As of today, it has been two months and a week since Santana's mother passed away and just as much time since she last spoke to me.

As of today, it has been a week since I noticed someone else.

Finally, as of today, it has been six days since I kissed someone else.

I've never been more of a mess than I am now. I did something for me and now I'm a mess. I was right, too. It was both the best and worst thing I could have done. It was liberating but at the same time, it's trapped me in this cage of guilt.

I may or may not have cheated on Santana. I don't know. I don't know because I don't know if I'm still with Santana. I don't feel like I am, but I still love her and my heart is still there; no matter how much my brain keeps trying to tear it away.

Perhaps the worst of all is that I like Bailey. I like her a lot. Enough to make me sometimes forget about everything with Santana. Talking to her is so easy. She's fun and she sends me texts that make me smile and sometimes blush. I don't think it's bad that I like her, it's just… it complicates everything. I can't stop the smile that appears on my face when she texts me, though, no matter what their contents; from the innocent to the not so innocent. Those started last night. I said that Bailey was confident and believe me, she has every reason to be.

I haven't told anyone about what happened on Saturday or what's been subsequently happening. That might actually be what makes this bad. It's like I've turned it into a dirty little secret; something that it isn't. I might not want the entire school to know about what's happening between Bailey and me, but it isn't 'dirty.' The problem is that once one person finds out, everyone will and I don't know what havoc will wreak if that happens.

I feel like this is wrong, but then I don't and I just keep talking myself in circles. I know that people often cheat on their significant others for attention. They do it because they want attention from their significant other. I know this is happening because I want attention, but I'm not sure I want it from 'my significant other.' I think I just want it from my other.

The real problem is that I don't know anything. I just think things.

From Bailey:
There's this kid in my history class: sooo gay and forever wearing a bow tie. Obvi the gay part isn't a problem, but the bow ties…

From Bailey:
Have to go.

As much as I love Blaine, she's right. He's very sweet, but those bow ties make him look so very uptight. He's also my friend so:

He's sweet and he's my best friend's boyfriend. And you guys have more in common than you think. He's new here, too.

From Bailey:
One thing I do like about this small school: you always know who I'm talking about. Lol.

From Bailey:
Another thing: it's easy to find you. You know, you look kind of cute today 😘

Here's one of those unstoppable smiles appearing on my face. I'm pretty sure I'm blushing along with this one.

Only kind of?

I'm rolling my eyes at myself because I feel like I'm the worst at flirting.

"Who are you talking to?" Kurt whispers and leans over trying to see my screen.

"No one," I say quickly and hold my phone face down in my lap. Because that isn't obvious. "Just my dad," I whisper then give him a closed lip smile, trying my best to cover up however obvious my first reaction was.

"Yeah," Kurt whispers just as my phone vibrates in my lap, "I'm sure your dad always makes you blush like that."

"Mr. Hummel," I'm saved by our Astronomy teacher, Mrs. Lewis, "I'm assuming you and Miss Berry already know everything there is to know about Jupiter's sixty-seven moons."

"Sorry, Mrs. Lewis," Kurt shifts himself back towards the front of the class and picks his pen back up.

When I'm satisfied that he's paying attention to what Mrs. Lewis is blabbing about, I pick up my phone and slide my way to my most recent text.

From Bailey:
Okay, maybe 100% the cutest thing I've ever seen.

"That is not your dad!"

"Mr. Hummel, do I have to switch your seat?"

"No, Mrs. Lewis, I'm sorry. Last time, promise," Kurt picks up his pen again and 'resumes taking notes.'

Despite the absolute mortification I feel from Kurt's outburst, I still manage to reply to Bailey's message with a little monkey covering its eyes and the heart eyes face. Class is almost over and I have photography next. Just a few more minutes and I get to see her again. I just need to get myself out of here as quickly as I can so that Kurt can't corner me.

The bell rings and I shove my things into my bag as quickly as I can. Of course my chair gets stuck in a crack in the tile and by the time I get it out, Kurt is already up and at my side waiting for me.

