This chapter is a filler between the end of season 2 and season 3! I apologize for it being so short, but I always felt like we needed more of a backstory on what happened regarding Sam's move.
He sends her a text on a Wednesday night while she's going through college pamphlets Ms. Pillsbury gave her during the last week of school. Come out, I'm outside. At first she thinks it's a joke, it's pouring outside, what could he possibly be here for this late? She checks the clock on her phone and it says it's half past eleven. They haven't spoken for a few weeks because he's been busy dating Mercedes and she's been busy being miserable about it, but she sees his truck parked across the street with the lights still on when she goes to peer outside her window. She thinks to herself, what the hell? as she's shrugging on an oversized grey zip up that she thinks is his that she never gave back, overtop of the small navy shorts and white tank top she has on.
She throws the hood over her head and runs through the rain towards his truck as soon as she gets out the front door. "Sam?" she yells because it's raining so hard. He's standing in front of his truck, and she can tell he's been crying even though it's raining. She cups his cheek forcing him to look at her. "Hey, what's wrong?"
"I'm moving." She drops her hand from his cheek like he's burned her, and he finally looks her in the eyes. "I'm leaving in a week."
She feels like someone has just knocked the wind out of her. A week? All she has left with him is a week? She takes a step back from him because she feels like she's suffocating. She has so many questions, so many things she wants to say, and so little time. Her mind is racing, and the words please don't go, I still love you are on the tip of her tongue. Instead she asks him, "where?"
He tells her Kentucky and she thinks Kentucky? What the hell is in Kentucky? He must notice her confusion because he tells her his dad found a decent job out there and his mom has an interview lined up.
"What about Mercedes?" What about us?
"It'll have to end." This is going to have to end.
She starts screaming at him then. Telling him he can't leave, they're about to be seniors. They still have to win Nationals together and someone has to make sure she doesn't strangle Rachel and he still hasn't fulfilled his promise on teaching her how to play the guitar. Her voice cracks when she tells him that he can't leave her here alone with all these people that she can't stand and he grabs her and wraps his arms around her while she sobs into his chest.
Mercedes and Kurt decide to throw him a going away party. She debates on whether or not she should actually go. She's already said her goodbyes to his family when she had gone over to help them pack last weekend, and she's not going to say goodbye to him. Because it's not goodbye, it's see you soon.
She decides to go anyway. She wears a pretty white sundress and her hands are shaking when she parks at the Hummel-Hudson residence. She has this entire speech prepared in mind, I love you, and I'm sorry I'm telling you all of this now because you're leaving. But I love you and I wanted to tell you before you left. But then you started dating Mercedes and I wasn't going to ruin that for you, not when I had already ruined everything else. I don't know why I didn't break up with Finn when you broke up with Santana, and that along with cheating on you will probably be two of my biggest regrets. But I love you Sam, I love you now just how I loved you then and I can't stop.
But she doesn't get the chance because he avoids her the entire time. He won't allow her to talk to him alone and she's confused. Did she do something? They had been fine last week at the motel. She convinces herself he's probably just upset about his breakup with Mercedes that had happened two days ago, ignoring the fact that he's been talking to Mercedes for most of the party.
His family comes to pick him up a couple of hours later, telling him it's time to go. He says individual goodbyes to each of them, everyone but her. She's surprised and hurt, she knows that she has upset him in the past, but she thought they were fine now. He's really not going to say goodbye?
She watches him hop into his truck, his parents car already heading down the road. He waves to all of them before he starts the car and the tears stop flooding down her cheeks. She's standing beside Kurt who must notice her distress because he pulls her into a hug. She pretends that she is laughing into his shoulder to cover up the sounds of her sobs.
She visits him in his new house in Kentucky two weeks before school starts. She gets in her car at four in the afternoon and drives three and a half hours without stopping to see him. She texts Kurt asking for his address and ignores his second message asking her why she needs it if they had his going-away party just three weeks prior.
She sits in her car across the street for twenty minutes before she even has the courage to walk up to his door. What would she even say? Hey Sam, I'm sorry for cheating on you last year, and I know you were with Mercedes this summer and are probably still into her, but the thing is? I still love you. She's sure he would appreciate that.
She gets out of her car anyways with no speech prepared in her mind. Despite it being the end of August, she finds herself slightly shivering standing in front of his door in black running shorts and an old faded red McKinley shirt at eight in the evening. She thinks that's what motivates her to knock on his door.
She kind of forgot about his siblings while on the ride over, which is terrible because of the amount of time she spent babysitting them. But embarrassment washes over her in waves when Stevie is the one who opens the door instead of Sam.
