Edit: Revisited and revised.
09
There is nothing left to say, absolutely nothing. Brittany looks at Santana, at this new and strange version of herSantana, and now that it's out in the open and apologies have been issued there is nothing left to say, absolutely nothing. Forgive me, Santana, for I have sinned, she wants to say but she doesn't. She just stares at Santana, defeated and deflated, a heavy uncertainty between the two of them. Brittany feels foreign, foreign in that office with its wooden tables and impersonal decoration, because she knew Santana before that and because she herself is light and humble, and this is not her, either.
It's Brittany who breaks the silence. "Look at us, Santana. Look at our state on a Thursday night." She gestures between them and their miserable state. "I want to have you in my life. I miss you." There's another long pause, used by each to wipe off the tears on the verge of falling. "Let's do something different." She's sick of their baggage, she's smothered by everything said and done and all the things she could have done better. "Let's always be honest and straight forward, and let's start new."
Brittany waits for an answer and hopes Santana is ready for it. She knows it's a bet, because Santana closes herself off as a means of protection. However she doesn't want to lose Santana, and her laugh and her company and the assurance she represents. They're bonded to each other, it's an easy recognition, and they just have to find out where they stand and where their boundaries lie. "Okay." Santana says, and Brittany lets out a breath she hadn't even known she was holding. "Let's just... take it slow, okay?"
Brittany agrees and holds out a hand. "I'm already looking forward to it." She says as she shakes Santana's hand. "It's a deal." Santana manages a weak smile, and Brittany thinks she's such a pretty thing. "We just need a little adjustment, that's all." She adds, full of hope and longing.
Santana can't seem to forget the fortune teller. That unknown woman was the closing she had been dreading to accept back then, the vocalization of her personal ghosts and insecurities. The gypsy had taken the words of Santana's mouth without even knowing it, even if Santana is a skeptic before anything else and doesn't believe in anything magical, superstitious or unexplained. In her eyes, there's only hard, cold reality, and there's no point in covering it up with mysticism.
However, the woman does touch her where it hurts. It is a vague feeling of failure and loneliness, of having loved and lost. Santana is not one to surrender herself to another person - Brittany is the only exception to that rule. Love is defeat, is throwing yourself at someone's feet in all your vulnerability and hoping for the best. Santana's image of herself has no space for weakness or romanticism. The way to succeed is to draw a plan, stick to it and be smart enough to see an opportunity and make the best of it. This notion that she has, that Brittany was the love of her life, however incongruent with her own image and her life philosophy, never really fades away.
She can't help it. Her argument with Brittany still takes her breath away and she keeps making vague and sincere confessions to the therapist whenever her husband isn't around with his prying eyes. It's an unforgiving reflex of having so much unsaid and unfelt and compartmentalized. She's opened a gate she can't close it back.
She looks at Alexander at times, when he's asleep and she's turning around in bed in the vain hope of getting some rest, and she wonders if he knows this is a lost battle for him. She loves, respects and admires him, but he has never gotten anywhere close to the intensity and desperation, that loving Brittany always was. She chose him among all persons but he was never, not even for a fleeting moment, the love of her life.
"I have something to say." Santana says solemnly to the room, looking at no one in particular. Alexander is by her side, in a gorgeous navy blue suit tailored for him. The therapist sits in front of them, legs elegantly crossed, and looks at her. "Something I have not said before." She can't stand it anymore, she's not used to this weight on her, to this loneliness of not being able to share her thoughts with the man she's supposed to be sharing her life with, this forced silence not even her therapist manages to break. "Something important." She breathes in, breathes out, breathes in, breathes out, and opens her mouth several times before continuing. There are no right words to find. "Brittany and I, we're not just old friends. We were friends, once, and we are first and foremost best friends, of course, ever since the day I gave her my crayons when we were 6." She clears her throat. "But the story doesn't stop there. We were together for a decade, more or less. Together as in a romantic, lesbian relationship."
It's out now. She can't take it back, and she's terrified. She looks at Alexander for the first time since she started talking and his face and blank and void and the therapist eyebrows are raised in surprise. "What are you trying to say, Santana?" His lips are forming a thin line and his breathing is so even Santana can tell a storm is on the brewing. "That you are gay? That you are having an affair?" He's as implacable as her, and that works for good and for evil. He's not stopping now. "Is this your idea of a joke?"
"Let's take it slow, Alexander, and not jump to conclusions. Why are you telling this now, Santana?" Her therapist asks slowly, with a powerful stare to Alexander to hold him back.
