i'll sing you the jacinth song of the probable stars

by missmandamargo

you are are little tired now; tired of things that break, and- just tired. so am i.

5. Part 5

Trigger warning for rape/non-consensual sex.

---

I took you for granted.

I didn't begin to comprehend that for months – and when I finally did, it made me feel hollow and weak, the way a baby bird trembles and shudders in the wind. I was too naïve to understand what had happened between us until years had passed, and when I finally did, it felt as though my heart was made of shattered glass, and every brittle edge sliced a wound in my chest.

We didn't speak again for half a year.

It was spring before I worked up the nerve to approach you – and that was only because I had learned to wash the look of the wound in your eyes out of my memory. I couldn't muster up the strength to talk to you in the days following what happened, and then the days turned to weeks – you never sought me out, never tried to contact me, so I took your lead. It was cowardly. You deserved an apology, if nothing else. There are many things I would have changed about our time together, Rachel, but this is one of the things I wish I could change very much.

I didn't prepare myself for it, it just sort of happened; by this time, you weren't so much like a throbbing wound in my ribcage, more like a dull ache behind my eyes – I never forgot about you, quite, but I could think around you, I could function around you, and after a time, the norm became rote for me – and I didn't always turn for you when doing tasks we had always done together.

I ran into you on the quad, before Cheerios practice. You were carrying a case for an instrument and it startled me because, even though we didn't speak, I kept a careful eye on you just the same – and I didn't know you had joined the band.

Your bangs were longer, and they fell into your eyes in a way that was unkempt and messy. Not at all like you – you're rigidly neat, if nothing else. Your clothes were clean, as always, and even with the distance between us I could smell the laundry soap on you; that scent that is mostly chemicals, but still gave me a sense of peace and relaxation – but they weren't as stridently pressed, either. It made a frown line etch itself between my eyebrows to see you like this, in a hurried daze.

"Rachel?"

It felt both strange and familiar to say your name aloud, and for a brief moment I saw the light come into your eyes (it wasn't just recognition – it was hope, and longing, and remembering) before you closed up, your entire person going rigid and tense. I could have sighed if I hadn't been a bundle of nerves. You clutched the instrument case impatiently, your gaze flicking from one edge of your vision to the next, almost in an effort to avoid looking directly at me.

It sent a fresh wave of pain through me, and I swallowed.

"How have you been?"

You shrugged. You didn't move, precisely, and I felt encouraged by the fact that you didn't push past me or walk away – though you seemed impatient and uncomfortable, you stayed, and it made my insides tremble. I had to squeeze my fingers into the meat of my palms to stop them from shaking, to fight back the urge to reach out and touch you –

"I miss you," I whispered before I knew what I was doing.

Your eyes snapped into focus, then, and I felt paralyzed by the weight of them; their color, when we were young, were a sweet and steady brown – like Easter candy – but as we aged, so did they, and looking at them then, I was struck by the difference in the hue, how it had changed from solid to something permeable, like mahogany shadows; I was reminded abruptly of blood on glossy wood tables, of coffee with strawberry syrup. It startled me. I was too struck by the intensity of them to properly hear you when you said –

"I can't do this, Brittany."

Your voice was low and terse, but it felt good to hear you speak, even if I didn't absorb the words at first. I pulled my bottom lip into my mouth and sucked in a breath, scanning your face, trying to take you in all at once – I could sense that you would leave, and I yearned to pull you close, to just stop, for a moment, and be the people that we used to be.

"I'm sorry," I breathed in a rush.

You flinched, your body recoiling, and I instinctively reached out – but my fingers curled on air, stopped mid-gesture by the way you withdrew from me. I never touched you, Rachel, but it felt like I was burned, anyhow.

"No," you jerked your head, shaking it violently, and deliberately stepped around me.

I didn't watch you go, but I felt you leave. It was as if some hook embedded deep inside of me – caught somewhere around the base of my spine – was tugging and tugging, ripping slowly out. It was a jagged, searing pain, the expulsion of something that had always been vital and important and loved.

I didn't cry, though I wanted to. I swallowed and breathed, reminding myself that the female body is designed to withstand the intolerable – and that I would be fine, with time.

We hadn't said a word to each other in six months, but that exchange – so few words, such a brief time – it felt more like a final goodbye than all the silence between us ever could.

---

I didn't make a conscious decision to stop paying attention to you, but it happened by degrees. I think it was by instinct – I had to force myself to stop looking for you in the hallways, to not hear your voice coming from the choir room. It was hard to do for the remainder of that year, but I did it.

I buried myself in the Cheerios to fight off the loneliness. It worked. I grew close to Quinn, whose icy smile and slanted eyes reminded me of a vixen, and sometimes her kisses stole my breath away. She introduced me to Santana Lopez, a girl so full of passion and anger that I imagined her walking around with an electricity storm surrounding her – snapping and cracking, igniting the air. I found her beautiful and frightening and dangerous, and after a time, we became uneasy friends. She seemed impatient with me – her eyes were always quick and furious, glancing from one subject to the next, dismissive; and she never could bear to look at me for very long.

Quinn worked to smooth the place between us, because she seemed intent on us becoming part of the elite, and Santana – for some unnamed reason – acquiesced to her wishes. I never knew that I was a part of the 'popular' crowd until Quinn told me so. It proved to be true when I was asked to prom by a senior that year.

Quinn and Santana got dates, too, so I accepted. He was a big football player – burly, thick, the kind of guy that always made me wrinkle my nose. At that age, I didn't have a reason or a desire to name the thing inside of me that drew me to women more than men, but that was the very first time I remember being confronted by it. His name was Jason, and he smelled weird. His face was scratchy and his hands were rough, and the whole time we danced, I wished it was you.

Quinn looked adequately annoyed by her date, too, and Santana glared at hers. He seemed too afraid to touch her. In the end, I slipped away from Jason while he was pouring vodka in the fruit punch, and I convinced Santana and Quinn to steal away with me.

"Yuck," Santana said, wiping a layer of sweat from her cheekbones the second we let the gym doors clatter behind us. "It smells like pheromones and Axe body spray in there."

"I think it was lovely," Quinn's voice was always so quiet in comparison to Santana's. Her smile was almost wistful.

"The stink of adolescence and sexual tension? Okay."

Quinn's lips thinned. "Prom. It was beautiful."

Santana's eyebrows rose on her forehead, but she was too busy studying her phone to reply. The three of us walked with our high heels dangling from our fingers down the sidewalk.

"I liked the lights and the music," I said, shrugging. "But Jason can't dance."

Quinn smiled one of her gentle, fond smiles at me – "Compared to you, Brittany, nobody can dance."

Santana glanced up at that, her dark eyes calculating, bouncing between Quinn and I. I always wondered if Quinn ever told Santana about the nights we spent together. It made me think about the two of them sweating together in the dark, and for some reason, that made my insides twist and boil. I swallowed, shaking the thought away, and clasped Quinn's hand loosely. She smiled tolerantly as I swung it between us.

"Where are we going?" Santana groused. "I'm getting gravel embedded in my toes."

"I could call my dad to pick us up," Quinn tipped her head back to look at the sky.

"We could go to the park," I said. The night felt cool and damp and thick, like the wind had rain behind it, and I loved the way it smelled. I wasn't quite ready to be ushered home, to fall asleep in a bed that still felt too big for just me.

"And do what?" Santana asked.

I shrugged again.

Quinn let the moment pass before she nodded. "Yeah, let's go."

I'm sure we made a sight, strolling down the dark neighborhood streets barefooted. But we kept our hands linked, and even Santana laughed at the way I would jog ahead, pulling them behind me, in a jerky, swaying rhythm. By the time we made it to the park, we were all breathless, but I felt light and happy as I hadn't in a long time. It made me smile to realize it – though I was sad, too, to be missing you.

Santana dug through her tiny clutch purse until she pulled out a pint of tequila. It made my eyes grow big, because I'd heard enough about alcohol to be curious about it – but to that point, the most I'd ever had was a sip of wine or beer. Santana smirked, all smug confidence, at the narrow look Quinn threw her.

"What else are we gonna do here, anyhow?"

"I thought we would swing." I gestured to the structure, chains clinking in the breeze.

A pause. "We can do that, too."

Wood chips just aren't the same as sand. You were the first person to tell me that, back when we both first noticed that the parks were slowly replacing all of the sand with tiny pieces of wood. We were too big, then, to really play on them, but it made us sad all the same. I remembered your voice around those words while we tip-toed delicately over to sit in the swings.

Santana took a swallow of tequila and didn't grimace, but she did grin hugely at Quinn when she passed the bottle to her. Quinn wrinkled her nose, sniffed it, and shook her head. "No way."

"Don't be such a little girl, Fabray. Just try it."

Quinn shook her head again, but then almost immediately took a sip. Her lips peeled back, exposing her teeth, and she made a noise in the back of her throat.

"That is revolting."

"It'll grow hair on your chest." Santana wiggled her eyebrows.

Quinn rolled her eyes.

"Let Princess Buttercup over there have a try."

I was a little nervous when Quinn handed me the bottle. It didn't look like anything except water – but I could smell it, even without bringing it close to my face. I swallowed before I put it to my lips, and then with a deep breath I filled my mouth – and almost spat it back out again. With a choked groan, I pushed it past my throat, noting the way it made my whole face feel like it was on fire. I panted, pulling in air to soothe the burn, but that seemed to only make it worse. I handed the bottle back to Quinn with a vehement headshake. "Gross."

Santana sputtered out a laugh, and even Quinn was grinning in the dark. She took a small, delicate sip, before passing it back to Santana.

Santana gulped without pulling a face, and I was fascinated by it. I didn't understand how anyone could do that – tequila tasted like acid and electricity mixed together, sharp and strong and painful. Even now I can barely tolerate it. Santana swallowed it without a wince, and even Quinn seemed to grow accustomed to it after a time.

