Someone had the idea to have the members of Glee Club gather in the choir room of McKinley High, and despite her reservations - but mostly because Kurt had insisted everyone should go (and Quinn was coming, while Shelby was on speed dial) - Rachel had chosen to go anyway.
The excuse given for wanting access to the choir room was for rehearsals for the memorial. Before getting permission from Sue, Kurt had asked her if they could use the Berrys' basement, with its superior acoustics and without Sue Sylvester's prying eyes, but Rachel had resisted the urge to give in to her desire to be the popular and well-liked (compliant) girl playing hostess to the Glee Club. Hence, choir room.
The choir room. Once upon a time, she'd considered the choir room to be her home within McKinley High. Some within Glee Club called it their safe place, but she wouldn't really go that far. It wasn't particularly awkward, other than the fact that so many of them had been so eager to leave high school only to be right back where they started, but it had been home, for all of them.
Still, it was weird, being back: not just in the choir room, or in McKinley High school, but being back in Lima. She'd always felt like a girl out of place in the town she called her home, but it was the place where she had grown up, it was where her entire being had been formed, and it felt weird to be back and feel even more out of place than ever.
She had always called New York City her spiritual home: Broadway and the stage were her home, and Lima had always been the place she considered to be the first chapter of her life. It was where her family were, where she grew up, where her formative years were spent. Back in junior year, after Nationals, she had realized that there was nothing in Lima that felt like a compelling enough reason to stay.
Except for Finn.
But that wasn't even really true, because in all her fantasies of the future, she was in New York, and Finn had been there. It had been easy, to dream up scenarios where she was onstage and see him in the front row, or having her name announced as a Tony Award winner and turning to him for her congratulatory kiss, but the fact of the matter in all those daydreams was that he was in New York with her.
Those dreams began to slowly crumble when he started making comments like how much he enjoyed working in Burt's shop. Or when he said he wasn't much of a Big City guy and liked the idea of living and working in a smaller town. How much he liked that wherever he went, people knew who he was and what he liked. That the pizza at the bowling alley was the best he'd ever tasted.
Those comments, compounded by her own floundering aspirations, had given root to the thought that maybe staying in Lima wouldn't be so bad. It had hurt to consider, but reality had a funny way of consistently kicking her in the rear through most of her senior year, and she'd thought maybe she had to be more realistic with her life ambitions.
Because not everybody got to become Broadway stars. Not everybody got to go to top-tier arts conservatories and go on to brilliant careers.
Sometimes she thought back during that time and couldn't say for certain whether Finn, or pursuing her future stardom, had been Plan A and which one had been Plan B. She only knew that deep down, even then, she had known there was a choice to be made and she couldn't have both.
But she had tried. She had tried so hard that she became oblivious to other things around her. She had wanted Finn to be a part of her future and she had wanted what she so believed to be her inevitability of being on Broadway, and she did everything she could to make those goals a reality.
Teenage weddings and stalking admissions administrators were probably not recommended modes of operation and strategy, but Rachel Berry would never be accused of not being goal-oriented.
And she had almost achieved her endgame, that of being committed to Finn while also pursuing her Broadway destiny, but there had been some things she had overlooked.
Foremost being what Finn actually wanted. And what ultimately would have been best for them both. She had never given much consideration to what Finn would be doing while she achieved her dreams - Daddy had often voiced his opinion of Finn's limited career options (particularly in the realm of sports, academia and the performing arts) - even as she insisted that he should pursue something in line with her own goals.
Katharine Hepburn had Spencer Tracy. Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. Charlotte d'Amboise and Terrence Mann.
Ingenues, after all, needed to have their go-to leading men.
Barely a year ago, she had considered putting her dreams and goals on hold if she couldn't pursue them alongside her boyfriend and best friend, because both Finn and Kurt were staying in Lima.
Now all she could think of were her friends in New York, who weren't even from Lima. The irony was the almost certain knowledge that Claire and the rest of them were far more likely to still be in her life years from now than the people she had known in Ohio.
She missed them. Claire and her sharp, biting wit. Amy and Anton who could make the most random things a source of amusement. Christian's willingness to play Name That Tune with her. Getting movie and TV recommendations from Tom. She even missed Parker, who she just met but loved Disney movies just as much as she did.
