Chapter Three

"I just don't know what's gotten into her. It's like she's on drugs. Or insanely hormonal," Kurt complained as he and Santana dodged the slower walkers on the street. He stopped when he saw a lady trying to pass with a baby stroller. "Oh my God, Santana, do you think she's pregnant?"

Santana, who hadn't stopped, turned on her heel and slapped him across the face in one fluid motion. "Don't ever put that out into the universe, Kurt Hummel."

Kurt, who was in minor shock, reached up to work out the stinging in his jaw. "Good grief, woman!"

"Do you have any idea what that would do to us?" The publicist asked Rachel's personal designer with a finger pointing hard at his chest. She shivered in her moderately expensive boots. "Rachel. Pregnant. She'd be a fucking demon on speed. She'd make Hitler look like a decent guy who was just a little misunderstood. And the spawn? I can't even imagine what kind of evils would be packed into a Berry/Hudson hybrid. It boggles the mind."

"Chill out!" Kurt yelled. He stretched his mouth a few directions still trying to get the kinks out. "That was completely unnecessary, by the way."

"The slap or the implication that Rachel's baby would be a be a tiny Lord Voldemort?"

Kurt looked affronted by the question. "The slap," he practically squalled. "Rachel's potential child would absolutely be a tiny Lord Voldemort...with Finn's dopey grin."

"I can already see the gassy infant look on an actual gassy infant."

"While I agree that I'm tempting the fates," Kurt said between trying to pop to his jaw back in place, "that really hurt."

Santana reached up and pinched his cheek. "Sorry, Porcelain."

"Ow," the man pushed her hand away. "I asked you never to call me that."

"It's cute, and you can't argue your pale, delicate quality," Santana said as she turned and continued down the sidewalk.

Kurt rushed to catch up with her. "You never did mention how lunch with Quinn went," he said as he tucked his arm through hers.

"I didn't," the woman dismissed the implied question as they walked step for step.

"How is she?"

"Married."

Kurt tugged on her arm. "C'mon, Santana. How is she doing?"

"Great," Santana shrugged. "That's what she told me."

"Well good for her."

Santana nodded, "Yep."

"You haven't convinced her to move back yet?"

"Nope, she's a mother. She has a family now," the brunette reached up to tug at her easy to manage ponytail as they entered one of the nicest buildings on the Upper West Side. "She's happy where she is, Kurt."

"Oo-kay."

"What?"

"Nothing."

Santana shot him a glare.

"I'm just saying," he said, pulling one hand up defensively.

"Well, stop just saying," she ordered. "What about you, what's going on with you?"

"I just happen to have a date this Friday," Kurt confessed. "Assuming Rachel Berry's oh-so-important schedule doesn't interfere."

"That's great, Kurt," Santana smiled genuinely. "Who's the lucky fella?"

"I don't really know him all that well. We met at one of Rachel's soirees, I think he's a senator's son."

"Well, I'll try my best to make sure she's otherwise engaged on Friday night."

"Thanks. I'll keep my fingers crossed."

"And if that doesn't work," Santana grinned as they reached their destination. "I'll have some Ambien ready to slip into her Tasmanian Rainwater."

"Finally!" Rachel huffed as soon as she caught sight of them. "I thought you two would never show up."

"We're fifteen minutes early, Rachel," Santana said as she dropped into a nearby chair.

"I was about to send Beiste out looking for you," the movie star continued dramatically. "I simply cannot have my inner circle missing in action."

Oh no," the publicist motioned for her to stop. "You're not allowed to call us 'the inner circle' anymore after I read your attempt at erotic novels."

"For the last time, it was a metaphor," Rachel huffed.

"Still gross." Santana looked over to Shannon Bieste, the leader of Rachel's team of bodyguards. "Beiste, we're right here. All accounted for. No need to deploy."

"I see that, Ms. Lopez," Beiste tried not to smile at her antics before turning her attention to Rachel. "Ms. Berry, would you like Figgins to pull the car around?"

"I'm not going to walk through the park and then 40 blocks, so yes, I would love it if Figgins brought the car around."