"Oh. Stevie. Hi." He looks just as surprised as to see her standing there. For a minute she thinks that maybe he doesn't remember who she is. It has been a while since she has last seen him and Stacy.
"Quinn?" He says her name like it's a question. Like he doesn't know why she's here. And if he were to ask her? She wouldn't know what she would say because she doesn't exactly know why she's here either. Stevie continues to stand there, his hand still on the doorknob, confusion painted on his face. She wants to roll her eyes at how he hasn't figured it out yet that she's clearly here to see Sam, but contains herself because if she was in his position she would probably feel the same way. His brother's ex-girlfriend who cheated on him driving for almost four hours and showing up on his doorstep? Not something that's very common. Before she can ask him to get Sam, she hears his voice.
"Stevie? Who's at the door?" Stevie doesn't get a chance to answer him as Sam appears behind him. As soon as he registers that it is indeed Quinn Fabray, his face mirrors the same expression as his younger brother still standing in front of him. "Quinn?" She slightly chuckles at how similar the two brothers are.
"Hi." She doesn't know what else to say. She knows that he's probably going to ask her why she's here, but she hasn't quite figured that part out yet. He blinks twice, like he's dreaming and she isn't really here. But there she stands, slightly shivering and biting her bottom lip nervously. Quinn Fabray in all her glory.
"What are you doing here?" Stevie has run off somewhere in the house, and she assumes before he can go off and tell Stacy about their special guest, Sam steps outside and closes the door behind him. She's trying to figure out whether he's genuinely unhappy to see her, or just shocked. She prays it's the latter.
"I-" She cuts herself off. What is she supposed to say? She can't say that she doesn't know. But she also can't say that she still loves him and the thought of never seeing him again keeps her up at night, sobbing into her pillow. "I wanted to come see you."
He chuckles because he knows it's bullshit. He knows there's more. She knows that he knows there is, but Quinn Fabray isn't honest with her feelings. She never has been, and she especially is not going to start changing that now.
"Why?" She knows that Sam stopped taking her crap a long time ago, but she hopes the look she gives him shows that she's pleading with him to let her have this. Let her get away without having to explain herself. Not that she ever has before. She didn't explain to him why she cheated on him with Finn, she didn't explain to him why he decided to date Finn after they broke up, but he never gave her the chance. And now that he is, she doesn't want it.
"Because we didn't get a proper goodbye." It's not exactly a lie. Sam had a moment with each individual New Directions member except for her. Even Lauren got a proper goodbye, but for some reason at his party he had been avoiding having to spend time alone with her like the plague.
"What do you want Quinn?" Her brain is telling herself to leave it. He clearly doesn't want to see her, she made a mistake. But her heart is telling her to stay. For once in her life, fight for what she truly wants. So she does.
"Please Sam." She doesn't quite know what she's begging him for, but she hopes he does and gives it to her. He sighs and runs his left hand through his newly cut hair. Her hand twitches as she almost goes to fix a strand that falls onto his forehead. He nods his head towards her car.
"Alright. Let's go."
They somehow end up at a park. They're sitting on an old blanket she had in the trunk of her car. There's nobody else really there except for them, sitting and laughing on some random ratty old blanket on a Thursday night on one of the last days of summer.
She doesn't know if it's because after this they'll probably never see each other again, or because he's tired of being hostile towards her, but there's no tension between them, it almost feels like how they acted around each other before all of this, when they were still together and allowed to be in love.
He tells her about how he and Mercedes ended things the day that he left because neither of them really want to deal with the long distance, and she tells him about how Finn dumped her in his truck after Jean's funeral like Sam didn't already know. They talk about how happy they are to be done with Ms. Patterson's English class, they talk about how he feels about his new neighbourhood, they talk about anything and everything. Anything but them.
But then she's looking down at the blanket, putting her finger through one of the holes in it, thinking about how much more she owes him than just this. After everything that she's done to him, she really doesn't deserve a proper goodbye.
"Sam, why didn't you say goodbye?" she can feel him staring at her, but she cannot muster up enough strength to look him in the eyes.
"What?" He sounds like he doesn't know what she's talking about, which she thinks is bullshit because she thought they were okay about everything. She helped him babysit his siblings, he kept her from losing her mind.
"You avoided me at your going away party, why? I thought you forgave me for everything." Her voice is shaky and she's afraid that if she looks at him she'll start crying.
"I didn't know how to say goodbye to you. It was too hard." She hates this. How he's now here and she's stuck in Lima without him. Who's going to write little notes in her notebook when she's not looking? Who's going to act out scenes from her favourite disney movies for her? Who's she going to love if it's not him?