"Kurt, I really can't talk, I have to get all the way to the other-"

"Your photography class is right across the hall from my drawing class. You can talk," Kurt turns with me out of our Astronomy class. How could I have possibly forgotten about his drawing class? He never walks with me, that's why. He usually takes a detour to meet up with Blaine.

Just because I can talk, doesn't mean that I want to, "I don't want to talk, Kurt."

Except that now that I have the opportunity, there's a part of me that's just itching to tell someone about how amazing this is.

"I think you do," Kurt says quietly as we turn towards the stairs.

He knows me too well.

"I have to stop at my locker," I tell him, "it's on the way and I have some film in there."

"Is she the new girl? Can she sing?" he asks me just as we get to my locker. I give him a look telling him 'don't go there.' "Okay," he holds his hands up in surrender. He gives me a little time to get my locker open, "When did it start?"

That's definitely not the question that I was expecting. I grab the canister of film that I'd stopped for and my lunch and close my locker. "Saturday… well, actually, I'd say Friday," I answer somewhat reluctantly and fighting off a smile as I turn in the direction that we need to start walking. Santana's at her locker. She's in her Cheerios uniform talking to Brittany whose locker just so happens to be one away from hers… again. At least she's pretending to talk to Brittany.

Kurt sees her, too. Actually, he probably saw her before I did. "I think you should go for it," he says while we're still in ear shot of Santana. He could be talking about anything. I know what he's talking about, but she wouldn't.

"I think I… kind of already am… going for it," I say and I can feel my cheeks burning.

"Oh my god, look at you!" he squeals after we've turned the corner and gotten a few more steps away, "I haven't seen you like this since… dammit." I see him berate himself for almost going there.

By almost going there, he did go there though and I'm reminded that I can't escape Santana even when she isn't near me. You know, things were fine until he said that. It didn't even bother me to be near her. Seeing her and not talking to her has been such a regular occurrence that being in her presence barely affects me at this point. Now I feel that guilt again; after Kurt reminded me that Santana and I had something.

That's just the thing though, we had something.

"That's her, right?" Kurt whispers pulling me to the wall as if this is some big undercover operation.

Initially, I'm thoroughly annoyed by Kurt for both making too much of a big deal out of this and for making us look absolutely ridiculous, but then I catch Bailey's eye and her smile. How can I stay agitated when I see that?

"Oh, that's definitely her," I hear Kurt say, then after Bailey walks into the photography room, I turn to him and see that he's been looking at me.

"I don't want this getting everywhere," I say to him sternly, quietly and with as much worry as it makes me feel.

"I won't even say anything to Blaine," he holds up one of his hands as if to swear it to me, "I'm all for this, Rachel. Believe me there is nothing I want more than for you to be happy, but if little exchanges like that," he points over towards the door of the photography room, "keep happening, other people are going to find out and I can't promise anything for them."

I was already aware of this. Hearing someone else say it makes the chance of that happening much more real… and a little scary. I let out a heavy, "I know."

Just as the bell rings, he wraps me up in a hug and says, "I hope this all works out for you."

I think he knows me well enough to already know how much this is all tearing me up inside, which is why he says that to me. We part ways quickly so that we're only a few seconds late for our classes. My worry lingers as I pass through the door, but when my eyes find Bailey's again from across the room it slips away. Now that someone knows, it doesn't seem so bad for others to as well.

~:~:~

Fourth period is four minutes longer than the other four periods in the day. It's when lunch happens. Instead of having the entire school converge on the cafeteria all at once, fourth period is divided into three lunches. If you have first or third lunch, you're stuck in fourth period for an extra four minutes of passage time. If your class is boring, you totally feel that four minutes, but if you love it, the seventy minutes feels shorter than all of your other sixty-six minute ones. Needless to say, photography is too short.

"I'll stay behind and finish these," Bailey says to me after the bell rings. We're in the dark room and we still have a few more photos to develop.

"Are you sure? I don't mind staying with you," I say letting my pinky brush against her hip. I'm trying so hard to be discreet.

