Here is the next chapter. Thanks for all of the previous comments. I appreciate it! ;) Is it me or was FF glitching earlier? Tsk tsk.
Though Rachel had long since abandoned their eye contact, and was now stood a few metres away talking to a strawberry-blonde-haired, fair-skinned girl, Quinn could not stop her eyes from trailing after the brunette.
Every smile. Every laugh.
Every crease that rippled in her uncharacteristic pair of jeans whenever she gestured her small tan hands a certain way.
As studiously as the blonde's swimming vision would allow, she watched Rachel accept a small glass of red wine from Noelle, thanking the tall raven-haired girl with a grateful adoring grin.
Suddenly the pleasant warmth of the sun, the air of popularity, the lustful looks that she'd been getting – none of it mattered. Quinn's shoulders sagged; all she wanted to do was leave – even if diving overboard was her only option.
In all truth, the luxurious yacht was outrageously vast, and to the point that neither her nor Rachel would have to ever see or interact with one another if they chose not to.
Though perhaps that was the problem, Quinn gleaned miserably – that she wanted to interact with the annoying brunette. Wanted to have it out with her for unjustly calling an end to whatever the hell it was that one would call their relationship, both false and otherwise.
Wanted to explain that she hadn't too much meant it when she'd called her a loser just moments before.
And to add salt to the slug's back, Rachel was just a few meters away, publicly single and living it up in the company of Noelle Hutchington-Chang, the girl who would've put a ring on it this very moment if Rachel would only just agree to such.
Quinn rested her elbows atop the shot glass table, held her face within both palms, and sighed wearily.
She could no longer deny it; she was fucked, both in terms of intoxication and in terms of –
A warm large hand suddenly skated down her back, and with the muted sensation of the gesture, Quinn remembered that other people existed. As the sound of teenage debauchery slowly began to funnel back into her ears, she also remembered that she was sat on Wade Massey's lap.
Sluggishly lifting her head, which was starting to feel more and more like a fifteen-kilogram medicine ball, she murmured something that even she, herself, couldn't decipher.
"What? You want to go inside?" Wade asked, seeing his opportunity to get the intoxicated beauty to follow him into private quarters; just the two of them. "Looks like you've had one too many shots, babe. Let's go inside. You can lie down on the bed for a bit."
"No, I just wanna... wanna sit here for a while," Quinn replied, quiet and forlorn as she mentally summoned her bearings.
Luke, who was lounging in the deck chair beside them, lowered his cigar; pretty ribbons of smoke swirling from his heavily stubbled lips. "The remote to the bed recliner is in the bedside drawer, just in case you want to get freaky," he whispered into Wade's ear, all whilst watching Quinn to make certain that she was indeed wrapped up in her stupor, and not listening to him.
Wade's face broke out into a lop-sided yet cunning grin.
A bed recliner?
Sweet...
Rachel snorted unattractively, spluttering the moment that the rich red wine met with her tongue.
She began to whistle an innocuous little melody of a tune, all whilst edging towards the yacht's side, from where she tossed the remainder of her wine over board. "I don't normally drink, and that concoction was kind to remind me why. A smidgen of red wine is good for the circulation? Pfft," she scoffed. "Whatever happened to good old fashioned exercise?"
"I can't believe I'm friends with such a lightweight. You're supposed to endure the rancid taste for the sake of getting buzzed. What a disgrace," Noelle commented, shaking her head from side to side whilst trying not to smile through her feigned disgust.
Rachel gasped, slamming her empty glass down on a nearby table in a show of playful affront.
Beth Sykes giggled, before flicking her strawberry-blonde mane off of her shoulders and downing the entirety of her champagne, as if to show the alcohol-intolerant brunette how it was supposed to be done.
Quite funnily, the boastful little demonstration wasn't at all lost on Rachel. "So you can guzzle a whole glass of champagne. That's great. But is that a skill that is going to help you achieve your dream of becoming a WWE diva? You didn't think about that, did you now?"
Releasing a few tickled brays of laughter, Beth glanced to Noelle. "I can only imagine the amount of fun that you guys must have when you hang out, just the two of you," she mused, knowing what Noelle could also be like.
"We don't even do drugs, yet our conversations tend to take us to the most outlandish places. Never a dull moment. I love it. It's good to be random."
