage to figure out where their lead vocal is, yes." Claire nodded. She could have been backstage like the rest of the band and their girlfriends, but she knew her boyfriend's band mates' girlfriends didn't really like hanging out with her, which was why she had wanted her own group of friends along to keep her company. She picked up a fry from the basket in front of them and chewed on it as she considered the beat of the music playing over the club's speakers.
Beside Amy sat Christian, who, while a true-blooded New Yorker and a college freshman like Rachel, looked remarkably young in the room. His excitement showed in his wide-eyed examination of the space, and the way he was bursting with nervous energy at the very idea (and reality) of being in a music club. "This place is awesome."
Amy gave him a weary look. "You really should have told me you were one of those weird New York nerd kids who were forced to stay home, so that Anton and I could have taken another freshman under our wing."
Christian rolled his eyes at her. "I'm Asian in the music program of NYADA and I play the piano and the violin. What did you need, a big neon sign with flashing lights?"
"Could have helped." Anton remarked, to the group's amusement.
It was, quite frankly, a scenario Rachel had never imagined happening back in high school when she had been the school's resident loser and was hard-pressed to name two people who wanted to be her friend (Jacob Ben Israel could always be counted on if she had to name one): surrounded by friends in a club that was apparently the place to go to, if the line outside was any indication. She had arrived with Amy, Anton and Christian after Jesse had informed her of his delay, meeting Claire at the door, as she had arrived with Tom. And now they were seated in a booth with a view of the stage but away from the speakers that were currently playing rock music Rachel had never previously heard of.
The club was a small space, Rachel supposed it was a converted warehouse, with a stage and dance floor on the main floor and a second floor loft that had a view of the stage below. It had a bar on both floors, and while crowded with both college-aged and just-graduated-college-aged people, the space was remarkably clean, if a little dark and loud.
It was also technically a 21-and-over club, but the group of them had entered through the stage door, which Rachel supposed was a convenient excuse if it was discovered there were minors in the room.
Then again, having gone through the back door meant none of them had the bracelet that allowed them to get drinks from the bar, so they were pretty much stuck with sodas and non-alcoholic versions of drinks from the bar.
"Oh look, it's Pretty Boy." Amy said suddenly.
The group turned in time to see Jesse, with a striking redhead with him, glancing around the second floor loft.
"Jesus Almighty, who's that?" Anton asked in awestruck wonder.
Their awe quickly changed to puzzlement as they all watched the girl, who stopped and pulled Jesse back to exchange what looked like heated words.
"Oh, she's not happy," Christian noted.
"I thought Jesse was bringing his roommate," Rachel commented with a slight hint of confusion, prompting her friends to all turn to look at her with skepticism and wary expectation. The truth dawned on her a second later, as her eyes widened in understanding. "His roommate is a girl?"
"A hot girl," Christian observed.
"Dude!" Anton hissed, jerking his head in Rachel's direction.
"Oh," Christian smiled at Rachel. "You're hot, too."
"Dude, no." Amy shook her head in dismay of her and Anton's protégé's lack of social skills.
Christian was confused, but since everyone had turned back to observe Jesse and the redhead, chose to remain quiet.
The redhead was really not pleased, as she started ticking off something with her fingers, then motioned to the direction of their table. They stood a close distance together, an indication that they were at least comfortable with each other, and the fact that they spoke frankly - as indicated by the redhead's curt movement with her hands - and obviously candidly, to do so in the middle of a public and crowded place, spoke of an understanding between the two individuals.
Jesse, for his part, only looked somewhat amused by the whole thing.
"They're coming." Anton announced, the group of them turning back to the table and feigning nonchalance as if they hadn't already been sighted by either Jesse or the redhead.
Rachel would feel put out about the whole (tall striking redhead) thing if she hadn't been the one to insist on meeting Jesse's friends (friend) and roommate; as well as the fact that the redhead was about to join a table full of Rachel's friends. Of course, Christian basically looked like a cool Asian nerd, Amy was as wholesome as the all-American girl-next-door, and Rachel was tiny. At least Anton had an athletic build and Claire had excellent bitch face.
"Hi everyone," Jesse greeted, coming up to the table.
"Jesse!" Rachel greeted brightly. She motioned to Christian. "This is Christian, I don't think you've met."
Christian merely nodded at Jesse, focusing back on the redheaded girl.
Rachel noted that Jesse had a vice grip on the girl's bicep, as if forcing her to stay. The girl did not look pleased.