It didn't matter how loose or warm the alcohol made me, my face never stopped its bitter wince after every drink. I was amazed at the way it changed my friends – Santana's laugh, which had always been reserved, cold, and derisive before, became loud and giddy and genuine; Quinn's smiles, usually so fleeting and reserved, turned into wide open-mouthed grins, and I was delighted. We stumbled around that playground for hours, until the silver tequila finally vanished, and we wobbled half a block before Santana gave in and called her mom.

Santana's mother didn't seem surprised to find us drunk and sloppy, and though her eyes – the same ones Santana wore - were creased with worry, she didn't scold us the way I imagined a parent would. I couldn't conceive of my mother reacting with such calm, and Quinn slurred – during the grainy passage from the park to Santana's house – "my dad would put me in a boarding school if he ever saw me like this."

The three of us piled together in the backseat of Mrs. Lopez's Buick, the car filled with the quiet lull of late night radio – jazzy Frank Sinatra (I can't hear All of Me without remembering that night) – and the stench of us; grass, spring air, cheap liquor, and body spray. Quinn kept her hands wrapped around both of ours, respectively, and I stared at the wild tangle of our fingers in her lap with hazy eyes. Santana was subdued, but she rested her head on Quinn's shoulder, and her face was more relaxed and open than I'd ever seen it before. It made me realize that I was beginning to love her, in a way.

The way Quinn held onto us was almost desperate, the grip of a drowning man searching for buoyancy. All these years later, I still remember the texture of her skin – deceptively soft – and the feeling of her bones, hard and brittle, crunching against mine.

Santana's room was smaller and more cramped than I imagined it would be, with black walls and splashes of red everywhere. It made me vaguely uncomfortable. The three of us made a mess out of undressing, ripping lace and satin and dripping glitter everywhere. By the time we finally collapsed into her bed, the sky outside was lightening, and I could hear the faint chirping of birds.

I expected to drop immediately into sleep because I was exhausted – but just as I was on the brink of it, I heard Santana whispering, and something about her words snagged my attention. I kept my eyes closed, though, when I realized it was about me.

"Why is she even here, Quinn?"

Quinn was quiet, her voice hoarse and dull, as if she were too heavy to move. "I like her."

I made myself continue breathing as steadily as possible.

"Why?" Santana sounded almost wounded, and I wished that I could see her face.

"She's kind, Santana. She's funny."

"You like her legs," it was an accusation.

Quinn was silent for a long moment, and I jumped despite myself when I felt her fingers stroke down the length of my hair. "Yes," she answered simply.

Santana shifted almost violently in the bed, and I could feel Quinn reaching over to her, tugging at her. Their movements jostled me, and I fought to keep my eyelids from fluttering.

"Santana," Quinn said her name with such urgency – even at a whisper. "I can like another girl's legs. I can like her everything. It doesn't mean that I like you less."

Santana made a strangled sound.

"Don't cry," Quinn murmured.

"It's the tequila," Santana said around a sob. It made me hurt – and I knew, then, that I definitely did love Santana. "It always does this."

"I know." Quinn was quiet, and didn't say the next thing for such a long time that I thought she had fallen asleep. "Don't be jealous of Brittany. She's a good person. She's good to have around."

"How good?" Santana couldn't hide the spite in her voice. "Good enough for you?" I imagined I could hear the tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Don't be cruel."

Santana's laugh was ironic. "That's rich, Fabray."

Quinn sighed, and I wondered about their secrets – I wondered what exactly was hiding beneath the surface of them, what was causing such pain and anguish between them. I knew it wasn't my business. I barely knew Santana, and Quinn was still mostly a mystery to me; I realized that they had a past, just as I did with you, and that somehow our lives had collided to create this mess.

"She's my friend. I like her." Quinn was harder, now, than she had been before. The sympathy had drained out of her. "You will like her, too, if you give her a chance."

Santana didn't say another word, but the mattress shook with the force of her sobs. It was silent, desperate crying, and the instant stretched out so long and painfully that I was tempted to reach over Quinn and console her – it broke my heart to feel someone's palpable grief and not be able to comfort them.

Finally, Quinn rolled away from me and close to Santana, and I let out a relieved breath when Santana turned to bury her face against Quinn's neck.

"Don't leave me," Santana's whisper was hoarse.

"Shh. Go to sleep."

"I love you," Santana insisted.

Quinn shook her head. "You're drunk, Santana."

"No," Santana's voice was watery. "Yes. I am. But –"

"But nothing. You're drunk, go to sleep."

She did, without more argument. I didn't know it was possible to have such a bruised heart for another person – I felt even more guilty for the time I spent with Quinn, not only at your expense, but at Santana's, too. I fell asleep with water trapped behind my eyelids, struggling to understand how something could be so beautiful and broken and damaged all at once, and how that thing could be both me and not-me at the same time, and that if that was what growing up felt like, I would just rather not do it.

---

Things didn't change overnight between Santana and me. I kept a careful eye on her and Quinn and how they interacted – their deliberate dance around each other in Cheerios, the way they always seemed a united front to everyone else, but were disconcertingly at odds between themselves. I wanted to help them. I wanted to help us. I didn't know how.

You finished out our freshmen year as part of band, you played the flute. I saw you a few times with Mr. Ryerson and some other kids, and I hoped you were happy. You didn't seem like it. You squinted in disgust at Jacob Ben Israel, and seemed to only mildly tolerate the kid in the wheelchair.

Quinn asked me to go to cheerleading camp with her for six weeks starting in June. I wanted to say no, but only because I half expected that the summer would bring you to me – that you'd show up on my doorstep with shiny, polished shoes, or you'd call me and beg me to help you with a ballet move. It was a futile hope, though, and I think that part of me understood that; so ultimately, I said yes, and Quinn rewarded me with her big grin, the kind that showed all of her teeth.

Santana came along too, and even as her attitude towards me remained sullen and angry, I found myself loving her a little more each day – the fact that she had a Gucci suitcase, that she wore sunglasses and Chanel perfume to morning practice, the way she would file her nails with boredom during seminars about balance and mind-body connection. Quinn soaked up everything eagerly, and didn't let Santana's quips bother her. I loved her for that, too.

I loved them both for different reasons; I loved them apart, and I loved them together, and I wanted them to be happy.

We slept in a cabin together, with Santana on the bunk above Quinn's, and my own just next to hers. I knew that Santana did that to make us uncomfortable with the idea of getting intimate. She didn't have to – I couldn't even think about Quinn's naked body without hearing Santana's sad, brittle sobs in the early dawn.

Quinn didn't initiate anything between us, and I hoped it was for Santana. I hoped that they learned how to work around whatever it was that caused them both such complex pain.

After cheer camp was over, I spent the rest of the summer in my room, painting my nails and flipping through the mindless reality shows on MTV, and missing you.

---

Sophomore year was different. I felt older – and I was older, by the way I was quickly outgrowing all of my clothes.

"You're going to be so tall," my mother said, when I made her take me shopping at Charlotte Russe. "You can thank your father for that."

I can thank my father for my feet and my ears, too, my mother always told me.

"We don't even have to try out this year," Quinn told me on the second day of school. I was still buzzing from the excitement of it – she slid her arm through my elbow and guided me down the rows of lockers. "I talked to Coach Sylvester, she wants all three of us."

"That's great." I smiled because Quinn was so obviously pleased. "Is Santana happy?"

Quinn made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. "Is she ever?"

I smiled weakly. I didn't know how to answer.

"I'll see you in English."

We hardly ever talked about Santana between ourselves, but I never stopped thinking about her. I wondered if it was the same for Quinn.

I knew that it must be, because I never stopped thinking about you, either.

I didn't see you at all during the first week of school, and I thought it was because you might have transferred out of the district. I was extraordinarily saddened by that possibility, but also somewhat relieved – it might be easier to face the day knowing there was no chance to run into you. When I saw you at the school assembly with an unlikely group of kids doing a performance, it made me feel – strange. I was happy to see you, happy to see you doing something you enjoyed; but I felt empty because I knew nothing about it.

I didn't know anything about you, anymore. It was a harsh realization.

Quinn was upset about this assembly – she didn't like the idea of Finn hanging out in a club like that. I didn't understand why. Quinn had never even mentioned Finn to me, and I'm friendly enough with him that I wave hello during lunch, and Quinn knew that. Quinn knew we were friends. I'm still a little confused about it, even to this day, even though she's tried to explain it to me in the years since.

I had a harder time in school without you. I had to spend more and more time doing my homework, and the stress of failing grades made me morose and unenthusiastic. I didn't pay enough attention to things outside myself – I was tired a lot of the time, with Cheerios and dance practice and dealing with English and math assignments I didn't understand.

During the first quarter, I was put on academic probation, and my spot on the Cheerios was threatened. I felt helpless and frustrated – and, surprisingly, the person who came to my aid was Santana.

"I'm not doing this for you," Santana reassured me when I expressed my confusion. "I'm doing it for her."

I didn't need to ask which her. She meant Quinn. For whatever reason, Santana was willing to help me bring my grades up and stay on the squad, because she knew it was what Quinn would have wanted.

Santana was far from patient or kind as a tutor. She was brusque and blunt and she occasionally called me an idiot, but it did help. We spent a lot of long hours alone together in the library – she would scoff and roll her eyes at every question I asked, barely containing her annoyance. I didn't mind. By this point, I knew that I was pretty much useless with average academics, and I was used to people thinking I'm stupid. I had good friends who always reassured me otherwise (people like Finn and Tina and you) and I dealt with it.

Sometimes, Santana would let it slip that she wasn't as cold and cruel as she pretended to be, and it made a sweetness fill up within me. Once, she was running through geometry equations, her thumbnail tracing the lines in the textbook. She spoke with calm clarity, her words easy and slow. We sat close enough together that I could smell the scent of her shampoo, and her skin was warm against me – her lipgloss was pink and sticky, and I paid more attention to her lips moving than to math.