"See, hormonal," Kurt whispered before sauntering off toward the master closet, no doubt. When he was anxious, only Armani could calm him.

Santana narrowed in on Rachel. She was even crazier than normal. She was flying off the handle at every little thing. Of course, it could be her working double time to keep a leash on her wandering husband. It might be the movie that she directed that was in post production. The stress of the upcoming album could be getting to her. But it never hurt to do a bit more digging.

"Hey, Rach," the publicist called. "Can I have a word?"

"Do we need to prep for this interview?"

"No, Fallon won't ask you anything too tough," Santana answered. "I've cleared the questions. Just Finn, Run Joey Run, a teaser about the record, throw in that hilarious vacation story about the kickboxing kangaroo. But if it starts to get dicey, and this is only to be used as an audible, Rachel. If. Then use the whole three Jewish parents and a Christmas fern bit."

"Okay," the star nodded quickly.

"I've got a question, though," Santana drew a bit closer. "I'm only asking because it's my job to know."

"Okay," Rachel ducked in further.

"And I need to stay ahead of it, if you...are."

The celebrity looked up, "If I'm...what?"

"Knocked up. Preggers. With child. Basically, is there a bun in your oven?"

"NO!" the small woman's eyes widened.

"Are you sure?"

Rachel scoffed, "Am I sure? Of course, I'm sure. Why would you even ask?"

"I, I don't know, Kurt-"

"Kurt?" Rachel gasped. Her hand flew to her chest in outrage. "Kurt thinks I'm pregnant? Am I getting fat?"

"No!"

"Oh my God!"

"Rachel, no, no," Santana tried to quiet her.

"Kurt!" Rachel screamed. "Kurrrrt!"

After watching her charge up the master stair case, Santana heard a chuckle to her left. "Now seems like a good time to deploy, eh, Ms. Lopez," Beiste said with a smirk.

It felt like days instead of hours later when Santana slipped into her slightly bigger than a shoebox, rent controlled, but still ridiculously expensive Manhattan apartment. She just wanted to shower and crawl into bed. She passed by her answering machine and noticed the blinking 3. She stared at the number appear, then disappear, then reappear. Finally, she punched the button.

You have three new messages.

First message.

"Mija, it's your mother. Remember me? You were supposed to call last weekend. I gave you a two day grace period. Your time is up. Call me back.

Santana smiled at her mother's voice. She had forgotten to call, of course. She needed to do that. And she would, tomorrow.

Next message.

"Hey San, it's me. I had a great time at lunch last week. Same time, same place next month, right? You don't have to get back to me ASAP. Just let me know. Oh, and...you seemed kind of weird, is ever-

The woman cut the message off there.

Next message.

"You're a bitch, Santana Lopez. You'll pay for this! I'll see you tomorrow."

That made Santana double over with laughter. Rachel had badgered Kurt for the rest of day. His interrogation was complete with an actual lie detector test that covered questions from "Is your name really Kurt Elizabeth Hummel?" to "Does Rachel Berry look grotesque in swimwear?"

The laughing continued down her short hallway into the bathroom. She took the hottest shower she could manage for all of three minutes. Toweling her hair, she made her way into the kitchen and looked in the fridge.

"Call mom. Buy food," she made a note to herself. She finally saw a cup of yogurt hiding behind what was a probably a two week old pizza box.

Santana made short time of piling the pillows up on her bed and grabbing her laptop for her nightly check of the "news." Making sure there were no outstanding stories going around about Rachel and begrudgingly Finn, she clicked over to real news.

After a few minutes, she looked over to her phone out of the corner of her eye. She checked the time. It was around 9 in Seattle. She shook her head, trying to shake out the thought. She should go to sleep. Rachel would still be on a rampage tomorrow. Kurt would be on a mission for revenge, and she would be exhausted. She should most certainly not be thinking about calling a woman she didn't even know, a woman that lived 3000 miles away.

She shouldn't be, but she was.

She grabbed her iPhone and swiped her thumb across the screen. She pressed the green phone button and scrolled until she found 'Brittany from Seattle.' Her finger hovered over the name. She tapped the side a few times, closed her eyes and pressed down.