"I agree," Beth chimed, fiddling with the pink bow on her bikini bottoms. She took her green eyes to Rachel, who seemed to be doing an absent little jig to the music that could be heard pouring from the upper deck. "You seem pretty upbeat for someone who's just gone through a break-up," she highlighted, her eyes quieting with curiosity. "What's your secret? Every time a guy breaks up with me, my parents have to call up The Dr. Phil Show to help with pulling me out of my major depression."
Recalling the time that Phillip Kinsey had broken up with Beth, Noelle nodded in quiet concurrence. The pale girl wasn't lying.
Rachel's movements came to an almost comical still once she realized that she was being spoken to. She began to chew the inside of her cheek. "Well, I... don't really have a secret, to be honest with you. I just understand that Quinn and I are not a good fit. We were doing more damage by being together. The end of our relationship was a blessing, or at least that is how I am choosing to look at it. I wish her the best, despite the fact that I boarded this yacht to find her calling me derogatory names. If at any point she wants to talk, I'll talk, since I'm concerned about how she may be taking the news about Finn. But aside from that, I am going to continue on with things as normal."
Noelle took a bite of her lobster salad canapé and sighed as she chewed. In all honesty, she still wasn't over the disrespectful scene that they'd walked into upon boarding the yacht.
Over and over again she'd apologized to Rachel, explaining that she hadn't a clue about the fact that Quinn, her ex, would also be in attendance.
How could anybody call Rachel a loser, and with such venom in their voice?
At this point, Noelle could no longer say that she deemed the Head Cheerleader to be pretty at all. In fact, when she looked at the blonde, the depth of her internal ugliness just seemed to ooze from every previously perfect pore, distorting all physical pleasantries.
The same rule applied to Benjamin Price too, who'd scurried off into hiding after almost losing a tooth at the hands of Rachel's verbal bitch slap earlier, funnily enough.
Beth placed her glass down on a nearby table. "I'm not trying to be an insensitive ass here, not to you or to Finn, but I've got to say that Quinn's hot – and that's coming from a straight girl," she gushed, growing pink around her pale ears. "Anywho, I wish that I could be as mature as you are about break ups. Quinn calling you a loser just shows that she's not over you or your goodies yet, 'cause you seem pretty cool to me."
Tucking her hair behind her ear, Rachel smiled and sort of ducked her head, warmed by Beth's words of encouragement. "Thank you. That means a lot. It's not every day that people refer to me as cool. "
"I may not always tell you that you're cool, but –" Noelle halted her quip, glancing over her shoulder at the sudden commotion that had just erupted behind them.
Crumpling her forehead as though being subjected to a bad smell, Rachel was quick to follow her friend's unimpressed gaze. What she saw failed to make her eyes pop; a belligerent and stumbling Quinn, who could just about stand upright.
Hardly a shock, considering the speed with which she had seen the cheerleader tossing drinks back.
But the curly-haired boy, the one who was stood by the floppy blonde's side, touching all over her under the guise of wanting to assist? He certainly seemed dubious, at least he did to the aspiring Broadway star.
"Who is that boy?" she soon asked.
"Wade Massey," Noelle answered, growing more and more uncomfortable as she watched Wade begin to escort the babbling Head Cheerleader towards the plush interior area. "Yeah, so I'm not Quinn's biggest fan, but she isn't in any state to give consent to anything sexual, and he looks like he's taking her inside to proposition her," she quickly deduced. "Us girls all need to band together when it comes to stuff like this."
She shot Beth a serious look, which was returned with a strong concurring nod.
In response to having her suspicions voiced aloud, Rachel bristled and began to chew the inside of her cheek, her brow pinching with indecision.
"Are you gonna go, or do you want me to?" Noelle prompted, everything about her countenance serious.
Without further comment, Rachel hurried off through the clusters of teens...
But seconds later, she found herself inside of the yacht's warm and majestic living quarters, hot on Quinn's heels.
Strands of her silk brown hair were still strewn across her face from where the wind had met a worthy opponent in her hasty footsteps.
"Quinn!" she called down the hallway, and rather loudly too.
The Head Cheerleader angled her body away from Wade's persistent touch, batted his hands away from her upper thighs, and then turned around.