I watched her scrawl an equation out with her left hand, the writing neat and compact, and it made me grin. I was only half-thinking about geometry when she handed me the pen – and I didn't struggle through it like I usually did, I just wrote the answer down.

She gasped and gave a happy shake, bumping my shoulder with her own. "See! You got it!"

I nodded and she laughed. "Progress, finally."

I wanted to kiss her.

I think she could tell – because in a moment her gaze sharpened, her eyes narrowed, and she held her breath. I heard a faint buzzing in my ears, and I almost did it; but the heavy expectation in the air made me almost hyper-aware of it, and I remembered Santana crying in her bed.

"Thank you for helping me," I murmured, still somewhat entranced, and so, so close to her face.

Santana swallowed. "You're welcome."

That wasn't the last time we would get caught in moments like that. Often, if Santana and I stood too close, the air between us would grow thick and weighted, and her eyes would bore into mine with a kind of heavy resonance – her lips would part, just slightly, as if in expectation. It always made my heart beat painfully through my entire body, throbbing in my fingertips and all of my limbs, my lungs constricted and aching. It was hard to concentrate when I was so close to her, and for her – I think she was surprised by it, honestly. Her eyebrows wore this slightly puzzled crease whenever it happened, and she seemed dazed whenever it finally broke. I found any excuse I could to touch her, just to see that little frown – it mystified me, and excited me, and it changed the way Santana treated me, too.

If Quinn noticed, she was happy or relieved to find us finally getting along. She spent most of her free time stalking Finn Hudson and trying to get him to date her, and I knew that it made Santana fill with rage whenever she noticed it. I wanted to soothe them – I wanted to direct Quinn away from Finn, however I could – but a selfish part of me wanted Santana to focus on me instead of Quinn, at least for a little while. I can't help it that sometimes my own hunger gets the best of me. It's not one of my proudest moments.

I didn't know anything about the way Quinn was interacting with you until after Christmas break. I was looking for her – she had promised that we would build snowmen in her front yard with Santana before it got dark – and I pushed the auditorium doors open on the off chance that she was practicing piano there.

I saw that she had you cornered against the stage, and the look on your face was almost hopeless, your eyes so big and miserable. I couldn't hear what Quinn said, but I recognized the low threat in it; it was the tone she used whenever she intimidated handsy football players and upstart freshmen on the squad. It made everything inside of me tangle and wrench, and for a moment it felt like I was doing a cartwheel while standing absolutely still – before the door slapped closed behind me and Quinn turned, startled.

"Britt," Quinn said.

Your face showed shock and then it closed up, and you inched away from her.

"Quinn." I tried to swallow the dryness in my mouth. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing." Quinn didn't take any time to start walking towards me, as if she realized how awkward this would be. We never talked about you before that, Rachel, but I'm sure Quinn knew that we were friends once.

"Let's go." she tugged at my arm as she passed.

I stayed there a moment longer, looking at you. You were watching the two of us with a kind of aghast shock – and I noticed that you were thinner, now. You were taller. I wished I could put my hands on you and feel all of the differences.

"Brittany," Quinn said, more quietly, and I relented. I let her lead me out of the auditorium. We were silent, walking through the deserted halls of McKinley, and after a moment she directed me towards the Cheerios locker room.

We didn't have a reason to be here, and when she started undressing, I realized what she wanted.

"Quinn," my voice was unsure. "What about Santana?"

"What?" she looked at me sharply, her Cheerios top half off. "What about Santana?"

I sighed, and I think she could read it on my face. Quinn paused, studying me, before she shook her head. "You were awake that one night."

"Yeah." I bit my lip. "She loves you, I think."

"I love her, too," Quinn answered easily. "But I want you – I want other things."

I nodded. I understood, a little bit. I wanted you, and Quinn, and Santana. It was complicated. It never stops being complicated.

"Are you in love with her?"

Quinn fiddled with the seam of her polyester cheer top, glancing down. "I love Santana, but we aren't ready to be together yet. She couldn't handle what it would do to her reputation." Quinn looked at me and I couldn't decipher her expression – as if she were gauging me, somehow. "My parents would send me to a Pray Away the Gay camp. It isn't time for it yet."

I made a noise, because I didn't know what to say. I didn't pretend to understand what their lives were like, or what the implications were. "Maybe Santana doesn't really care about her reputation."

"She does," Quinn answered sharply. "She said a lot of things that night, but she's the one who –" Quinn's fists clenched suddenly, and her face was angry. "She slept with Noah Puckerman while we were – while we –"

I nodded slowly, thoughtfully. I imagined what it must have felt like for both of them – I wondered if Quinn realized that she was my Puck in relation to you.

"It's better this way," Quinn said with finality. "We both do whatever we want, and make no promises, and make no apologies. It's simple."

I smiled a little sadly at her, because I knew she couldn't possibly believe that. "People make mistakes sometimes, Quinn. Maybe you should forgive her."

Quinn's face darkened, and with an abrupt gesture, she re-zipped up her Cheerios top. "I don't want to talk about this."

"Okay." I sighed. I knew I had upset her, but I wasn't too worried about it. "Please leave Rachel alone, Quinn."

Quinn squinted at me, a little off-guard. "Why?"

"Because she doesn't deserve you bullying her."

Quinn snorted. "She's a disgusting little cretin."

I flinched. "Quinn, she's my friend."

She looked at me with incredulity. "You never talk to her. Ever. I would know if you were friends."

"Okay." I realized that she was right – we weren't friends anymore, were we? – and I picked at the cuticle in my thumbnail. "Quinn, she's like – she's, ah, she's my Santana. You know?"

Quinn looked at me slowly, her face blank, until it finally dawned on her. First, her eyebrows rose, and then her lips pursed. "Real-ly? Rachel?" Then she grimaced. "Ew, Rachel Berry? Brittany!"

I smiled, even though it hurt. "We've been best friends since the second grade. We just don't talk anymore because –" I gave a vague gesture in her direction.

"What?" Quinn glanced around, and then an even more obvious shock came over her. "Oh! You're talking about – when we –" she spun to look in the direction of the showers, and then she gasped. "I remember that! Oh my God!"

"Yeah." I let out a breath. I had never talked to anyone about that, and it still hurt. My chest quivered and heaved. "We haven't been the same since then."

"Were you guys –?"

I shook my head. "I don't know what we were. But it was enough that she was –"

I didn't know what, because you never told me. I never worked up the courage to ask you.

Quinn just nodded, as if she understood. After a little while, she let out a short laugh, shaking her head. "Who knew there could be so much screwed up about all of us?"

Who knew, indeed?

Quinn's face softened, and she slid close to me – her eyes were dark in the yellow light of the locker room, almost black, and her lips were red. She smiled as she cupped my cheek, stroking her thumb over the sharp line of my cheekbone. "We could just – do it anyway. Forget about them."

I turned my face and kissed the inside of her wrist, bringing my own hand up to hold hers there. "You don't want to forget about Santana."

Quinn let out a sigh. "I couldn't, even if I did want to."

I knew what she meant.

"You're very beautiful, Quinn. One of the most beautiful people I've ever seen."

Quinn smiled and it reached her eyes, for once.

"Talk to Santana. Figure it out with her. After that, if you still want to, we can."

Quinn nodded. She leaned up on her tip toes to press a soft, firm kiss to my lips, and it reminded me of our friendship – calm and accepting, with only a hint of fire beneath it. I wanted to pull her body close to mine, to bury my nose against her neck, to taste the dark, sweet places of her. But I didn't. Maybe for the first time in my life, I didn't.

"What about you and Rachel?" Quinn asked, once the moment had passed. "Do you want to talk to her before we-?"

I sighed. "No. Rachel doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't want me, anymore."

Quinn was quiet for a long while, and she spent the whole time studying my face. Her eyes were intense and serious, and it made me slightly self-conscious.

"She does still want you." Quinn was almost reluctant when she said it. "I saw the way she looked at you. It's obvious."

I shook my head in immediate denial. "I'm not sure she will ever forgive me."

Quinn's smile was wry, then. "She will. Someday. Just keep asking for forgiveness, and one day, she'll give it."

I frowned, brought to the realization that I had never – I had never really asked for forgiveness. How could you be expected to give it, then?

Quinn drove me home that day, and we said goodbye with soft kisses on the cheek. I loved the smell and texture of Quinn, and have always, and will always. Quinn is always so clean and neat – she's pristine, even when she cries – and her scent is like summer wildflowers. I love that everything about her is soft, except (sometimes) her voice and her eyes, which can be sharp and cutting like knives.

Santana is the opposite; there's very little soft about her, except perhaps her lips – though I always imagined them to be bruising and brutal – and she seems composed of things that slash and burn, like cayenne and cinnamon and shards of glass. It's her eyes that sometimes betray her with their impenetrable depth; occasionally, I can see the wounded vulnerability of her, and it rocks me to my core.

I still love them, after all this time. They dug themselves into my soul in that time that we weren't friends, don't you see? How could I ever stop loving them?

Quinn was right, I thought. I thought that if I asked – and kept asking – one day, you would forgive me.

I stopped you at your locker the next day, and you were so stunned by my sudden arrival that your jaw nearly dropped.

"I want to apologize," I said in a rush. "I know that I hurt you, Rachel. I never wanted to. I never meant –"

"Brittany." your voice was raw and hoarse, and you looked around with furtive eyes. "We can't do this here."

"You won't talk to me," I insisted. "I just want you to listen –"

"I want you to leave me alone!" you hissed, slamming the door. Several other students glanced in our direction and your jaw clenched. "Brittany, what's done is done. Move past it."

I bit my lip, breathing through my nose. "Rachel, I miss you. I want – we can still be friends!"