"I'm sure," she says softly then turns around so her backside is against the edge of the table, "especially if you… leave me with a little something." Her lips part slightly and her eyes slowly shift down my face from my eyes to my lips.

I know exactly what she wants.

"Everyone else is gone," she whispers and simply because I'm a little paranoid I look behind me, then quickly back to her.

"Sorry."

"Don't be," she whispers through that smile, drawing my lips right to hers. Even under these red lights I can't resist her smile. I could really get used to this. I want to get used to this.

"Text me?" I whisper as I take my lips back.

"I'd love to," she whispers and steals another kiss from my lips, "now go have some of your rabbit food."

The wink she gives me is so cute and I just giggle as I back away out of the dark room.

~:~:~

Kurt and Mercedes hate waiting in the lunch line so they always get up seven minutes into the lunch period to get their lunch, leaving Blaine and me with our food from home to save the table. Today is no different. Except:

"Hey, do you mind if I go talk to someone for a minute? I have a group project due next week," Blaine asks, already half up out of his seat.

"I don't mind," I laugh a little. I mean, I don't really want to sit here by myself, but this looks urgent.

"Thanks, Rachel," he has to call out because he's already half way across the cafe.

Because sitting alone even for a few minutes is the least fun ever, I put my head down and concentrate on my rabbit food. And now I probably look foolish because I'm snickering at myself.

"We're awesome," a familiar voice comes from behind me and a stack of black and white photos slides onto the table. I turn around and follow Bailey with my eyes as she takes the seat closest to me, then scoots it even closer. She's close enough that our shoulders are touching, "Look at these!"

I pick up the photos that she's brought and flip through them slowly. These are fantastic. If I do say so myself. I'm a big fan of the R that Bailey found on her own on Tuesday. Of course. I flip past a few more and then stop because I'm not looking at letters anymore.

"When did you take this?" I ask her knowing that this is one of hers. I couldn't have possibly taken this picture of myself. It's from some distance and I'm standing at a tree with my own camera to my eye. I think I already know when she might have taken this.

"I was taking the picture of the first L and when I turned around you were gone. I saw you over by the tree and you just looked so… perfect," she smiles that half smile that I really love, "I just had to… capture it."

For a second I forget that we're in the middle of the cafeteria and I almost follow my instinct to kiss her. Almost. She's still completely in my personal bubble, however, a place that I really like for her to be in.

"There's also um… this one," she tugs at the picture of me and lifts it to reveal one that we took together. My lips turn up immediately upon seeing our smiling faces squeezing into the frame. We had been joking about how it could turn out because we couldn't see the results immediately. Bailey kept joking that one of our faces was going to be cut in half, most likely mine because she was holding the camera. She said that her aim was terrible and that we might even just get foreheads. Clearly she was wrong because this is perfect. I just can't get over how… happy I look and how happy I feel seeing this.

"Can you develop another one of these?"

"Yeah," she answers breathily, "I can do that."

"Thank you," I smile and work so hard to fight the pull that her lips have on me.

"Talk to you in a little bit?" she asks as she slowly pushes her chair back.

"I'd love that," I reply handing her the photos so that she can bring them back. As she walks away I turn back to my lunch so that no one can see the blush that's obviously on my cheeks.

After a few seconds, there are trays on either side of me. I keep my head down because I can still my feel the ridiculous giddiness all over my face.

"Rach?" I hear Kurt.

"Mhm?" my eyes are still trained on my lunch in front of me.

"I think other people just found out."

"What?" my head snaps up and whatever was leftover from Bailey's visit is completely gone. "Who?" I ask as if that really matters.

"Probably the last person you wanted to find out," Mercedes answers for him because he's stuck staring at one of the doors.

Oh god. It does matter.

"Where?" I ask trying to keep my panic at bay.

"That door and left," Blaine says running over to our table. He's pointing to the same door that Kurt's been staring at.

Without thinking at all, I push away from the table and blindly run in the direction that Blaine told me. Then it clicks that Bailey was headed back to the photography room and after a few strides in the right direction I hear something.