"Hello." That was all it took. Relief washed through her and she couldn't for the life of her figure out why.

"Hi," she breathed.

"I wondered if you'd ever call back."

Santana leaned further into her pillows, "I said I would, didn't I?"

"You did, but then you waited more than week."

"I was busy," she answered then groaned at the flimsy excuse. "That's shitty, I know, but it's true."

"That's okay. I was mostly kidding."

"Still a shitty excuse."

"Nah," Brittany said lightly.

"So how did it go with Will?"

"Not much of a change unfortunately." Brittany answered dejectedly. "I did convince the rest of the team to give him just a bit longer, though."

"That was nice of you."

"I'm not so sure it will make a difference, though. We don't exactly have a lot of time to waste."

"What do you do?" Santana was curious. "That's if you don't mind me asking?"

"Not at all," the New Yorker could hear the excitement in her voice. "I work for an advertising agency. New Directions Ad Agency, actually. We're in the creative process for a pretty important ad campaign right now."

"That sounds cool."

"It is," Brittany said. "And Will's our jingle guy."

"Hence the unjingly."

"No, it has nothing to do with hens or anything, he just hasn't written anything useful in a while."

"Uh...yeah," Santana did a mental rehash of everything she just said. "I gotcha. So, commercials?"

"Commercials," Brittany confirmed. "And print ads and radio spots, but my favorite is commercials."

"It fits," the brunette smiled at a piece of the puzzle sliding into place.

"Yeah?" Brittany seemed to like that Santana thought so. "I kind of have a knack for taglines and slogans."

Santana's interest was piqued, "Anything I'd know?"

"Hmm, uh, do you remember when Duck Tape was briefly making outerwear? There was a commercial with a little boy in a duct tape rain suit and fisherman's hat..."

"No way," Santana sat up in bed. "'The duck's in the hat' was you?"

"That was me."

"I'm a fan of your work," she said as she pulled up YouTube and quickly typed in the semi-famous phrase.

"I appreciate that," Brittany replied. "Then there was an ad we made for Safer Waters International. My slogan didn't go over so well in the US, but in Japan, the interpretation was 'Dolphins are Happy Sharks', so it was pretty successful overseas."

"That's...interesting." Something about this woman was uncommonly delightful, Santana thought. "It sounds like you really love it. So few people really love what they do."

"I do love it," Brittany stated. "I don't think there's anything else like it. You know, creating something so compact and informative from scratch that so many people see and memorize. I want to make the next big ad success. I want to be the one that creates another 'Buy the World a Coke', or Just Do It, or that hilarious Geico pig. It's just, commercials are so powerful. So are print ads, I'm not saying they're not. But...there's something about the jingle plus the images plus the product. It's amazing."

"Wow," the New Yorker was impressed by the other woman's passion. "And I usually just fast forward through commercials."

"Oh," Brittany said. "Well, that's okay. It's really a dying art."

"I'll stop, though," Santana said quickly. "I mean, unless it's a tampon or laxative commercial. I can still fast forward those, right?"

"You have my permission," Brittany granted. "So what do you do, Miss Not a Doctor?"

"I'm not sure it's as magical as commercials."

"Try me."

"Okay," Santana swallowed hard. "Do you know who Rachel Berry is?"

"Of course," Brittany said nonchalantly. "Catwoman."

"Huh?" Santana was confused for a moment. "Oh, no. That's Hal-le Berry. I'm talking about Rachel Berry."

"Yeah, the chick in New Year's Eve."

"You're still thinking Halle Berry," the brunette shook her head. "Rachel Berry was in Loser Like Me."

"I'm not sure I saw that."

"Okay, what about Get It Right?"

"Is that about vampires?"

"No, it's a rom com."

"Then, no."

Santana scratched her forehead. This was proving to be more difficult than she thought. "Okay, did you see Glee? That movie about the high school show choir?"

"Of course, everybody did."

"The lead actress in that movie is Rachel Berry."

"Oh, yeah, okay. What about her?"

