Rachel didn't seem to be among the twenty or so people milling about Groman's Music on a fairly busy Saturday morning, so Will, disappointed, drifted to the back wall where the music scores were stacked. He noticed a young woman, her back toward him, talking to a college student type manning the register. She was wearing a short white dress that skimmed seductively around her ass and hips, and her heels highlighted the toned muscles in her calves and lower hamstrings. She was short, but her updo revealed a long and lovely neck that enhanced her stature and made the smiling young male clerk look as though he very much wanted to lean across the counter and kiss it repeatedly. As she spoke, the other store personnel came up to greet her, as did several of the patrons.

The way she held and moved her arms, the way she positioned her legs, the bends of her knees, the slopes of her shoulders and tilts of her head suggested an animal at ease in its native habitat. (Will was certain that if the staff had been all-female, given the frequency of his appearances at the establishment, he might have been accorded similar treatment. He was probably right, but as they weren't, he wasn't.) Then the young woman turned her head to present her profile to a visibly stunned William Schuester, now teacher of Spanish and choir director at William McKinley High School, but soon, he suddenly feared, to be practicing accountancy and having to live more than a mile from the nearest school or place of worship.

Will at last had the answer to the enigma that was Rachel Berry: there were two of her, each adapting as well as she could to the environment that was presented. "My god," was the phrase that echoed back and forth through the cavern of his mind. When she turned fully toward him and caught his glance, her smile evanesced as they gazed solemnly at each other across a crowded room. On this enchanted May morning, Will and the essential Rachel were indeed strangers, destined to meet if ever either of them were able to physically move. Rachel, the more comfortable and confident with home field advantage, took the initiative and walked toward a still immobile Will, holding his eyes continuously in the grip of her gaze, looked up at him when the distance between her nipples and his abs was at the edge of indecency for the meeting of a teacher and his student in a public space where both were habitués, and said "Hi" in a voice barely above a whisper, the entire sound produced by a soft expulsion of air that was most commonly heard in the bedroom when a woman greeted her lover after recovering from a massive orgasm.

Aside from the sensuousness of the sound, the most telling part of Rachel's greeting was what was missing, what Will recognized immediately as conveying the possibility of a different relationship between them. Two words were missing, two words she always used when first meeting him on a school day: "Mister Schue." Take away those two words and the official hierarchy that separated them vanished and now anything could be said and anything could happen.

Will curled up his fingers in both hands in an attempt to control an overwhelming desire to reach out and touch her face. Nothing, however, was able to prevent him from smiling nervously and offering the understatement of "You look wonderful."

"Thanks," she said, her right hand very lightly squeezing his bare left arm just above his wrist watch, causing his eyes to close for an instant and his lips to slightly part. Rachel understood how much he had risked with "wonderful" and after watching his reaction in the brief instant of her touch, she lowered her head for a moment to lick the middle of her upper lip. They then both took a step back, simultaneously realizing how close they were getting to making a very dangerous public spectacle, and began a surreal dance. They slow-waltzed to music only they could hear, as though they were listening via earbud pairs to the same iPod, circling, moving, afraid and unable to stand still, talking of songs, of medleys, of mashups, of arrangements, of key transpositions, of solo line assignments, of choreography, seeing themselves in a French movie with subtitles and in soft focus, until Rachel, feeling almost unable to breathe, sat down on a piano bench and said to her partner when he joined her, "What's happening, Will?"

The question contained its own answer. When she had deliberately neglected the "Mister Schue," Rachel had left a void, which she now filled with "Will," the first time she had ever addressed him by that name. He grasped the significance of that choice, and responded to her question with the only answer he could imagine that was both truthful and meaningful: "We're falling in love."

"Yes."

"What do you want to do now?"

"I need fresh air. I need to go outside."

He followed her out. They shuffled about anxiously on the sidewalk for a bit, neither sure what to say or do, when Rachel suggested going for a walk in nearby Faurot Park.

"I'd like that."

"We'd better go in our own cars, though."

"You're right. Too many people here know who both of us are."

"Actually, I was more concerned that I might have tried to unzip your pants at the first stoplight."

Will burst into sustained laughter, falling back against the wall and giggling until he was able to calm down after a few minutes. The extent of his reaction resulted from the release of the unbearable tension that had built up, and Rachel laughed and giggled with him, happier than she had ever been with a man, but didn't think the moment was quite right to tell him she hadn't in fact been joking.