"I don't know." Santana answers. "I feel it is a big part of me I have to share. Brittany's return, it..." She searches for a way to express herself properly. "It reminded me of a moment in my life previous to my marriage, and the person I used to be. It's hard for me to look past that, sometimes." Brittany is a reminder of a moment in her life when she lived the life she loved and she loved the life she lived, and that was hard to forget.
"Oh, so you're having a miserable life with me and prefer the nostalgia of your lesbian relationship?" Alexander asks, and he's getting it all wrong, and they always get it all wrong. Santana hates to open up because it's pointless and meaningless, because all human communication is bound to be imperfect. Santana doesn't know what to answer to that. "Are you a lesbian?"
Santana doesn't even know anymore. "I'm not a big fan of labels. They generally acquire an exaggerated importance and meaning beyond their original ones." It might be a fancy way to say yes, she thinks. But one thing a woman doesn't tell her husband is that her sexual orientation in quite the opposite of what he imagines it to be, especially Alexander, who's straight as an arrow. "I was with boys until I was with girls until I was with boys again, and that's it."
"I believe Alexander is feeling quite insecure with this new situation, Santana. Do you think your relationship with Brittany has affected your marriage somehow?" Her therapist asks before Alexander can react.
"I just don't know what I'm doing anymore." She admits in defeat. "Of course I love Alexander, it's just... Nothing fulfills me." She hopes one of them will understand it; the void feeling of having nothing to look forward to, the emptiness of an envisioned perfection, the superficiality of her own life plan. She hopes one of them understands how bad it feels not being comfortable in your own skin and not feeling satisfied with anything. "My work, my life, it doesn't click anymore." Had it always been this way? Had life always been this way, and had she just never noticed? She was starting to forget. "I'm really sorry, Alexander."
He's not used to see her fragile and defenseless. Santana looks to him and his shoulders are less tense and his expression has softened. "I love you, Santana Lopez." He places a hand over hers. "And I'm not giving up on you." Santana doesn't know whether to be relieved or afraid of that.
Brittany's dancers are almost reaching the point of perfection. Their project isn't too big, but it is a start and everyone is very excited about it, gossiping during breaks, anxiety growing with each week. Brittany remembers what it feels to be young and beginning a career, hoping anything could be the break. She's working hard at it, never complaining about long hours or stubborn dancers. Working with Jim has been amazing, with his witty and funny attitude and his obvious queerness. He has a good eye for people and investments and he loves to surround himself with talent and beauty. That has always impressed Brittany: he knows what to do and with whom to do it.
Tonight is the opening night. Brittany bought a few seats for her friends and an extra one just in case Santana would show up. Not that there's any real chance of that, as Brittany has been silent about this and Santana has no way of guessing. Brittany hasn't invited her because who knows if it is appropriate or not, and she is trying to take things slow. Still, she can picture Santana by her side with her supportive and caring words, and that has to be enough.
Jim tells her there are two critics in the audience. Brittany knows she is just one in many who had worked for the performance and that her job is a part of a much bigger scenario; however, it is hard to avoid the feeling on her stomach of responsibility and nervousness. She choreographed and trained those young men and women - if they fail, she fails as well.
Her parents are there, her mother in a black dress and her father in a suit. They wouldn't miss it for anything; one thing her parents are great in is in taking part and showing their support, even if Brittany is in her late thirties and could have done this on her own. They sit on the first row, intensely focused, even when they don't quite understand all this "modern dancing", as they call it.
The curtains go up. It is a renewed feeling, the one to be before an audience, when all the training has to pay off, and there's no space for mistakes. Brittany had loved it, in the past. The excitement that preceded entering the stage and focusing so hard there was no space for wondering minds or anxiety. Jim squeezes her hand and they lock eyes with every dancer entering the stage as the music begins to play.
They're at a park on a Saturday afternoon. Santana likes parks because they are relatively neutral: a park is not the heavy atmosphere of their workplaces, or the intimacy of their homes, or the public and exposed setting of a restaurant. Truth be said, they remind her of Law School, when Brittany and her would hang out in places like these on weekends, just enjoying each other's company. It was for free, and their tight budget didn't make room for much back then.
It's the first time they're alone since the last time they were alone, and Santana knows their previous conversation is far from over. She has important questions that are yet to be answered before she can really move on. "Brittany, I called you here because I need to ask you something." She clears her throat and plays with her cup of iced coffee. "Have you ever forgiven me for... you know?" Cheating, she would say if she had the courage.