In the blink of an eye, her vulnerable demeanor evaporated, replaced by something coarse and hostile. "What?" she grunted, almost wavering on her feet due to the force of it. "How about you go back out there," she spat, jabbing an acrimonious finger at the doors through which they'd just entered," and... and hang all over Noelle, since you're so good at that!"
Rachel sighed wearily, though hell would freeze over before she would allow Quinn to deter her!
She placed her hands on her hips, and rooted her feet firm to the ground. "I would just like to speak with you, Quinn. That's all. You've obviously had quite a bit to drink, and I'm not just going to stand by and let you be taken advantage of."
With a testy click of the tongue, Wade stopped easing open the door to the bedroom. "Get the message!" he snarled. "Quinn doesn't wanna talk to you!"
"She doesn't want your STD-ridden dick in her mouth either, but that doesn't appear to be discouraging you, does it?" Rachel instantly counted, making a point to grant this jerk not a shred of eye contact.
Instead she continued to hold Quinn's somewhat softening yet vacant golden gaze...
Pretty soon, Wade's eyes began to darken. He flitted them between the two silent girls, sensing that his opportunity to have sex with the blonde beauty was slipping away with every second that passed.
But he was Wade Massey, and he was not about to go down without a fight!
Little did he know...
He stepped out from behind Quinn and towered over the mouthy little cock-block. "Look you little bitch -"
Well... that was all it took.
Like she was an appliance that had just been plugged into the mains, Quinn sparked to life. She shoved the stupid boy to the side with all of her given might, watching him stumble off into the wall that shouldered the narrow hallway.
"Hey!" Rachel immediately piped up, stepping in-between them. "Stop it!"
But once Quinn's smooth bikini-clad chest pressed up, supple yet firm and imposing against her shoulder, the brunette wasn't so sure as to whether or not the blonde had even heard her.
"The fuck d'you think you are?" Quinn spat at the boy, and much louder than her bubble-like sense of sound could perceive in that moment. "All the money in the world's not gonna save you, rich boy! Call her a bitch again, ass-clown, and we'll see who the bitch is!"
Rachel huffed; her eardrum was going to need to be replaced after this. She was sure of it.
"The hell's the matter with you? You were the one calling her a loser earlier!" Wade whined, shrinking into himself pathetically as he rubbed the swelling area at the back of his skull; the area that had thumped the wall.
"What's your point, douche? She's my God damn loser!" Quinn roared, pointing her finger into her own chest with so much force that she was sure to be sore tomorrow. "I'll call her a loser all freaking day long if I want to – she knows, deep down, that I don't mean it! But you and your homo-erotic friends can't! You assholes don't know her!"
Upon the sudden silence, Rachel ducked her head and cleared her throat. Well, she hadn't expected to hear any of that. It was sort of sweet, ironic, and comical in a way, she supposed – that Quinn Fabray, inebriated or not, would say things like that. About her.
What a spectacularly peculiar few days it had been.
"Man, forget you guys. It's not worth the hassle," Wade suddenly mumbled, taking off down the hallway.
For him, foreign waters was being told no. And even more foreign was being physically thrown around by pretty little blonde sluts.
Whatever though; the jacuzzi had been brimming with plenty of other hot girls who were desperate for attention the last time that he'd checked…
Together, Rachel and Quinn watched until he bustled out through the doors that led to the outer deck, and then they looked at one another at the same time, just like in the movies.
"Well that was... interesting," Rachel mused, passing her hands down the front of her black skinny jeans.
"What do you want from me?" Quinn grumbled, impatient.
"I think that we need to talk," Rachel urged, without missing a beat. "I can't have you running around getting shit-faced, Quinn. It isn't good for any of us, and I never want to hear that anybody has taken advantage of you in your drunken state. Guys won't think twice, mostly due to the fact that you're so beautiful!" she stressed with her hands, almost pleading. "Now, I'm not sure why you've gotten yourself into such a state," the brunette said, gesturing up and down the motionless yet swaying blonde as if to state her point, "but regardless of what has happened between us, you can talk to me at any time. At the risk of sounding like Miss Pillsbury, I'll always listen."
Quinn rubbed both of her palms over her face, rigorous and fast; kind of like how dogs shook water from their fur after a bath.