I didn't expect you to be so furious, but I could feel it coming off of you in waves. Something had changed you: it made you darker and more livid, and somehow more substantial than before. It nearly knocked me off my feet.

"We aren't friends, Brittany. Maybe we never were."

I wanted to cry. I almost did.

"Please leave me alone. My life is hard enough without you – coming around here, making it worse."

I could think of nothing to say, so I left. I left you there, in your red and blue skirt, white headband, maroon sweater. I had never tasted such hateful words from you, and I didn't know how to cope with them; so I went to my first hour and tried to forget.

You were wrong, Rachel. I wish I would have told you then, but I didn't. I wish I would have said – you're angry and hurt and I deserve all of the venom you want to spew, but you're wrong. Of course we were friends. We were always friends. I'll always be your friend.

I made that promise to you once, do you remember? I still love you even when you're mean.

I always will.

---

Eventually you started dating Finn Hudson, and it was strange to think of you with a boyfriend. I knew that it irritated Quinn – she hated the idea of you having him, even if she didn't want him – but I made her leave you alone. I hoped you were happy. I hoped he made you happy.

Quinn came to me, in the weeks following our discussion in the locker room, and told me that Santana wasn't ready. Neither was she, really. We found reasons to have sex all over that school – we made a game of it. Quinn enjoyed playing it. She would tease me during Cheerios practice, until I was practically squirming with the need to peel her out of her clothes, and then taunt me into running my hand up her skirt beneath the bleachers. She loved it, loved having the power over me, and I loved making her legs weak.

I had a feeling that Quinn still spent time with Santana – or started doing it again, I was never really sure about how long they spent abstaining, if they did at all – and it was confirmed when I noticed a bite mark on her collarbone that wasn't from me. I didn't mind, though. I knew that Quinn loved Santana wholly, and that Santana loved her, too; and that someday, Quinn would stop needing me, and I was fine with that eventuality.

It wasn't until the summer between sophomore and junior year that my curiosity about boys piqued, and that was mostly due to my older sister commenting on it.

"Why don't you have a boyfriend?" she eyed me critically up and down, home from her semester at the University of Ohio. "You're not a scraggly chicken-legged kid anymore. You have boobs. Why don't you have a boyfriend?"

I was too busy cramming Froot Loops into my mouth to really pay attention to her, so I shrugged.

"I had my first pregnancy scare at your age," she warned, pointing her finger at me. "If you're sexually active, tell me. I'll help you get on the pill."

I looked up from the kitchen island to stare at her. I had never thought about boys – like that. Not really. Some boys had tried, certainly; Puck most of all, but also Finn (before he settled with you) and other basketball and football players. A boy named Sam Evans sat on the steps and played guitar every morning, and he smiled at me when I passed.

"Promise me," she insisted. "Abortions are expensive. Better to just prevent them."

"Okay." I hadn't had a sex ed class yet, so I wasn't quite sure what she was talking about, except I knew that abortions were scary and nobody wanted one. "I haven't yet, though."

"No?" she seemed genuinely surprised by that. "Why not?"

"Nobody really.." I stared at my cereal, wondering myself why not? I had kissed a few boys, before I started kissing you. So I didn't know, really. "Nobody cute enough, I guess."

She laughed, and it made me look up at her.

"You'll find somebody. Your hormones will make it so that even the most pizza-faced guy is somehow some kinda sex god. You're just a late bloomer, I guess."

I still think about that conversation sometimes, and how my own sister thought I was a late bloomer. As an adult, I knew she was wrong – I had had my first sexual experience with you before most of the people in our grade had had their first kiss – but it unsettled me, somehow. I felt inherently lacking.

Boys. Boys were something I never really thought about, but in that moment, they became a challenge I needed to meet.

---

It was late summer before I got the chance to try them out. I hadn't made any quick decisions about who it would be – but I imagined that it would be Puck, probably. He had been more than vocal about how well he liked me since freshman year, and I knew it wouldn't take much convincing. I liked the idea that he had a lot of experience. I preferred it to someone who wouldn't know what they were doing.

I saw Mike Chang at our dance school one evening, and I knew that my plans for Puck were unnecessary. I had never seen Mike dance, but I caught a glimpse of him in one of the empty ballet rooms when I was on my way out – he moved with more grace than anyone I had ever seen in my life. I was always paranoid of running into you here, because it was the most painful place to see you and not be able to touch you or talk to you, but in that moment I lost myself in watching him, and I didn't care if anyone saw me standing there.

It felt like a timeless eternity before he finally stopped, and he was startled to see me there in the doorway – he looked around quickly, a little bashful.

"That was beautiful," I told him without reservation.

"Thanks," he seemed embarrassed. "I didn't know you were watching."

I walked into the room, setting my duffle bag down. "I didn't know that you dance."

He shrugged, refusing to make eye contact. "Not many people do. It isn't something I tell people."

"Why not?"

He gave a short laugh. "I play football."

"So?"

He looked at me, a little disbelieving. I smiled. I realized this was that sort of thing I never had a good grasp of, the social hierarchy and what was and was not acceptable. The kind of thing that people like Quinn and Santana know as if by default – the kind of thing that you are acutely aware of at all times.

"I thought you were hot," I stated bluntly, and watched his eyes widen with surprise.

"Yeah?"

I nodded. I was drawn to Mike more than any boy – maybe I had never really experienced attraction to a male before him, I don't know. I do remember the way his body was sculpted and defined beneath his black wife beater; I remember the sharp ridge of his hips, visible even beneath his sweat pants.

"Do you have plans?"

Mike shook his head, his eyes widening further. "Are you serious?"

"Yes." I was close to him, now; standing within his personal space. He didn't move, exactly, though he seemed a little incredulous – I could smell him, and it wasn't exactly pleasant; the musky, pungent smell of boy that has always made my nose wrinkle. But he also smelled like cologne and hair gel, and his chest looked strong, and I wanted to touch his arms and stomach.

"Can we do it here?" I couldn't help the playful way that I smiled, and I swear that Mike blushed, even though I couldn't see it.

"If you want," he managed, his voice hoarse. "We should close the door – lock it."

I nodded, but I didn't move away from him. Instead, I cupped the base of his neck, pulling him close to me. Kissing Mike was so different from kissing you or Quinn – he was still soft, but I could feel the scratch of his cheeks, and his mouth was more wet, somehow. He was taller than me, and until then, I had never really made out with someone taller than me.

Mike's body was hard in all the places I expected softness; I felt the sharp press of his skeleton beneath his skin, the ropy coil of his muscles, and all I could think about was – well, you.

He held me, and I felt dwarfed in his arms, another sensation I had never really experienced (and I wasn't sure that I liked it). His tongue was rougher and bigger in my mouth than I was used to. But he was gentle, and after a time I relaxed enough to feel my belly tighten in anticipation when his palms roamed low on my back, and then roughly over my ass.

We broke apart and he was smiling – happy, I guess, to be kissing me – so I reached down and tugged my shirt off. His smile dropped – he quickly darted over to the door and closed it, turning the little lock. He removed his own shirt while I slid my shorts down, and the look on his face was just downright flattering. It made me grin to feel so appreciated for something that I really never took a lot of credit for – my body. Mike enjoyed looking at it, and I enjoyed his obvious pleasure.

I let him kiss me again, because I felt a little lost in this instance – I didn't really know where to touch him. It didn't come to me naturally, like it did with you, and when he moved to lay us down on the thin blue mat, I let him – marveling at the strange weight of his body on top of mine. He was lighter than I imagined he would be. I compared the length of his torso to Quinn's, and thought about you when he pressed his lips to the cusp of my throat. I remembered your tongue tracing the line of my pelvis when his hand wandered there, and I shut my eyes against the flood of memories. Not like this. I didn't want to have sex with a man the first time to only be aching for you.

I was not used to being under someone – usually, with Quinn, I hovered over her – and it was odd to just lie there, trying to let my body respond. Mike was kind and patient and he went slowly, but there was banked heat in him, too – I felt it in the hard swell against my thigh, through his pants; I could sense the strength in his shoulders and hands.

It felt good. I can't say that it didn't. When Mike's fingers touched me beneath my panties, I was wet, and I moaned into his mouth when he slid them off. I let him unbutton my bra, too, though he was clumsy at it – I arched into him when he put his lips on my nipple. I liked the warmth of it, the way it made a long tugging start down the center of my body – but I noticed, again, the scratch of his cheek against my skin, and it was just a sharp reminder of how different he was. I had grown used to Quinn, and before her, you. I had never imagined having to adjust to things like scratchy cheeks or rough tongues or high, hard shoulders.

Mike tried putting his fingers inside of me, but I didn't really like that – I squirmed, moving my hips, tugging at his hair. They were big and calloused and I didn't think his fingernails were clean. I didn't like the idea of it, because he seemed awkward – at least in comparison to you, who had always been so delicate and deliberate and precise – so he stopped, settling for rubbing against my clit. It made me writhe and groan, just as it always did, and he kissed against my neck; sloppy, now, because he was distracted by his own mounting desire.

"Now," I breathed, because I was impatient – I wanted to get it over with, finally. I wanted to see what it was like.

Mike didn't hesitate. He pulled down the waistband of his sweats, just enough for it to slide out – and I didn't even get to see it, really, because it was a haze of movement and shifting. He slid my legs apart and guided it in with his hand, and he was so, so slow.

It hurt. I never, ever thought that it would. I never associated anything painful with sex before – I always got nothing but joy out of it – so I gasped, surprised, and Mike's progress stuttered to a halt.

"Brittany?" his voice was strained. "Are you okay?"

I couldn't breathe. The pain felt so big – it was a stretching, tearing pain. I felt like this was some kind of huge joke being played on me; did people really enjoy this? How? I squeezed my eyes shut – turning my face away from him.

"Just go slow."

