A/N: I told you guys this one would be short, but it did end up being a lot shorter than I thought it would. Next chapter will more than make up for it, I think it's probably going to be my longest so far. Hopefully I will have time to add it sometime this weekend. Thanks so much for continuing to read!

It ended up working out well that Rachel was busy on Sunday because at four in the morning, getting only an hour of sleep after my date with Rachel, I got my usual bi-weekly hysterical phone call from Quinn asking if she could come over. Quinn was a mess since she found out she was pregnant and ever since then it had progressively gotten worse. Finn breaking up with her for the second time was what threw her completely over the edge and since then, every two weeks I would get a call from her in the middle of the night, sobbing into the phone about how no one loved her.

She got to my house around four-thirty in the morning and like usual she silently slipped into my bed with me and I held her all night. It wasn't like with Rachel. There was nothing exciting or arousing about it and I always thought of it like how my sister used to let me sleep with her when I had nightmares. She just needed someone to be there to remind her that all the demons weren't real.

We spent most of Sunday in bed, with her curled up in my arms, as we watched another Kardashian marathon, and like always not actually talking about anything. I knew Quinn and she wasn't a talker. I was pretty sure she knew about my secret as well, but she had never ever brought it up or hinted at it. Sometimes she just had this sort of all knowing smile that made me wonder how many secrets she had figured out about everyone around us. She was so quietly intuitive, I sometimes envied her for it. She was also the most well guarded person I knew and as much as she knew about everyone else, no one really knew who Quinn was. She had so many secrets that she kept hidden away and she never really trusted anyone enough to open up to them at all. That was why my envy only lasted so long. She felt like such a tragic person, a fairytale princess fated to live a life full of doom.

She left my house around nine Sunday night with her head-bitch-back-in-charge look, head held high, and her usual apology that she left me with every time, "Sorry to be such a cry-baby."

"You're not a baby, babies don't have teeth," I answered back, always some variation of how Quinn didn't physically resemble a baby, and that smile would appear on her lips. Soft and all knowing, like she understood the game and she was playing along because she understood how important secrets were.

With everything that happened with her, I had forgotten all about the math test and even though I was almost positive I didn't actually need to study, I felt like I should've at least read over the outline of what was going to be on it.

When I sat down in my seat beside Santana in math class, who gave me little more than a weary glance, I looked up just in time to catch Rachel giving me a large encouraging grin with two thumbs up as she passed by me in the aisle.

"So pathetic," Santana growled, rolling her eyes and tapping her pencil so hard against the desk I thought it might snap. I ignored her, I knew she was just angry still about my tutoring sessions with Rachel and knowing Santana she was going to stay angry about it all week.

I was more concerned about the butterflies that had begun to flutter in my stomach, something I hadn't felt before a test since elementary school. It was going to be the first time in years that I didn't answer every question with either 'rainbows' or 'unicorns' and suddenly I felt like I wasn't prepared enough, or at all.

When the test was finally placed in front of me and I read the first few questions, the nausea completely disappeared and was replaced with a kind of warm, happy feeling as I knew all of my answers were correct. I had to go back and change a few of them, purposely putting in the wrong answers because I knew it would be entirely unbelievable if I suddenly got a hundred percent on a test. When I was finished and handed it in, I felt so accomplished and true to myself, even if I had to change a few of the answers, it was like I was finally becoming myself again.

During spare I escaped to my deserted bathroom, like I always did at that time, but once again it was not deserted. Rachel was leaning against the bathroom counter, as if she was waiting for me.

"We have to stop meeting like this," I joked, after the door had closed behind me.

"This wasn't an accident," Rachel admitted, "I know you always come in here during your free period."

I could tell by her expression that there was something she urgently needed to talk to me about so I decided to cut to the chase and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong," she stressed, her eyes wavering on me, "but I do have something on my mind."

"Tell me," I said, resting my forearms on the tops of her shoulders and keeping our bodies at a safe distance.

She glanced down at my arms and said reluctantly, "Aren't you worried about someone coming in?"

I shrugged, knowing I was the master at cover-ups, "I'll just say my arms were too heavy and I needed a place to rest them."

Rachel looked away disappointedly, "Oh."

"What," I asked, tilting my head to the side and watching her resist a heavy sigh.

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," Rachel said, her innocent brown eyes looking up at me through her bangs.

"Heavy arms," I said dumbly, almost hopeful that it was about that and not about what I knew it would be.

"No," Rachel said curtly and this time she did sigh, "I mean... we had our first date on Saturday and it was truly amazing, Brittany, really. No one has ever taken me somewhere more beautiful. In fact, I'm almost certain that all of my dates have either included bowling or Breadsticks, and I don't even like Breadsticks."

"Blasphemy," I gasped, letting it slip out before I even realized I was saying it.

"Their vegan menu is quite lacking," Rachel clarified and then shook her head as if to remind herself to get back to the point, "Can we consider dinner tomorrow our second date?"

"We can," I nodded, I had other plans for our second date, but if she wanted to count this as our second then the plans would just have to wait for the third.

"I need you to promise me something," she said, with a pained look on her face as if she was afraid of asking this of me.

"Okay," I said drawing the word out, not liking how this was sounding.

She bit her lip, eyes holding mine for what seemed like hours while I waited, until she finally replied, "Promise me that if this- if we get serious, you will tell everyone about us."

I was pretty sure that was where she had been going with this little talk, but was dreading it entirely. I didn't feel at all ready to tell anyone about us, but since Rachel had added in the part about 'if we get serious' I felt like it was a loop hole allowing me to agree to it. I was sure that when I felt like things between us were serious I would be ready to tell people, that would probably be months away anyways. Sure, I seemed to forget how to breathe when I saw her, and I may have had to toss out all the panties I had worn that week, but that just meant my body was attracted to her. It said nothing about things like compatibility and love and wanting to spend forever with each other.

I moved my hands from her shoulders to rest on either side of her neck, stroking the sensitive skin with my thumbs and making sure to look directly into her eyes as I spoke with as much confidence as I could fill my voice with, "I would never make you stay in the chorus when you were born to be a star. Rachel Berry was never meant to live in the shadows."

"You promise," she asked hopefully, a shy smile curling the corners of her mouth.

"I promise," I replied with an assuring nod and after her smile widened and her eyes fell bashfully to her feet I asked, "How's your confusion."

"It's starting to get a little clearer," she laughed, her teeth biting into her lip again, "Yours?"

Why did she have to look so damn beautiful all the time?

"It still kinda blows my mind," I replied with wonder, my hands tangling in her hair as I pulled her head to lay against my chest, tucked under my chin.

The same vanilla scent that drove me crazy everyday.

"What," Rachel asked, her arms wrapping around my waist.

I kissed the top of her head, my lips lingered as I inhaled the intoxicating scent of her before I mumbled, "Liking you."