Chapter Thirteen

When Rachel got to the house it was quiet, meaning LeRoy probably wasn't here yet. She hurried to the kitchen and set some water on the stove to boil. Her hand shook as she stirred the noodles in the pot. Maybe it wasn't the best dinner to bribe someone with -being so plain and everything, but he hadn't done much better in his attempts to get her to like him, so she figured this probably met his standard.

She stirred a bit too vigorously and water splashed out onto her hand. Gasping and jumping back, Rachel quickly turned on the cold water and put her hand under the facet of the kitchen sink. Small tears of pain rolled out of her eyes.

Why was she even bothering to do this? There was no need to impress LeRoy, or make him think she was trying too hard for attention. What was the point of making him dinner when it would be so lame anyway. But, she remembered as her hand began to cool down, she wouldn't have enough time to talk with him otherwise.

The water in the pot began to boil over, withdrawing from the sink, Rachel held a wet towel to her injured hand and turned the stove down to medium.

She looked up at the sound of a lock turning. As the front door swung upon, she made an involuntary movement, reaching for the towel covering her left hand but then stopped. She couldn't hide her injury, her skin would sting too much without the towel.

LeRoy met her eyes as he came into the house. "Hi." He gave a friendly smile. His eyes flicked over the the steam rising from the pot on the stove. "You making dinner?"

Rachel nodded, a bit embarrassed. "I wanted us to eat together."

"Alright, let me go change out of my work clothes, then I'll be right down."

"Okay," Rachel turned off the stove and moved the pot of boiling water to the sink where she poured the noodles into the strainer.

As they ate, LeRoy threw her smiles of appreciation, but Rachel found it hard to return them.

"What happened to your hand?" LeRoy said, pausing before winding more noodles around his fork.

"Nothing," Rachel said. She slid her wrapped hand off of the table and placed it on her lap, where the water made a circle of dampness on her jeans.

LeRoy stared at his plate and frowned, looking like he wanted to say something else, but instead he took another bite of his food.

Rachel let out a sigh. There was no sense in waiting any longer. "LeRoy?" Rachel pressed her lips together briefly before continuing, "there's something I need to tell you."

She had his full attention now, and she decided to focus on the table so that she wouldn't have to stare into the worry on his face.

"Um, its not anything bad," she said quickly, "Its just, a few days ago, my birthmother made contact with me, she invited me to come and see her, so I did and..." Looking over LeRoy's face Rachel couldn't bring herself to tell him the full truth of Shelby's offer. "She wants to be a part of my life, have visits with me and stuff, like a divorced parent would with their kids, and the thing is, I want to see her too."

LeRoy was looking over the table set-up with an expression of disappointment on his face, as he realized the true purpose of the meal. He attempted to mask it before meeting Rachel's gaze. "I think its great that your birthmother is back in your life. How did it go? Is she okay? Are you okay?"

"Yes, we're all fine. She's the coach of Vocal Adrenaline now actually, that's how we met."

"Oh."

Rachel could tell that LeRoy probably wanted more information on Shelby, but he didn't pry and Rachel didn't tell him.

Upstairs, in her room, on her laptop, excitement and nervousness rose up in her stomach as she began her next task. As her computer booted up, she held the slightly crumpled paper from Quinn, where she had wrote down Shelby's email address.

She thought about texting Quinn, asking her for advice or something, but what did Quinn know that she didn't? Many things, but none of them would be helpful in the area of contacting her mom. She had to do this on her own. Quinn would probably agree.

Rachel typed Shelby's address into the bar at the top of the page, then she wrote and rewrote until she got this:

Shelby,

This is Rachel. Next Saturday, I'm not very busy. There is a really amazing vegetarian restaurant at the mall. I really am tired of going there alone, because my friends hate vegetarian food. Do you hate vegetarian food?

Rachel hated the way the email sounded, but putting "hello" behind Shelby's name sounded too formal, but "hi" sounded too friendly, too informal. The rest well, she couldn't help it, and she couldn't keep editing it, so closing her eyes she pressed send.

The words on the screen changed from "sending" to "sent".

