High school is hard. The teachers don't take care of her like they did in middle school. Brittany feels lost all the time.
Santana likes high school. She's good at it in every way. Brittany is afraid at first that she'll leave her behind, but instead San takes her along, the way Brittany took her to sleepovers in the fifth grade.
San teaches Brittany her locker combination and takes her to each of her classes the whole first week. She writes Brittany's schedule on her hand so she can't forget. By the end of the second week, she's finally learned it by heart, but it tickles in a delicious way when Santana writes on her hand, so she doesn't tell her.
Everything gets better when they make the cheerleading squad. Santana kisses her on the cheek, right in front of everyone, when she sees their names on the posted list; that makes Brittany all kinds of happy.
"You don't have to worry now," San promises. "We's gots it made."
Being popular means everyone wants to be your friend, but Santana insists that to keep that going means Brittany can't be friends with everyone—which doesn't make sense, but when it comes to this kind of thing, she's learned that Santana is always right. It's like what she saw on Shark Week: Santana can smell a drop of blood in the water, and there must be something shark-like deep inside Brittany too, because she secretly likes to watch Santana savage people. It makes her feel safe. As long as she's with Santana, no one will ever, ever hurt her.
There's another girl named Quinn who's really pretty—almost as pretty as Santana. Brittany aches to be friends with her, but she waits for Santana to tell her it's okay.
It is. Quinn is like them, Santana tells her. Popular.
Sometimes Santana talks about Quinn too long. Something in her voice sounds not quite right. Too bright, too hard—like she can't stop. Brittany always keeps a hand on San somehow when she gets like this, fixing her hair or massaging the sore pits of her palms, as if keeping her close will stop her from what she's most afraid of: that Santana will leave her behind and fly to Quinn.
The first time they go to a party and get drunk, she clings to Santana like she's the only thing that stands still in the swirling world. She feels as wobbly and queasy as she used to in elementary school when she was learning to do spot turns. When she starts to stroke San's arms and hair and neck, San shakes her off and tells her to go dance with a boy.
"You're making a scene," she hisses.
It stings. But Brittany does as she's told: she dances, flies. When a senior boy catches her, pulling her in by the waist, she loses herself in kissing him. He does something San's never done: he slides his tongue between her lips. That makes her even dizzier.
Then, from the cloud, she sees Santana, kissing Noah Puckerman. She's pushed him against a wall—her hand's still on his chest—and it's clear she's in charge. Santana's never kissed her like that.
Finally, she can't stand it any longer. She lures Santana into a bathroom, pushes her against the wall, and kisses her the way she saw Santana do with Puck. San seems to forget to breathe—then she pushes back against her so Brittany can feel the map of her whole body. As if she wants her. The way a girl wants a boy. Brittany flicks Santana's lower lip with the tip of her tongue, ready to dive, and all at once San pushes her away.
"Enough. Come on. We have to get back to the party," she says, her voice clogged and strange. "People will notice we're gone."
After they stumble out of the bathroom and slip back into the crowd, she watches from the wall as Santana pulls Noah by the hand and disappears upstairs.
"What are they doing?" she asks another Cheerio, a sophomore named Jenna, who looks at her as if she'd just asked what color the sky was.
"I'm guessing they're hooking up." She laughs and shoots a look of disbelief at the football player she's talking to. It's clear she wants Brittany to go away, but instead Brittany strokes her arm the way she strokes San's when she needs to be held and safe. A mistake. Must be the booze.
Jenna opens her mouth to say something, probably along the lines of get off, but instead, the football player whoops.
"Make out!" he orders. Jenna gives her a nasty look—see what you've done?—but shrugs and touches Brittany's shoulder. They kiss; a small crowd of football players gathers and leers. She tries what she tried with Santana a few minutes ago, licking her lower lip, and Jenna, instead of pulling away, nips at her tongue and sucks, and once again, Brittany lets herself get lost in sensation. Even if she tastes too sharp from the alcohol, Jenna's a good kisser—so it's easy to forget everything else.
After a minute, Jenna pulls away. "All right, break it up, pervs," she says, but anyone can see she's happy for the attention.
The spell broken, Brittany just drifts back into thinking about Santana. She can't hear or see a thing above the staircase that separates them.
After the party, Brittany walks home, bringing San with her. She takes her hand: for once, softened with alcohol, San doesn't resist.
Brittany pulls an old soft shirt and some pajama pants from her drawer. Her favorites. She hands them to Santana, who goes to the bathroom to change—she's never done that before—and comes back to bury herself under the covers. Brittany joins her. San smells like Brittany's pajamas, booze, and her hothouse smell—but something else too, something bitter and musky. Britt tries to tuck herself into San's body, but San pushes her away.
"I slept with him," she says.
"What?" Brittany's heart thuds, thick and heavy.
"Noah Puckerman. We had sex." She's trying her best to sound happy about it.
