Authors Note: Wow I think this is the first time I've done and AN. I just wanted to take the time to send a very big thank you to a Gleeforum friend and fellow fanfic writer lilgulie5 who has been giving me crash courses in Catholicism throughout this fic. You made this chapter possible! Now if only some of her awesome writing skills would rub off on me…
"I debated whether or not to answer the door, trying to guess if he had heard me come up to the door to look through the peep-hole or not. He rang the doorbell again and looked bound and determined to stand there until I answered."
Quinn let out an exasperated sigh and wrapped her fingers around the locked deadbolt, thinking how he must be a glutton for punishment returning after the telling off she gave him earlier. She had another bashing ready in her mouth when she unlocked the door and swung it open, but Puck cut in before she could speak.
'I know I'm the last person you want to see right now and you told me never to even look at you again, but I thought you might want this…' he said quickly, holding up her crucifix.
She couldn't keep her expression from softening as she reached up and took the necklace from him, a new, nauseating wave of guilt washing over her as she ran her thumb over the small smooth golden cross.
'I found it in the floorboard of my truck; it must've fallen off when I was driving you home.' He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground. 'Look, Quinn….'
'Don't,' she stopped him
'I really am sorry,' he said softly, looking up at her.
'Me too,' she said bitterly. 'It was a mistake, but it happened and it's over and it will never happen again. You go back to your life and I'll go back to mine.'
'Back to Finn?' he asked.
'Who else?'
'Quinn you know he's cheating on you…'
'And what do you call what I did last night?' she asked sharply. 'But I can get him back' she stated, and not in vain. She had half-formulated a plan while trying to fall asleep earlier. 'As long as he never knows about this,' she finished, the warning clear in her tone.
'I promised you I wouldn't tell anyone,' he reminded her.
'Yeah well you promised me some other things too,' she likewise reminded him.
'Babe, I told you I'm sorr-'
'Could you just…' she sighed and continued softer. 'Could you please go… ?'
She peered up at him to see his jaw muscles twitching as he ground and clenched his teeth before he muttered a terse 'yeah' as he turned away from her. She closed her door and locked it again after he climbed back into his truck and slammed the door shut. To his credit, he didn't peel out the drive like she expected him to. Luckily too, she wouldn't have to explain the long black tire marks, which would be totally garish next to the immaculately manicured lawn, to her parents.
"I went back up to my room, prayed some more before I put the necklace on again, and I tried to sleep some more. I finally just stripped my bed down and washed everything, which I should have done from the start, so then I took another shower.
"At about two o'clock Finn called me and apologized for being a lousy boyfriend and ignoring me. Don't you know that made me feel soooo much better," Quinn said dryly. "Anyway, he said that he wanted to make it up to me and for us to spend the evening together. So I got dressed, used the honed Fabray skill of sweeping everything under the rug, put on my Cheerios game face and went with him pretending everything was peachy.
"He did everything perfect that night, making me feel even more guilty. He brought flowers, opened the car door for me, took me somewhere nicer than Breasdtix, managed not to bring up Rachel in conversation, and I suppose he was feeling extra flirty because he kept dropping hints about my hot tub and my parents being out of town. So I figured why not. I didn't want to ruin his renewed interest in me, so I jumped on the hot tub idea. He had a pair of trunks in his gym bag and there we were, making out."
Quinn stopped for a moment and looked Mercedes square in the eye, speaking directly to her with a very serious tone to her voice. "Now, this is the part that's going to get really weird for you to hear. You're probably going to wish you didn't know this and I wish I didn't have to tell you but it's kind of vital to the story."
"Okay," Mercedes said apprehensively.
"And I hate to say this because you've opened up your home to me and I don't want to ruin this new friendship thing we've got going on, but…you do have little problem keeping secrets."
"Yeah, I know."
"But I've been telling you all this in good faith that it won't leave this room…"
"It won't," Mercedes assured her.
"But this that I am about to tell you really can't leave this room, I mean Finn would die if this got out. It was all he could do to tell me, he wasn't going to but it got to where he had to…just promise me, Mercedes."
"I promise that nothing you have said or will say will leave this room." She said sincerely, if a bit dramatically as she raised her right hand.
"Okay," Quinn breathed the word in a heavy sigh. "This I where the fifteen second make out thing comes in. In situations such as the one we were currently in, Finn can become….ummm…" Quinn trailed off, "how can I say this lady-like…very easily excited". She let the sentence hang in the atmosphere until complete comprehension (and a little grossed-outedness) dawned on Mercedes' face.
