A/N: Thanks again for all the reviews! I hope you like this chapter. Also, this story takes place in the universe of my other story, Summer Memories. You don't need to read it to understand what is going on, but obviously I always love more readers!
The parking garage was like a war zone, but eventually Santana found a space and headed into the gym. She decided that it would be the most efficient if she first checked at the front desk to see if anyone had turned anything in during the day. She groaned internally as she saw the woman standing at the front counter.
6 months earlier
"Santana, mother-fucking, Lopez." Santana looked up from the text she was sending as she walked into the gym and stood face to face with a blond who looked about her age.
"Um…can I help you?" She asked the woman smirking behind the counter. Santana's face contorted as she sorted through her internal rolodex.
"You don't remember me, do you?" The woman leaned over the counter, her hands dipping over to the other side. "Jenny Tyler, we went to cheerleading camp in Florida when we were in High School," Santana's scowl deepened. She had found, in the twelve years since High School, that for the most part it was easier to put her High School mean girl face back on before people began regaling her with tales of her teenage cruelty. " I was in the dorm room next to you and…" The woman's forehead wrinkled as she tried to recall the name.
"Brittany. Brittany Pierce." Santana interjected.
"That's right! Oh my God. You guys were, well, 'going through a phase', as my mother would say," the woman chuckled to herself and Santana wondered how long she could take this before she felt the need to claw this woman's eyes out. "You provided the nighttime entertainment for the entire hall."
"Great," Santana said, fishing through her bag for her gym card.
"You know, you're just as hot as I remember you at 15." Santana looked up. Was this woman flirting with her? They locked eyes and the blond blushed. "You know, I always secretly wished that I had been roomed with you instead of that girl—"
"Brittany Pierce," Santana interjected again.
"Right. You were always so…badass with everybody, but I would catch you looking at her with so much adoration…" the woman sighed, "puppy love. I guess that's what it was."
Santana had never before been so desperate to find her gym card.
"So, did you end up staying in touch with that girl…"
"Brittany Pierce. Well, now it's Brittany Pierce-Lopez," Santana said, sighing with relief as she found the card and presented it to the woman. The woman looked intently at the Gym Membership Card.
"Santana Pierce-Lopez," she said, under her breath, obviously thinking to herself. "Oh my God," she said, obviously a little stunned, her face turning a bright red. "I'm really embarrassed," she looked apologetically at Santana.
"Don't worry about it. I'll tell Brittany you said hello. What did you say your name was?"
"Jenny Tyler," she replied, obviously a little hurt. "Have a nice workout, Santana."
Santana had been avoiding her ever since, but she knew that she was going to have to talk to her now, getting the bracelet back was worth her embarrassment. She approached the front desk.
"Hi…"
"Jenny. Jenny Tyler," the blond responded. "How can I help you today, Mrs. Pierce-Lopez?" There was a glint in her eye when she said Santana's name.
"I was here this morning, and I think I may have left my bracelet here. It's a charm bracelet, there's a heart with the initials S+B engraved on the back and—"
"a megaphone that says 'cheerleader' on it…"
Santana looked at the woman with shock. "Were you stalking me or something?"
The woman just laughed. "Of course not. I was there the day Brittany bought it for you. Some of the girls made fun of her because we were too old at 15 to still be wearing charm bracelets," she blushed realizing that Santana must still wear the bracelet if she were looking for it here. "Let me take a look in the lost and found." She pulled out a box from behind the counter and started sifting through it. "Nothing here, unfortunately."
Santana's face fell. "Ok, well I think I'm going to take a look around, if that's alright."
"Of course," she said, as Santana turned to walk into the gym, "nice seeing you again, Santana."
"Can you believe we get to share a room for a whole month?" Brittany squealed, jumping into Santana's arms.
"I know, it's amazing," Santana said, returning her friend's hug and pulling her tightly to her. Their mothers' had just left after getting the girls' unpacked and setup for their month at cheerleading camp in Florida.
The first week of cheerleading camp was harder than either of them expected. In retrospect, Santana didn't know why they didn't just assume that spending 10 hours a day with Sue Sylvester was automatically going to be hell, but at least they were together, and at least she got to wake up next to Brittany everyday. The other girls were nice enough, but to be honest, Santana never really noticed anyone else when she was with Brittany, which, right now, was all the time. It didn't even really bother her that they barely got any real time to hang out because they were both always so dead tired by the time they curled up into the twin bed they'd been sharing all week.
It was Saturday and Santana had never been so relieved. Sunday was their day off and the campers were free to do whatever they wanted to prepare their bodies for another grueling week. They were lying in their tiny twin bed, Santana curled into Brittany and Brittany playing with Santana's long, dark hair. There was a light knock on the door.
