Thanks for the reviews so far. I would greatly appreciate more, however! Good or bad. As I said at the end of last chapter, this is my favourite one.

Finn decided to put his game-plan into action immediately. Right after second period, they had a fifteen minute break. He ran as fast as he could to Rachel's locker so he could spend break with her and then walk her to her next class. He was a bit out of breath when he reached her.

"Hey, Rach!" he exclaimed, as cheerfully as he could. "How was second period? Did you learn lots? Man, it's a nice day, isn't it?"

Rachel appeared a little surprised by Finn's manner. "It was very educational. Finn, you didn't take pseudoephedrine again, did you?"

"Take what?"

"That 'vitamin' Mrs. Schuester gave us last year to give us more energy?"

"Oh," Finn said. "No. I'm just happy to see you, that's all."

Rachel's concerned expression relaxed into a smile. "Good. I'm happy to see you, too." She went onto her tiptoes to give him a peck on the lips.

Suddenly, another of Miss Pillsbury's tips came into his mind. "Wait here," he said to Rachel, and he ran into the nearest classroom. The teacher inside looked up curiously as Finn grabbed a chair and brought it into the hallway. He set it down behind Rachel. "Here, have a seat."

Rachel furrowed her brow. "Um, Finn. We're in the hallway."

Finn began to doubt himself. Maybe it was kind of weird-but he was desperate. "You don't want to sit down?" he asked, a little hurt.

Rachel's expression changed immediately when she saw his frown and she sat down on the chair. "Sure, yes, I do want to sit down. Thank you, Finn."

"No problem, Rachel," Finn replied, grinning. "Anything for you!"

Lunchtime was the next chance Finn got to try out his strategy. He was a little late to lunch, as he had spent extra long in the locker room after P.E. trying to look good for Rachel. When he got to her table, Artie, Tina, Mercedes and Kurt were already sitting with food, eating. Rachel didn't have anything in front of her.

"Why don't you have anything to eat?" Finn asked.

"Oh," she replied in an offhand sort of way, "I thought I'd wait for you so that we could go through the line together."

Finn mentally slapped himself. She was such a good girlfriend. How could he have ever taken her so much for granted? Time to be a gentleman again. "No, you just sit here. I'll go get your lunch for you! And it'll be totally vegan-friendly!" He paused. "Kurt, could you come here for a second? I've got a question about...uh...that game we might go to in Cleveland next month with Burt."

Kurt rolled his eyes, but got up and followed Finn to the lunch line. When they were out of earshot of the others, Kurt said, "What is this really about? You know for a fact I would never go to a sports game with you and Dad."

"I need you to tell me what of this stuff a vegan can eat. I know they can't eat meat, but what else?"

Kurt laughed. "You've eaten lunch with her every day for almost a year, and you don't know that she has a garden salad with Italian dressing on the side every single day?"

Finn could only blink. "Wait, how come you're so observant?"

"Just come on. You get what you want here, then go over to the salad bar and get her food. And it wouldn't hurt for you to load up on some green stuff, too." Kurt shook his head, still laughing, and walked back to the table.

Finn followed Kurt's advice, and got himself a few pieces of pizza and a pile of salad drenched in Ranch dressing—he didn't see how he could eat all of that lettuce without something on it. He similarly loaded up Rachel's plate with salad, but put some Italian dressing in a little bowl and stuck it on her tray.

"Thanks, Finn," she said when he placed the tray in front of her. When he sat down beside her, she kissed him on the cheek. "What a gentleman!" she praised. "And you're even having some salad today."

Finn couldn't help but grin as he threw a grateful glance at Kurt. His plan was working. Soon, Jesse would have absolutely no chance with his girl.

Finn tried a bit of his salad, but realized he'd put too much dressing on it—the lettuce was getting soggy already. He turned his attention to his pizza—but not his full attention, of course. He was listening as avidly as possible to Rachel telling him about the first Broadway show her dads had ever taken her to—"The Lion King".

Eventually, the end of lunch was about ten minutes away, and Rachel put down her fork. "I'll meet you in Spanish, Finn. I just need to run to the ladies' room."

As she began to stand up, Finn remembered another of Miss Pillsbury's tips. He rocketed up off his seat. Unfortunately, his sudden movement caught both Rachel and his tray, still bearing the Ranch-dressing-saturated-salad, by surprise. The tray flipped over onto Rachel, and then fell to the floor.