Brittany's throat dries and cracks.
"How was it?"
"Okay. Not as good as everyone says." She swallows. Brittany pulls her closer and strokes her hair. This time, Santana relaxes into her. Brittany's sleep shirt feels wet where San's face presses against it. She strokes San's back the way she strokes her little sister's when she cries.
"I'm sorry."
Santana is silent.
"San? You okay?"
"Yeah," she whispers. "Can we just go to sleep now?"
"Sure." Brittany kisses her hair, softly, so Santana can't feel it. Sleep doesn't come easily, but it comes, warm and dreamless.
Word gets around about the senior boy and the Cheerio that Brittany made out with at Mike Chang's party, and soon boys are swarming around her—hoping for a shot.
Brittany lets boys touch her breasts and her belly and her legs and even between her legs—well, over her underwear. She makes out with another cheerleader at another party, later. It all feels good. That ache she gets sometimes happens when she's with them, but it feels nice, friendly, familiar. Still, she's scared to have sex, ever since Santana was so upset that first time. San will never admit that she was crying, not in a million years, but Brittany knows.
"You should do it," Santana tells her one night on Brittany's floor. "It's really not a big deal." They ran out of junk food, so they're eating jumbo marshmallows straight from the bag; their hands are getting sticky and sugary. Santana tears a marshmallow in half with her fingers. Brittany shakes her head and sucks on a fingertip.
"I think you should do it with Puck. At least—I mean—I've gotten it on with him a bunch of times, so he's getting better at it."
"Puck? Noah Puckerman? Are you serious?"
"Sure. I mean, I'll tell him he gots to be gentle or else I'll break his balls. No one's going to hurt my Britt-Britt and live."
She's got her Mama Tiger face on, and Brittany feels so safe she nods immediately. "Okay. But only if you're there."
"Britt, I can't be there. That's weird." Brittany's face falls, and Santana softens. "But I'll pick you up from his house afterward, if you want."
"Deal."
Puck is surprisingly nice to her—maybe because he's afraid of what Santana will do to him if he isn't. He moves slowly, softly, and each time he does something new, he asks her if it's okay first. He starts with his fingers, and once he's inside her, he doesn't feel that much different from her own fingers. It feels nice enough after a little while.
As it turns out—she catches on pretty fast. All she needs to do is watch his face and follow his sounds and twitching muscles to figure out what makes him tick. It's like a game. Dance has made her strong: it's easy to keep up. Once she unlocks his weak spots, Puck folds fast.
Afterwards, pulling on her clothes after a quick text to San—its over with. b—she asks the one question she's been burning to ask.
"What is Santana like in bed?"
He looks at her funny and smiles his crooked smile.
"Why do you want to know?"
"Well, you sleep with her a lot, right? She's got to be doing something you like."
"Don't worry about it. You were awesome."
"I'm not worried." She shrugs. "Just curious."
"Well." He considers. "She's, like… mean, kinda. But hot mean. She likes to be rough. She makes you fight for it."
"Am I different?"
"Way different. But that's not a bad thing," he assures her. "You're like, psychic or something. You totally knew what I wanted." He grins. "Really your first time, huh?"
When Santana comes to pick her up—she doesn't even have her learner's permit yet, but she steals her dad's keys sometimes when her parents are still at work—she asks how it went.
"I think it was good," says Brittany.
"You think? You don't know?"
"How would I know? I've never done it before."
"Was he nice?" she asks, glancing briefly from the road to Brittany's face. "He'd better have been nice."
"He was totally nice."
Santana's run out of questions. She stares ahead at the road and worries her lower lip with her teeth.
"It'll only get better from here," she says at last. "I should know."
She's right, actually. Brittany likes that she's good at sex. It's like dancing: she's strong and supple and can manipulate every muscle without thinking about it, and the way boys look at her body reminds her of the way an audience watches her during her solos at dance recitals. Then, there are the boys: each one smells different, feels different, sounds different. Clothed, their bodies are mysteries; naked, they're revealed: warm, raw, surprising.
Instead of driving something between them, sex has brought Brittany and Santana even closer together. They have something completely new to talk about. Sometimes they even trade boys and compare notes—although Brittany has ticked off more than Santana, who always gets bored and goes back to Puck. Brittany has never gone back to anyone more than twice. Even just for making out, which she'll do with pretty much any boy, they do get boring pretty fast. The mystery's gone.
Still, even though she knows she's supposed to be happy with boys and popularity, Brittany can't stop thinking about touching Santana. She's sure she could make Santana feel good. That Santana could make her feel good. Santana's kisses are softer than boys' kisses, softer even than other girls' kisses. That night when they kissed against the wall—she wants to make Santana move like that again, like she's let her control over her own body slip into Brittany's hands. She wants to hear the sounds San makes during sex, to know how her smell and the taste of her mouth change just after she comes.
Too bad Santana doesn't want what she wants.