"I'm sorry." She doesn't know what exactly she's apologizing for, she just hopes he understands. He doesn't say anything, but when she looks back up at him he's smiling sadly at her. He goes to wipe a stray tear off of her cheek and she leans her face into his palm hoping he won't notice. They stare at each other, only the two of them in this moment. His face moves closer to hers and she closes her eyes as he kisses her.
It starts off slow and sweet like the kisses they used to share by his pickup truck afterschool. But then it becomes more rough, more urgent, as if he's trying to say if this is goodbye, this is how I want you to remember me. And his lips move to her neck and her hands are in his hair and if she were to die right here right now she would be fine with it as long as she went with his hands resting on her hips the way they are right now.
But then his fingertips are playing with the bottom of her shirt and he breaks away to raise an eyebrow at her asking her for permission. She nods her head and he smiles, takes off her shirt following with his own. Then he's taking off their pants and moving to grab a condom out of his wallet and she prays that he can't hear the beating of her heart telling him that she still loves him.
There's a thin layer of sweat covering her after they finish. Her body is still tingling and she feels like she's on cloud nine. She's too content to move or even bother getting dressed. And in another life, a better one where she doesn't mess everything up between them, they are laying in her bed. They're allowed to stay naked under her sheets because her mother doesn't bother checking in anymore. Maybe he sleeps over, or maybe they stay up talking for a few more hours before he has to return home. His parents were always more strict on the curfew thing than her mother ever was.
He brushes a strand of hair off of her cheek and she tries not to react too much because she doesn't want to ruin the moment, but as soon as he realizes what he's doing he's snapping his hand away and passing her clothes over to her. The hurt she's feeling must show on her face because she sees the guilt in his eyes as they look at one another as he's handing her the old McKinley shirt she was wearing. He makes up for it by throwing his arm around her shoulders as they both lay on their backs onto the blanket once more staring up at the stars above.
He's playing with a strand of her hair. She decides that if this is the last time the two of them might ever spend a moment like this, then she is going to do it with no regrets. She's half listening to him point out the different constellations, remembering how much of a genius he was at astrology. It reminds her of a different time, the night that she told him that she loved him. They had been laying in the bed of his truck, similar to how they are now, and he had been pointing out the Big Dipper to her when she just blurted it out, I love you. He had been surprised at first, eyes all wide, but then his face broke out into the biggest grin and he kissed her before continuing onto the Little Dipper. She wonders if he's thinking about that night right now too.
"Do you remember what it was that made you fall in love with me?" She doesn't know if he'll answer. If he'll want to go down this road with her again. But then he's laughing softly and it makes her smile in a way she hasn't for a long time.
"Do you remember that day we tried baking cookies for Stacy's birthday?" and she does. And it makes her laugh along with him. It had been a couple of days before the Hudson-Hummel wedding. Stacy had been asking her mother to make her cookies for her birthday, but Mary just hadn't had the time. So Quinn offered. Sam of course was ropped into helping her, and even though he and Quinn had ended up engaging in a flour fight while the cookies were in the oven, Stacy's reaction when she realized Quinn was making her cookies made it all worth it. "When Stacy had run into the kitchen and saw the cookies, you looked so happy. You had flour all over your nose and in your hair, but you didn't even care or notice as soon as you saw Stacy. And looking at you, in that moment I just knew. So I saved up my allowance for a couple of weeks and bought you that ring because I wanted you to know too."
He's not looking at her while he's telling her all this, eyes still fixated on the sky above. So she allows a few more tears to roll down her cheeks and reaches beside her head to squeeze his hand.
They stay like that for what feels like hours, reminiscing and remembering, until Quinn decides it's probably best that she heads home. It's half past eleven, so she won't get home until around three. Sam tries to convince her to stay, that it's too late for her to be driving all that way, that she can crash in Stacy's room. She rejects his offer, as much as she would like to accept and spend the entire night with him, she's gotten what she came here for, a proper goodbye. So he kisses her softly after she drops him back off at his house, and tells her to text him when she gets home, he tells her that he'll call her soon. Neither of them say goodbye, they just smile at each other once more before she gets into her car and drives off.
He doesn't call like he says he would. She waits three days before she sends him a text telling him it was great seeing him. He replies six hours later and it's almost pathetic how quickly she drops what she's doing to check what he said. He sends her back yeah and her heart drops. It breaks in half just how it had in the hallway that one Tuesday when he broke up with her because she cheated on him with stupid Finn. Stupid Finn who is still somehow screwing her over even though they broke up months ago. Stupid Finn who she blames all of this on because if she doesn't blame Finn she is going to have to accept that all of this is her fault.