Why was everything so jumbled and confusing at the moment?
The silence swelled loud within the hallway, still yet pregnant, and then –
"I'm sorry I called you a loser earlier," Quinn mumbled from behind her hands, child-like.
At the rare and unexpected sight, an amused grin glided in and captured Rachel's lips.
Never had she glimpsed this side of the cheerleader before.
Never had she imagined that it would even exist.
Simply put, it was cute. Not that the brunette condoned – or ever would condone – drinking to excess!
"It was uncalled for, yes, but you needn't worry about it Quinn. I've sort of developed a thick skin when it comes to insults. You and your goons have, essentially, equipped me for the criticism that is sure to come along with my Broadway dreams. Like I said before, life's about how one chooses to look at things."
"I-I only said it because you really pissed me off last night," Quinn was quick to explain.
She lowered her pale hands from her face, which was stirred at the hands of a deep flustered grimace. "You told me that you were done with everything, and I didn't – you wouldn't – I didn't do anything wrong, " she fumbled out, blinking over and over again, as though she was confusing even herself. "I didn't do what you said I did."
For a moment, Rachel cast her mind back to the previous night, considering that maybe she had perhaps acted a little impetuously.
She'd even threatened to call the police, in order to have them remove the stubborn cheerleader from her home. But it wasn't as though her suspicions and actions were altogether unfounded, she reasoned.
The brunette thumbed through the libraries of her mind, seeking to explain her previous behavior in the best way that she possibly could.
Though she wasn't at all certain that anything that she said would remain once Quinn's beer goggles had worn off.
Still, she didn't want to leave the other girl, who finally seemed to be opening up, hanging.
"You have to understand that whilst I am not afraid of you, I am rather wary of you, Quinn," Rachel stated, making sure to let those words settle before continuing. "I know how you can be, which was why I assumed that your initial intentions regarding that kiss were manipulative. If they were not, then I apologize. But I'm still not satisfied with the fact that you saw your lipstick on my face, and sent me out to –"
A distant thud sounded just then, snatching the words right from the brunette's tongue.
She took owlish eyes around the fixtures and fittings – down the hallway, and then back up again.
No other souls were present, as far as she could see.
But why take the chance?
"Maybe we should take this conversation inside, so that we may speak in a freer manner," she softly suggested, bobbing her head towards the partially open bedroom door just behind the cheerleader.
Quinn looked towards the room, as if it were a doorway that led to the edge of a two-hundred-and-fifty foot cliff.
And it was. For her at least, because she knew that...
"If we go in there, I'm probably gonna kiss you again," she slurred, shrugging like the two of them were pretty much just helpless victims of fate at this point. "And this time you'll know it's not fake. I promise."
The smatterings of a challenge that had reverberated within the blonde's husky voice washed through the aspiring Broadway star, who couldn't help but smirk at the abrupt change in Quinn's demeanor – despite not really knowing what to make of the somewhat racy comment.
Quinn Fabray was openly flirting with her; CNN would be on the phone pestering her for the full story once they had learned of the incident, Rachel was sure.
"What are you smirking at?" Quinn grumbled, having thought that she'd finally managed to silence the quick-tongued shorter girl, once and for all.
But the smirk that currently defined the brunette's features – it suggested otherwise.
"You, Quinn. I'm smirking at you," Rachel responded with an air of gentle impishness. "I don't agree with the amount that you've had to drink, but you're certainly a cute drunk. I will give you that."
The Head Cheerleader huffed, slinging her hands over her ears. "Shut up; I'm not listening. I'm not cute. I'm sexy. Always sexy."
Rachel rolled her eyes. "You can be both!" she emphasized loudly.
"You're both," Quinn mumbled at the ground as she let her hands fall to her sides.
Rachel stared at the blonde, without so much as blinking. She was, quite frankly, failing to grasp how Quinn could be one way one second, and then another in the next.
Nevertheless...
"Let's go inside and talk, Quinn," the brunette once again suggested, this time gently brushing past the cheerleader on her way into the room.
From the doorway, Quinn ran her hand back through her billowing golden tresses. She took a deep breath, and only then did she finally follow after the girl that had undoubtedly turned her world on its axis...