Part 7: [Still Breathing]
You wake up to the mumblings of the television and the smell of frying eggs. When you work up enough energy to roll out of bed, your knees collide with the ground before you realize that you've actually been lying on the couch, not your bed.
You kind of half crawl, half stagger your way into the kitchen where her blue eyes nearly knock you backwards with surprise. When did Brittany get…oh yeah, you cried last night. Sobbed and sniffled and snorted is probably a better description of what you did last night. Still groggy your brain works to put together the image of Brittany in your kitchen and the smell of perfectly done poached eggs.
"Shit!"
"What?"
Your brain is kind of clicking along now, although, clearly your filter didn't wake up with the rest of your body, "You're allowed in kitchens now?"
At that Brittany frowns and snaps her head away from your gaze and back to the frying pan. You're trying to think of all the nicest ways of saying, "You nearly burnt down my kitchen once and somehow set a metal pan on fire, why the hell are you in my kitchen," but before you can think about better ways to rephrase such an offensive statement she interrupts your thoughts,
"I was never not allowed in kitchens," she starts as she turns off the flame and scrapes the eggs onto a platter, "and our dorms were too far away from each other so I couldn't steal your food anymore."
You just stare at her. You're not sure what else to do so you grab two forks, hand her one, and begin shoveling eggs down your throat.
"Yeah. I guess our dorms were pretty far apart."
She gives you her whimsical smile, the one that you don't like to see because it means that you won't be having this conversation anytime soon. You're not even sure what this conversation will be. Will it be you trying to apologize and explain why you chose to go to school clear across the country? Will it be you trying to see how she's changed in the past five years?
"So I'm in med school," you start because sadly, that's pretty much the only thing that's going on in your life.
"I was dancing in L.A."
"And now?"
"I am dancing on Broadway."
"Holy shit Britt! That's great!"
You lean over the counter to give her a hug as she moves in to receive it, but you end up smacking skulls. That's never happened to you two before. Usually you're so in synch is scary. But if you just bumped heads while trying to hug, what the hell is going to happen if you try to kiss. Wait. Kiss? Who? Kissing?
"Shit. My bad B," you say as you settle for an awkward one handed hug and pat on the shoulder. What the hell is wrong with you?
-/-/-/-/-/-
Brittany ends up staying with you for the rest of the week. Every morning you awaken to a cooked breakfast and the T.V. on the news channel. For the first time ever you're actually going to class with a full stomach and you don't have to raid the vending machines at every break.
You never actually ask Brittany to move in and become your official roommate. Instead one day you begin moving all her stuff from the living room to the spare room. She watches you but says nothing and just begins leaving you checks for rent every month.
She dances at night and you study all day. You almost never see each other and when you do it's usually while passing through the apartment door. Since that first day you haven't tried to talk to her and she is either too busy or too tired to make an effort and drag you into conversation.
"Hey, so I was talking to one of the other dancers and he told me about this nice Italian restaurant really close to the theater."
She's shuffling her feet nervously. You're pretty sure she's either about to tell you that she has a date or about to ask you on a date. You're not really sure which is worse.
"That's cool. You should check it out."
You mentally congratulate yourself for actually being able to sound somewhat indifferent and neutral.
"I was thinking that you and I could go on Friday? At seven? We coul–"
"This isn't a date right?"
"Uhh. No… I guess not?"
"I have to go Britt. But I'll meet you at the theater after class?"
Without waiting for a reply you grab your bag and nearly run full tilt out the door. The entire subway ride, you can't get that sad, torn up look you saw in Brittany's eyes when you basically said that you didn't want to go on a date.
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
As you walk to class you mentally curse yourself for being that stupid. It isn't bad enough that you lost her once because you didn't want to date her. You're pretty sure that if you don't do something soon you're going to lose her again.
Your mind is plagued with the thought that she'd find someone else, someone more deserving of the kind of love she could give throughout class. You stop thinking about Brittany only long enough to put some over-eager but wrong classmates back in their place.
