Chapter 4: "Sam"

Karofsky left and Santana cleaned up the mess in her bedroom, satisfied that on Monday their plan would officially start to be set in action. That would also mean "going public" with their relationship, and she'd have to put up with some incredulity and probably some nasty comments from some of her closest friends. She would also have to break up with Sam, she realized. She wasn't a cheater. And the poor guy had just been cheated on. She needed to do the right thing this weekend.

She left her bedroom in search of wherever she left her cell phone. Entering the kitchen, she spotted it on the table. She also noticed her mother already cooking something for dinner.

"Mija, was that a new friend of yours? I didn't recognize him."

"Oh," Santana replied, hesitating but realizing that now would be as good a time as any to go public to her parents, too, if she was going to announce the relationship to the whole school on Monday.

"Is he from the glee club?" she asked kindly, knowing Santana usually only dated guys who weren't exactly that body type.

"No," Santana replied, trying to resist laughing at the notion of Dave Karofsky belting out showtunes. Her lips curled into a smile just the same.

"Oh," her mother replied, waiting for the answer.

"He's, um… my new boyfriend," Santana explained.

"Really?" Sasha Lopez replied, clearly surprised. She tried to cover her surprise because of his size as if it was for another reason. "Weren't you just in a relationship with another boy?"

"What? Oh, me and Sam? That was just a meaningless fling," she answered casually, pretending she could care less about hurting his feelings. In truth, she was dreading the break-up that she had to do as soon as possible, knowing that the boy was sweet and didn't deserve anymore heartache in his life.

"Okay," her mother answered, not quite sure how to react whenever her daughter treated dating like this. Sasha could not relate. She accepted her daughter deciding to become sexually active while still quite young, and had seen over the years that Santana was truly capable of not letting herself get emotionally scarred by anything having to do with her romances. She still, sometimes, worried about all of it, though. A part of her was afraid that Santana's behavior was not healthy. She also worried that Santana might come home pregnant one day, or with an STD. But she had reminded her daughter to use protection more than enough times, so now they were just… in a state of understanding with each other.

"So, what's for dinner?" Santana asked.

The next day, Santana scheduled a time to meet up with Sam at his house. She knew Sam had trouble getting anywhere on his own, even on the weekends, because his family only had the one car to share amongst all five of them. They had no money for even a relatively cheap used car for Sam to call his own. Sam had confided in her a couple weeks ago that the reason was his dad had lost his job and was having trouble finding new full-time employment. Sam was busy a lot, delivering pizzas pretty much every school night, and Santana realized that she'd only actually had "dates" with him outside of school maybe four times.

She arrived in his driveway and noticed his parents were having a yard sale, and they seemed to be selling some items they might've actually wanted to keep, like a pretty nice computer, various kitchen equipment, Sam's acoustic guitar, and a couple of televisions.

Sam's mother was standing behind a table waiting to sell some of the smaller items.

"Hi!" she called out when she was Santana exit her car. "Are you here for Sam?" she kindly asked.

"Um, yeah," Santana replied, looking around at the yard sale. She felt bad, like maybe she should be buying something. Were they really having that bad of money troubles?

"He's right inside, sweetie," she answered. "I think he was helping Stacey with her homework, but they're probably done now."

"Okay. Thanks," Santana replied.

She headed to the front door and let herself in, feeling fairly confident that what Sam's mom had just said to her constituted as permission.

Sure enough, Sam and one of his younger siblings, Stacey, were just finishing up the assignment. Sam was putting her folder back into her backpack while Stacey put her pencil back in her pencil case.

Sam turned his head to see his girlfriend come in.

"Santana! Hey!"

She smiled slightly.

"Hi," she replied.

"Thanks for coming over. My dad's using the car right now; he's across town with my brother."

"No problem," Santana replied. She looked down toward Stacey. Glancing back up at Sam, she asked, "Do you think we could maybe talk for a minute, somewhere a little more private?"

"Of course," he replied, still completely oblivious to the idea that anything was up. He smiled and grabbed her hand softly, just like the sweet boyfriend to her that he was. He led her upstairs into his bedroom.

Santana let herself be dragged in that direction, worried he might be expecting sex, or at least something other than talking. But she was slightly relieved with what he said as soon as they entered the room.

"So, what did you want to talk about?"

"I… I wanted to do this in person," she started, and already Sam's face dropped a bit. He was still holding onto her hand, but she felt like maybe his grip had loosened ever so slightly.