She missed Jesse most of all. Not to hold her hand or anything equally mundane, but just the knowledge that he was always just a subway ride away. They exchanged text messages, but kept away from the elephant in the room, which was the reason they were even apart at that moment. He'd said he was a willing listener, but she felt it too offensive to him to talk to him about her ex-boyfriend, especially since Jesse and Finn had never gotten along. They had tolerated each other, mainly for Rachel's benefit, but there was no love lost between them.
As Jesse had stated, he was never Finn's friend, and had never liked the guy, but he had meant something to Rachel. Which pretty much summed up all of Jesse's insight on Finn Hudson.
And Rachel? Well, she wasn't sure how she felt about the whole thing.
As she'd told Shelby, she had already mourned Finn Hudson from their breakup months ago. Finn had decided that he couldn't be with her in New York City, and she had respected that decision. She had already been living a life without him, and when he had chosen to return to Ohio instead of staying with her in New York, she had made the conscious effort to move past him. And despite his calls, his text messages, his emails and Facebook tagging, even when he kept insisting for her to come back to Lima and help him and be there for him, he wasn't a presence in her life.
But her apprehension on having been the other half of FinnandRachel wasn't limited to having been broken up with Finn, or that she was dating someone else now. A percentage of it stemmed from the fact that Finn had been the one to break up with her (repeatedly), had walked away from her (repeatedly) and chose something (sometimes someone) else other than her, and their last conversation had reminded her of those things with the harshness of a slap to the face.
She had been abrupt, even mean, during that phone call. He had been callous and insensitive, oblivious and ego-driven, and she had allowed her impatience to raise her ire. But she had shown her strength, and she knew it: she wasn't the girl who was willing to compromise just for the attention of the popular quarterback, she was Broadway-bound ingenue Rachel Berry, and she had been proud of herself for standing up for herself instead of cowering and just agreeing with what Finn said. That night she had been self-congratulatory, proud, happy and almost giddy of knowing she was truly capable of avoiding the trappings of FinnandRachel.
It was why Kurt's voice message had been such a figurative cold Slushy to the face: while she had gone to sleep happy and proud, brimming with confidence and a steely will and determination to end things with Finn, to break their ties once and for all, he had been in an accident that had cut his life short.
Just a year ago, she had been determined to marry Finn, unable to imagine a future without him. Mere days ago she was determined to cut off all ties with him because she felt his presence in her life smothering.
How could anyone reconcile such conflicting feelings, especially when faced with people who had always seemed to like him more than her?
Indeed, being back in the very place that had witnessed her life (so far) and its highs and lows, all she could think of was why she was even there.
She had come to Lima to say goodbye to Finn, but Mr. Schue and several members of Glee Club (including, oddly enough, Noah Puckerman) seemed to be determined to wallow in their grief for their friend. This was never more evident than when Artie admitted to how hard it would be to keep going on without Finn and people had echoed his sentiment. And some had started sharing exactly how hard life would be, without Finn.
It was as good a chance for everyone to bond, she supposed, but how was it helping them in their grief?
And, what even? She could understand it if they were sharing their favorite memories, but how hard it would be to live without Finn?
They could talk about their favorite memories of him, or how Finn had affected their lives, but - and she could be truthful, from her own experience - it was very much possible to live without Finn. Everyone's lives were affected, she had no doubt about that, and as Shelby had pointed out, everyone who had known him, especially his friends, would have altered lives from his loss; Moving on and moving forward would be a task, no question, and some would find it more difficult than others, but save for Carole Hudson-Hummel, Rachel doubted anyone's life would be so drastically different now that Finn was gone.
Heck, she'd managed to do it, and he'd been the most consistently present person she'd had throughout her senior year. And a lot of them were in high school, or just starting their college lives - as her friends kept reminding her, and she was slowly coming to terms with, there was definitely a life beyond high school.
But she couldn't exactly say any of that, not at what seemed like such a sensitive time.
She had left the room in what she hoped had looked like a dramatic outburst, and sought refuge someplace she thought she could be alone.
Her instinct was to call Jesse, vent her frustration a little - she was due for another emotional outburst, surely - but she had promised herself not to do that.
"I figured we'd end up here."
Rachel looked up, startled from her introspection, and smiled when she set eyes upon Quinn. "Forever destined to meet in public bathrooms."
Quinn smiled, and came closer to hand the brunette a cup of cider. "How did your date with Jesse go?"
"Is that appropriate to ask, given why we're here?"
Quinn shrugged, leaning against the sink near Rachel. "Your rehearsals cut into our Skype Saturdays, this is the first opportunity I have to ask."