"Come in!" Santana yelled, as the two girls jumped up to sit on opposite sides of Brittany's bed. Quinn opened the door and walked in.
"Good God…" she said, taking inventory of the room. It looked like a cheerleader had exploded. There were uniforms everywhere. It literally looked like the carpet was made of cheerleading uniforms.
"What happened in here?" Brittany just looked back at Quinn blankly, and Santana looked mildly embarrassed.
"It's a mess. And why do you have all of these uniforms?"
"Our moms' know that we hate doing laundry," Santana said, visibly a little embarrassed by the state of their room, "so they made sure that we both had enough uniforms to last us the entire week…which I guess means that I have to do laundry tomorrow…"
"I can help, San," Brittany said quietly.
"I think I can handle it, B," Santana replied, laughing to herself as she thought back to the one time she remembered Brittany doing laundry. She put the entire bottle of detergent in the washing machine and the laundry room had overflowed with giant suds. When Brittany's mother came home, she found the girls playing in it. It took them three days to clean up the mess.
"You're so weird," Quinn said, "you can't bother to wash your clothes, or even, say, put them in that easily accessible laundry basket," Quinn said, gesturing to the empty laundry basket in the corner, "yet somehow have the time to make your bed up to military standards?" She said looking over at Santana and gesturing to her perfectly made bed.
"No, Santana just hasn't slept in her bed," Brittany deadpanned. Quinn raised one eyebrow and then sat down on Santana's bed.
"God, you guys are such lesbians."
"Fuck you, Fabray. Can you at least tell us why you're gracing us with your presence this evening?"
"Well, I came to tell you that a couple of the girls on the second floor are having a party tonight, since we don't have to go through hell with Coach Sylvester tomorrow. They figured out a way to sneak the boys from the soccer camp in here…that is if you can pull yourselves out of your sex den for long enough to join us…"
"That's it, Fabray," Santana shouted, jumping up and tackling Quinn on to the bed.
"Let me up, Santana! I think you're confusing your blonds!" Quinn yelled, struggling beneath Santana.
"Not until you promise to not make anymore lesbian jokes."
"Ok, ok, I promise, just get off of me!" Santana sat up, releasing Quinn, and straightened out her uniform. "I got you off so easily, I bet Britt can't get you off that fast," Quinn said, running towards the door before Santana could tackle her again. Brittany looked confused. "I'm going to go get ready, but I'll come back down here when I'm done and we can go together," she said matter-of-factly, and turned and walked down the hall.
"Yay! A party!" Brittany squealed, and then she got up to look through the clothes in her closet.
Santana sat down in front of the mirror to start putting her makeup on. She hated when Quinn made fun of her and Brittany. She wasn't sure why, she knew that Quinn was just joking, but for some reason it really struck a nerve with her. Sure, they made out once and awhile, but never anything more than that, and all girls did that with their best friends, right?
It was midnight and Santana was already bored of the boy who had been talking to her for the last thirty minutes. She looked at her drink and was relieved to see that it was nearly empty, meaning she'd have an excuse to leave and get another drink. She downed it in one gulp.
"Sorry, I'm going to go get something else to drink," Santana turned to leave.
"I'll come with you!" The boy said, a little bit like a puppy dog.
"Look," Santana said, turning to face him, "you're hot and all, but you're boring me. Like really boring me. Now I'm going to go get a drink, please don't bother following me." Santana walked out of the room towards the room with the alcohol. She walked in and quickly poured herself a stiff drink; it looked like the booze was running out and she didn't want to be left high and dry. It was pretty much ¾ of a cup full of rum and a dash of diet coke. There was music coming from the room next door, so she decided to see if there was anything more interesting going on in there.
Santana took a big swig of her rum and diet coke when she entered the room; there was a black light on and everyone was dancing like crazy in the tiny dorm room. She took a second swig when she saw Brittany, in the middle, grinding on a one of the soccer players.
"SANTANA!" Brittany squealed excitedly when she saw her friend lurking in the corner. "Come dance with me!"
Santana walked over to Brittany who had all but forgotten about her new friend on the soccer team. "Where have you been?"
"Just talking to some boy in the other room," Santana said, handing Brittany her drink. Brittany took a big swig.
"Jesus, San," she said, her face scrunching up as the strong drink hit her throat. Santana's face flushed, embarrassed for some reason by how strong she had made the drink. "Come dance with me?" Brittany asked, grasping both of Santana's hands in her own.
