At Nationals - Continued
Victory lap. Finn couldn't believe he and Will were the directors watching their team perform this new tradition show choir tradition.
I keep it steady 'cause steady that's how I do it
(Jai ho) This beat is heavy so heavy you gonna feel it
(Jai ho) You are the reason that I breathe
(Jai ho) You are the reason I still believe
(Jai ho) You are my destiny, Jai ho
(Jai ho) No, there is nothin' that can stop us
(Jai ho) Nothing can ever come between us
(Jai ho) So come and dance with me,
Jai ho
Finn knew this was the end of the road for him as much as it was the end of Artie, Tina, Sam, Britt and Blaine. He was tired of fighting with Will. He glanced at Will Schuester, the man who had once meant so much to him, who was the father he never had. When Finn was part of New Directions he was inside the celebrated circle and never saw how the team worked. Now he saw how biased Will can be. Did the rest of the team fell neglected by the focus on the stars, the way Will wants to focus on Ryder and Marley?
Finn didn't know, will never know because he's done fighting with Will. Even this last song was a fight. Sure, they had already won and why not let Marley and Ryder have the spotlight but Finn felt he owed Tina big time. Gangnam Style was atrocious, and kinda racist Mercedes gently chided him, and Jai Ho is the song Tina wanted to do at the time. Finn regretting not going with his first impulse and taking Will's advice. Well, it's Will's team after this song and from now on Will can do what he wants, whatever the team lets him get away with. Finn is moving on to his new life with Rachel.
A month later
Mercedes looked around, damn if this wasn't the world's biggest record store. Three levels of music smack dab in the center of Manhattan. Hell, since she's here she might as well look up a little Broadway. She picked up a CD and started humming to herself.
"Mercedes!"
She looked up to see a beautiful sight, and angelic Kurt Hummel beaming at her. He'd put on a few pounds since she last saw him, making him even more beautiful in her eyes. "Kurt! What are you doing here?"
"I live here, babe!" he giggled. "I should ask you that skinny girl. You're pretty far from LA."
"Skinny is relative, babe. By LA standards a size 8 is still massively obese but thanks for noticing. I'm here for work."
"A singing gig?" he asked excitedly. "Tell me where and when and I'll buy up all the tickets."
"I'm singing with Tim, my boss's husband, tonight at a small club but really I'm here for work. Ben, my boss, had to come out here to do some promotion work. Pimping his book is what he calls it. Tim came too and singing an opening set makes it a deductible business trip. They gave me the afternoon off and I'm leaving for Ohio tomorrow. I'll catch up with them in Columbus next week."
"Finn said you're a personal assistant. What exactly does that mean?"
"It depends. I've met people who work for real douches but I got lucky. Ben can be a little moody but mostly he just needs an extra pair of hands, somebody to drive and carry stuff if he has to go out. He's teaching me how to do research for his books. That's kind of fun. At home he doesn't need much help at all, the house is set up for him. And when Tim's home he takes care of everything like any married couple." She looked at her friend with concern. "I tried to tell you I'd be in town today. That's why I called you last week? I didn't mention it because you seem preoccupied. Distracted?"
"Last week?" Kurt racked his brain. Oh, right. Last week. "I'm sorry, I got a piece of unexpected news."
"You okay?" She asked, putting here hand on his arm. "You look tired. School okay?"
"School's fine. It's just, like I said, unexpected news."
"Burt was sick a while ago, wasn't he? Is he okay."
"Yes, the family's all fine. Thanks for asking but it's nothing." He rubbed his hands together, changing the subject. "So you're singing tonight?"
"Yes. Ben's got friends everywhere, from back in the day, and he got Tim and me a gig opening for a friend of his. It's a short set but it's in New York."
"Ben was musician?" Kurt tried to remember the story Blaine told him.
"Yes. Ben and his sister Alice are guitarists. Really good, I'll send you a clip of them playing. They did a lot of session work and big tours. That's how he met his husband, Tim. Tim's a backing singer and they met on a tour. They were already dating when Ben had a freak accident, a scaffold collapsed during a show. It was tough for him. Of course it would be tough on anybody but he was one of those jump around all over the stage type guitarist. But you move on, you know?"
"Yes." Kurt's blue eyes clouded over for a second. "You move on. And speaking of that, how are you? Dating anybody?"
"Not really but now that I'm skinny, kind of, men that wouldn't give me the time of day are circling like vultures."
"It's not like back in high school nobody ever looked twice at you."
"Whatever." It was her turn to change the subject. "You got a couple of minutes for a cup of coffee? If we discuss music I can use it for a tax write-off."
"You make enough from singing to pay taxes?"
"One day, babe. One day."
"Well that makes two of us." The two old friends linked arms.
late that night
Mercedes listened to Kurt snoring in the other bed in this hotel room. She was happy to see him show up at her show, surprised Rachel didn't come along - sick Kurt informed her, and impressed with the plus-one he did show up with. A cute blonde, Kurt was a magnet for cute guys, he knew from back home. Chandler was a theatre major at NYU and full of stories. Stories about Lima, stories about Philadelphia where he lived before that, stories about places he and Kurt hang out in Manhattan. After 30 minutes Mercedes realized she knew about Chandler than she knew about Blaine, and she's known Blaine for two years. Kurt explained that when he first got here Rachel and Chandler were the only people he knew. Yeah, she'd hang with Chandler too.
Also surprising was her visit to Chandler's dorm room, where Kurt apparently spent a lot of time.
"Too much drama over at the loft." Chandler stage whispered. Kurt rolled his eyes.
"Santana moved in. She just freaking moved in!" Kurt sighed and plopped on Chandler's roommate bed. "Chandler's roommate is in Africa for a work study for the semester so I've been hiding here. Not that anybody's noticed. Rachel, Santana and more of Quinn and Brody than I care to see."