"Is this your - ? Are you a-?"

I bit my lip. "No. No. Just keep going."

Mike didn't seem convinced, but he was already halfway inside of me, and I could tell that he had a hard time thinking clearly. I don't know why I didn't ask him to stop – it really hurt, Rachel, not just a little bit; I felt like he was actually injuring me down there, and that was a scary thought – but he kept going, and after a moment, the pain lessened.

He slid until his hips were flush with mine, and I breathed through the fullness between my legs. It was sore and uncomfortable, but it did seem to grow less agonizing as the seconds ticked by. Mike was wonderful – I know, now, exactly how thoughtful he was being, and how much worse it would have been for me if I had chosen Puck for this – and his rhythm was, at first, subtle; it gave my body enough time to adjust, and when he really started moving it felt good again.

I wanted to come, and there were several times I thought that I was getting close – but then something would distract me, and I wouldn't quite get there. Nothing really stopped the pain entirely, even though it felt good at the same time, and the sensation of his body slapping solidly against mine was satisfying in a primal, nameless sort of way.

He pressed his face against my shoulder, grunting, when his orgasm washed over him – he shuddered, and I was fascinated by the ripple of muscles on his back. I was flooded with a kind of sticky warmth and it made me grimace – I had forgotten about that really weird detail about sex with boys – and, a second later, he slid out of me. I let out a relieved breath. I felt immediately better to have it gone, though there was still soreness there.

Mike was breathing unevenly, and I could smell his sweat. I wanted out from under him. I wanted to take a shower and call Quinn and spend the night holding her. I thought about you, too, briefly – I wondered if you had ever let Finn do this to you, and somehow, imagining that filled me with a restless sort of disquiet.

"You didn't come," Mike said. It wasn't a question.

"No." I agreed. There was no use in lying about it.

"What can I do?"

I smiled, because he was sweet to ask. "It's all right."

"It isn't." he lifted his face to look at me. "I want to."

"I don't know, Mike," I shrugged. "I don't have a lot of experience."

"Really?" he seemed surprised. "I didn't know that."

I wanted to laugh, but I swallowed it down.

"I think I know." Mike said, and then he was moving away from me. I was a little glad to have him off of me – I could breathe more easily – but a second later he was nudging my thighs apart, and I felt his breath hit the inside of my thigh, and my throat closed.

I was used to that sensation, but it still caused a kind of breathless anticipation in me – you were the first person to kiss me there, but Quinn had done it many times since, and she was a master at slow, deliberate lovemaking; she dragged it out with a kind of vicious gloating, too pleased to have me sweating and begging on the sheets. I knew that it always put a cocky smirk on her face, and that made me pin her down and swallow her grin, touching her until she was gasping and desperate. You were never that manipulative, Rachel. I don't think you had learned how to be, yet.

Mike wasn't as careful as you or as skilled as Quinn, but his tongue was soft and insistent, and eventually my back arched. His grip on my hips held me still, and he kept his mouth fused to me even through my orgasm, never halting – he worked me into a second one with only seconds between, and that was the first time that ever happened to me.

I was heaving when he lied beside me, my body sticky with sweat. He smiled affectionately at me, sweeping my hair away from my forehead. "Good?"

I just nodded. I was dazed and a little impressed. I don't think I really thought Mike capable of that much when he started down there.

"This was fun," I said, because it was, really. I smiled at him. "I wish we didn't forget a condom, though."

"Oh." His eyebrows wrinkled. "Do you need me to get you a Plan B pill?"

"Probably." I was still taken with how sweet he was. Mike was a good guy.

"Ah, Brittany – you don't have to worry about – anything else." he rubbed a hand over his hair awkwardly. "I'm – well, I'm clean. You know?"

"That's good." I wasn't really thinking about STDs at that point, but I was glad he was. "I am, too."

"I can help pay for a test if you want to be sure." he seemed anxious. "It's my fault we didn't use a condom. I always do. I just got – distracted."

"It's okay." I smiled, a little charmed by him. "I'll go and get it done. It's not a big deal."

"Okay." He let out a breath. "If you're sure."

I nodded. I was sleepy. I knew I couldn't go to sleep – the mat was thin and hard and uncomfortable – but I wanted to.

"We should probably go. I don't know how late the pharmacy stays open."

"Okay."

I let him help me up, and we dressed in silence. It wasn't awkward between us. I think that impressed me more than anything.

---

If the awful side effects of the Plan B pill weren't enough to deter me from having sex with boys, Quinn's reaction to the news certainly was.

I told her during our first sleepover as juniors, and she seemed stunned and appalled – the look on her face was mildly disgusted. Santana sat on Quinn's bed, chewing on her lips to prevent a smile, painting her toe nails black.

"I can't believe you had sex with Mike," Quinn's voice was a mixture of astonishment and horror. "He's – he – you let him – in your –"

"That is typically how it works," Santana snarked. She didn't look up when Quinn glared in her direction.

"It was awful." I said, my smile tentative and confused. I didn't understand why Quinn was so upset about it.

"Why did you do it, then?"

I watched Quinn's hands. They were nervous and jittery, and they looked like they wanted something to hold on to. I gave her mine, and in an instant she began filing them – it made the tension inside of me relax, just a little bit. "I wanted to see what it was like."

Santana made a noise in the back of her throat.

"Mike looks like a girl."

I raised an eyebrow at her.

"He's definitely nothing like a girl."

Quinn tossed a bottle of nail polish at Santana. It smacked her soundly on the temple, and the resulting yelp was, just a little bit, satisfying.

"Well, just don't.. do it again. You could get pregnant, or herpes." Quinn studied my fingers for a moment before she began grooming my cuticles.

"Boys, the most dangerous creatures on the planet." Santana didn't tone down her obvious sarcasm. I wanted to laugh, because it was funny – but the way Quinn clenched her jaw made me think better of it.

"You do whatever you want, Goldilocks," Santana said, bemused. She switched to her other foot. "Not all of us are required to be as virginal as the Ice Queen over there."

I knew that this petty argument between them was a symptom of something deeper – I hated being caught in the middle of it.

"Brittany isn't going to jeopardize her health." Quinn's tone was icy.

"There are safe ways to do it," Santana's smirk was slow and languid. "And besides, what else is a girl to do when she wants to get some? Masturbation doesn't scratch everyone's itch, Q."

Quinn sat in silence, fuming. I winced, because her movements were harsh and her fingertips made my knuckles ache. She switched hands and I wiggled my fingers gratefully.

"She wouldn't be mad at you if you were sleeping with another girl," Santana drawled. She couldn't leave it alone, though Quinn's cheeks were pink and furious by this point. "It's just the idea of some penis going into you –"

"That's enough!" Quinn surprised me by shouting. I almost swallowed my tongue. Her eyes were glassy with anger, her lips peeled back in a snarl. "Santana, I've had enough!"

"All right, all right," Santana smirked. She wasn't even the least bit intimidated. "Touchy subject."

Quinn's eyebrows wrinkled angrily above her eyes. I wanted to move away from her, give her some space, but her hands were like claws around mine. She never did miss a nail, though. Quinn always gave the most flawless manicures.

"I'm going to take a shower," Quinn announced, as soon as she was done. She heaved herself up from the carpet and stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Things were better between Santana and I – but we never did overcome that heavy tenseness between us. Now, after being used between them as a kind of weapon, I felt slightly uncomfortable. I blew on my nails and tried not to look at her.

She lied sprawled on Quinn's bed with a magazine in front of her. Her hair was loose, for once, and it fell over her shoulders and neck in a dark sheet. I wanted to touch it – I had always wondered at the texture of it, whether it would be smooth or springy, thick or dry – but I never pushed it with Santana. I contented myself with tentative brushes against her lower back, a thumb along the inside of her wrist. We were never so intimate outside of the school setting. I think we both liked the pretense that being in public gave us, and when we were alone – like now – I couldn't just grin and dart away when she noticed my palm on her side.

"You know, it's too bad Chang didn't really – ring your bell." Santana didn't glance up from her magazine when she said this. "Sometimes, guys aren't half-bad at it."

I shrugged, drawing my knees up to my chest. "The only thing he did that I really liked was – well, the same thing a girl does, anyway. I'll just stick with girls."

Santana glanced up at me, almost distractedly, before she looked back at the magazine. "You think you're gay?"

It was the first time anyone had ever asked me that question. I had an idea of what being gay was – I heard about it everywhere, on TV and in books and flung around the school – but I never really thought to apply it to myself. "I don't know."

Santana hummed. She seemed completely disinterested in the conversation. "I think Quinn is. Probably.. probably more than anyone else I know."

I felt my cheeks flush. I didn't want to talk about Quinn like this – without her present.

"I know you two sleep together."

It made my tongue swell and stick to the roof of my mouth. I had a hard time breathing.

"I'm cool with it." Santana's eyebrow quirked. "Mostly. I wish she would just realize –"

I waited for Santana to finish her thought, but she never did.

Instead, she looked up at me, and this time I felt the weight of her gaze; it was dark and brutal and almost angry.

"I'm good at it."

I wasn't exactly following her, and I think she could tell.

"Ugh, why do you have to be so hot but so clueless?" she flipped the page in her magazine viciously. "I'm good at sex."

"Oh."

Santana sighed, aggravated. "It was an offer, blondie."

I blinked. "Oh."

Santana frowned. "Is that all you're going to say?"

I fiddled with my thumb, looking down at it. "I don't think you actually want to have sex with me, Santana. I think you want to get back at Quinn – or me, or someone. I don't want that."

Santana was silent long enough that I looked up at her curiously. She was thinking, and she seemed rather baffled by the thoughts in her own head.

