Rachel has a lot of mixed emotions about moving into her apartment in Columbus. That isn't surprising, really, because she's always been a girl who has a lot of feelings about everything. She's a little concerned about not being at home, even though Daddy is doing better, simply because there aren't any guarantees that his health won't take a turn. He got good news when he went in for his last round of tests, but you just can't predict these things. Not to mention the fact that she's eighteen and moving away from home for the first time; it's one of the most significant moments of her life so far. It stands to reason that she'd feel a lot of things about it.
It's a shame that it isn't going the way she'd imagined.
The apartment is lovely, and once she gets everything unpacked and exactly where she wants it, it'll be perfect. It's just that Rachel pictured her first night away from home in a tiny, potentially smelly dorm room at NYU, or, before getting her acceptance, perhaps in a little shoebox of an apartment in Brooklyn. She's supposed to be getting used to the sound of traffic and making lists in her head of the places in the city she wants to conquer, but when she steps out on her little balcony, all she hears are cicadas humming in the trees that line the courtyard of her complex.
She's trying so hard not to dwell on it, the fact that things aren't going exactly how she's always pictured it, but it just seems unfair.
Her fathers leave after dinner, taking turns pulling her into tight hugs and making her promise to call if she needs anything. "We're only two hours away," Daddy reminds her, his voice stern. She knows that he means it. She knows that her daddy would be there for her no matter what, no matter when, and she loves him so much for that.
She goes to bed early, because even though she has plenty of things to do (unpacking, mostly, and a bit of cleaning), she's tired. She was up early, and she's been up and down the three flights of stairs to her apartment too many times to count, carrying boxes and directing the movers they hired. As soon as her head hits the pillow, it's like the exhaustion drains out of her body to be replaced with restlessness.
It's quiet. She isn't afraid of being by herself, but it's just different, being in this place by herself than it was to stay in her fathers' house alone. She can hear the faucet in the bathroom dripping (that will be fixed tomorrow or it will drive her crazy forever, not to mention the gallons of water that are wasted by a single leaky faucet) and the sound of one of her neighbors walking up the stairs, and she just suddenly feel so alone it almost hurts, tightening in her chest.
"'Sup?" Noah says when he answers his phone, and the familiarity of it makes her smile.
"I can't sleep."
He looks over at the clock on his bedside table and rolls his eyes. "It's barely ten o'clock, Rach." He probably should have known she was going to say something like that when he saw her name on his phone; girl's crazy, and he knows she moved into her apartment today.
"I can't turn my mind off," she says, ignoring him. She's learned, over the years, that sometimes the best way to talk to Noah is to just ignore the silly bits and focus on the things that matter. And yes, she's aware that most people approach conversations with her the same way. She can appreciate the irony. "I tried to call Finn, but it went straight to voice mail. I'd call Santana, but I figured you would be less likely to just be cruel."
"You're overestimating me, babe," he teases.
"Noah," she whines. "Talk to me."
"Maybe I'm busy."
Oh. "In that case, I'll let you go, and I'm sorry to have bothered you," she says quickly. She's embarrassed that she would just assume that he had the time - and the inclination - to talk to her.
"Rach, I'm just giving you shit," he laughs. "Why can't you sleep?"
She lets out a sigh, pushing herself up so she's leaning against her headboard a little. The fact that she's never slept in this bed before certainly isn't helping, she knows, but that isn't the real issue. "It's strange to be alone like this," she admits, toying with the edge of her pretty new duvet. "And then I feel silly for feeling strange." She's quiet for a moment, and Puck can tell there's something else, something she isn't saying, so he waits.
"It just isn't the way it's supposed to be," she finally says, her voice so quiet he can just barely hear her.
"Rachel-"
"I'm being ridiculous," she interrupts brusquely.
"Maybe a little," he admits, "but, fuck, you're allowed to be upset about not going to New York."
"It was my decision."
"Well, sometimes we have to make decision that suck," he offers bluntly, and she knows without him saying it that he's thinking of Quinn and Beth. "Jesus," he mutters after a moment. "Tell me about how you're decorating your living room or something."
"Noah, you don't care how I decorate my living room," she laughs.
"Not even a little bit," he admits easily, and it's almost as easy for her to admit how much she appreciates that he's doing this for her, being her distraction.
He listens to her talk for nearly half an hour before she feels that she'll actually be able to sleep. She thanks him quietly, and she manages to sleep for three whole hours before she wakes up to the sound of her dripping bathroom faucet and has to get up to stuff a towel in the sink to muffle the noise. It isn't until after that that she allows herself to cry, curled into a little ball on the left side of her bed and feeling more alone than she has in quite some time.
It takes Puck about two weeks to decide that he fucking loves college.
They had this English teacher at McKinley last year who spent all of fall semester talking about how hard college was going to be, how studying and balancing all of the shit they had to do was going to be such an adjustment and blah, blah, blah. What she didn't do was tell them about all the awesome parts, like the fact that he's only in class for like, three hours a day and can fuck around the rest of the time and how there are a million and one girls running around in little shorts and tiny skirts while they ride out the end of summer.