"It was fine. Jesse's always been a good date, and this time isn't any different." Rachel replied, taking the cup. "Thank you, I was thirsty." She regarded the blonde. "Did you just get in? You weren't in the room earlier, and I didn't see you at the funeral home."
"Yeah..." Quinn gave her a weak smile. "It got really overwhelming, being there. It's Finn, you know?"
"I know." Rachel concurred.
"And I'd forgotten how much his mom hated me."
Rachel took a sip from her cup. "Carole doesn't hate you."
"You did not see the total freeze that happened when I gave my sympathies." Quinn told her. "It's understandable, but it was really disconcerting."
"You did lie to her about what she thought was her grandchild."
Quinn gave her a wry look. "I was a scared teenage girl: if Finn could forgive me and date me again, you would think forgiveness would be a valid option for her at this point."
Rachel laughed softly. "He never told her you two got back together."
"Excuse me?"
"He never told his mom you were together during eleventh grade."
"We were together for the better part of that year. We attended prom together!"
Rachel nodded. "For your Prom Queen campaign."
Quinn stared at her, her incredulity evident. "No way."
Rachel kept nodding. "He was scared Carole would get angry, because, well, you know why. So he told her he was doing you a favor, you know, since he kind of owed you for getting you kicked out of your house and so much of what followed. At the time, Kurt was on my side, and was attending Dalton and didn't know the whole story, so he couldn't argue or refute Finn's story."
"Oh my God." Was all Quinn could say.
Rachel nodded, because what could she say?
Quinn rolled her eyes. "But I bet Carole loves you."
"Hardly. She thinks I'm the girl who tried to tie her son down into a teen marriage."
Quinn frowned. "Didn't Finn propose?"
Rachel shrugged.
"Wow." Quinn nodded in understanding of the situation. "So I'm the lying hussy and you're the old ball and chain. Brilliant."
Rachel held out her cup and Quinn tapped it with her own.
They settled into a peaceful silence then, reveling in their shared history with Carole Hudson.
"Shelby came along with you, though." Quinn commented, breaking the silence. She briefly hesitated, but obviously wanted to ask another question.
Rachel saved her the trouble. "Shelby didn't want to bring Beth to a funeral. She's staying with one of Shelby's friends in New York."
There was a slight crestfallen look that crossed Quinn's face. "Oh."
"You can come with us when we go back home, spend some time with her." Rachel offered. "The daycare's been busy lately, I'm sure Shelby won't mind letting you have her for a day."
"Thanks." Quinn laughed, and glanced at Rachel. "So how are you holding up? You know, 'given why we're here.'"
Rachel glanced at her, and considered the question.
The last time she had been in Lima, she had been chasing back Finn, who had left in the middle of the night and sneaked away from New York, and confronted him in the auditorium of McKinley High. In hindsight, she found it dramatically appropriate that their relationship would begin and end on the stage, where so much of its major events had played out.
But that had been months ago. Since then she had been forced to confront parts of her that had been put in the back burner for so long: her talent had been challenged, her determination and ambition questioned, her commitments and relationships highlighted.
She was not the girl who had held onto Finn like he had been the only thing that mattered. She was not the scared high school senior facing a daunting future and had looked to the one thing - the one person - that she knew would not change.
But she had. She had known even then that college would change her, and hadn't known what changes would occur.
She had changed. And she had let Finn go.
She was not falling apart and crying her eyes out for him, but she still felt miserable.
Rachel took a deep breath, and smiled wryly at Quinn. "I've already had two breakdowns on that subject, do you really want to witness a third?"
"Sure beats the times I was the one you had to witness having a breakdown, right?" Quinn joked. She offered Rachel a soft smile. "Talk to me, Rachel."
Rachel sipped her cider and lowered her gaze. "He called me that night."
Quinn glanced at her questioningly.
"I was with friends, and he called... I don't know, to tell me it was OK to come home to Lima, or something. That it wouldn't be awkward between us."
Quinn sighed heavily as a thought occurred to her. "I didn't know the feed looked the way it did. I'm sorry."
Rachel shook her head, waving her apology off. "It's not your fault. You were the only one who didn't post anything even remotely offensive towards me. Well, you, and maybe Mike..."
"Still. As someone who was present at that pool party, someone should apologize to you."
Rachel glanced at her. "Was he coming from the party?"
"I don't know. I left early, my mom's been insisting we have dinner together." Quinn admitted. "He was still there when I left, around five."