A dark, restless feeling settled in her stomach.

She surfed the web for a computer game as she waited for a response. She found a pretty entertaining one, but kept losing because she impulsively checked her inbox every five seconds.

Her eyes were beginning to feel dry with tiredness when she got a response. She jumped when she saw the reply in her inbox and it took a lot of willpower for her to click on it.

Hi Rachel!

It's so, so good to here from you!

I would love to spend time with you next Saturday. Do you want to go to that amazing vegetarian restaurant with me? I have to know what kind of food you've been living off of these past years.

I love you,

Shelby

The email made Rachel squirm as she read it. It was hard to take in a letter oozing with so much affection. But also with desperation. Quinn didn't even try this hard. Of course she didn't need too. Rachel loved Quinn so much...

Her cheeks burning slightly, Rachel sent Shelby another email with the time and place, even attaching a map and directions.

This time Shelby responded almost immediately.

That all sounds good to me!

But its getting really late...

Don't you have school tomorrow?

And glee practice?

Honey you need to get some sleep, rest up those vocal chords.

I'll see you on Saturday, and I love you.

Rachel let out a breath of frustration, feeling overwhelmed by Shelby's slightly patronizing words, motherly words. But she obeyed her command and closed her laptop. As she rolled over in bed, she wondered if a part of Shelby really didn't want to see her, and hoped that she would be stood up by Rachel.

On Saturday, Rachel got to the mail early and paced in front of a designer clothing outlet. Every minute that Shelby didn't show up seemed to increase the chances that she wouldn't. Rachel mistook other tall well dressed ladies for Shelby, but when she finally did see her, she didn't recognize her until she was close enough to see the expression on her face.

Shelby wore a large, almost gloating smile as she spotted Rachel. Rachel had to force herself not to bolt as Shelby approached her. Shelby looking so happy seemed more dangerous than Vocal Adrenaline winning Sectionals and becoming their competition at Regionals.

"Hi, Rachel," She was smiling so broadly Rachel thought it must be hurting her cheeks. She held out her arms and it took Rachel a second to realize what was happening before she was enveloped in Shelby's embrace.

The warmth that filled Rachel as her mother hugged her filled her with annoyance at the absolute joy that Shelby had just displayed at seeing her. It wasn't fair that Shelby could fill the holes left in Rachel's heart from childhood when she could just as easily make new ones. When she had been the cause of the original pain. She knew the annoyance was mostly just a defense mechanism against her other, stronger emotion: vulnerability.

"Don't look so disappointed to see me," Shelby said, noticing Rachel's expression. Her feelings must have somehow filtered onto her face.

"Its just normal teenage embarrassment at being seen in the mall with your mother," Rachel lied. Then she realized she had just called Shelby her mother.

Another gleam of triumph shown in Shelby's eyes.

"Don't worry Rachel, I'm a cool mom."

"Right." Rachel laughed.

As they sat down at a table, Rachel's initial annoyance at seeing Shelby wore off and she was hit hard in the gut by a pang of sadness.

"You gotta tell me what to order Rachel, I don't know what any of this stuff is."

Rachel helped Shelby pick out the best tofu stir-fry. They ended up ordering two different things, but it was a Chinese restaurant and the dishes were made for sharing.

"So," Rachel said after the waiter had left, "How's Vocal Adrenaline?"

"Their good," Shelby said, taking a sip of water. "As always, although, they do still have a lot to improve on before Regionals," she smiled, "if your looking to spy on them though, don't think I'll give anything away just because I'm your mother."

"And don't worry, I won't reveal any of the secrets to Finn's dancing."

Shelby laughed lightly, weather she understood the joke or not Rachel wasn't sure. Perhaps Shelby did know a lot about New Directions, perhaps enough to know each of its members by name. Rachel was in the group, so why wouldn't Shelby use her social connections and powers of persuasion to get every detail of information on them that she could? After all she seemed to have made friends with Will Schuester and Tina was still dating Jesse. Tina could sometimes be shy, but never really managed to keep her lips sealed around Jesse. And everyone knew how close Jesse and Ms. Corcoran were.