And look, he's taking shit seriously. He's doing his reading and going to all of his classes, including the biology lecture that's basically a review of everything he's surprised he remembers from sophomore year. (Considering he spent that year sitting beside Santana and passing filthy notes back and forth with her, it's kind of a surprise that he learned anything in the first place.)
He and Sam are sharing a room in a suite with two other guys, sophomores who roomed together last year and are totally willing to drag Puck and Sam along to house parties and whatever, which works out. Their friends are cool and it's easier than finding their own shit to do right off the bat. Santana lives two floors down in the same building and is already talking about moving off campus next year because she hates her roommate ('A fucking clone of Quinn Fabray circa 2009, I swear.'), and Finn's across campus in another dorm with the rest of the freshman football players.
The second weekend of school, he fucks a redhead with Greek letters around her neck when Sam's out playing DD for Santana. He's a little disappointed that her sorority's reputation didn't hold up, but an orgasm is an orgasm, so whatever. He deletes her number out of his phone as soon as she's gone, because even though she was hot, he's not really interested in repeat performances unless it's really fucking great.
Basically, Puck intends to take advantage of every single thing college has to offer. Especially the fun, dirty stuff. Santana ends up being his partner in all that because she has the same idea, and even though Sam's up for a lot of it, he studies like crazy and will actually turn down a night out in favor of writing a term paper. Finn's all caught up in football, even though he's just riding the bench. He has practices and weights and mandatory group study sessions, and he has curfew before every game, so he kind of falls off Puck's radar for the going-out stuff, even though they hang out and have dinner together in the dining hall a couple of times a week and whatever.
Rachel goes back to Lima at least every other weekend, and sometimes every weekend, even though Andrew is doing well. He doesn't ask why, because it's not really any of his business, but it just feels like a waste of the experience (and fuck, if he's thinking in terms like that, he's obviously spent too much time with her). When she is around, she hangs out, and a lot of times it ends up just being the two of them and Santana, which is actually a lot cooler than he would have expected. Neither of them gives him shit about hitting on girls, and they're both fucking hilarious when they drink, though Rachel plays DD more often than not.
If he'd known that college was going to be like this, maybe he wouldn't have bitched so much about high school. That shit was all just a means to an end.
Nothing is the way it's supposed to be.
College isn't anything like she imagined, but that's probably because she always imagined the part where she was walking the streets of New York, not sitting in classes and completing boring reading assignments and writing term papers. Yes, she'd be doing those things at NYU too, but that really isn't the point. She just feels so trapped here, all the time, no matter what she does.
It's not that she isn't making an effort, though it's admittedly not quite as enthusiastic as it might have been elsewhere. She's made some casual friends in her classes, including Lindsay, a girl she kept running into at the coffee shop on campus before the composition class they share; now they walk together and sit beside one another, which is better than being completely alone even if they aren't going to be the best of friends.
She's still spending time with her friends from Lima, and it's strange, but sometimes, even sitting right beside them, she feels like she's observing from a distance. Sam has always been up front about his learning disorder, but he refuses to use it as an excuse, which she admires so much. He's working hard to keep his scholarship, and she knows from the conversations they've had that he's leaning towards getting his degree in special education. The way he sees it, he'll be a better teacher than the ones he had because he'll actually understand what his students are going through, will know what it's like to look at a page of text and see the letters floating around like hieroglyphic gibberish. Santana is certainly keeping herself busy, engaging psychological warfare with her roommate (whom she hates) while simultaneously sampling the offerings of both men and women at the university. Noah isn't slacking, which Rachel's impressed by, but he's also not holding back from going after his fun, and really, good for him.
She think she could like Columbus if she could just be here, but her heart is in New York and her head is in Lima, so it's difficult. She feels like she's biding her time, treading water until next year, when she'll be where she's supposed to be.
It hasn't escaped her though, the fact that she has this year to spend with her friends. She'd been heartbroken over the fact that she wasn't going to be in New York with Kurt, though she now believes, based on the fact that she's only spoken to him once since school began and her text messages go ignored, that he didn't value her friendship nearly the way she valued his. Here though, she's gotten the chance to get to know Santana away from the pressures of McKinley and the watchful eyes of Quinn Fabray, and she sort of loves the way you always know where you stand with the girl, no questions, no doubts. And, when she can let herself forget about propriety and political correctness, Santana really is hilarious. Sam is as darling as he ever was, and Finn has always made her feel safe in a way that no one else can.
She and Noah have always been better friends than anyone realizes, and going to college hasn't changed that. It isn't that they keep their friendship a secret, but neither of them feels the need to talk about it or advertise it; maybe it's an old habit, leftover from when she didn't want Finn to think anything strange was going on between the two of them but wasn't willing to cut Noah out completely. Rachel kind of likes that they just have this thing for themselves. They have lunch together in the student union every Tuesday afternoon, and they take the opportunity to catch up on what's going on in their lives. She updates him on how Daddy is doing, and he tells her about how he spent his weekend, and they both talk about classes. It's just routine, and she finds that she really likes it.