"Can I please just have those back?"

"Why? They're just pictures of junk."

I found them and when I turn the corner I see that so have several other members of the William McKinley High School student body.

"Exactly, so why don't you just give them back to me and we can both just go back to what we were doing?"

I don't know what to do. I'm just standing here in this crowd, watching.

"Because I'm trying to figure something out."

I have to do something, but I am so torn. On the one hand I should save Bailey from this. This is not something she should have to go through. On the other hand, I think Santana's fighting for me.

But why now?

"Please, I really need those," Bailey says, letting her worry show for the first time.

I can only see her back but with the way her arms are moving and by the look on Bailey's face, I can tell she's flipping through the pictures and it's only a matter of time before she...

"Well aren't these just… perfect."

...gets to the pictures.

The mix of venom and hurt that was spit out of Santana's mouth is so clear.

"We're just doing a photography project together," Bailey says calmly, covering for me even though she doesn't have to. I actually find it to be quite chivalrous.

But what Santana's doing… I still don't know how I feel about it… although I do think I'm finding myself growing fairly agitated over her bullying someone on account of me.

"So that gives you license to flirt with my girlfriend?"

And now I know exactly how I feel about this.

"Santana, stop!"

I push my way through a couple of people in the growing crowd and stare at the back of Santana's head. She isn't moving. At all. She's actually stopped moving long enough for Bailey to take back the pictures from her.

"Bailey, you should go," I look beyond Santana's back to Bailey, "I'll talk to you later."

Santana whips around and spits, "What?"

And now I'm furious.

"That is the first thing you say to me after over two months?"

I watch as her facial expression melts from jealous rage into sheer mortification and fear, "Rachel…"

The crowd around us is growing and I'm pretty sure that they've already witnessed enough. They most certainly aren't going to witness the first conversation that Santana and I have had in exactly two months and one week. I step forward, grab Santana's arm and turn her towards the stairs. It's the first time we've touched and it definitely doesn't feel like I thought it would. Actually, I don't even want to be touching her. I let go of her arm and lead her up the stairs to the first empty classroom I find. I open the door and gesture for her to pass into the room first. She's had the upper hand this entire time, she's not getting it right now.

"I'm sorry," she says as soon as I close the door.

"Sorry? Santana, I don't think 'I'm sorry' is enough at this point," I say exactly what I'm thinking and I say it as calmly as I can muster because even though I'm so angry that I can barely see her standing five feet in front of me, I don't want this to turn into a screaming match.

"Rachel, this isn't how I wanted things to go," she says in a shaky voice and with a half a step forward.

I resist the urge to take a step back, "Really? Well you've surely taken enough time to figure out how 'things should go' by now, don't you think?" I am trying so hard not to let my anger get the best of me, but she's saying the wrong things. I don't think I know what the right things are, but what I'm hearing is not it.

"I got to the hospital just in time," she says it quickly, like if she doesn't say it now, she never will and I can hear her fighting back tears, "They were about to take her into the OR when I got there. Rach, she was a mess. She hadn't been wearing her seatbelt and she'd gone through the windshield. None of the doctor's know how she was conscious when I got there, but she was. It's like she was waiting for me," a soft sob wracks her body and I simply can't stop myself from stepping forward and catching her, "she told me that she was sorry and I tried so hard to forgive her, but even looking at her in all of her pain I couldn't do it."

"It's okay," I say softly wiping away one of her tears, just the way I'd imagined I would have… over two months ago. That thought takes me out of this moment and despite her continuing sobs I back away a half a step and let her hold herself up.

"No, it wasn't," her tears have suddenly stopped, "She was dying and I couldn't even forgive her! I was still so blindly angry at her. When her surgeon came out and told us 'they did everything they could,' I didn't want to be around myself, let alone anyone else."

"This is the part that we all know," I say only somewhat bitterly. My heart truly aches for her at the moment, but this is coming so far from when it should have, I'm having a terrible time letting it show.