Santana smiled, "I work for her, I'm her publicist."

"Oh," Brittany was obviously surprised. "That might be cooler than commercials."

"I doubt it."

"Hold on just a sec," Brittany ordered. Santana heard a bit of muffled movement and then the faint sounds of typing. "Rachel Barbra Berry from Staten Island, New York..."

"Dammit!" Santana exclaimed suddenly. "She's been editing her wikipedia page again. Her middle name is Constance and she's from Lima, Ohio."

"Her husband looks familiar."

"Finn Hudson," Santana supplied. "He was a big deal for approximately thirty seconds when everyone thought the was going to be some Hall of Fame worthy superstar."

"He's an athlete?"

"If you want to be technical, sure. He was the backup quarterback for the Jets for like a day and a half."

"I'm not much of a sports fan," Brittany sounded apologetic.

"Not much of a sports fan? C'mon Britt. He had that drive down the field with a minute twelve left on the clock."

"Don't remember."

"It was the playoffs!"

"...kay."

Finally it hit Santana, "Oh yeah, Seattle. Alright, well, he was the talk of the town for a couple of months. At least until everyone found out he was a one hit wonder...or rather a 'three passes and one running flail into the endzone' wonder."

"Wait a second, are you talking about that guy on Dancing with the Stars last season?"

"The one who twirled off the stage and into a cameraman."

"That's where I know him!" Brittany exclaimed. "That was brutal! Did that guy make it? I never saw anything else after he was hauled away in the ambulance."

"The camera guy? Oh yeah. He was hospitalized for a week and lost some mobility in his left arm, but he's fine. Got season tickets to the Jets out of it. J-E-T-S, go Jets, go."

Brittany couldn't stop laughing, "He was the worst!"

"He really was," Santana joined in.

"No, seriously, it was hard to watch. I love that show and I almost had to give it up because of that guy."

Santana agreed. "It was like watching a really large unattractive robot being shot at from all directions."

"Now you're being mean to robots."

Santana roared with laughter. "You love Dancing with the Stars, huh?"

"Yeah," Brittany quieted. "It was sort of a dream of mine to be on it once upon a time."

"So you're a dancer, too?"

"Was," Brittany replied shortly.

Santana took that as a cue to abandon the subject.

After a few moments, Brittany rekindled the conversation, "So you hang out with celebrities?"

"It's not nearly as glamorous as it sounds," the brunette said.

"That's still really neat, though. I've only met one celebrity in my whole life."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, well, his name is Cooper, he's an actor," Brittany explained, "and my friend's brother. He does a lot of commercials, some of them have even run nationally. He does the best pounding headache I've ever seen."

"And how is he at receiving the news from his physician about contracting genital herpes?" Santana asked jokingly.

"Pretty good," the other woman replied seriously. "Personal experience to draw from really helps in commercial acting."

"Obviously," Santana snorted.

"You know who I've always wanted to meet, though?"

"Who?"

"Britney Spears." Brittany informed her. "You ever met her?"

"Yeah, actually," Santana tried to sound unimpressed. "I met her at the Grammys once."

"And it's not glamorous," the woman in Seattle teased.

"It's really not," the brunette claimed. "Why Britney Spears?"

"Oh," there was a light chuckle, "I always thought we had some kind of cosmic connection. She's Britney Spears and I'm Brittany S. Pierce."

"Pierce?" Santana locked it into memory immediately. "Brittany S. Pierce," she tested on her tongue. "What's the S for?"

"Susan," Brittany admitted shyly. "It's my mom's name."

"Excellent name."

"Thanks."

Santana reveled in the fact that had gotten a last name for a few seconds before her eye caught the time on her clock. She groaned out loud.

"Is something wrong?"

"No," the New Yorker said. "Just that I should be sleeping."

"Oh," Brittany was disappointed. "Yeah, it's late there."

"Will we talk later?" Santana's voice sounded more desperately hopeful than she wanted.

"Hopefully sooner."

"Hopefully," Santana echoed. "Goodnight Brittany S. Pierce."

"Sweet dreams, Santana."