Shelby looked at Rachel more seriously. "But I don't wanna just talk about glee. How have you been Rachel? Like what's going on in your life?"

Of course Shelby ignored the very likely possibility that Rachel did just want to talk about glee.

"Besides ending my nine-year estrangement with my birth-mother, not much."

"I guess that would be a pretty big event."

"Not as big as spending my childhood running from angry foster parents and ignoring disapproving teachers glares."

"Well, I would say that reuniting with my daughter was a huge event in my life. Even bigger than suffering through cancer treatment, which may as well have been a form of torture." Shelby waved a hand in the air like she was brushing away an irksome strand of stray hair.

"Oh really? How was college then mom? Let me guess, torturously terrible, I'm so glad I got peed on and shunned and beat-up, so much easier than enduring that."

Shelby stared down at the table with a slight grimace, and Rachel realized that her tone had been a bit too grating.

"Look, I'm sorry," Rachel said genuinely. Inwardly she was fearful that Shelby would just get up and leave if she didn't apologize for her continuing attitude. "I-I didn't mean to minimize the obvious pain you went through." She said softly.

"No, Rachel, your right. I'm not mad at you sweetie. I'm mad at myself. Did all of those things really happen?"

"Yes."

"I should have been there for you."

"This is all just a lot to take in. A-and your acting like...like nothing's changed."

"You mean because I'm acting like I'm still your mom?"

Rachel refrained from nodding.

"Rachel, I know you have a lot to forgive me for but isn't there some way that you can let me back into your life? If a complete stranger can just become your parent I don't see why I can't be again."

Rachel was about to ask Shelby what she was talking about but stopped herself, remembering how she had implied that she considered LeRoy to be her father.

They both fell silent and stared down at the table as the food was brought and placed in front of them.

"Thank you," Shelby managed to tell the waiter before she left who smiled warmly in response.

Rachel continued to stare down at the table, she felt tears coming to her eyes.

"Rachel."

She looked up and met Shelby's eyes.

"I want to make it up to you. I want to rebuild our relationship. Can you please just give me a chance?"

Rachel looked around at the food with a grim smile. I am she thought. But outwardly she just nodded.

"Now, we should eat this food don't you think? It looks delicious."

The rest of the meal reminded Rachel a bit of dinner with Leroy. But this was mainly because looking at tofu was a good excuse to not look at Shelby's eyes. As far as confidence went, she felt like she had done well so far. But the whole situation felt so temperamental. It could all just break and crumble in a matter of seconds. Rachel was afraid that the next time she looked into Shelby's eyes she would be paralyzed. By painful memories and the desire to go back in time and be who she was nine years ago.

When the waiter came with the bill, Rachel reached for her purse. "I brought money." She pulled out a few twenties.

"No, absolutely not. I am not allowing you to pay for this Rachel."

"It would make me feel better about things."

Shelby looked at her for a long time and then sighed. They were both so stubborn. "Fine, but I'm paying for my half, and I've got the tip."

Rachel smiled, "fine." She knew she couldn't fight her more on this one. She could always use the extra money Leroy gave her for cigarettes. She could easily smoke a whole pack after this visit. It wasn't that it had gone badly, necessarily, it was just that it had given her so much energy, sent her brain into a crazed frenzy that she needed to calm down.

"It was really good to see you Rachel," Shelby said as they stood outside the restaurant. "Whenever you want to, email me and we can do something like this again, maybe, maybe I could even take you clothes shopping sometime."

"Okay," Shopping was the last thing Rachel wanted to do, because although she did want Shelby's advice in style, she didn't think Shelby would let her pay for her own clothes, and she didn't like feeling indebted to her.

Shelby pulled Rachel into a hug. A tear rolled down Rachel's face and she quickly wiped it away.

As she turned her back on Shelby and walked away, she was filled with warmth and happiness. She had managed to survive their first lunch together in nine years.

Sorry about this guys, the update was not for a new chapter but to edit this one. I accidentally posted the wrong version. Its just the Shelby-Rachel scene that got edited.