"Look." her voice was strangely gentle. It put my nerves on edge. "I get why you think that. I really do. I haven't exactly been nice to you." she rolled her eyes. "I've got some people skills I need to work on. But the truth is – you are pretty hot. I know you're working with something, or Q wouldn't be on you like she is. I'm just saying…" Santana bit her lip, and it made me notice how full and pretty they were. "If you ever want to scratch the itch again – we would have fun together, I think."

I swallowed a breath. "Maybe so."

Santana smiled, cocking her head. I felt my belly tighten in anticipation of what she was going to say next – but she never got the chance to say it, because Quinn came in, wrapped in a towel and dripping. There was still mad all over her, I could tell. She practically vibrated with it.

"Go take a shower, Santana," Quinn ordered.

"Nuh uh," Santana grinned, rolling onto her back. "I'm fine without one."

I got the feeling that Quinn wanted Santana to leave because she wanted to have sex with me. The way Quinn kept angling her body towards me and glaring at Santana gave me that impression. I was finding that the place between them was growing more uncomfortable by the minute; I leapt to my feet, on the brink of offering to go myself, when Santana said –

"Look, there's a simple way to solve this."

"What are you talking about?"

Santana didn't answer. Instead, she lifted herself up onto her knees, and pulled her shirt over her head.

"You're crazy if you think that's going to work," Quinn hissed.

"You're sexy when you're mad," Santana grinned, unfazed by Quinn's fury. She scooted to the edge of the bed and, kneeling, grabbed Quinn's hips. Her smile was lazy and confident – as if she knew that Quinn would only pretend to resist.

"Uh," I pushed at my bangs. "I'm going to –"

"Stay." Santana said. She didn't take her eyes off of Quinn, who was glaring at her with silent rage.

"I don't think –"

"What's there to think about?" Santana slid her gaze towards me, and I felt myself responding – even though I didn't particularly want to – to the liquid desire in it.

"You really want -?" Quinn asked. She was looking directly at Santana.

Santana smiled. "It's just sex."

Quinn frowned. I think she suspected Santana of playing a trick. I sort of did, too – but I knew that I didn't imagine the heat between us. It had been building for most of a year, and I was eager to see Santana underneath her clothes; I was also really entranced by the thought of watching Quinn and Santana together.

"Get naked," Santana ordered, and I knew it was aimed towards me. She reached behind herself and unclasped her bra, which was enough convincing for me. Santana slid the towel out of Quinn's hands, and Quinn didn't resist. I debated for an instant longer before I did what she asked.

Quinn gave me an uneasy smile when I sidled up next to her, and I tried to make my own reassuring. I pressed a gentle kiss to her lips in an effort to ease her nerves – her hand tangled in my hair, grateful, I think, for the distraction.

Santana made a low noise in her throat. "This is gonna be so hot."

---

I keep that memory of the three of us close to me – mostly because I understand it better, now, with the passage of the years. I got the opportunity to see what intimacy looks like between two people who truly love each other; I got to watch Quinn's face change in ways I had never been able to see it before. I discovered that Santana tasted exactly as I thought she would – and that her hands were impatient and almost painful in the way they gripped me, as if she were terrified of losing even an ounce of control.

Santana stopped being angry with me after that. If nothing else, I'm grateful that it changed that between us – I got to see the side of her that few ever do; the way that Santana is, in her private moments, nothing but a clown. I think even she doesn't suspect it. Quinn and I know, though – we see the faces she pulls and the way she dances when she thinks no one is watching.

It made me ache for you, though. I left Quinn's house the next morning feeling strangely calm – I was still overwhelmed by an indescribable emotion. I could still feel them on my fingertips, but most of all, my chest was full of the way they looked at each other – the way they kissed and held one another. I never loved them more than I did then, seeing them like that. But it made me miss you.

It was early when I pulled up in your driveway. I was driving by then, my sister's hand-me-down volkswagon, something I never had the chance to share with you. We missed out on so much, didn't we, Rachel?

I hadn't really thought about what I was doing before I did it, but I shimmied up the lattice that still connected to the side of your house. The morning was gray and damp, but I knew the sun would be coming out from behind the clouds before too long.

Your window was unlocked, almost as if you expected me. It made me wonder if you ever hoped I would climb through it again – it had been years, at that point, since I had done it. We were both juniors, now. We only had a year left in high school. It felt like a lifetime ago that we were short, pudgy freshmen with wild eyes and excited hearts. I was sad for those children that we used to be – I'm sad, now, for the me who was sad then; because we were just children still, and didn't feel like it anymore.

You were sleeping. I wanted badly to climb into bed with you, to thread my fingers through your hair and listen to your even breathing, to let it lull me to sleep. But I didn't have the right to it anymore – I knew that it would only do more harm than good.

I laid the sunflower I brought with me on the pillow next to you. It was a sad stand in, but it would have to do. I wanted to leave more. I had words building up inside of me – words and emotions and too much longing – but I never, ever knew what to do with them. I watched you for as long as I dared, until I heard the sound of your dad puttering around downstairs, before I finally left.

I thought that I imagined you murmuring my name as I slid back down, but I made myself believe it was just a dream.

---

I brought you jacinths the next week, and the week after that, I left a bushel of prairie star flowers. I learned a lot about flowers that year. I tried to find the right ones that would make you forgive me.

You never said anything to me, though I almost died with wanting you to. Sometimes, I would catch you in the hallways, looking at me – you would always shut your locker door quickly and scurry off whenever my eyes met yours. Often, I saw you beneath the heavy arm of Finn Hudson, and his weight seemed to crush you by degrees: you shrank and shrank, and grew quiet.

We had biology together that year. I tried not to let it get to me when you paired up with a girl named Mercedes instead of me.

I always expected to find your window locked – I thought you would grow tired of me invading your privacy. I thought you would tear into me for feeling entitled to climb into your room. I almost wanted you to scold me. Anything. Any acknowledgment of my existence.

Santana continued to tutor me through my classes. She sat the three of us down together and we all picked classes so that I had one or the other of them in nearly every one. Quinn and Santana were good friends to me, Rachel. Without them, I don't know if I would have graduated.

Sometimes, Santana would pin me against the lockers, and she always grinned at the way she could make me pant – Santana was so compact and small compared to me, but she had a kind of innate strength in her that always surprised me. I loved how her lips were soft and almost bitter, and that her kisses always hurt, just a little bit.

Quinn never stopped having our sleepovers, and she liked to steal my kisses from my dreams. I can't count how many times I woke up with her tongue in my mouth and her hands unknotting the strings of my pajama pants.

Even despite this, it wasn't so strange a thing of Santana to say to me, one day, after we showered with the rest of the squad –

"You know, you might give Puckerman a try."

I was busy toweling off my hair, but I looked at her anyway. She was gathering her hair up in a sloppy bun on top of her head, and didn't even look at me.

"I know that Chang didn't really do it for you, but Puck, he's decent. If you were still – curious."

I didn't understand what Santana was offering. I shrugged. "Probably not."

Santana smiled. "Just a thought."

It was a thought that never left me, not truly. I remembered Mike fondly, but I had heard much more since then about the sexual prowess of men. I knew that Santana still slept with them on occasion. All of the other girls on the Cheerios had a boyfriend, and many of them had 'dated' Puck at some time or another.

I did feel a little left out. I wanted to understand what drew other girls to them, what exactly it was that made them worthy of desire.

I got drunk at his house one night. He had invited over the entire football team and the Cheerios, too – so Quinn and Santana were there. Finn was, too, but I didn't see you. It didn't surprise me that you wouldn't come to a thing like this. The music was loud and throbbing, the air thick with smoke, and everyone was drinking and dancing wildly.

I don't remember a lot of it, Rachel. What I do remember is the way the walls were spinning because I drank too much rum and coke, and how Puck's house – it was run down, the plaster of the walls were cracked – made me feel claustrophobic. There were too many people in too little a space.

Puck found me, somehow. I had a hard time standing up. I don't recall a lot of what happened, but I know that he pushed me into his bedroom – he kissed me, and he tasted like smoke and vodka. I remembered feeling the muscles in his arms and shoulders, and thinking about Mike. Puck was much bigger than Mike. I needed to pee.

I remember him asking me a question – I remember answering (slurring) no – and I remember that he didn't listen to me. I'm glad, in the years since then, that I don't remember more than that. I know that when it was over, I felt hollow and numb, and I could hear the blood swimming inside of my ears. I might have lied in Puck's bed for the rest of the night – he had left me as soon as he was through – if it weren't for Quinn.

Quinn refused to drink at parties like this. Santana confided in me once it was because Quinn had a pregnancy scare before she ever met me, and she refused to get drunk around men ever since then. I never thought about it – really – until after that night. I wonder, even now, if the same sort of thing happened to Quinn. I couldn't bring myself to ask her. I felt, in the weeks and months following that, too ashamed to bring it up. I think, sometimes, I am still ashamed.

I didn't know that I was crying until Quinn asked me why I was. I couldn't answer her. The words felt like thick vomit in my mouth – my tongue wouldn't obey me, anyway. The room was spinning too much for me to make sense of words.

Santana came in next. She had been drinking – I could tell – but she sobered up when she saw me.

"What happened?"

I think that I drunk-dreamed the concern in her voice.

"I don't know. She won't talk to me."

Santana crouched down next to the bed. It was hard to see her through the wetness in my eyes, which turned everything in a broken prism. I blinked, because Santana was too pretty to ruin with tears. I wanted to touch her cheek, where her dimples hid. I pushed one finger against it, and she held my hand, gently.

"Who?"

I sniffled. I couldn't think his name, much less say it. I didn't know what had happened to me.

"Was it Puck?"

Quinn's voice was strangely flat. I think I must have dreamed that, too.

I didn't respond, but something on my face was answer enough for Santana.

Her face grew dark and dangerous for just an instant – and then she flung herself away from me. Quinn said her name urgently – she seemed almost scared – but Santana brushed her aside. Puck's bedroom door slammed open and slapped closed again. It was much quieter in the room without her, even though she hadn't said much before she left. Just her presence was loud. I missed her.

