Thank you for your kind words and for welcoming me back. Also, thank you for your continued interest and support.

I do not own Glee or the characters and I especially do not own The Billionaire's Embrace.

MERCEDES

In the morning, I awoke to find an empty house and my mother smoking at the kitchen table wearing the same clothes she'd had on the night before. She didn't look like she had slept at all.

"There's coffee," she said.

"Thanks," I replied. Then I poured myself a cup and sat across the table from her.

It felt strange after so long to be back in this house where I grew up, sharing coffee with my mother like the intervening years had never happened. But if she didn't want to talk about the past, I wasn't going to bring it up.

"You should get some sleep. I'll sit vigil for a while," I offered.

She shook her head.

"Maybe later. I have some cooking to do."

"I can do that, too," I said.

"Oh, you still know soul cooking? You haven't forgotten everything?" She scoffed. "I doubt it."

That stung.

"I still cook for myself," I said. "Every recipe you ever taught me."

"Well," she said as she exhaled and stubbed out her cigarette. "At least you're not on drugs, or in prison. It could be worse."

That surprised me. I would've thought abandoning my family ranked me much lower on the scale than someone like my cousin Tyrone...who as I learned the night before...was doing six to ten in Chino but still called his mom every weekend.

We sat in silence for a while, me drinking my coffee and my mother smoking another cigarette. Then she said,

"Help me cook and then I'll sleep for a little while."

"Okay," I said.

We had cooked together more times than I could count, and so, we fell easily into the rhythm of it... me chopping, her rolling and frying.

My mouth watered as the kitchen filled with the scent of good old southern food cooking. It took me back to when I was much younger.

We finished quickly with the two of us working and afterwards my mother went into the back of the house to sleep. I finished putting the foods in containers to keep warm, then I went into the living room.

One of my aunts, Melba, had arrived, and was sitting there smoking a cigarette.

"You helped cook?" she asked me.

"Yeah," I said. "Mom is sleeping."

She nodded.

"Good. She needed it." She motioned to the chair beside her. "Sit and do crosswords with me. The house is too quiet without people, but we'll make do."

And that was how we passed the morning, sitting beside the window doing crosswords mostly in silence.

A couple of neighbors showed up later and my aunt roped them into playing a game of Trivia with us. She's very knowledgeable and therefore won every game.

And although I count myself as a know-it-all, I didn't stand a chance against my her.

We took a break around noon and went into the kitchen to eat some food. While we were in there, the doorbell rang...

My aunt looked at me, eyebrows raised.

"Well, go get it. You're the daughter of the house."

She was right, technically, but I still felt weird about answering the door since it hadn't really been my house for a long time.

But someone had to get it, and it wasn't going to be her.

Sighing, I hauled myself out of my chair and went to see who it was.

There was a person standing on the front step, but it was so bright outside and so dim inside the house, that I couldn't tell who it was.

However, I opened the storm door with a polite smile already fixed on my face, and then froze.

It was Devin, my first boyfriend.

"Hi, Mercedes," he said. He looked just the same, only older, and my heart turned over in painful recognition.

He was wearing the kind of jumpsuit that auto mechanics wore and his name was stitched on the pocket.

"Hi," I said, feeling dazed and then belatedly stepped aside to let him in the house. "We have, um. There's food."

"Great," he said, giving me a cautious smile. "I'm pretty hungry."

I led him into the kitchen and stood in the doorway while he made easy conversation with my aunt and the neighbors, and ate twice as much food as someone his size should've been able to.

Devin was a small guy, only a few inches taller than me, but solid and muscular. And I had always been amazed by how much food he could put away.

Seeing him again was like a hot knife in my belly. I wanted to cry, or hug him, or run away.

He was not only my first boyfriend, he was my first love.

We started dating our freshman year of high school and we broke up the night before I left for New York, when I told him I was leaving.

Maybe I had never really gotten over him...

I wandered back out to the living room and stood by the window, staring blindly into space.