The others at the table gasped. Artie sounded as if he was choking back laughter.

Finn, however, was horrified.

"Oh no, Rachel, I'm so sorry, I was just trying to..." He didn't even know what to say.

Rachel was just looking down at her outfit, now covered in white glops of lettuce leaves. After a moment, she looked up, a pained smile on her face. "Don't worry, Finn. I always keep a back-up outfit in my locker for when I get slushied. I haven't been slushied in over a week, so it's time the outfit was put to use." She picked up a napkin and got some of the lettuce and dressing off, got her bag, and said, "Please just let Mr. Schuester know I might be a few minutes late for Spanish." She walked off.

Finn sunk back down into his chair, mortified.

"Well," Kurt said, "at least it was the salad you spilled on her and not the meat-lover's pizza you were just scarfing down."

Finn could only scowl at Kurt's joke.

Finn informed Mr. Schuester of Rachel's likely tardiness and the cause of it immediately upon entering the Spanish classroom. Mr. Schue looked as if he wanted to make a joke, too, but closed his mouth and simply nodded when he noticed Finn's morose expression.

Finn took his usual seat, and got out his books. Rachel walked in only a couple of minutes late in her clean outfit. She took her seat beside Finn, and gave what seemed to be an encouraging smile to him. "See? Good as new. And don't worry about those other clothes. I have a very good drycleaner," she whispered.

Finn felt a bit better. She wasn't mad at him, after all. He was able to concentrate as much as he ever was on the conjugation of Spanish verbs. At least for the first twenty-five minutes of class.

At that point in time, there was an abrupt knock on the door. Mr. Schue paused his lecture and opened the door. Finn craned his head as far forward as he could so he could see who was at the door; however, Mr. Schue was blocking his view.

He could still hear, though. And what he heard was, "Special delivery for Miss Rachel Berry." Rachel's head perked up at the mention of her name. So did Finn's.

Mr. Schue seemed to have been taken by surprise. "Um, our class is in session."

"Sorry, man. Just doing my job," the visitor said.

Mr. Schue relented. "Well, okay, sure, she's in here." He turned around. "Rachel, can you come up?"

Rachel rose quickly from her seat and approached the door. Finn could hear her sharp intake of breath. When she turned around, her arms were full of a bouquet of red roses. There was a large card attached, too. The class broke out into murmurs.

"Here, Rachel, you can put those on the side until the end of class," Mr Schue was saying. But Finn wasn't paying attention to anything but the fact that his girlfriend had just received a bunch of romantic flowers from someone who wasn't him.

Rachel did as she was bidden and put the flowers on a side table. Finn noticed her sneakily snatching the card and bringing it back to her desk.

She was beaming at him. She whispered to him, "Finn, you shouldn't have! You know I wasn't mad about the salad..." But she was trailing off as she began to read the card. Her mouth dropped open, and she glanced quickly at Finn, then back at the card, then at the flowers, then back at the card.

And then her face abruptly went as red as the flowers sitting on the table.

Finn didn't need to be told who the roses were from.

Verb conjugation was forgotten as Finn occupied himself for the rest of the period in drawing a rough picture of Jesse St. James getting an atomic bomb dropped on him.

Finn only took two basketballs to the head due to inattention at practice that afternoon. That was better than the days when Rachel had started dating Jesse. Back then, he'd have to put a pack of frozen peas on his forehead every night.

And he enjoyed being able to pretend that the basketball was Jesse's head as he pounded it to the floor over and over as he dribbled down the court.

But he couldn't help but wonder if Jesse was over at Rachel's house right now doing something else to win her back. Finn wanted to call her, but didn't trust himself to not sound like the idiot he had been all day.

Finn thought sulkily to himself as he walked from his locker room to the car that if he was Rachel, even he would break up with him. Jesse seemed to know what this romance stuff was about, even if he was a jerk. Then again, Finn thought, I'm a jerk, too—just a different kind of jerk. Jesse's the kind who eggs a girl in a parking lot, and I'm the kind that ignores her phone calls and forgets that she doesn't eat meat.

While the difference between the two kinds of jerks seemed dramatic, Finn knew that both resulted in heartbreak—one was just quicker at it.

Hmmm...things don't seem to be going so well for Finn. I bet that if you reviewed, things might go better for him...or not. I guess you'll just have to see!