She goes to a football game with Sam, Santana, and Noah, which she thinks is a waste given that Finn isn't even playing this year. Still, school spirit is important and she figures the game could be fun, so she wears jeans and a gray thermal shirt with an Ohio State tee shirt and winds a scarlet and gray scarf around her neck before walking to campus to meet everyone at Sam and Noah's dorm room.
It's strange, but it's October and she hasn't been in this building once, even though three of her closest friends live here, something she realizes when she's in the elevator on her way up to the boys' floor.
Puck thinks she looks fucking hot as soon as she walks through the door.
He's just laying back on his bed, tossing a tennis ball up at the ceiling and catching it over and over in hopes of pissing off the girls who live above him and Sam because they're fucking loud all the time. Then Rachel comes in with her hair up in a ponytail and a hot ass pair of jeans he's never seen her in, and he doesn't care how cliché it is, girls look hot in school colors, legit. "Your suitemate let me in," she tells him, totally misinterpreting the way he's looking at her.
He sits up and shrugs. "Whatever. You look hot."
"Thank you," she says, feeling her cheeks get warm. He's been talking to her like this for years, but it never fails to embarrass her just a little.
She decides, very quickly, that college football is fun, and it's a wonderful surprise.
Puck knows that it's because she's discovered the joys of tailgating.
They're all pretty drunk by kickoff, and Rachel's still sipping from a thermos of Irish coffee that she totally charmed out of some old dude, passing it back and forth between the four of them. (Seriously, the things she gets away with sometimes blow his mind. Guy just handed over a huge stainless steel-looking thermos full of coffee and liquor. That shit doesn't happen in real life.)
It's kind of awesome to see her loosen up just because she doesn't do it very often, but she takes it a little too far and is completely wasted by the end of the game. The Buckeyes win, and she's jumping around so enthusiastically, standing up on the bleachers and screaming her head off (even more proof that she's blitzed, if she's risking her throat like that), that Puck is worried that she's going to fall and break her ankle or something.
"You need to take her home," Santana tells him, eyeing Rachel warily. "Before she starts puking in public."
"That's your job," Rachel tells her matter of factly, because she's watched Santana throw up in public more than once and Rachel never has, thank you very much. But yes, she probably does need to go home, because she can feel it coming.
Puck takes her hand to lead her out of the bleachers, because not only is she drunk (and he's not exactly sober), but like, way underage. And no, she isn't the only one, but Rachel's small enough that he knows people think she's younger than she is, which makes them more likely to get stopped. Having her fall down the bleachers or weaving on her feet is a surefire way to draw attention, attention that he definitely doesn't want right now.
She holds his hand all the way out of the stadium, until they get to a part of campus where the crowd thins out and they can actually walk side by side. She loops her arm through his, smiling when he grins down at her. "It's like high school." She likes walking with him like this, and not just because the wind has picked up and he's all warm and solid beside her.
"Are you gonna take me back to your bedroom and stick your tongue in my mouth?" he asks, smirking when her mouth falls open. "'Cause that's what happened the last time we walked like this in high school."
She shoves at him with her shoulder, stumbling sideways a little with him because she isn't sober enough to keep her balance. "That isn't funny."
"'S'the truth, sweetheart."
She wrinkles her nose. "Be quiet."
'Being quiet' last approximately ten yards, then she's asking him to explain the Big Ten conference to her, interrupting about two minutes after he starts talking (which is fine, because he knows she doesn't give a rat's ass about the Big Ten) to tell him about some Broadway play about Vince Lombardi and Judy Light or whoever. He doesn't mind listening to her talk, not really, so he just kind of lets her voice wash over him as they walk.
She leans against the wall next to the door when they get back to her building, watching him pull his keys out of his pocket to unlock her door. She has a key to her own apartment, of course, but she pulled it off the ring to put it in her pocket before walking to campus and it's sort of buried in there, and besides, he has a key, too. She'd considered giving a spare to Finn, but worried about sending the wrong signal, and she isn't really close enough to Sam. She didn't seriously consider Santana because as much progress as they've made, she doesn't trust the girl not to pull a Regina George. It just had to be Noah.
Rachel doesn't need to be taken care of, not really, but he knows she likes it, so he hangs out. He drinks one of the beers he keeps in her fridge (and yeah, they totally use her apartment for their liquor storage; they weren't kidding about that shit) while she sips from a bottle of water, and even though she bitches about it, they eat these kettle chips she has straight from the bag. He flips channels until she convinces him to watch Full House on DVD - and no, he doesn't know why she has this fucking show on DVD, but whatever. They end up ordering Chinese and spending the whole night just sitting on her couch, and it's the lamest Saturday night he's had since he got to college, but she's cracking him up, so it's cool.
That's the thing about Rachel. Somehow, she makes even totally lame stuff fucking fun, which doesn't really make any sense. And like, she knows he's humoring her, but she doesn't try to do anything else, and he kind of digs that about her, how she just doesn't give a fuck. (Except she would never, ever say it like that, but whatever.) She's just an easy girl to spend time with.