"This is Parker." Jesse introduced, cool and calm and obviously ignoring the tension emanating from the girl beside him. "Parker, these are Claire, Rachel, Anton, Christian and Amy. Claire's boyfriend is the one in the band we're seeing tonight."
Parker glanced briefly at Jesse, sighed, and the tension in her body seemed to ease as she turned back to the others. "Hi. And, just so we're clear," she motioned to Anton and Christian. "You're not my type."
The group all turned to Jesse, who frowned at Parker. "This isn't a group date."
"Well, all you kept saying was we were meeting your girlfriend and suddenly there's a whole group of them?" Parker shot back.
Jesse rolled his eyes, releasing Parker from his hold, and made his way to where Rachel sat, giving her a quick kiss. "Hi."
"Hi." Rachel smiled back at him. "So this is the roommate?"
"That's her."
"She doesn't seem to like you very much."
"Not very much, no." Jesse agreed. He smiled at Anton, who had pulled a chair up for him, and squeezed in between him and Rachel. He glanced over to where Parker had sat down and struck up conversation with Claire and Amy.
Amy motioned to Jesse and Parker. "How did you two end up living with each other?"
"Oh," Parker made a face, "he begged for a place and I had room."
Jesse rolled his eyes. "There's a longer story than that."
"Yes, there was groveling and bribery involved, too." Parker gave him a mocking smile, before Claire asked her a different question to distract from the discussion.
Rachel turned back to Jesse, puzzled. "I stand corrected. She really doesn't like you."
Jesse had to smile. "That... would be an understatement."
Rachel's puzzlement stayed, but a club wasn't the best place to have any kind of substantial discussion.
Anton suddenly grabbed Jesse's arm. He lifted it to expose his wrist, and the bright green paper band around it. "How did you-"
"Oh," Jesse indicated Parker. "Park's twenty-one, and she vouched for me."
Parker immediately became that much more interesting to everyone. But the girl merely smiled coolly at Jesse. "I got you in and I got you a pass at the bar. What do you say?"
Jesse narrowed his eyes at her, before he sighed. "What can I get you?"
"Whatever they have on tap." Parker replied.
Jesse stood up.
"Oh, and St. James?"
Jesse turned back to her questioningly.
"A round for the table."
Jesse returned her fake smile with one of his own. "Of course."
Once Jesse was gone, Parker's green eyes zeroed in on Rachel. She leaned forward to cast a penetrating gaze upon the other girl. "So you're Rachel."
Rachel was oddly comforted by the fact that she felt Claire's body bristle defensively beside her. "That would be me, yes."
"How do you know Jesse?"
Rachel hesitated, not liking the almost-evil glint in the redhead's eye or the snide smile on her lips, before she answered. "We met in high school."
Parker paused, apparently unprepared for that answer, and her predatory grin turned puzzled. "And you're actually willing to date him again?"
"Wait, is there drama involved?" Anton piped in, poorly concealing his excitement.
"Wait," Parker said, pulling back and staring at Rachel. "You're that McKinley girl, aren't you?"
Rachel's eyes widened. Her reputation in high school was not one she liked to be reminded of, and she really didn't want her New York friends to know too many details about any of that. "Um..."
"Holy shit!" Parker exclaimed, her face brightening as she jumped up from her chair and moved around the table to sit beside Rachel. She grinned broadly. "You're the girl who gave him his soul back!"
"What-"
"Oh my God." The smile on Parker's face was almost disconcerting. She leaned in for a hug but hesitated just as she was about to cross Rachel's personal space. "Can I hug you?"
"What's going on?" Anton wondered out loud, glancing around the table in confusion.
Rachel gave him a bewildered shrug, even as everyone else could only watch the encounter with equally confused expressions.
"Why is the hot girl scaring Rachel?" Christian asked.
Rachel returned her gaze to Parker, before something occurred to her. The girl knew about Rachel, but knew her from high school. She was "The McKinley Girl". Her expression turned into one of a mixture of wariness and suspicion as she asked her next question. "You were in Vocal Adrenaline?"
"You say that like it's a bad thing." Amy noted, taking a sip of her drink.
Parker waved her hand dismissively. "It was the worst thing. But it was a ticket out of Ohio."
"Are you in AMDA too?" Rachel asked.
"Oh, no." Parker shook her head vehemently. "Sweet Jiminy Cricket, no. I'm getting a business degree, and leave the Newsies business to St. James."
"But Vocal Adrenaline had the best performers in Ohio." Rachel argued.