Quinn took my hand and squeezed it between both of hers. I think she was crying.

I didn't want her to cry.

"I'm sorry." I croaked. My mouth felt weird and numb. I tasted smoke on my own tongue and it made my stomach roll.

"No." Quinn denied the apology. "No, Brittany. Don't be sorry."

I was sorry. I still am.

A few minutes later, Mike came stumbling in. His eyes were wide and almost panicked – Quinn tensed, turning to face him, putting her body between me and him.

"Hey." Mike sounded breathless. "Santana told me to – uh." He gestured towards me. "Carry her out? She can't walk?"

"No." Quinn's tone was guarded. "Are you sober?"

"I'm good." Mike wasn't sober, but he was good. I did remember that.

"Don't drop her." Quinn said it like it was a warning. He made a hat tipping gesture before he reached down and scooped me up.

I think that there was some commotion going on in the house. Well – no, I know that. Quinn fidgeted with her keys in the front seat of her car, and I lied prone in the back. Mike didn't stick around. It took an indescribably long time for Santana to join us in the car, and when she did, she was shaking – her body trembled with unreleased energy.

"Santana!" Quinn gasped. They're fuzzy images in my mind now, but I remember the sound of Quinn's voice – how concerned she was.

"It's fine. Let's go."

Santana slammed the door shut, glanced back at me briefly.

"She asleep?"

"I don't know."

"Britt!" Santana shook me roughly. "Don't pass out. What if you have a concussion or something?"

"She didn't hit her head."

"How do you know?"

I felt bad that they were worrying so much for me, so I rolled my head and blinked at Santana. It was hard to do, but I did it.

"What if she has alcohol poisoning?"

Santana frowned, studying me. "She might."

"You broke your hand."

"It's fine." Santana grunted. "Do we need to take her to the hospital?"

"I don't know." Quinn's voice was small. "I wish – I wish –"

"It isn't your fault. It's nobody's fault."

I felt like it was my fault, no matter how often I would hear that in the coming months.

"She probably needs to see a doctor. Because of – him."

"Britt. Do you want to go to the hospital?"

Santana's face was close to mine. I remember seeing her eyes, so large and expressive. They reminded me of ink wells and oil spills and the lightless night sky.

"No." My mouth felt like it was filled with cotton.

"Are you sure?"

I nodded my head. I couldn't tolerate the idea of being in an E. R.

"Take us back to my house. I'll talk to my mom."

Santana's mom is a nurse. She's one of my favorite people on the planet.

I fell asleep on the ride back to Santana's house. I woke up, vaguely, when the pair of them carried me inside and somehow managed to heave me up the stairs – I let them pull my clothes off and wipe the spilled alcohol from my skin with damp rags. I couldn't move, and I didn't want to. I think I even slept through some of it. Maybe I don't remember most of it now because it's better that way.

Santana slept with her arm curled over my waist. I slept fitfully and woke up before the sun properly rose – my head was surprisingly clear. It couldn't have been more than four hours of sleep, but I could see. I remembered the night in a flash – I felt mortification and dread when I tried to piece it together. I remembered hearing Santana say, "I'll talk to my mom," and I knew that there was nothing else I wanted less in this world than to sit with that sweet, kind woman and have her look at me with pity in her eyes.

I crawled away from Santana and her arm, which was meant to be comforting, I'm sure. I saw how Quinn clung to Santana as if there were nothing else in this world. I loved them, but I couldn't stand to be around them.

I slipped out of Santana's bedroom window, and I picked my way through other people's back yards for several blocks. It was early morning – the sun was still only a distant pink line on the horizon – when I finally made my way to your house.

I hadn't brought flowers this time. I hadn't had time for it. I actually hesitated because I realized that – if I didn't have flowers, I didn't have a reason to be here.

I looked around at the calm green lawns. They were neat squares all lined up in a row. I didn't want to pick any from your dads' flower bed. It took me a long time before I dragged myself around to your backyard and, after a moment, I picked a dandelion growing between the roots of the oak tree. I shielded it with my body as I climbed up the lattice – slower, this morning, than I had ever been. I was beginning to feel the ache in my body, and my stomach roiled dangerously. I knew that my head was going to be pounding soon, and I had a feeling I would spend the better part of the day attached to a toilet. But I had to see you. I needed something to soothe the wound on my soul.

I put the dandelion on your pillow, and this time I couldn't stop myself from touching you. I ran my fingers through the thick length of your hair – it was soft and silky, just as I remembered it. I took longer than I should have to leave, and by the time I was sliding your window up again, you had rolled over. I caught a glimpse of your open eyes just before I lowered myself out of the window, and I knew that I'd been caught.

I definitely heard you whisper my name – Brittany – but I couldn't halt my backwards motion. I didn't bother to look up and see if you were watching me as I walked away. I couldn't face you, just then. I still needed to spend time with myself before I chanced time with you.

---

We didn't talk about it at school.

Santana's hand was broken. She came in with a cast and an angry look on her face. Puck's face was worse – he didn't show up for another week, and the damage was still severe. I wanted to ask if he had any broken bones to match hers. I wanted to kiss each one of her fingers.

I did neither of those things.

I heard kids whispering about it – what might have happened to cause such a fight between them? There was so much gossip. I thought I would throw up every time I heard about it.

Quinn tried to talk to me, but I wouldn't let her. It was as if the whole thing was a gruesome nightmare, and I kept it clamped inside of me – I didn't even want to face it. Quinn seemed troubled by this, but she understood. She held my hand whenever she could, and the pressure of her fingers was reassuring.

Santana never tried to talk to me about it. I think Santana understood – more than Quinn – why I didn't want to relive it. But I caught her watching me more often after that. I always felt her eyes on me whenever I least expected it – and she stayed as close as she dared, challenging other people with her eyes to get close to me. I appreciated her protectiveness, but I felt awful about it, too. I hated that she felt compelled to protect me.

I saw more of you in the weeks after that. I think you were curious about it. Did you sense that something awful had happened?

I waited for you to find me, to ask me about the flowers. I waited for anything from you – I would have welcomed anger or accusations. I would have let you rain hatred and insults on me. I wanted you, Rachel, however you would have me.

But you never came.

Eventually, the rumors died away. Santana glared at Puck any time he came near either of us, and he had the look of a sullen, vicious dog – the kind that slinks away from kicking feet, but won't hesitate to bite once your back is turned. I grew cold at the sight of him, and sometimes my ribs would contract inwards.

I finished out the end of that school year feeling like I gradually faded away. I felt like a ghost – haunting the halls, immaterial. Quinn and Santana never let me leave, not completely. They kept me grounded and real when all I wanted to do was dissolve into mist.

I'm grateful to them, now.

I started leaving you different kinds of flowers: roses, daffodils, lilies. I even tried an orchid once.

I spent that summer sleeping more than is humanly possible for a teenage girl to sleep. I think my parents worried. They always frowned at me over dinner, as if I were some troubling puzzle they needed to sort out.

I lost weight and I carried a listless, hollow look in my eyes. It was just symptoms of the darkness that had pushed itself inside of me – eventually it came out – but it worried everyone. I hated worrying them. I didn't know how not to.

My parents bought me a kitten. I think they thought it would make me happy.

He helped. I spent time recording him on my little webcam and patching together videos. I put them up on YouTube and people liked it. The fact that people I never met enjoyed the things I created made me feel – lighter somehow. I felt myself becoming myself again.

He was a black striped kitten who purred and flopped around cutely, and I thought of you. I thought of a name that I hoped you would like – Elvis. He reminded me of you: always hamming it up for the cameras. He was a rockstar, just like Elvis. It was a good name for him.

By the time senior year started, whatever had broken inside of me mended itself as well as it could. I laughed during Cheerios practice and yelled during football games. I let Santana and Quinn sleep on either side of me during our sleepovers, and I enjoyed Saturday morning cartoons and Rice Krispy Treats on the couch in Quinn's den.

I never kissed them again, though. I wanted to – sometimes I got close to doing it – but I never could. I think they understood, somehow, though we didn't talk about it. They let me play with their hands and braid their hair and massage their feet, and they never tried to kiss me.

Once, Quinn pulled Santana close to her in the middle of the night, and I lied with my head cradled on a pillow and watched them. There was something different about it this time – something I couldn't name – and it made my heart swell with such a fierce and furious pain.

I could tell that they were happy. There was a kind of relaxation in Santana that I had never seen before – maybe that night changed things for them, too. I hoped that some good came out of it.

I tried marigolds and begonias, camellias and carnations and daisies. I tried every combination imaginable. I'm sure you had more dirt in your bed that year than you ever did growing up, when we would sleep together like puppies, still covered in sand from the playground.

I feel like that year went by more quickly than any of the other ones did – why is that? I think it's because I knew I was just waiting for it to be over. I was waiting for this chapter of my life to close and for the next to start.

I don't know how or why I knew it, but I knew that I wouldn't start it without you. It was a quiet, calm reassurance – I remember it coming over me any time I felt a kind of panic when faced with my future. I had counselors and coaches and parents and teachers and friends all badgering me about colleges and scholarships and cheerleading programs; it was a lot to deal with. I didn't want to. I wanted to bury myself in my blankets and read Peter Pan and imagine us acting it out together like we did when we were in the fifth grade.

As the year progressed, however, the patience I had was growing thin. It felt like time was accelerating – and I knew that it was also running out.

Quinn styled my hair for my senior pictures. Santana helped me pick out my prom dress. I didn't have a date, but I didn't mind.

Quinn almost cried when she told me that she and Santana were going to go together.

I almost cried, too.

I was looking forward to prom – I wanted to see them, and you, all dressed up. I was glad that somehow Santana found her courage. I was happy that Quinn had finally forgiven her.

