I wanna thank all of you for being patient. I know I let this story sit for way too long.

Also to the person who said "Rae" isn't Rachel's nickname, it is in this story bruv.

Black Betty

Chapter 4:

Rated M

Quinn's POV

Though I walked through the hallways with a hard mask on my face and both hands on my hips, seemingly the epitome of power, my mind was in absolute overdrive.

Before the beginning of this week, I would always wonder what Rae was up to. If she was ok, what she looked like, how her day was going. I sometimes practiced what I would say to her in the future. Because I figured I would simply look her up sometime after I graduated and got away from my family. Then from there we'd reconnect and rekindle the friendship that once was.

But the Gods had a different plan. Now I have to figure out what I want to say to her right now, 3 to 4 years later, in 2 to 3 minutes.

I almost passed the library I was so lost in thought, I stopped, and stumbled forward a bit when she ran into me. Next thing I knew her hands were on my hips steadying me, pulling me closer to her. We were so close that I could feel her body heat, and even when she let go of my hips they still tingled. She was making my breath shudder.

"Sorry, I probably shouldn't have been walking so close." It felt colder when she took a couple of steps away, giving me space.

I just shrugged it off, I had to. "It's ok." I said while gesturing towards the libraries entrance. I went in first, eager to escape the still crowded hallway and went towards my corner where a sofa was placed.

I easily made my self comfortable, crossing my legs over the middle cushion as Rae took her seat on the opposite end.

I took that moment to stare at her some more, my eyes caught onto the "x" on her neck, and I made a mental note to ask her about it at a later time. I continued scanning down her body as subtly as possible.

Her blue flannel was cuffed up to the elbow, open, and underneath she had on a white V-neck. Everything seemed brand new, which I'm assuming it was since it's still the first week of school. She had on some skinny khakis and dark brown sperry's which I raised an eyebrow at, I just would've never pictured that.

"Nice shoes Rae." I said with a playful grin.

She immediately smacked her teeth while lifting up her leg, catching a view of her shoes. "Mom bought them for me. She said I look sophisticated." She huffed.

I couldn't help but smile at her expression. Rae was always trying to give off the "bad ass" vibe. Well, not that she wasn't (she did just get out of Juvi and all) but she was always soft around me.

We sat in silence for a little bit. I was extremely adamant about not speaking first so I went ahead and pulled my phone out of my bag. I thumbed through my apps and settled on playing Color Switch, glancing up at Rae every once in a while, peeping her facial expressions.

For now it seemed as if we were both ok with not speaking.

I made it all the way to the score of 47 before I messed up. I let out a huff of frustration and looked up from my phone to give my eyes a break just to stare right into Rachel's deep brown ones.

She was staring at me hard, unwavering. It made me wonder how long she was looking at me before I noticed. Her eyes flickered down, I couldn't really hone into what part of my body she was staring at but I couldn't help the blush that crept onto my cheeks when our eyes met again.

"I missed you, Lucy." I'm sure I was an even deeper shade of red now. I felt hot, as if I could break out into a sweat at any moment.

But I found myself nodding my head. Because of course I missed her even more, more then she could ever comprehend.

"I see you still choke up when I get deep with you." She whispered. "But, I'm sorry for just jumping in and messing up whatever you have going on here." She said while making gestures towards my cheerleading uniform. "Which is ironic. I remember you and I making fun of cheerleaders back in middle school."

I started chewing on my lip as I remembered those days. Walking together on the track during gym, or having lunch together even though we had different classes.

"I missed you too Rachel." I finally gritted out.

I saw her grin a little bit while leaning back into the seat. "That must've been so hard for you." Her sarcasm was dripping off of those words and I could barely contain an eye roll.

"You didn't mess anything up, by the way. I mean—" I glanced up at the conveniently placed clock on the wall. "It's only been about a day and a half so-" I shrugged after speaking, not knowing what else to say.

She nodded her head, puffing up her cheeks. "So, you wanna start or should I?"

She never did beat around the bush much. Straight to the point as usual.

"Well I can start." She said before I could even get a word out. She looked straight at me with a serious look, and I could already feel how heavy this conversation was going to be.

"First thing that comes to mind is, why in the hell you stopped writing me? The second thing I wanna know is what happened to you? You're blonde?"

Her faced was twisted in confusion and she was gesturing to my body with her hands, waving them up and down.

I wasn't sure if I should feel insulted or embarrassed for being called out on my hair color. No one in this city knew about my past, nobody knew about the amount of weight I had to lose to look like this, nobody but the girl sitting beside me, who has seen me at my worst. Plus, her brother.

"My dad stopped letting me write you when he found out you got in trouble. You know how he is, well, I guess you never knew how deep it was but, he's a very controlling man." I sighed and sat back further into the couch, trying to force myself to get comfortable enough to talk about my father.

"He found me writing a letter to you one evening and ripped it up, saying that it was your fault that I was over weight, and other things." I took a deep breath. "Anyway, I had to stop writing you, after all we had moved out here to Ohio and I figured it would be best to try and forget about you. Not that I could, but I wanted a fresh start, after all I didn't have you to defend me anymore, so I basically just fixed everything that was wrong with me, and started going by my middle name." I shrugged after my explanation, knowing it wasn't exactly good enough.

