Chapter Eighteen

The energy pounded against Rachel, the living beat of the club. The music flowed through her, and she tried to focus on that, blend in with the rest of the moving bodies. She had been to clubs before, but she had never gone alone. She had hoped though, that time alone away from her friends with only the music and strangers pounding around her, would clear her mind.

It was a club for high school students, and there was a rule no alcohol allowed. But someone had smuggled in weed. No one had offered her any yet, but a hand reached out, and touched her own.

They both felt the electric touch.

The girl turned her face towards Rachel and smiled. She had a large smile, and her teeth gleamed white against the black surroundings of the club.

"Got a cigarette?"

"No," Rachel hesitated a moment. "Do you?"

"Wait till you try this," The girl said through her smile. "My buddy Mark made it, it's got an extra edge."

The girl handed her a cigarette. Rachel took a drag. A sloppy smile formed on her face. "That's something."

"I know right," The girl laughed.

Rachel took another drag, then blew smoke which clouded the vision of her face before disappearing into the dark air. "What's your name?"

"Dani."

"I'm Rachel."

"Rachel...do you go to Carmel High?"

"No, Mckinley."

"Oh, I thought I saw you around Carmel," Dani said. "That's where I go."

"Yeah that was probably me, my mom works there, Shelby."

"Ohh, Ms. Corcoran?"

The way she held out Ms. made Rachel grin. "Pretty well known?"

"Yeah, everybody knows her, her glee club struts around the school like cheerleaders do in normal high schools."

Rachel let out a soft chuckle. "You come here a lot?"

"Now and again," Dani said, narrowing her eyes. "Why?"

Rachel took another drag. "You seem at home here."

"I like the music."

"I like your smile," Rachel hadn't actually meant to be so straightforward.

Dani laughed, then thought for a minute. "Do you have a girlfriend?"

"What? I'm not gay."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, its just your so pretty, and it seemed like you were flirting."

Rachel laughed. "No I'm totally gay. Like one hundred percent lesbian. I don't know if my ex was though..." Rachel ended darkly, then realized mentioning her ex might not be the best idea. "But I'm totally over her." she added quickly.

Dani pondered this for a moment, seemingly torn between asking if she was okay, and getting on with what they both hoped they both wanted.

"Break-ups are always tough."

"I broke it off," Rachel said.

By now they were both standing, while everyone danced and moved around them, like flowers moving in the wind, scenery decorating their conversation.

"What about you? Are you single?" Rachel asked, the weed urging through her veins, making her bold and insistent.

"I've never had a girlfriend."

"Really?" Rachel said, shocked. "But your so..." She couldn't think how to answer that. "Cool." She finished softly, regretting how honest and vulnerable her voice sounded.

"Yeah, well I was in love with my best friend for three years, and she's on her fifth boyfriend since then and homophobic as hell. I could never bring myself to tell her how I felt about her. So finally I was like, screw it, and I started coming here to try to forget about her."

"Did it work?"

Dani shrugged. "I think we get over people, but we never really get over them, you know?"

Rachel nodded.

"I think we just find someone new, eventually, and that becomes our future, and our love for them just...stays alive in the past. So I get it you know, if your not completely over her."

"Thanks," Rachel said softly. "I-I know what you mean," There was a depth to Dani's eyes, and an openness about her. It made Rachel want to tell her everything, but not yet. "What went down between me and my girlfriend, is very complicated, but I'm...definitely available."

Suddenly the crowd was jostled, with whoops and yells. A kid was being hoisted up by the hands of the crowd, and passed around. A guy knocked into Rachel, sending her into Dani's arms.

Dani caught her and steadied her. "Whoops."

Rachel clung on to her arm a moment too long, and then pulled away. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"People can be, ridiculous," Dan laughed it off, looking towards the crowd where another dude, and now a blonde girl were being lifted up and passed around as well.

"Yeah," Rachel agreed.

"You wanna get outta here?" Dani said. "Go someplace a little quieter, so I can hear everything you say more easily?"

Rachel smiled. "Lets go."

Dani took Rachel's wrist, and led her through the crowds of people.

"How'd you get here?" Dani asked outside.

"Took the bus."

Dani led her to a gleaming black car.

"This is yours?" Rachel said incredulously.

"Yep," Dani said with a casual smile, but looked pleased.

"This is...really nice."

Dani got into the driver's seat and Rachel sat down beside her in the passenger's.

"Where should we go?" Dani said, hands on the wheel. Long fingers flexing over it.

Rachel looked up, a little distracted by their movement. "I don't know," she said. "Wasn't this your idea?"

Dani let out a breathy laugh and Rachel joined in.

Dani's face took on a new expression, calmer, watching Rachel's face with measured calculation. "Have you ever seen the stars touch the city?" She said.