On senior skip day, I heard a group of football players talking about you, and it changed my mind about that night.

"I heard Hudson is finally going to pop her cherry," one of them said. I didn't know his name.

"That loser he's been dating for forever? About time."

"She's gonna give it up on prom night. What a cliché."

I don't think those boys even knew how to spell the word 'cliché,' but that's beside the point.

Thinking about you having sex with Finn Hudson made me mildly uncomfortable, even though I knew that it was a possibility all along. I hadn't even tried to guess if you had ever done it before then – I didn't want to think about it – but hearing that made me realize that I was desperate for it not to happen.

Quinn and Santana wanted us to get ready together, but I knew that if I did, their date would turn into a group of friends hanging out, and I wanted more for them. Now, I knew all I wanted to do was find you.

It was still early evening when I stood outside your window. Your light was on. The sky was turning purple – I knew that Finn would be here for you soon.

I wasn't afraid when I climbed the lattice up to your room. I knew that I should be, but I wasn't. I felt that same strange, weighted calm again; I felt like an anchor sinking in the ocean, but with no fear of drowning.

You didn't even seem surprised when your window slid upwards. You were sitting on the edge of your bed, your hair half-curled, with your face in your hands. You didn't flinch when I shut the window behind me, as if you had been waiting for me the whole time.

You were crying. It was a heart-wrenching, ragged sound; it made me think of bones breaking and lungs tearing. I wanted to hold you – but I knew I couldn't, not yet.

"You're like jacinths, Rachel. They symbolize sincerity. You were always right about that."

You cried even harder into your hands, and I realized that, even if it wasn't the right time for it, I had to put my arms around you. I sat beside you on your mattress and laid the bundle of flowers in your lap. Then I pulled your body towards me, and you pushed your face into my neck.

The instant shock of holding you after all that time – it almost paralyzed me. I felt a strange kind of vertigo: the floor shifted and spun, whirling in a crazy rhythm, and I could hardly breathe through the intensity of it. I felt all of the blood drain out of my face and then flood to my heart, spreading an almost painful warmth through my body. I could barely feel my arms – they seemed weak and flimsy – but I could feel your breath, wet and hot, and the stinging spill of your tears on my skin.

"You and your stupid flowers," you sobbed. You clutched at them blindly, holding their stems. "You and your stupid face and your stupid, stupid flowers."

I wanted to make a joke – how can a flower be stupid, Rachel? – but I didn't. I just held you, and rocked, and you clung to me as if I were your only chance to live.

"Why can't you just go away?" you were so angry with me. "Why can't you just leave me alone?"

"I'm sorry," I whispered, because I was. I didn't want to hurt you any more than I had – but I couldn't leave you, either.

"I'm tired of hearing that you're sorry." you sniffed, rubbing your face against me. "I wish you never came back. I wish you stayed away. I wish you never left."

You weren't making sense, but it made a perfect kind of sense to me. I breathed through my nose, pushing the pain away. I wanted to let you say all the things you needed to say.

"I hate that I need you so much."

I felt my heart squeeze, and I closed my eyes.

"It's been – how long?" you pressed your palm into your cheek, "and you're still here? You just come here and find me like this and we're – we're doing this, now?"

I didn't try to talk to you. You didn't want me to, not really. You just wanted me to listen.

"The last time I even remember talking to you was almost two years ago. Why are you here?"

I shrugged. It was a long time before I said, "I never really left."

You laughed, and the sound was bitter. But you didn't let go of me. You didn't pull your face away from my neck. I smelled your shampoo – it was still strawberry – and your laundry detergent. I couldn't believe how much it made me want to cry.

"How did you know I wanted you to be here so much?"

That question had more sincerity than any other had. I knew that you wanted a real answer.

"I heard about you and Finn. I wanted to make sure you didn't make a mistake."

You pulled away from me then. I felt my insides tremble, when faced with the inevitability of looking into your eyes. They were swollen and red, and you squinted at me around a sheet of tears.

"That's very kind of you to ride in like a white knight, saving the day," you were angry still. "I don't need you to protect me, Brittany."

"I know." I tried to keep my eyes on you, instead of looking at my hands. It was hard. "But Rachel – I made a mistake, once. I've been paying for it ever since." I bit my lip. You were watching me, and – I think – finally hearing me. "I don't want you to do the same thing."

You were silent for a long moment, and then another wave of tears spilled down your cheeks – you sobbed, pushing your hands into your lips.

"It was supposed to be you," your tone was accusing and full of blame. I knew that I deserved every bit of it. "It was supposed to be you, and we were supposed to have a picnic by the river, and we were supposed to take each other to homecoming and to the fair and spend Christmas in Portland with my aunt – this is all wrong!"

I think you almost wanted to slap me. I know that I would have felt better if you had.

"I had all of these plans for this!" you were almost shouting, now. "I had everything mapped out – how our entire high school years would go – and you just ruined it!

"It's almost over and now you're here! Now!"

"I came as much as I could." I wondered if that sounded enough like an apology.

"It wasn't enough." You choked on a sob, crying into your hands. "It was too much."

"I wish I could change it, Rachel." I felt my throat sting and swell, but I fought back the tears. I didn't want you to think that I was crying to try to get sympathy from you. I wanted you to give me as much as you had to give without feeling even the slightest guilt. "I wish we – I wish it was different."

"You had to join the Cheerios. You had to be friends with her."

I swallowed. "I'm sorry."

"She tortured me, Brittany. She tortured me in middle school and she kept doing it until you – until you made her stop." You pushed at the tears on your cheeks angrily. "Do you know what it did to me, to see you with her? She's – she's blonde and pretty and perfect, and nothing like me, don't you see that? How could you think -?" you almost choked on your own words, and I wanted so badly to kiss the wetness from your cheeks. "How could you think it wouldn't – betray me?"

"You never told me she was cruel to you." My voice was small and quiet, even to my own ears. "You never told me – Rachel, I didn't know. I never knew. I can't know everything."

"You should have known that!" you were so sure of it that I didn't want to contradict you. "You should have known – at least – that I was in love with you!"

I inhaled sharply. Hearing it, even then, made my breastbone feel tight. My heart was strangled and I felt sharp, shooting pain down my left arm. I imagined I might be going into cardiac arrest.

"I know. I know, I know, I know," I whispered. "I didn't see it – maybe I just couldn't – but I should have. You're right."

You stopped, almost mid-rant, to stare at me through puffy eyes. I think maybe you expected me to make excuses or argue. I don't know what you expected.

"I am right." you whispered.

I nodded.

"I hate that I miss you so much," you swallowed. "I hate that – I hate that I want it to still be you."

I looked at you carefully. I didn't know what to feel. I couldn't let myself hope that you had forgiven me – yet – but my heart danced so violently in my chest, I prayed for any kind of relief. I felt like my organs had to be bruised and mushy by now, due to the tumultuous rhythm of my heart.

"I shouldn't even care about you anymore." you huffed, rubbing at your nose. "Normal people don't still feel this way after so long."

I sighed, and I reached out between us – I held your hand between both of mine, pressed a kiss to your knuckles.

"Maybe we were never meant to be normal people."

You wiped at your cheek, and I thought you might be done crying.

"Did you ever love me, Brittany?" the solemnity in your voice made my jaw clench and my stomach drop. "Were you ever – in love with me?"

I rubbed my thumbs over your fingers and I tried to think. I tried to remember – my life is so much of you that it seems silly that I had to struggle to do it, once – and I recalled the look of your pigtails in ballet class, the way we would dance together to old Beatles songs; how you would pick the pieces of ham out of your salad and feed me all of your cherry tomatoes because you didn't like them. I remembered baking chocolate chip cookies and roasting marshmallows, swimming in the dark and your voice humming showtunes at every turn.

"I always loved you, Rachel," I said. You went still, as if you couldn't quite believe it. "I was always in love with you."

"I won't ask you why, then," you choked. "I don't think I want to know."

The answer is – because even I didn't know, then. Maybe I never knew how much I loved you until I didn't have you anymore.

"Do you still love me?"

It felt brave of me to ask the question. I was terrified of your answer.

You looked at my face – and I couldn't read the expression on yours. I thought how odd it was that you were such a stranger to me, now.

"Of course I do."

I breathed.

"How could it end up like this?" you wiped at your face again – you weren't done crying, after all. "How did we mess it up so badly?"

I didn't say it then, Rachel, but I have thought it since – maybe everything happened exactly the way it was supposed to. Maybe if we hadn't gone through the wilderness of our adolescence that way, we would have never made it to paradise.

"I just know that I love you. I don't want you to go out with Finn Hudson."

You studied me for a moment before you said, "I don't owe you anything."

"I know that." I squeezed your hand, swallowed. "I know that I'm selfish and wrong."

You rubbed furiously at your face again, almost as if you resented the way your eyes kept watering. "It would serve you right for me to kick you out of here, and for me to go to prom with him. You deserve it."

I didn't say anything – not even to agree with you. I couldn't abide that thought. I wanted to pull you to me, hold you in my lap, press my face against yours and breathe you in; I couldn't tolerate the idea that some other person might do that instead.

"Your stupid flowers."

You stopped fighting your tears, then. They came back in a flood – and this time you flung yourself into me, your arms circling my waist. I held you against me and let you cry, my own tears leaking quietly down my face. I felt indescribably giddy to hold you like this again; but my chest ached and my stomach hurt, and everything inside of me felt like razorblades and glass and broken promises.

The flowers I brought you lied forgotten on the floor, a mess of battered petals.

I'll never forget the way they looked, with starlight filtering through your window. I'll never forget the scent of crushed jacinths and the way it mingled with the hot smell of your tears.

ah, come with me!

I'll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,

that floats forever and a day;

I'll sing you the jacinth song

of the probable stars;

---

A/N: As always, thank you for your patience. This was a long time coming. I hope you let me know what you think.