Brittany resumed dancing in the middle of the room, and for the most part, Santana just watched her. Slowly, she moved closer to her friend, so that they were obviously dancing together, but still without allowing their bodies to touch. Brittany grasped Santana's hand in her own and turned so that her back was facing Santana and she placed Santana's hand upon her hip. Brittany whipped her hair around and Santana couldn't help but take in the smell of vanilla that somehow always seemed to accompany Brittany. The heat was rising throughout Santana's body and she wasn't sure exactly what to do about it. Even though she was 15 and pretended to be cool about these things, all of these feelings were still new to her. Brittany turned around to face Santana and handed her the drink. There wasn't much left, but Santana finished it in one gulp and threw the cup on the ground. She pulled Brittany closer to her and Brittany slipped her hands on Santana's hips pulling Santana hard on to her leg so that Santana now straddled her thigh. Santana's heart was racing and the tension growing inside her from a combination of the alcohol and Brittany being so close was reaching a boiling point.
"B, we have to get out of here," Santana drunkenly whispered into Brittany's ear. Brittany didn't say anything, she just grabbed Santana's hand and pulled her out the door and downstairs towards their room. She pushed Santana in first and Brittany leaned up against the door of their room. Santana stood a few feet away, facing her, but also trying to cool herself off a bit. It wasn't working.
"I'm sorry, Brit," Santana could feel herself slowly approaching her friend in her drunken haze. "I just had to get out of there…it was getting too…"
"Hot?" Brittany finished Santana's sentence, looping her fingers into Santana's belt loops and pulling her so close to her body that their noses were almost touching. The sensation of Brittany's hot breath against Santana's lips was driving her nuts. They stood there for too long, neither knowing what the next step was, until Santana leaned in and forcefully brought her lips up against Brittany's. They wrestled like that for awhile, feverishly kissing. Santana slipped her leg between Brittany's and grabbed on to her hair, pulling them closer together. Brittany let out a moan, deep and loud and so unlike the girl Santana was so used to spending her time with, and in a fleeting moment Santana knew what she had been missing all these years—that sound of Brittany moaning.
Tomorrow was the last day of camp. Part of Santana was excited to go home, she missed her family, although she would never admit it to anyone, but the other part of her was unbelievably scared of what life was going to be like in Lima after the summer she and Brittany had spent together. Instead of heading straight back to the dorms to finish packing after the rewards ceremony had ended, Brittany grabbed Santana's pinkie.
"There's something I want to show you," Brittany whispered in Santana's ear. As usually, Santana didn't question and allowed Brittany to lead her towards the campus' main cafeteria. Before Santana realized what was happening, Brittany was climbing the fire escape ladder on the side of the building.
"B! What are you doing? That's is not safe, get down from there!"
"Trust me, San," Brittany said, reaching her arm down towards Santana's. As usual, Santana complied. She really had to learn about this saying no to Brittany thing. When they got to the top of the ladder, Brittany began to walk with the grace of a cat across the slanted roof of the building towards the bell tower. Santana was certainly not doing that. Brittany looked back at her with puppy dogs eyes and grabbed Santana's hand and they walked across the roof and into the bell tower. Santana was glad to be in back of Brittany so she couldn't see her eyes squeezed tightly shut with fear. She didn't open them again until they were safely within the tower.
"What?" Santana said. "There are no bells in here! It's just an Ipod!"
"I know," Brittany said, looking at Santana seriously. "It's the recession," Brittany said, shaking her head. She gestured to the iPod. "This little robot told me that Quasimodo was laid off because they outsourced his job to apple. Although I don't understand how your job can be outsourced to a fruit…" Santana didn't reply, sometimes it wasn't worth trying to understand the things that went through her best friend's head. "I didn't bring you up here though to introduce you to my new robot friend." Brittany led Santana to the front of the tower, revealing a spectacular view of the city.
"It's beautiful up here, Britt."
"I got you this," Brittany said, reaching into her pocket and revealing a small box. She handed it to Santana. Inside was a new charm for the bracelet—a small megaphone with the word cheerleading engraved on the side.
"It's beautiful, Britt." Brittany took out the charm and began to clip it on Santana's wrist.
"I know that when we get back to Lima it can't be like it is now. I know that we can't…be together. But this way, with this charm, you'll always be able to remember all the things that happened this summer at cheerleading camp." Brittany had her eyes down the entire time she spoke. Santana lifted Brittany's chin so that her bright blue eyes were forced to look into Santana's.
"B. I will never, ever, forget us this summer." She gave Brittany a soft, but long, kiss on her lips, gently holding her cheek in her hand.
"Promise you'll wear it forever, just in case?"
"Of course. I promise." She pulled Brittany in for another kiss, more passionate this time around. She was more confused than she had been when she was twelve, but she was also more content. Standing there in Brittany's arms, she knew the trade was worth it.