She looked confused but nodded her head in acceptance to my rambling.

"What's embarrassing is that I kept the few letters that you did send me." She said. I smiled sadly, I kept the ones she sent me as well.

I read through them last night.

"That's not embarrassing, I'm touched."

It was her turn to shrug. "Why'd you change your hair? What's there to be ashamed about.?"

"Oh there's plenty." I said morbidly. "The joke in my family is that I'm not really my fathers child. That I was adopted, left on the front porch. At least that's my sisters theory is. My cousins, on my fathers side of course believe my mother whored her self out for a night and my dad was kind enough to stay with her. Or some other bullshit."

I didn't look back up at Rae to gauge her reaction. I decided to just stare at my hands, just incase she didn't believe me, I wouldn't have to see it.

"You never told me your family was like that. But I guess once I think about it, your sister and father smiled way too much. Kind of creepy in hindsight."

I glanced back up at her and saw her smirking at the ceiling, her eyes closed. I shook my head in disbelief realizing she hasn't changed much.

Then with every breath I took I started to feel a bit lighter, knowing our friendship didn't dwindle away.

"So tell me about you. Are you ok?" I asked timidly.

She tilted her head towards me, her dark brown eyes telling me everything I needed to know before she even spoke.

"I don't really know." She shrugged. "I feel ok, but I don't think my ok is a normal ok. You know what I mean?"

I shook my head, shifting a bit closer to her. "I don't, but I'm always here if you need someone to talk to."

She nodded her head quickly and sat up straighter. "Yeah, yeah. It's whatever though. I just missed out on a lot of stuff, it's not that deep."

She shrugged, rubbing her hands on her pants, being all twitchy. I rolled my eyes, and she claims I'm the one that can't handle deep conversations.

"Ok, so is that everything you wanted to get off your chest?" I asked, sort of changing the topic.

She shrugged again but nodded. "I guess. Now it's just us getting to know each other again. You wanna get something to eat? It is lunch time."

I nodded my head and stood up, straightening out my skirt and tightening my pony tail out of habit. I stood up straight, eyebrow raised at the slow poke as she started stretching out dramatically, making some weird groaning/wheezing sound.

"Anytime now."

She huffed at me before tilting her head towards the libraries exit.

I ended up being the first one to walk in the cafeteria with Rachel one step behind me. Only the people that were right by the door seemed to stare pretty hard at the two of us walking together.

It was no secret that my only friends were Santana and Brittany, now all of a sudden I'm being seen with the new kid, who just happens to know more about me than anyone in this whole town.

After grabbing a Sylvester approved "Power Meal" I joined Brittany and Santana at our usual table, basically pushing Rae into the only empty seat beside me.

Santana kind of glanced at me then started to stare down Rae, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Brittany just grinned at the both of us.

"Nice of you to finally join us Q." Santana said, never taking her eyes off Rae.

Rachel just smirked at her, blindly picking up some baby carrots and eating them, throwing my co-captain a wink.

I inwardly groaned and focused on my cold chicken strips. There were one too many ego's sitting at this table.

"So what's your name greenie?"

I didn't bother looking up, knowing exactly where this was going.

"Rachel, and yours?"

The chicken I was chewing was juicy enough, but not seasoned well. Coach really has it out for us. She even put dried mangos as the "side" for this meal.

"No, we're not dating. I knew her since I was kid, I've been back four days, I don't work that fast."

I glanced back up at everyone, wondering how I zoned out while looking at cold chicken slices.

Rachel's statement was directed at Brittany, I would ask for someone to catch me up on the conversation, but I'm not too sure I wanted to be in the convo in the first place.

The bell ended up ringing before anyone could say anything else. I was grateful for the life saver, I can't stand being around Santana for too long.

Without thinking much about it I grabbed onto Rae's flannel, easily falling into the old way I would walk with her when we were younger.

Which is basically me dragging her to different places.

"What class do you have next?" I asked as I dragged her towards my locker to grab my notebook.

"History."

I nodded as I concentrated slightly on entering my locker combination.

"Do you have a phone yet?" I asked while glancing back for her respone.

She shook her head. Once my locker was opened I grabbed a marker and swiftly grabbed her arm, lifting up her flannel sleeve.

"I assume you have a house phone." I jotted down the 10 digits, capping the marker and rolling down her sleeve so no one would see.

"I have practice after Chem, so I won't see you after this but… I'm glad we talked." I said, throwing a slight smile her way while tossing the marker back into the locker.

She nodded her head. "Right. I'll um, I'll call you tonight."

"Yes you will." I couldn't help but keep smiling at the dork. "Later Rae."

"Bye Lucy." She grinned while walking backwards, thinking she was so smooth.

I rolled my eyes while grabbing my notebook, mentally preparing for this last torturous class.

AN: Hey, sorry about the long wait. It wasn't fair to make anyone wait this long. But writers block is a superb bitch. But I feel like i'm back on track, so i'm more excited about the next chapter than the one that I just wrote, so stick with me.

And please review, it means a lot.