"Yeah, and one summer at Juilliard was enough to tell me I can't do that dancing shit professionally." Parker replied.
"Another dancer." Anton said dryly. "Joy."
It was at that moment Jesse returned with a tray of drinks, followed by a tall boy with dark hair and a warm smile, holding another tray of drinks and a plate of chips. "Look at what I found." Jesse then frowned when he saw his chair occupied. He looked at Parker, then at Rachel. "What happened? What did I miss?"
"Your roommate is a girl. From Vocal Adrenaline." Rachel noted coolly, her intonation not giving Jesse any indication on which point concerned her more.
Parker, on the other hand, was far more enthusiastic, pointing at Rachel. "It's the McKinley girl!"
"Guys." Claire cut in, sparing the Rachel-Jesse-Parker situation for another day. She motioned to the guy. "Guys, this is Tommy. Thomas, these are my friends: Rachel, Jesse's roommate Parker, that's Anton, Christian, and Amy."
"Nice to meet you." Tom smiled at them. "Sorry about the no-drinking policy, one of the guys in the band is related to the manager of the place, and we kind of promised that none of our guests that's underage would drink."
"It's fine," Claire assured him. "So, hey, you guys find Brett yet, or is this going to be another one of your open-mic concerts?"
"Ha. He's backstage, and I think he's sober enough to perform." Tom replied. He turned to the others at the table. "We might suck, so thanks in advance for the moral support of not booing us."
"Way to preempt our show of support, man." Jesse told him.
Tom only shook his head, because previous experience had shown him that sometimes no amount of rehearsal could remedy a lackluster show. He took the seat between Claire and Amy, leaving Jesse standing.
Amy turned to Tom with interest. "So, how did you and Claire meet?"
Tom laughed, even as he and Claire shared a glance. "Um, Claire?"
Claire shrugged in response. "He was a boy. I was a girl. Can I make it any more obvious?"
Beside the dancer, Rachel frowned, the words oddly familiar. She wished so hard sometimes that her world view and points of reference weren't so focused on Broadway and musicals to be able to appreciate far more immediately pop culture references. A quick glance around the table showed that she wasn't the only one troubled by the familiar words.
"I was a punk, she did ballet." Tom added, with the same casual demeanor Claire had.
"What more can I say?" Claire quipped.
Rachel glanced at them suspiciously. All those hours of surfing different music websites weren't entirely for naught, after all. "Tom wanted you, and you'd never tell, but secretly you wanted him as well?"
Claire and Tom paused, glanced at each other, and turned to give her matching grins.
"I'm missing something," Amy noted as an aside to Christian, who looked equally confused, but Anton, who had overheard her, brightened as he realized what was happening.
"Did all of her friends stick up their noses at your baggy clothes?" Anton asked, amused, even as the group of them started laughing.
Christian glanced at Amy, who lifted her hands in a gesture of confusion.
Anton shook his head at them. "You are so uncool. They were reciting Avril Lavigne lyrics."
"Avril Lavigne is barely relevant. Why would I know the lyrics to her songs?" Amy retorted.
Tom interrupted before the debate could escalate. Claire had warned him about Amy and Anton's escalating verbal sparring. "It's cheesy, but the lyrics are true: I was kind of a punk when I'd met Claire. She wanted nothing to do with me, but cut to two to three years later and here we are."
"You met in school?" Rachel queried.
The two glanced at each other again.
"My dance class. He was there with a crew filming something." Claire replied.
Amy turned to Rachel and Jesse. "And we got a clue from Parker, here, but what about you two?"
Anton gave her a look. "What is it with you and learning people's history tonight?"
"I want to know this stuff, so sue me." Amy replied defensively. "If you must know, I was going to major in Psych if I hadn't gotten a dance scholarship."
"Yes, because what the world needs is you fixing other people's psychological issues," Anton remarked dryly.
Amy glared at him, raising her right hand, palm facing herself, and started fluttering her fingers. "Say stop."
Anton, confused, obeyed. "Stop."
Four of Amy's fingers folded with only her middle finger left raised.
"Whoa, wait." Parker frowned, cutting in, suddenly aware of the situation she was in. She glanced around the table. "Are you all performing arts majors?"
"Musical theater." Jesse confirmed.
"Same." Rachel told her.
"Me three." Anton nodded.
"Music." Christian replied.
"Dance." Amy motioned to herself and Claire.
"Film and media." Tom added.