"What do you mean?"

"There's only one place to see that, one perfect place. Wanna go?"

Rachel nodded, brown eyes large and touched with a spark of light. "Yes...I would like that."

"So, what's your life story?" Dani said as she began to drive through the night tinted yellow like beer from the street lights.

"I don't know if you would want to hear it," Rachel said. "It's a bit of a downer."

"Come on, I just told you about my three year crush. Tell me something about you. Like, what do you like to do?"

"I'm in glee club, I like to sing, and I'm also a cheerleader." Rachel felt a bit like she was reading a grocery list. Talking about herself was not one of her strong suits, but Dani was able to make it interesting.

"Cheerleading huh? That explains the looks."

Rachel smiled sheepishly. "I don't like it though. I think I'm going to quit soon."

"What's so bad about it?"

"Coach is gotta be from like hell, and so is most of the team. The work outs are just, exhausting, and they really shouldn't be, its like, even the track kids don't work out like we do."

Rachel might have also said that it was awkward seeing Quinn there, but she left that out. That part wasn't so bad, it wasn't that different from glee club. And usually Brittney and Santana would talk to her during cheer, although it was an either or thing, they were either hanging out with Quinn, or with her, so sometimes she did get lonely during practice.

"What about you?"

"I do tennis..."

Dani was captain of the tennis team, and a sophomore. Rachel listened as she explained how hard it could be to get some of the girls to give it there all, and listen to her. But from her energetic personality, and charisma, Rachel thought that she was perfectly suited to be a leader. She told Rachel that she was the first person in her family to get a license, her brother was seventeen, but her parents hadn't let him drive because of his grades. And because they had caught him with drugs a couple of times.

"I would hate to know, what they would do to me if they caught me with drugs," Dani laughed. "I mean I'm supposed to be their perfect child and all. I don't do anything really intense," she added. "Just a bit of pot or a cigarette every now and then."

"Me too," Rachel said. "I don't do a lot of pot though, but I like it though, its been a while, I mostly just stick to cigarettes."

Dani drove through a road of forestry, then they broke through the trees and she eased to a stop. They were on a hill, the city falling below them, lit up by the lights of the night, and the stars reaching down to touch the top of the buildings.

"Wow," Rachel said. "It's beautiful."

She didn't have to fake the phrase either, like she had been worrying she might have too. The sky looked so large from their point of view on the hill, three times as large as the city, shrinking it to a smaller, irrelevant group of pretty lighted buildings under the blanket of the stars. The remnant of worry was wiped from her mind, as if it never existed.

"You can see everything from here," Dani said. "All of the constellations."

Rachel heard a click as Dani took off her seatbelt, the dark material whizzing over her chest and slithering back into its hole near the door of the car.

Her hand fell down between the seats.

Rachel looked at it from the corner of her eye and her breathing tensed. Slowly, she eased her hand down between the seats as well.

"Do you know any of them?" Rachel asked.

"No, not really," Dani said. She stopped looking at the stars and looked at Rachel's eyes. "I just think their beautiful." She took Rachel's hand. "I like to make my own patterns...in the sky with the stars." She drew her fingers across Rachel's palm.

Rachel looked into Dani's eyes, and they burned like a fire place in a cozy wooden cabin. She looked down at her lips and found that they gave off the same, warm inviting feeling.

She leaned in. "How many stars do you think there are in the sky?"

"One," Dani said and she closed the distance between them, kissing Rachel.

They pulled away and smiled at each other.

"You are my star against the sky," Dani said. "Sent here by all the less brighter stars, to walk the earth."

"If I'm a star," Rachel said. "Then you are my dark blue sky."

They both laughed and kissed each other again.

Then they leaned back in their seats and held hands.

"Your deep Rachel, I like that."

"You are too."

"Come on, lets go back to my house and have an incredibly deep and too revealing conversation for strangers to have over beer."

"That sounds...perfect."

~R~D~R~D

Dani's living room had one of those really nice, squashy leather coaches.

"Its fake leather," Dani said. "Don't worry. My whole family, well, except for my brother, are vegetarians."

"Really? That's so cool, I'm a vegetarian too."

Dani got out too beers, and set them on the coffee table. "My parents get back at around midnight, so I'll have to kick you out before that and hide the beer cans, but until then we have plenty of time."

Dani opened a beer and took a sip. "So how cool are your parents with everything?"

Rachel thought she knew what Dani was asking. "Well, my mom's been okay with me being lesbian for as long as I can remember, and my foster Dad's gay so..."

"Foster Dad?"

"Yeah, its complicated."

"Tell me."