Coming home had been a mistake.

I thought of Sam, three thousand miles away, and how he would never know this part of me...the Mercedes I became in California.

New York seemed like a distant country now...

A floorboard creaked behind me and I turned...

Devin came up behind me, wiping his hands on a paper napkin.

"I should've changed, probably," he said. "Sorry. I was at work."

"It's okay," I said. "Um... How are you?"

"Good," he said. "Busy. The shop's doing well."

When I left California, he and his brother had been making plans to buy out the local mechanic who was retiring.

"So you bought the garage," I said.

"Yeah," he said. "We're making a good living." He stuffed the napkin in his pocket. "You want to go talk outside?" He tilted his head in the direction of the kitchen.

I looked where he was indicating and saw my aunt and the neighbors peering at us. They quickly turned away and pretended like they weren't eavesdropping, but that was obviously what they were doing.

I rolled my eyes. That had been one of the worst things about my adolescence...trying to do something, anything, without every black person in San Bernardino hearing about it before dinnertime.

The grapevine was all-seeing and all-powerful.

Devin and I went out into the front yard and I was careful to close the door firmly behind me. I was an adult...old enough now that I wasn't going to tolerate anyone spying on me.

We stood under the avocado tree and I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling weirdly exposed.

When I was eighteen, this man knew me better than anyone; but we were different people now.

He scratched his head.

"Now, I can't think of anything to say," he said.

I chuckled, more out of nervousness than because he'd said something funny.

"It's a little strange, isn't it?"

"Yeah, a little," he said. "I heard you were in town. I wanted to see you."

"I thought you would still be mad at me," I said.

He shrugged.

"Yeah, I was mad for a while. But I know why you left."

"You do?" I asked, surprised.

"Yeah. Your dad, and everything." He shrugged again. "Right? It wasn't a secret that he drank too much and...you know. And you were weird for months, like you were hiding something. I thought it was another guy, but after you left, I figured out that you were just planning your escape."

I turned away, afraid to let him see my face. I felt raw, stripped down to bare nerves.

That last night, when I told him I was leaving, I had said I didn't love him anymore. I'd been trying to hurt him, to keep him from asking too many questions, and I knew from his expression that I had succeeded.

That was the one thing that haunted me, my one regret.

And now he was telling me in his roundabout Devin way, that he had forgiven me.

"Look," he said, "I have to get back to work. Do you want to get dinner later? My treat. I'll even talk your mom into letting you out of the house."

I drew in a deep breath and turned back to face him.

"How are you going to do that?" I asked. "I've got a strict curfew, you know."

"I'm an upstanding member of the community now," he said. "No more sneaking around."

"Okay," I said. I smiled at him. "Dinner sounds really nice."

Devin came at six and picked me up in the same beat-up Chevy he'd been driving since high school.

My mother went out onto the porch with me and said,

"That Devin's a good boy. Be nice to him."

I stared at her in surprise. Devin had always been good-for-nothing or delinquent. I wondered what he'd done to get my mom on his side.

I walked down the cracked sidewalk and eased myself into the passenger seat of Devin's car.

"Can't you afford a better car by now?"

He grinned.

"Sure, but I like this one. Lots of happy memories."

My memories of his car primarily involved driving up into the hills and making out in the back seat. I blushed and turned my head to look out the window.

We went to the same Mexican place we'd always gone to as teenagers, and sat in a booth overlooking the parking lot.

The menu hadn't changed at all.

I ordered Chile Relleno and a margarita as big as my head. We ate guacamole and waited for our food to arrive, gazing shyly at each other across the table, like middle schoolers at their first dance.

"I bet you can't get good Mexican food in New York, huh?" Devin asked.

"Well, you'd be surprised," I said. "These are still my favorite Chile Rellenos, though."

"Will you tell me about New York?" he asked. "I still haven't made it out of the state."

"Not even to Vegas?" I asked. Whenever anyone had some extra cash, they went to Vegas and blew it all in a single weekend.