Rachel turned in her seat to face Quinn. "Did he say anything, about me? He said some things, during our conversation that I found... disconcerting, to say the least. I'm curious, if there was a precedent of some kind that would have led him to say... certain things."
Quinn sighed. "Well, he was talking about how much he missed you and about going with Kurt and Santana when they head back at the end of Spring Break."
"Kurt and I agreed that it would be uncomfortable."
Quinn hesitated, but instead of verbalizing anything, she averted her gaze. "Hum."
"Quinn?"
Quinn looked uncomfortable. "You were a... sticking point, a bit, during the party."
"What do you mean?"
"There was some debate on why you weren't home." Quinn admitted.
"But Kurt knows why..." Rachel protested, but let her voice trail off, realizing where her error lay. "Oh."
Kurt had made no secret about how he felt about Rachel's relationship with Claire and the situation regarding the dance lead, and as she'd previously noted, it hadn't been a surprise that Kurt hadn't refrained from telling others about it. Mercedes, who had been on the receiving end of Rachel's drama with West Side Story the previous year, would probably have taken his side. Blaine, on the other hand, knew all about what it was like to be lead and the need for the spotlight, and would be diplomatic, but probably share Rachel's opinion. And the rest of Glee Club could argue amongst themselves about this depending on their opinions of Rachel on that particular day.
Rachel had always been a divining rod among Glee Club: she was talented and they would all rely on her to bring them to victory, but none of them had ever wanted to deal with the diva that came with that talent.
"And Finn, you know, shared that maybe you two had just needed to stay away from each other a little but that you didn't have to anymore, and that you two can get back together, which is when Santana decided to remind him - frankly and brutally - that you two were broken up and that you're the better for it."
"Santana said that." Rachel noted skeptically.
"And a bunch of other things that were mostly threats to his person and denying all knowledge of what she'd said, with some violence thrown in, if anyone ever told you she had come to your defense."
"And yet you're telling me." Rachel observed.
"I can take Santana." Quinn assured her.
Rachel smiled, before glanced down at her cup. "So there was a reason, why he'd decided he'd try to win me back over, over the phone."
"That must have been difficult."
"He..." Rachel frowned. "He basically told me that any relationship I'd have with anyone who isn't him won't matter. That he's the only guy I'll ever love and that I should just... settle. Like that's even an option."
Quinn was polite and tactful enough not to point out that less than a year ago, Rachel had been all but ready to settle with Finn.
"And that's... that bothers me the most. That that's the last conversation I'll have with him. He was drunk and I was tired, and he made me angry, and now he's dead, and I can't be mad that that's my last memory of him."
Quinn smiled wryly. "I told him to stop bothering you because you were out living your life and that he should go and live his. He told me to mind my own business and that I've always found a way to make him look bad. I told him to stop drinking and find a brain that had a higher quota than his self-righteousness." She gave Rachel a pained smile. "So: double-guilt coupons."
"So he was drinking."
"Rachel, we were all drinking." Quinn corrected. "Puck's ID has said he's 21 since he turned thirteen, and Santana uses her older sister's. Between the two of them, and Puck's excitement that everyone was going to be home, we had enough beer and the hard stuff to last us for another week."
"You weren't drunk," Rachel pointed out.
"Yeah, my parents are alcoholics and let's not forget an incident with wine coolers." Quinn reminded. "Trust me: you learn how to drink in moderation fast."
Rachel smiled faintly, and exhaled. "I just... I wish I could take it back. He said things, but he was drunk - it doesn't excuse them, but I didn't have to get mad, or get mean about it."
"If what he said to you was anything close to what he'd been saying to us about you, well..." Quinn shrugged. "Santana wanted to make the beat-down physical." She glanced around the bathroom, her voice going soft. "The thing is, we were all drinking. It could have been any one of us, but when I'd left, I'd kept everyone's keys in the vegetable compartment of Puck's fridge so that no one would find them. And Finn still found them. I want to yell at him, because didn't he think? Didn't he wonder why someone had taken the time to hide those keys? When I left, he was plastered, and he still managed to get into his car?"
"Quinn..."
"He had a future, Rachel! He had a whole life ahead of him, and maybe it wasn't the future he'd had planned, but he had one. Instead..." Quinn clenched her fists, crumpling the thankfully-empty cup in one hand. "He's gone, and I want to yell at him."
"I just want him to not be gone," Rachel shared. She smiled faintly at Quinn. "It's selfish, to want him to be alive but not be a part of his life, but we were supposed to talk. A part of me keeps expecting his call, but I know it'll never come, and I just want him to be alive so that my last words to him wouldn't have been so mean."
