"Puck kissed me with such confidence; he knew how to put me right at ease. It was also really nice to have a makeout session that could last longer than fifteen seconds, too," Quinn added wryly.
"You were only gettin' fifteen seconds? Why?" Mercedes asked.
"I'll get to that too…" Quinn promised. "Anyway,….I'm not sure what I was expecting kissing him that night, where I was thinking it would go…even when he laid me back on the bed and settled half on top of me I didn't think anything about it, like I said we had done this before. He had never pressured me for sex any of those times, he knew better, but I guess he realized how vulnerable I was that night and took a chance."
They had been kissing for several minutes and Quinn couldn't help but smile against his mouth. She felt relaxed and allowed her mind to blank out to all her earlier doubts and troubles…until…
"When his had moved down my body and to my thigh, it wasn't casual; it was very deliberate and intentional. It became quite clear to me exactly where this was going."
'I can't do this' she said, pushing against his broad shoulders.
"Reality somewhat came back to me at that point."
'Yes you can,' he reached over her to offer another wine cooler from her nightstand to further relax her.
I started trying to talk my way out. My celibacy vow was worthless to him so I brought up Finn again and Puck basically said after graduation we would all forget each other, so that didn't work. Then he said…"
'Life's just a bunch of experiences you know? You don't get a medal at the finish line for being good, you just get dead.'
"Looking back I can see how my heart wasn't really in trying to find an out. Now I think, if he just said he wasn't going to care about Finn in a few years, does that mean he wouldn't care about me? Then he insulted my religion, which at any other time or any other guy would have been a complete turn-off but it's like I didn't even notice any of that." Quinn looked at her hands which here resting in her lap, fingernails fidgeting, pushing at her cuticles. She sighed and shook her head.
"I have tried blaming that night on so many things. Rachel, Finn, Rachel and Finn, the wine-coolers, feeling fat, being too tired to fight because it was four in the morning. The truth is….in that moment…I just didn't care anymore. Nothing I had been doing was making me happy, so why keep doing it? I lost sight of why it was all so important to me, why celibacy was so important to me. Of course it seemed all too important when it was over and my purity was gone forever, but right then I didn't care. I wasn't drunk, but I definitely wasn't thinking straight, I was so wrapped up in the moment. I just thought, y'know what, I'm never going to be my sister and I'm just so tired of trying to please everyone but myself…so I said 'okay'"
'But you can't tell anyone, I can't lose my rep.'
'Our secret, baby'
'What about protection?'
'I got it, trust me. This isn't just another hook-up for me.'
"That is the moment I am the most mad at myself about." Quinn confessed. "That's the same stupid line I have warned every girl in the Celibacy Club about and I fell for it. Not hook, line and sinker, half of my brain knew it was bull the second it came out of his mouth but the other half thought about how nicely he had treated me, how he had never pressured me before now, how he always tried to make me feel good about myself… so…chalk that up to another thing I let myself believe that night. Oh, yeah, along with 'I got it, trust me'." She mocked, rolling her eyes. "I don't know….sometimes I still believe he meant it when he said I wasn't just another hook-up." Quinn sighed. "Sometimes…Puck can be wonderful! Absolutely everything I need him to be and during those times I truly believe that he meant it and that he does care about me, maybe even love me. But then….there are times that I just want to strangle him and then beat myself up for ever believing and trusting him!"
'Tell me one more time…'
'You're not fat.'
"I had whined to him about so many things that night that I have no idea how he knew that's what I wanted him to say…but he did, and it pushed away every last nagging doubt." Quinn then hissed out a rueful chuckling sound that was devoid of any humor "I gained two pounds and I felt fat." She looked at her belly, which was now about thirty extra pounds of baby and water. "I wish," she muttered then abruptly grabbed her belly. "OW! Yes, I'm talking about you," she spoke to her rotund abdomen, rubbing the area that had received the five-finger-death-punch.
"She gettin' mad at you?" Mercedes laughed.
"Hah, no, the opposite actually…here," Quinn reached out for Mercedes' hand and pressed it against her belly. Mercedes eyes grew round as she felt baby Beth doing what would be most accurately described as flailing. "I think the sugar from the ice cream just got to her."
"Wow, that's crazy…" Mercedes uttered with a tone of wonderment.
"Yeah, you should feel her when she gets a Krispy Kreme. Puck would sometimes go on runs for me, Eleven at night, twelve, didn't matter. And he'd sit in the parking lot until the 'HOT' light came on just so I would get the freshest batch. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself," she declared, and then chuckled. "I guess Beth supplied us with our commercial break."
"Yeah," Mercedes made her voice softer and throatier, "This Lifetime Original Movie has been brought to you by Blue Bell Ice cream, KISS Greatest Hits and Krispy Kreme doughnuts." Both girls cracked up despite the gloomy atmosphere that had permeated the room in the last hour then Mercedes eyebrows hitched and she literally fell over laughing as Quinn snorted amidst her own cackling.