"Not even to Vegas," he said. "I like to keep my money, not gamble it away."

"Some things never change," I teased. He'd worked two part-time jobs all the way through high school and saved every penny of it. It seemed to have paid off.

"So, New York," he said, leaning towards me, arms resting on the table.

"Okay," I said.

I told him about the way I felt the first time I saw the Manhattan skyline, riding the train into the city from the airport.

I told him about the hot air gusting up from vents in the sidewalk when a train blew past underneath, and the disgusting pigeons everywhere. And what it was like to walk through Central Park at night while it was snowing.

I didn't tell him about my job, or about Sam. I just told him about the guy who made sandwiches at the bodega near my house, who knew my name.

"Is it true that everyone wears black all the time?" he asked.

"Yeah, office workers and people wearing winter coats," I said. "People are also pretty friendly. It's not like you hear."

"Maybe someday I'll see for myself," he said. "Not in the winter, though. I'm too warm-blooded."

"The first winter was bad," I admitted. "You get used to it, though. You just need the right clothes."

Our food came and we ate and talked about everything that had happened in the last six years.

Devin told me that his sister had gotten married, his brother's girlfriend had just had a baby and they were planning a wedding to keep the relatives happy.

He said he'd been dating a girl for a while, but he broke it off when she started bugging him about having kids.

"I'm not ready for that," he said. "I'm focusing on my business now, you know?"

"You're still young," I said. "You don't have to start popping out babies at twenty-four. You've got time."

"Tell that to my mom," he said, rolling his eyes, and I grinned. She'd been ready for grandchildren ever since his sister turned sixteen.

The margarita made me feel warm and languid, and it was easy to sit there laughing and bantering with Devin like no time had passed.

He knew things about me that nobody else ever would.

He had held me while I cried on the nights I climbed out of my bedroom window to escape my father's drunken rampages. And he had seen me cold and furious after arguing with my mother.

That part of my life was over now and he was its sole witness...the one person I had trusted enough to see me live through it.

We were fooling ourselves, of course. Too much time had passed. We had lost our old intimacy and would never get it back. But it was nice to pretend for a while.

We paid and went out to the car.

I expected Devin to start the car and drive off, but instead, he sat there with his hands on the steering wheel, not moving.

"I should probably get back," I said. "The wake..."

"Sure," he replied, but he still didn't start the car. Then he turned towards me abruptly and slid one hand around the back of my neck.

And I realized I was holding my breath.

"Mercedes," he said.

Then he kissed me.

And I kissed him back.

Just for a moment, but it was enough.

I pulled back, my heart beating.

"Sorry, I...um..."

"Bad idea, I know," he said and grinned. "I had to try, though."

We drove back to my mom's house in silence. It wasn't uncomfortable, though; just the familiar silence of two people who knew each other well enough to not have to say anything at all.

But my lips still tingled from his kiss.

He pulled to the curb in front of my mom's house. All the lights were on in the house, a warm orange glow from within.

"It was good to see you again," he said.

"Yeah," I said. I swallowed. "I'll email you, okay? Maybe the next time I'm in California..."

"Sure," he said. "I'd like that."

"Devin, I just want you to know," I said. "I'm sorry for what I said when I broke up with you. I didn't mean it. I didn't stop loving you."

"I know," he said.

At that, I leaned in and kissed him, slow and sweet, then got out of the car and stumbled blindly towards the house.

We both knew I wouldn't email. And maybe I would never see him again.

I just didn't know how I felt.

The house was full of people, as usual...smoking, talking and playing cards. And I stood in the doorway, feeling overwhelmed by the lights and noise.

My mother came over and said,

"You're back so soon? Come help me in the kitchen, then."

"Okay."

My heart ached... What was Sam going to think? I shouldn't have kissed Devin, but it seemed like the right thing to do in that instant right before I did it.

I couldn't bring myself to regret it, though. He had been my whole world for four years. Maybe I just needed to say goodbye.