"I wanted to come to you," she says timidly, "But every time I picked up my phone and saw your name, all I could think about was her and all I felt was this awful mess of anger and guilt and sadness. I know, it's fucked up, but it's just what happened to me and then…" I see her gulp down at something in her throat, "I saw you. As soon as you saw me you started crying. I did that to you and believe me when I say I have never felt worse about something that I'd done."

My breath has gotten heavier and somehow I've found myself that half a step closer to her again.

"Things in my mind have just been such a mess. It's just been running around in circles trying to find the right thing to say to you because nothing has felt good enough."

She's so close. Same breathing space close. She's so close that it is far too easy for her place her lips onto mine. I let her far too easily.

I know she's sorry. I could see it and I can feel it in the way she's kissing me, but it hurts. Her lips against mine sting. They sting with all of the hurt she's already caused and I can't bear the pain that she's magnifying.

"No!" I shout through tears born from both anger and sadness as I shove her off of me, "It is not that easy. You will not manipulate me by playing to my sympathy!"

"Rachel, my Mom died-"

"That card's expired, Santana," I reply with the slightest bit of venom, then inhale a deep, steadying breath because, yes, her mother did die, "I spent so much time crying for you. Crying for what you must have been going through, but you know what? I've spent even more time crying because of you. I don't think you know how much you've hurt me."

Her posture shifts and I see this glint in her eyes that I haven't seen in over five months. "Well, has it occurred to you that maybe you've hurt me?" she has the audacity to ask me because if the defensive isn't working, you should jump onto offense, right?

Wrong.

"Excuse me?" I laugh dryly, "That's quite rich, Santana, really."

"You've just been looking right through me ever since I came back to school!"

"Because I don't know who I'm looking at!" I step on her attack and just in case she's forgotten, "Need I remind you that this is the first time we're speaking to each other in over two months?"

"Well then why didn't you-"

"Don't you dare go there," here comes a resurgence of that anger I'd been trying to keep down, "You know I tried to get to you! I left you message after message telling you that you I was there for you! This distance between us is completely your fault. You've spent all this time keeping to yourself and then you have the audacity to stake your claim on me because all of a sudden you feel like 'we're' threatened? Well guess what, Santana; 'we' were threatened the second you decided to shut me out of your life. After everything we've been through, you threw it all away. You threw us away because what? You were sad? Bull shit… and… and fuck you!"

The last sentiment is somewhat of an afterthought… a completely uncontrolled, no holds barred afterthought. I actually think that might be the first time I've ever said that to someone, well actually said it and meant it. I'm sure it isn't really, but this one might replay in my brain for a while.

"I…" Santana stutters probably because that's one of the last things she'd expected to come out of my mouth, "I didn't throw us away," she grasps for something, "I've been trying to find the right thing…"

Why is she clinging to that?

"Santana, anything would have been the right thing! You settled for nothing and left me to wait for you! I've been here for you all along and you didn't want me!" How has it taken me this long to realize that's why this hurts so much? Why is it this moment that I can say it? I know why, "And I know, how dare I make this about me when you lost your mother, but there are two of us in this, Santana. There are two of us with hearts to be broken," I inhale in this sort of hiccup as the pain of tears cuts at my throat and I fight it because there's something else, "It hurts to love you and I just can't anymore."

"Rachel, what are you saying?" I see panic in her eyes as I back away from her even more.

"I'm saying that you're too late, Santana."

My tears are getting much harder to hold back as my back hits the door and my hand finds the doorknob. I can't stay in this room much longer. I know that this is the right thing for me to do, but that doesn't make this hurt any less and the sobs that I've been keeping at bay are going to find their way out soon. Probably as soon as I pass through this door.

"That isn't going to stop me from fighting for you."

I actually believe her. I believe her, but that doesn't mean I forgive her. Though it's stolen my breath, one declaration doesn't erase all of the damage that she's already done.

It really is too late.

~:~:~

~:~:~

End Part I

A/N: I promise I won't leave you hanging too long.