Quinn wasn't sure if Mercedes comment had actually been that funny, as she dabbed her watering eyes, or if it was just a nice change from her depressing colloquy. "Thank you, Mercedes, I needed that."
"Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all night," she quipped. "Anyway, back to our regular scheduled program?"
Quinn sighed, "Yeah. Only in this case there was no cuddling. There was me yelling and throwing things at him when I realized, too late of course, that he didn't 'got it'. He kept apologizing and telling me not to worry."
'Chill, babe, it-OWW!-it'll be fine! Ch-Ow, stop geez, chicks never get pregnant their first time! Trust me!'
"There were those two words again, just as empty as the first time. Anyway, I threw him out and told him not to speak to me again if he valued his life, slammed the door…and then I cried. I just slumped against the door in my bathrobe that I had grabbed and put on sometime during my tirade and I cried. And then I did what I should have done long before…I prayed. I prayed for forgiveness, guidance, forgiveness again….but did you know I never prayed that I wouldn't get pregnant? It just didn't seem right." Quinn scoffed mirthlessly again, "I mean, how would that have sounded? 'Hey God, you know that promise that I made to You to never ever have sex until I was married? Well I kinda broke it and if it's cool with You, I'd really like to not have to pay any consequences for it.' Let's not even mention the fact that I broke it under a watching portrait of Jesus."
Mercedes eyebrows rocket launched off her forehead. "Li'l Mama say what?"
"Oh yeah, I have a portrait…of Jesus….over…my bed…." Quinn stated, enunciating clearly.
"You mean you…"
"Yep. And it's not one of those 'Jesus praying in the garden' deals where He's looking up towards Heaven, oh no, He's looking down at ME….watching over me as I sleep, my parents told me when they put it up when I was a child. I really see that as a testament to how low I had sunk, how far from Him I had strayed that that portrait hanging there didn't even faze me. And I know that portrait is just a symbol of how God is always watching, He was going to see it all whether that portrait was there or not but it just makes it seem all the more sinful with that tangible symbol there. I have no I idea how I managed not to get struck down by lightning or something."
Mercedes eyebrows had returned to Earth's orbit, but her eyes still carried a trace of shock and her mouth was slightly agape. "Wow…."
"I know, I can't believe I ever did that either! Like, now I can see how weak and spoiled rotten I was that things weren't going my way and what I used to think was bad and now what I know is bad and I just…I can't believe I threw something like that away so carelessly. Like my life now is one hundred times worse than it was then and I can't even fathom having sex with someone to make myself feel better, and that has nothing to do with the fact that I feel like Shamu.
"I mean this was something that I treasured, that I prided myself on and in one moment of indiscretion I gave it away like it was nothing…and Puck took it like it was nothing. And please don't take that to mean he was forceful in any way, he was actually very gentle, but….I had just always imagined my first time would be with a guy, guy meaning husband, that would appreciate and respect what I was giving him, granted that night I didn't respect it either, but still. Puck doesn't respect it, he doesn't see…." Quinn trailed off reformulating her words. "I can't understand how he can believe that sex is so important but he has absolutely no grasp of just how important it really is.
"It's not just something that you casually do its…I know I don't have to get into all this with you, you're a Christian too, you know what the Bible says. But, to Puck, 'virginty' is a four-letter-word. It is a disease we are all born with that we should cure ourselves of at the first available opportunity; he has no idea why anyone would be proud of it, or want to share it with only one person forever. He just absolutely does not grasp what I gave him that night, and, other than the fact that I got pregnant, he has no Earthly idea why I would wish I had it back. And I hate sounding like I'm bashing on Puck because I knew that's how he was, so the majority of the blame is on me, but like I said earlier, I had also believed that maybe I was different, maybe I was something more to him. Anyway…to recap, depressed, didn't care anymore, could have told him no but didn't so, all on me. Except the getting pregnant part, that was all him." Quinn breathed deep and exhaled slowly as if to clear all her words of the past few minutes out of the air to utter that last few sentences that would wrap up her memoir of that night.
"At some point during my hysterics and fervent supplication to God, I realized I was not wearing my Crucifix, which I never take off…unless I'm in some crazy Glee Club get-up or I'm wearing a different necklace, or..." she rambled.
"Quinn," Mercedes prodded gently.
"Right," Quinn steered back to the topic. "I tried not to view its absence as confirmation that I was screwed, but I couldn't help it. I guess I could have been relieved that I wasn't wearing it, to add even more insult coupled with the portrait, while I basically slapped God in the face and threw all my promises to Him out the window. It at least gave me something to occupy my mind with while I went on a search for it through the house. I finally gave up and decided to resume the hunt in the morning….or rather afternoon since that was likely when I would get up if my conscience would let me sleep at all. I took a shower as hot as I could stand it, still felt dirty, of course, then I turned on the tv to something mindless and innocent to distract my brain while I tried to sleep. I ended up dozing off and on until about ten when my doorbell rang. And who should be on the other side of the door but the one person I had, barely more than 5 hours earlier, forbidden to ever come within spitting distance of me again….Puck."