"So, you don't mean normal 'easily excited', you mean…"
"He contaminated my hot tub," Quinn finished for her. Mercedes face converted to complete grossed-outedness. "I tried to distract him, get him to focus…he's got this trick he uses. One time when his mom was teaching him to drive he accidentally hit a mailman."
Mercedes' brows knit together in concern. "Did he-?"
"No, no, the mailman was alright, but Finn was mortified, so he would use that image and the terrified emotion he felt to kill the mood, so to speak. So I kept telling him to think of the mail but….it must have been a holiday because the mailman was not on duty."
"Shall we continue the bad pun and say that you went postal?" Mercedes chuckled.
"No, actually I didn't," Quinn confessed amusedly. But just the same I wasn't too keen to stick around in that water. So we got out, with Finn apologizing profusely and me assuring him it was okay. We stepped into a little bath house we have to the side and rinsed and dried off, then went back inside and got dressed and just cuddled on the couch and watched TV. That was all, just cuddled, I guess hot tub thing was a buzz-kill for both of us."
"Well, it was definitely a buzz-kill for me. You're right, I really do wish I didn't know that about him." Mercedes said, looking as if an invisible hand was holding something especially foul smelling under her nose.
"Yeah, aaand?" Quinn inclined her head towards Mercedes.
"Right…" Mercedes made the motions of zipping her lips, locking it and throwing away the key.
"Okay," Quinn continued, satisfied with Mercedes vow of secrecy, "but you do see why I had to tell you, right?"
"Not really," Mercedes shook her head, her expression still frozen in a grimace.
"Think ahead," Quinn prodded her, "to when Finn found out in the choir room that Puck was the father. You remember Finn saying something about a hot tub?"
"Yeah, how you made somethin' up and Puck said he was dumb enough to believe tha-….waitaminit." Mercedes paused, piecing it together. "You let that poor boy believe that that's how he got you pregnant? That doesn't even sound possible."
"Well luckily Finn isn't too bright and also didn't pay too much attention in Sex Ed and would rather believe what I said then actually ask anyone if it was possible."
"Luckily?"
"Well, for me not for him. I know I sound awful wording it that way, but that's the way I was thinking. I was trying to save my own skin and didn't think twice about what I was doing to him in the process. Having the school think I was pregnant by a good guy like him rather than the town man-whore was the lesser of two evils, what did it matter what it did to Finns rep?" She said the next sentence with obvious self-loathing in her voice. "This is just the beginning of the awful things I've done since I found out I was pregnant. You're not going to think too highly of me by the end of this," she warned her dark-skinned companion.
"Oh that's cool. I didn't think too highly of you until a couple of weeks ago anyway." " Mercedes assured her, half-jokingly.
"Great, as long as we've got that out of the way, let's see…." Quinn said backtracking to the pre-pregnant (or rather unknowingly pregnant) part of the story. "Cuddling on the couch, nothing else eventful happened except a very sweet goodnight kiss and the promise to call me the next day, Sunday. Got up, got dressed, went to Mass like a good little Catholic. My church has it all day at different times, like most Catholic churches but I went to the same service my family always goes to, the one everyone knows my family always goes to.
" I didn't feel really comfortable going, but there are far too many gossiping hens there who would have been more than thrilled to inform Russell and Judy Fabray that one of their perfect daughters played hooky while they were out of town. I took Eucharist without going to confession first, which in my case was a big no-no. Telling a lie or something like that, you can get by without confession first. Having pre-marital sex? Really something you should clear with your priest before taking Communion.
"But the point of confession is to confess exactly what you've done…aaand I didn't particularly want Father Rourke knowing exactly what I had done. I mean, it's not like I go in there and say 'Hey it's me, Quinn Fabray.' You don't say who you are but come on, I started going to that church nine months before I was born."
"So, he would have recognized your voice," Mercedes surmised.
"Bingo. I actually thought about driving out of town and confessing to a priest who didn't know me but somehow that felt even more wrong and shameful. So, didn't feel great about taking Communion but I did anyway, because," Quinn waved her hand dismissively.
"What would everyone think if you didn't?" Mercedes finished for her.
Quinn snapped her fingers and pointed at Mercedes. "You're getting the hang of this."