Brody Finn had mentioned before but "Quinn?"
"Quinn." He rolled his eyes again. "But enough of that. You said you're driving back to Lima? By yourself?"
"Yes and yes." She grinned and looked at the suitcase at the foot of the bed. "And I would love company."
The next morning
Brody sat in the diner near the loft, watching silent tears run down Rachel's cheeks. Not that big ugly cry she does for dramatic effect, but a deep, truly heartbroken to the depth of her soul cry. Instead of analyzing her, storing this in his memory in case he needed it for a role, he should be reassuring her. He didn't love her, they had both acknowledged that, but he did still care about her and he suddenly realized he should show that. He reached across the table.
If looks could kill. Of course he'd heard that expression before but he'd never seen the actual look that could kill. Today he did. Smokey-eyed Santana, who was sitting on one side of Rachel, gave the look of a woman who would take you to Hawaii, hijack a helicopter and drop you into the nearest volcano. Icy blue-eyed Quinn, sitting on the other side, gave the look of a woman who would take you to Alaska, smear you with fish guts and drop you naked on glacier with a pack of polar bears. He definitely needed to memorize those looks he thought as he pulled his hand back.
"It's just a fertilized egg. Remember that." Santana said, ignoring Brody again.
"It's not an egg. It's a baby. Remember that." Quinn said.
"Look at your plate." She pointed to Quinn's scrambled eggs. "Is that a chicken dinner?"
"It would have been." Quinn said stubbornly, pushing her plate aside.
"Yeah, but it ain't, is it?" Santana turned her attention back to Rachel. "It's a perfectly legal medical procedure."
"It's a baby! A Christmas miracle!" Quinn said as Brody rolled his eyes.
"More like Halloween." Rachel whispered, the first thing she's said all morning.
"Halloween?" Brody asked. "Halloween?"
"That's what they said, down at the clinic a couple of weeks ago. If I...if I don't..." She was speaking so softly all three young adults at the table had to strain to hear. "Mid November, plus or minus two weeks."
There was stunned silence as the three did a piece of mental math Rachel never had. Ok, Santana thought, she's still in the first trimester. Ok, Quinn thought, she's known about this for a couple of weeks. If she was as set on abortion as she says she is it would be all over by now. Hell no, Brody thought.
"So you got pregnant in February?" He asked. Quinn and Santana noticed the anger in his voice. February, so what?
"Yes." Rachel answered.
"Mid February?" No answer from Rachel. "Ohio? Freaking Ohio?"
Brody labelled the look on Rachel's face as 'busted'. In fact it was horror sprinkled with a dash of embarrassment. Mortification.
"And you tried to pawn this off on me? I can't believe you! Who does that?" Quinn coughed nervously and Santana snickered despite the gravity of the situation. Brody missed both reactions as he lept to his feet. "Who does that?" he repeated just in case Rachel missed it the first time. Then he started to make his drama queen exit.
"Whoa!" Santana jumped up. "You're buying us breakfast. Remember?"
Brody threw two twenties on the table. "And that's the last thing I'm paying for!"
Good riddance douche-bag, Quinn and Santana both thought to themselves.
"How could you forget a critical detail like that?" Quinn asked later, cradling a sobbing Rachel in her arms as they sat on the sofa back at the loft.
"I didn't FORGET, forget. I realized I was late, I took the test, I panicked. Brody is, I guess was, my boyfriend."
"I think it's definitely was." Quinn wanted to slap Rachel but now's not the time. "This changes everything, you know. You have to tell Finn."
"No. This changes nothing. My body, my choice. Right Santana?"
Santana put the tray with the three cups of tea she'd just prepared on the coffee table. "Mostly yes." Rachel let out her breath. "But much as I hate to admit it, Quinn's right. You should tell Finn." She glared at Quinn. "Stop gloating, I just said you're right on this one particular point. Listen to me Rachel. We all know how Quinn feels, it's a baby the second that sperm barged into that egg, uninvited. We all know how I feel, a first trimester abortion is legal and moral and your own business. We all know how Brody felt, he doesn't want a kid and doesn't care how. Here's what we don't know. Finn's the possible father. " Rachel started to object. "I agree, he can't make you or stop you from doing what you want but he has a right to know. Two, none of use knows how you feel. How you really feel. Rachel, you have to make a decision and own it. Not Quinn, not me, not Brody and not Finn. You, Rachel Berry."
Meanwhile, in central Pennsylvania
A long car ride with an old friend can make you wonder. it can make you wonder why you were friends in the first place, what you ever saw in them, how they can stand to listen to that crap. Now, looking at Mercedes through half open eyes, Kurt wondered what he was thinking when he let their friendship die. There must have been a reason and he can't keep blaming Rachel and Blaine. Actually, this is one thing he can't blame on Blaine at all and Rachel was just being Rachel. He should have put more effort into maintaining their friendship he realized.
"You know, I always envied the way you could sleep in a car." Mercedes said when she realized he was awake.
"You used to get carsick." He laughed at the memory. "Remember that trip to Georgia and your grandfather? It took forever cause we had to stop every half hour."
"Luckily I outgrew that. They all send their regards by the way."
"Oh, that's so sweet! You spent the summer there, right?"
"Yup. Just like old times, except for the ice cream. My cousin tried to make vanilla ice cream. Your mom spoiled me for anybody else's vanilla ice cream. Nobody makes it like Miss Elizabeth used to."
"You want to try it, Mercedes?" How could he have walked away from the one friend who had known his mother, tasted her prize wining ice cream? "I know her cookbook is in the house, I saw it last time I was home. Please?"
PUSSYCAT DOLLS - JAI HO