He could tell this conversation was headed somewhere serious.

"I, well…" Santana faltered a bit. "I'm sorry, but I'm breaking up with you," she finally told him bluntly.

Sam let go of her hand. "What? Why?" he asked, clearly a bit hurt but more shocked than anything.

"It's… it's complicated," she answered truthfully. The real reason? She was a lesbian who wanted to start a new beard relationship with a fellow gay guy. She also had decided she wanted to win prom queen in order to win over Brittany's heart. It was hard to explain.

"I have time," Sam replied quietly but seriously, pressing her for more of an answer than that. He was clearly not gonna take this break-up without some explanation.

"Well… I'm starting to have feelings for someone else," she fibbed. The truth was, she'd been in love with Brittany for ages, and she maybe was starting a fake relationship with Karofsky, but she didn't feel a trace of romance toward him. Truth be told, she also had never felt anything more than simple friendship feelings for Sam either. So yeah… this feelings explanation was really a lie. But it was the best she could come up with.

Sam seemed disappointed. "Who?" he asked, which she knew was the logical next question.

"Well, his name's David," she said, not wanting to give away which David she was actually dating. She hoped using his full first name instead of "Dave" or "Karofsky" would leave Sam guessing until Monday after Karofsky had gotten a chance to give his apology speech to the glee club.

"Do I know him?" he asked, getting a bit more upset.

"I barely know him," she answered, evading the question. Of course Sam knew him. They were on the football team together. Sam had worn a black eye to Kurt and Finn's parents' wedding because of him.

"But you already want to break up with me, for him?"

She could hear the hurt starting to really sink in for him. She felt bad. She decided there was nothing more she could do to make him feel better.

"I'm gonna go," she told him, ending the conversation. "See you in school on Monday," she added before turning around and starting to leave his bedroom. She listened, thinking maybe he'd try to stop her, but her ears picked up nothing. He was letting her go. And it was done. She walked back outside.

"Leaving so soon?" Sam's mother asked, surprised.

"Uh, yeah," Santana answered, not really wanting to give more of an explanation than that. She didn't think 'I just crushed your son's heart' was a good thing to say to any mother, ever.

"Okay," she replied, a little confused. "Bye!" she called out right before Santana got in her car.

Santana pulled the door open and shouted back, "Bye!", before hopping in and pulling the door shut.

Monday was gonna be interesting. That was for sure.

Author's Note: If you read this chapter, please do me a favor and leave me a review! Just so that I know who is still reading! It'd mean the world to me. ;) Seriously.

For this chapter, I re-watched 2x19 "Rumours" carefully and found that Santana did not seem aware of Sam's situation living in the motel, BUT she didn't act as surprised as most of the Glee club, in fact not really getting much of a role one way or the other at all. She blamed Sam for the rumors about him cheating with Kurt and Quinn but it's unclear what, exactly, Santana knew/what she even thought was Sam's fault. This chapter took place only 1 episode prior, in the middle of episode 2x18 "Born This Way" (as have all 4 chapters of the fic so far, actually) and Sam said his dad had lost his job "a few months ago" and "then" they'd lost their house. So I decided it'd be acceptable to make it so the Evans family moved into the motel sometime after Santana and Sam broke up.

Sorry this chapter had so few mentions of Karofsky in it, and I'm sorry Dave didn't even appear. Of course I alternate point of views, and so, at some point, a chapter should have a lot of Karofsky but very little Santana.

Also: I'm gonna post the new chapter of my Quinn fic before posting chapter 5 of this, FYI. It's a very long fic that I've been writing for forever and I do hope to finish it eventually, so… :P It's time to write the Christmas chapter of that fic. It'd mean a ton to me if some people who found me because of this Karfosky/Santana fic here went and checked out that Quinn season 1 fic I'm writing, too. I think one person has done that already, and that's so awesome, so thank you! ;)

I'm also quite tempted to write a fic of some kind related to Finn's death… or maybe something where Marley is asexual (because I recently realized/decided that my own sexual orientation is ace and Marley's not wanting to have sex could technically be in line with an asexual identity, although we know Glee will never go there in a million years, in the long run…). We'll see if inspiration takes over or not for either of those ideas or both or something else haha.

And I will post chapter 5 of this asap. Back to Karofsky's point of view. That will happen soon.