"Yeah, but don't you want to yell at him?" Quinn questioned. "Aren't you angry? He... He screwed up. He was this guy, who had so much potential, for goodness and kindness, and those kids look up to him; he had a future to build, and a part of him decided that none of that was worth it. Drunk or not, there was a choice and he made it, and I keep getting the feeling that I'm the only one who wants to yell at him."
"You're not. Trust me, you're not." Rachel assured her. "But I've been yelling at him from a distance for months now. I've been through this, in a way, and... I don't know, I feel like it's all still surreal, in a way. And it's just... I know we all just lost him, but Carole just lost her son, and that has to come first, you know?"
"Oh God." Quinn paled, mortified. "I'm being selfish, aren't I? We all are. She just lost her son, and-"
"And everyone keeps saying that they just saw him," Rachel agreed. "I just talked to him, hours before. That was... that was all I could think about, when I read and heard the messages. Like, that can't be right. It can't be real, because I just talked to him."
"I know it sounds really mean and shallow, but personally I'm just relieved I wasn't the last person to see him." Quinn confessed. She met Rachel's gaze. "Because you know there's always going to be that thought, like, if you had talked to him for just five minutes longer, or invited him to play some pointless videogame, maybe he'd still be alive."
Rachel gave a small nod to indicate her agreement. "Maybe that's what they mean, when they say they just saw him."
"Like it's a guarantee they'll still be there the next day." Quinn agreed.
They fell silent.
Quinn smiled suddenly, recalling a memory that hadn't been particularly fond until that moment, with a lightness she hadn't felt ever since she'd heard the news. "He wanted to name her Drizzle."
Rachel glanced at her, not even needing to ask who the her in question was. "Drizzle?"
"That in-between stage, when it's not quite raining but it still smells like rain." Quinn explained.
"I know what a drizzle is." Rachel retorted.
Quinn smiled. "He thought the baby deserved a name as awesome as she was." Her face fell as she remembered the rest of that memory. "I think... I thought that if he put someone else before him, he'd make a great dad. And the baby deserved that. When Finn stepped up, and tried so hard to be just that, I think it's why he hated me so much, when the truth came out. He wasn't in love with me, not enough to have been that angry, but the fact that he'd come to love the baby as his own, and having that taken away from him... I think that's what hurt him the most."
"Yeah, he..." Rachel sighed. "He would have stayed, you know. He loved you, even when you were with Noah, and he wanted that family with you. But it was the lie, I guess, that really kept him away."
Quinn glanced at her. "And you were going to marry him."
"Yeah." Rachel laughed lightly, bittersweet. "We'd have been divorced within months, probably even weeks, but yes."
"You think so?"
"I know so." Rachel admitted. "Lately I keep getting reminded of parts of me that everyone in McKinley hated, parts that made me so different from everyone else in Lima. Parts that Finn never really liked, even if he tolerated it and maybe tried to understand. And I was talking to Jesse about it, how I was willing to compromise so much of myself, just because I thought I needed to, to be happy. But now..." She sighed. "Finn would have been a great husband, I know that, but he wasn't going to be an enduring one, not for me. To someone else, without question. Someone with less ambition, less... need. He wanted a homemaker, someone who cooks him breakfast and someone who's at the kitchen preparing dinner when he got home. Not someone who can ignore the people around her for days, weeks at a time, preparing for a performance. He would try, but that was never going to be the wife he wanted."
Quinn exhaled. "He thought all it would take was to move to New York, like you'd wanted him to, and everything would be fine between you."
"I thought so too." Rachel admitted. "I never realized until so recently that I wanted him to be a part of my dreams so badly I never realized he didn't have much of his own."
"We all wanted to get out of Lima." Quinn agreed.
"Actually, that's the thing." Rachel countered. "He didn't, really. He just didn't want to be a Lima Loser. And I wish, so badly, that he'd looked to Mr. Hummel more for guidance than he had Mr. Schue."
"I heard about that." Quinn had to smile. "Do you have that on video? I would have loved to see you ripping into a head of day-old grease."
"You're channelling Sue and I think I'd been channelling Shelby. We need better role models."
Quinn tapped Rachel's cup with her own.
After a moment of silence, Quinn spoke again. "I still want to yell at him."
Rachel smiled, a pained and grateful smile at the girl she'd once considered her fiercest competition for the affections of the boy they had once both loved. "Me too."