Rachel opened up her beer, took a long swig and smiled. She told Dani about foster care, about abusive mothers and fathers, about too many children, about the ones who really were nice. It wasn't typical conversation for a first date, although Rachel wasn't really sure if this counted as that. But she felt like with Dani she could just tell her everything, and it was such a relief. She avoided talking about Quinn though, but explained how difficult it was for her to form a relationship with Shelby.

Dani then explained how her parents didn't know she was a lesbian. She didn't want to tell them because when they got drunk they would make homophobic comments, and laugh about them. She worried about her brother a lot, because her parents didn't seem to believe in him anymore, and she hoped that he could still find the strength to believe in himself.

"You wanna try something stronger?" Dani said. "I've got vodka, my parents have it opened already, so they won't notice if a little goes missing."

Rachel was excited to be drinking the stronger beverage.

Dani then put on a movie, D.E.B.S, a DVD she kept hidden in her room and usually only watched on her laptop.

Rachel didn't even notice how attractive the brunette seductress was.

She just curled into Dani's side, and eventually, from all the beers she had been drinking, dozed off.

An hour later Dani was prodding her awake. "Sorry, it's just you've gotta clear out. My parents will be home soon."

Rachel got up, the room was blurry, but she somehow managed to find her shoes, and struggled to put them on.

"Do you need a ride home?"

"Are you crazy?" Rachel said. "You're as drunk as I am."

Dani handed Rachel a wad of cash and called her a taxi.

"Thank you so much for everything," Rachel said.

"It was my pleasure," Dani smiled her beautiful smile.

Rachel returned to Leroy's house with Dani's number in her phone, and written on her arm, and folded hurriedly on a slip of paper in her pocket. They hadn't had the typical evening of two people who like each other and meet at a club. They hadn't even had sex. But Rachel felt like she could trust Dani, even though she barely knew her.

She looked up at Leroy's house and took a deep breath, then went inside.

~R~D~R~D

The next morning Rachel was vomiting so much, Leroy called Shelby.

Rachel was a bit surprised and horrified that he did this. The whole point of going to the club when she was at Leroy's was because Leroy had always been the cool laid back parent, and Shelby wasn't supposed to find out. Leroy wasn't supposed to notice. But Rachel had never had a hangover this bad before, which was saying something because foster kids bought pretty cheap beers. Dani's beer wasn't cheap at all, Rachel was sure, but her hangover was so bad that she couldn't hide it, not even from Leroy.

Shelby held a bucket, and brushed back Rachel's hair, as she vomited.

"Rachel, you can't just go places in the middle of the night without telling me or Leroy." Shelby said voice alight with energy. "What if something really bad had happened to you? We wouldn't have even known where to find you."

"Sorry," Rachel managed to mumble between episodes of vomiting.

Shelby gathered up Rachel's hair, and tied it into a ponytail at the base of her neck.

Rachel leaned back noticing Shelby's arm was around her.

"What were you thinking?" Shelby said.

Rachel shrugged, then thought for a minute, which was difficult under Shelby's burning gaze. "I was just lonely," Rachel said, a remnant of the truth.

Shelby pulled her into a hug. "Rachel, you make it so hard to stay mad at you."

Rachel felt her eyes sting. She was so worn out from everything, she probably could just start crying, wrapped in her mothers warm, protective arms.

"Did you at least go to a good club?"

Rachel grinned. "I went to an alcohol-free club for teenagers."

"Oh so you were being responsible?" There was a little sarcasm in her voice, not because going to an alcohol-free club wasn't responsible, but because she had gotten drunk anyway.

Rachel was about to talk about Dani, but then she stopped herself, realizing she didn't want to get her in trouble. "Yeah, I met up with some friends afterward, and then they gave me something to drink."

"And who were these friends?"

Rachel didn't answer.

"Your not going to tell me, are you?"

In answer, Rachel pulled away and doubled over to vomit into the bucket.

Author's Note: Alright, so I loved Demi Lovato on glee as Dani. I think Rachel and Dani have a lot of chemistry together. Review if you feel like it. Though all those negative reviews do get a little depressing, I appreciate receiving your honest opinion. :)

I know that this story doesn't exactly contain the energy or charisma that it used too, but when I started writing this, I had a plot in mind and I feel like I want to finish it because of that. I admit that Dani was not in that original plot, but I got this idea and it surprised me and I liked it. I think I got this idea because I ended the emotionally abusive relationship that I was in. So this chapter is pretty much in celebration of that and of new beginnings. I know I don't usually write long authors notes like this, but I just feel that this is a positive turning point in my life.

I don't think that this story is ever going to be what it used to be, so I will be moving on to work on other projects, but I might finish it. I just want to thank everyone who has stuck with this story so long whether they ended up hating it or loving it.

I know I definitely love some chapters, others not so much. I think that with fanfiction writing, what matters most to me is capturing the emotion in the scene, and that's what I tried to do to the best of my ability throughout this story.