Brittany frowns and covers Santana's hand with her own, head turning so they could look into each other's eyes. "Yes, with time." She says without hesitating. "I wasn't being a good girlfriend." There's a long pause, in which Santana looks at her and Brittany looks at two dogs playing nearby. Santana's heart is racing. She's used to Brittany's lack of talent at lying, but not to this complete sincerity - or maybe, she has just forgotten what it feels to really talk with Brittany, like they used to before things started going in the wrong direction. There was so much left unsaid in the end. "Did you ever forgive me for leaving you so many times?" Brittany looks to Santana again, blinking away a few tears.
God, they were young. Santana shakes her head, her voice trembling a bit. "I never blamed you, Britt. I never could. You were doing your thing, putting yourself first and building something wonderful for yourself. I just felt like a weight." How could she ever blame anything on Brittany? Her girlfriend was amazing in every way. Her hand goes to Brittany's hair, pushing a stubborn lock from her face. "I kept trying to guess what I was doing wrong, or what I could do better." There was never any blame to give Brittany; that was a weight Santana herself could carry. Santana had been the one to push her away first, in high school; it would make sense Brittany would be the one to push her away in the end.
Brittany is indignant, in a way. It made no sense at all for Santana to blame herself, and Brittany was absurdly unaware of that feeling. "You weren't doing anything wrong." She doesn't even know what to add to that. It wasn't a matter of doing right or wrong. Santana was always trying her best, always attentive to Brittany's wishes and needs. Brittany's heart clenches with the look in the other woman's eyes. She intertwines their fingers to prove a point that is maybe too old to be proved.
Santana nods and shrugs, looking at their hands before breaking the contact. It doesn't matter anymore. "It felt like it." And then, of course, she did it wrong, she made the unforgivable mistake, and hell broke loose. They had stubbornly insisted in a relationship that just could not have continued the way it was. Santana never understood, how a relationship so full of love could have ended like that. "To be honest, I wish I could have loved you better. You deserved more." Santana says, because it is in a way the origin of their problems. But she was so afraid, so clumsy, so immature at first it just couldn't be helped. Brittany was always the bigger person, the stronger person, so many times it was unfair.
"We were so young, San. And stupid." It's an admission that works both ways. She remembers a Santana so broken, only getting more fragile with each time Brittany left on tour and it pained her she couldn't have done anything back then to ease the pain. She remembers high school with their closet issues and her choice for Artie. Santana understands it too, all their misdirections and misgivings, and briefly squeezes Brittany's shoulder. Brittany shakes her head, thumb stroking Santana's face. "We all make mistakes. I kept choosing other things over you. Artie, dancing, my career." She stopped showing Santana she mattered. She emotionally left their relationship long before their actual break up.
Santana sighs. "I went to Europe, you know. Right after the..." She stops herself, because mentioning their break up is a taboo she is not willing to verbalize. "To get you back." She still dreams about it, about going to Europe in some impressive move to get her girl back and failing miserably at it. She dreams about the nervousness in arriving, the surreal sensation of buying a ticket to see Brittany perform in the hope of understanding and to feel closer to her. She wanted to be supportive; she wanted to be strong for Brittany.
"I never knew that." Brittany frowns. This is unexpected and new. Why hadn't Santana ever said anything?
"It seemed like a great idea at the time. I needed to look at you in person, to talk to you face to face, so we could settle things and go back to being great together." Santana is crying quietly. "I never told anyone. I watched you perform and you left me speechless." She pauses and wipes her own tears. "But then as you left the place you were laughing so hard, having fun and John was playing with you. I felt like I didn't belong. Who was I to claim you, anyway?" Santana laughs sadly with the thought she was just a crazy ex-girlfriend. "So I left. Someone out there was meant to love you better. I clearly wasn't doing a good job at that." She had to set Brittany free. They weren't good for each other, not anymore.
And there was the gypsy, taking her hand and revealing her fate in the worst possible of manners. Your love line means you'll have just one great love, she said. And the woman had been right; there had never been anyone like Brittany, ever. Time doesn't heal, it just makes you take your mind off of the pain, the gypsy had said right before apologizing, because Santana deserved her pity. Santana just walked, and cried, and how distant it was from the movies, and how wrong it was to be walking through the streets of Paris, the city of romance, with your heart broken?
Brittany is on the verge of tears as well. She's fascinated by this Santana, mesmerized and touched by the entire conversation. "Silly." She says, cupping Santana's face and locking their eyes. "Silly." She repeats and kisses Santana's eyes, Santana's forehead, Santana's chin and Santana's wet cheeks.