You decide to head to the theater early so that you can catch the tail end of their rehearsal and maybe squeeze in a little bit of studying time. As you slip into the back of the theater you easily pick out Brittany from one of the moving blobs on stage. Still after all this time, the grace and power she possesses as she owns her character and her dance on stage, blows you away.
You're still in your Brittany induced trance, staring at the now empty stage, when you feel a tap on your shoulder. You nearly jump about a foot in the air out of surprise.
"Woah. Britt. Woah."
"'Woah' I tapped you or 'Woah' that was a good dance?"
Her tone is amused and her eyes glint with mirth.
"Both?"
The two of you just kind of stare at each other, you awkwardly try to look anywhere but her eyes as she tries in vain to catch your gaze.
"Let's go," you basically stutter in an attempt to save yourself from anymore awkward or headache inducing situations.
-/-/-/-/-/-
You're both silent as you read the menus and talk only about the type of wine that you should order. In fact, you don't even begin having a conversation until halfway through the entrees.
"Why did you choose to go to Berkeley?"
You internally rejoice slightly at this question because at least she didn't ask the 'Why don't you want to date' question.
"Uh. There were a lot of reasons. California is really cool."
"You chose your college because the state it's in was cool?"
"Well no not entirely," you put down your fork, flushed in a way that only Brittany can bring out of you.
"You chose Berkeley after you knew I was going to Julliard."
"How did you…Quinn."
"I thought we were best friends? Why would you choose to be so far away from everyone for four years?"
You know that when she says everyone she's really thinking about why you chose to actively avoid her for four years. You also know that you could totally try to avoid answering these questions. But that was the old you. If this is your second chance, you're pretty sure that honesty and full disclosure should be two things for you to focus on.
"I spent twelve years of my life being your best friend. Some of those twelve years hold the best times that I'd ever experienced and the happiest feelings I've ever felt. But some of those twelve years hold the worst hurt I've ever felt too."
You pause and wait for her to nod before you continue,
"You were always there for me in every way I asked you to be. Then suddenly one day you weren't. One day you weren't mine and you weren't there and I was alone."
You feel tears about to pop up but you push on.
"I had relied on you to be there every step of the way since we were six and suddenly we were eighteen and we barely talked to each other. I played Call of Duty instead of going to prom. A lot of that had to do with my fears of status, about coming out. But I couldn't turn to my best friend about it because I'm in love with her. How can you talk to the person who confuses you about how much they confuse you?"
Still, Brittany just sits patiently and listens, her eyes wide and seemingly soaking in everything you're saying.
"I loved you then and I love you now. I chose Berkeley because in Lima I had always been 'Santana and Brittany' or 'Brittany and Santana'. I didn't know how to be me without you and I needed to figure it out without having you constantly there. I needed to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be, for me."
"You still love me?"
Insecurity permeates her face; her brows furrowing slightly her mouth pushed into a sort of frown.
"I never stopped," you breathe out bringing your eyes up to meet crystal blue ones.
"God, you had me so scared. I thought I'd lost you forever. I thought you'd moved on and forgotten about me. I thought that you didn't love me anymore and went to school across the country because I wasn't there to chain you to New York."
"It wasn't like that at all."
"I thought you were done with me. You had Lex and Berkeley and I was just a part of your past. And then I visited and I was dating and you weren't. And I still love you too."
You're both crying as you get up and move over to her side of the table. You pull her sitting body towards your standing frame until her head rests on your shoulder and her tears soak through your shirt. You don't care that everyone in the restaurant is wondering why you're both crying your eyes out. All that matters is that you've got the girl of your dreams in your arms and that she still loves you.
A/N: Yeah, it is a short part but I wanted to give you all something before I go trap myself out in the wilderness for three days.
I'm not sure how much I like this chapter or its lack of substance…
Anyway, thank you to all of you who read this. And a huge thank you to the reviewers.
As always, review if you are so inclined to. (It rhymes, come on.)
Also am I weird for thinking that 'furrowed' is kind of a cute word?
Last thing. Created a tumblr. Currently there is all of one post on there, but I expect that to change soon. If you want to know when updates are gonna be or get snippets of the next chapter that's the place to go {arkantoz (.) tumblr (.) com}