The kitchen was empty and quieter than the living room and it was easy to let my hands move and my mind wander.

Chopping vegetables was sort of like meditating, in a way.

Maybe it was that blank space in my head that made me say it...like in the absence of conscious thoughts my mouth filled up with words I hadn't known I needed to say. Or maybe I just temporarily lost my mind. But either way, after a long, silent span of working, I turned to my mother and said,

"Do you remember that last fight we had, right before I left?"

She made a noncommittal noise.

"I remember."

"You told me to leave," I said, and my throat tightened unexpectedly with the weight of years of regrets and the grieving I had never really given myself enough room to do "You told me to get out and never come back."

"I remember," she said again, stirring the pot, not looking at me.

"Why did you say it?" I asked desperately. "Did you hate me that much that you didn't want to look at my face ever again..."

"No!" she said, voice sharp. She set the spoon down and turned to me. "You had to go. I knew what you were planning. Your dad found the plane ticket. He was..." She shook her head. "He was so angry. I was afraid for you." Suddenly, to my shock, she started crying. She raised her hands to cover her eyes and spoke through her tears. "I never protected you from him. I should have. I tried to, then. You had to go."

"Mom," I said, helpless and unsure what to do. I took a step towards her and tentatively wrapped my arms around her. "Mom, don't cry."

She brought her arms around me and squeezed me tight.

"I missed you every day since you left," she said.

And just like that, my heart broke open like an egg. I didn't know how much I needed to hear that until she said it.

We stood there for a while, holding each other and crying.

Finally, she stepped away and wiped her eyes.

"Well, dinner won't cook itself."

"Mom, don't," I said. "Can we talk about this? What happened to dad?"

"I kicked him out," she said. "After you left. I should've done it years ago." She shrugged. "He went to live with his brother, I think. And I haven't heard from him in a long time."

"Why did you wait so long to email me?" I asked. "I thought you hated me."

"No," she said. "How could I hate you? I gave birth to you right here, in this house. And you came out so light and yelling that I knew I would love you until the day I died." She picked up her spoon and stirred the pot. "I wanted you to have a good life. I didn't want you coming back here, letting that Devin get you pregnant and never doing anything with yourself."

"I thought you liked Devin now," I said.

"I like him okay," she said. "But he would've kept you here. And I think you needed to leave."

I thought about that while I sat quietly that night. I couldn't sleep, so I stayed up until dawn broke dim and gray through the faded curtains.

I thought about Sam, about Devin and about my mother. And I thought about how little I had thought about Sam since I arrived in California.

It was like I had traveled back through time and become the person who hadn't met him yet...who had never worked at the club or spoken to a billionaire.

And this person, the one I had returned to, had no place in Sam Evans' world.

I had known it for a long time and I kept putting it aside, ignoring it and pushing it away. But being with Devin again had made me realize how much I valued having that shared background.

We grew up in the same neighborhood, eating the same foods, being yelled at by our mothers in the same way, and Sam would never be able to understand what that was like.

Entire eons of my life were closed to him.

I had thought I didn't care, but it turned out I did. I cared a lot.

Sam was so handsome and so kind, and sex with him was incredible. And if I was someone else, I would hold onto him and never let go.

But as much as I enjoyed his company, we had too little in common when it came to the things that mattered.

He was a rich white boy from the Upper East Side and we would never be able to bridge that divide...unless I changed completely and became the perfect society wife his mother thought he needed.

That would never happen.

He was my impossible dream. And it was time to wake up.

I stood up, sensation flooding back into my numb feet and went into the bedroom to get my phone.

I knew what I was doing was cowardly. The grownup thing to do would be to go back to New York and break up with Sam in person. Or even better, confront my demons, finally put the past to rest and accept that being with him would mean changing.

But I couldn't. I wasn't ready; And I didn't think I would ever be.

I was shy, scared and insecure, but I knew myself. If I gave myself over to Sam wholeheartedly, who would I be then?

I dialed the phone...

Stay safe!