Parker shook her head, grabbed a pen from her purse, grabbed a napkin, and started to write on it. She began to mutter under her breath but audible to everyone at the table, "If I'm going to be guilt-tripped by my father into taking a business major instead of journalism, I am going to make a shit-ton of money." She finished writing, and passed the napkin and pen to Rachel. "Sign, please."
Rachel took the napkin, and adjusted her hold to find adequate light to be able to read its contents. "I'm hiring you to be my manager?"
"It's a provision, that I will take the first job you hire me for free, but if I do my job well, you have to take me on as a full-time manager." Parker said.
"Can you find me a job as a DJ?" Christian asked.
"I will listen to your demo and if you're good enough, yes." Parker promised.
"I'll sign it." Christian declared, taking the napkin and pen from Rachel.
Rachel glanced up at Jesse, who actually looked amused. "What?"
Jesse shook his head in amusement. He had known Parker since they were kids, the both of them coming from fairly well-off families back home. They had been good friends when they were younger, and had singled out Vocal Adrenaline as their best chance to get out of Ohio. He'd always wanted to be a performer, but she'd just wanted the chance to get out. But she'd had the grades to get into a good university, plus cunning and determination, which pretty much guaranteed that she could get whatever she wanted. She had been one of Vocal Adrenaline's best dancers, but show choir had never been her only ticket out of Ohio.
He held out his hand to Christian and signed the piece of paper even as he addressed his roommate. "You might have actually found your calling, Park."
"What the hell, give it here." Anton decided, as he signed next.
One by one, everyone at the table became a possible client to the redheaded girl, with Tom leaving almost immediately after he signed to head backstage to prepare to perform, until Rachel was left as the only hold out.
Rachel looked at Parker, contemplative. "You didn't like being in Vocal Adrenaline?"
"It was fine, until that guy," Parker pointed at Jesse, who was now seated in Tom's former seat, "got my best friend and all her friends demoted to the chorus."
"I only told Shelby about her Crohn's condition because I was worried about her health." Jesse protested.
Parker scoffed. "That you went from co-leads to a solo male lead had nothing to do with it, and was just a convenient coincidence?"
"Well, Andrea's fine in Stanford, isn't she?" Jesse pointed out. "And it's not my fault you all had to get involved and ended up in the back."
"You're a selfish asshat sometimes." Parker returned flatly. She turned back to Rachel. "He doesn't understand that he'd upset the balance of power and I'll never forgive him for giving Giselle the chance to dance on the front line, so yes, I learned not to like being in Vocal Adrenaline."
Rachel turned to Jesse. "Was Parker in the parking lot that day?"
Jesse held her gaze, trying to discern the sentiment behind the question, and exhaled. "No."
"Okay." Rachel signed the napkin. She then handed it back to Parker. "I intend to EGOT, so you better ace your degree."
Parker laughed, pocketing both the pen and napkin. "Just for you."
And that was how Rachel became friends with a former member of Vocal Adrenaline.
Which turned out to be a good thing, as she meshed well with everyone and provided Rachel with anecdotes regarding Jesse that humanized the male lead of a four-time show choir champion. And Parker was also on Spring Break, unlike Jesse, whose break was still the week after, so she could meet Rachel to act as a go-between, as well as getting to know the girl who had inadvertently shown her that the boy she'd grown up with was still there behind the self-serving and egotistic exterior.
The thrill of getting to know a new friend, alongside the excitement of the countdown to the preview, was enough for Rachel to ignore that she was in New York while the rest of the New Directions were celebrating Spring Break in Ohio.
The very first tweet came on Sunday afternoon, of Noah Puckerman announcing that one of the pools he was cleaning was available to use, and that he was hosting a pool party. It was promptly followed by a whole host of confirmations and approvals from the Glee Club. Within hours her social media feed was full of pictures from the party.
On Monday morning it was a brunch party at Mercedes' home, and the status updates from that even included the stinging celebratory update of "Best Friends 4 Life!" from Mercedes, and liked by almost everyone. At around lunchtime, the pictures suddenly included Quinn, who apparently had gone home for Spring Break, and was captioned by "The gang's all here!" on Artie's feed, and "New Directions for Always!" on Tina's. Liked by everyone who had ever been in Glee Club.
Rachel was having lunch with Anton and Parker, while Claire and Amy worked with Marco to get Amy up to speed, when Quinn sent a text message that simply read, S ripped F a new one defending you. Be warned.
Rachel hadn't known what to make of that message until Finn started calling.