You're kind of emotionally unstable right now - a lot has happened in the past few days - and all you really want to do is to have one night where you don't have anyone to break up with, anyone to get back together with, or anyone to answer to. So, after Dani leaves your apartment, you take a shower, get dressed and head down two blocks to O'Connors, a little bar on the corner of the street. It's usually quiet, and the alcohol is cheap, so it's just what you need right now.
When you get inside, everyone's head in the bar turns to look at you. They're all middle aged men who clearly aren't used to seeing a nineteen year old woman in a dress that barely covers her ass, but it doesn't even phase you anymore. You're used to turning heads. You make your way over to the bar and ignore their leering eyes. "Beer, please," you ask the bartender, and he immediately starts pouring you a glass. He places it on the bar, you pay him and thank him and take it, making your way to a table in the corner where you can just sit in peace and quiet for a while. No-one will ever find you here.
Three or four beers later, you realise that this is not what you should be doing. You're wasting time. You're wasting hours and minutes and seconds that could be spent talking to Brittany, when you've already wasted a year. You down what you have left and make your way outside to head back home. It's still the middle of the day, and you don't know why that shocks you but it does. You expected it to be the middle of the night, for days to have gone by, but when you check your watch you've only been out for over an hour.
You feel slightly pathetic when you break into a brisk walk, trying to refrain from running, back to the apartment. It's stupid, really. She's not even there, and you don't even know if she'll be online when you get home. But it really does feel like you're going home to her, in one form or another.
When you get home, you practically sprint over to your laptop. It takes longer than you want to load up, and all you can do is wait impatiently muttering "come on, come on!" under your breath. Eventually, it powers up and you open Skype.
Brittany's offline.
You carry your laptop to your bedroom and climb up onto your bed, letting yourself sink back into the pillows and take a breath for a second. You grab your phone off the night-stand and send her a text that simply says Skype?
As you put the phone back on the night-stand you lean back into your pillows realising you could be waiting all night for Brittany to come online. She could be out for dinner, she could be out with the Glee kids while they're all still in Ohio, she could be packing for going back to MIT tomorrow. She could be anywhere.
But when you see her status change to 'online', you know she's here with you. And that's where she should always be.
It doesn't even take Brittany ten seconds between signing on and calling you. It makes you smile that she's so eager to talk to you. You briefly wonder if this is what your life would be like if you'd never broken up with her. Coming home to Skype with her every night. Would you even need to Skype with her? Or would she be by your side?
You don't get time to finish your thought because Brittany's smiling face is on your screen and you can't help but smile back. It's involuntary.
"Hey," she says, shyly.
"Hey," you reply. "You look happy."
"I'm always happy to see you," Brittany replies, and the simplicity of her statement makes your heart beat faster.
"Me too," you tell her. "How's Lima?"
"Not the same without you," Brittany says. "I hung out with Tina last night, and she told me all about what's been happening this year. It was nice."
"Sounds good. It was kinda weird hanging out with everyone again though, wasn't it? In the choir room."
Brittany nods. "I guess it felt like going back to something we'd moved on from. Time travel or something," she laughs.
"Maybe there are some things I don't want to move on from," you tell her, and you know this is it. You can't avoid this any longer.
"Like what?" Brittany asks in a way that tells you she knows what you're talking about.
"Like you," you say. "I don't want to move on from you."
Brittany smiles and blushes slightly. "I thought you said you'd worked your ass off to get over me."
You swallow. "I did. God, Britt, I worked so hard. I tried everything I could. I tried being alone, I tried being with a different girl every night, I tried being with just one girl. I tried alcohol, I tried working every waking hour of every day. I worked my ass off, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get over you."
Brittany goes to say something, but you don't let her.
"There's nothing I can do that would ever help me get over you, and it's taken me a year to realise that. And the reason I can't get over you is because I don't want to get over you. I tried to get over you because I thought it was what you wanted. That you wanted us to move on, and I tried so hard for you to do that. I dated Dani, I tried to look like I was moving on with my life but I wasn't."
"Santana…" Brittany says. "I never wanted us to move on."
God, you wish you could touch her right now. You wish you could take her hand in hers, you wish you could touch her face, kiss her lips.
"I didn't want us to move on either," you admit.
You're both silent for a few seconds. "So what does this mean for us?" Brittany asks.
"I broke up with Dani," you tell her, and she gasps.
"Already?!"
"There was no point in waiting to do something I should have done months ago," you tell her.
"Was she upset?" Brittany asks, genuinely concerned.
"She slapped me," you half laugh. "And she was crying."
"I'm sorry," Brittany apologises. "I know it sounds dumb but I didn't want anyone to get hurt because of me. All I wanted was you back."
"I know, Britt."
"So… Do you want to be with me again?" she asks you, and you're wondering why she's even asking.
"Britt, I love you." You see the instant reaction those words get, how she relaxes. "I love you so much that some days I don't even know how to cope with it. I want to be with you more than anything," you tell her. "But-"
Brittany scoffs. "But." She looks scared.
"It's nothing bad, Britt. But before we do this again - properly this time - I want to make sure that we don't have any unresolved issues. I want us to both get the past dealt with, any… any worries, insecurities we have. I want us to talk about them first, so they don't come between us when we're together. Is that okay?"
Brittany's looking at you like you're the most amazing thing she's ever seen and you know she's going to agree. "I'd like that, actually," she says. "I think there are a few things I want to talk to you about that would be good to get out of my system first."
It's your turn to look scared. But Brittany reassures you. "Don't worry, I'm not mad or angry or anything like that. I guess I just want to hear your side of things, understand how you feel, too. And I want to tell you how I feel. So we're on a level playing field."
"I want that, too." You're feeling more at home and more relaxed than you've felt in as long as you can remember. You think back to a time when you'd be terrified to talk about feelings, and now it's all you want to do. You want to know what about you scares her, what worries her, what you do that makes her doubt you. You crave it, you need to know every little thing she feels because you're terrified that if you don't know you're going to hurt her again. And you never, ever want to do that again.
"Can we talk about all of that tomorrow though? I'm heading back to MIT in the morning and I have to be up at like five, and I don't really want to fall asleep on your mid conversation."
You laugh. "Yeah, Britt. That's fine. Just… promise me something. Promise me that when you get back to MIT you don't lose who you are again. Can you hold on to what makes you, you?"
"I can try," she tells you. "It felt good to have myself back again."
"It felt good to see you happy again," you admit. "All those numbers and equations, yeah, you might be a downright genius at them, but they don't make you happy. Just… please remember what makes you happy."
"How can I forget when she's right there in front of me?" Brittany replies, and right there and then you promise yourself that you'll keep doing whatever you can to make Brittany happy for the rest of your life.