Author's Note: I'm going to stop apologizing for the time between updates. It gets repetitive and a year from now when someone's reading the entire thing, it won't matter anyway. Just know that I love this story and I'll finish it, but I can only write when I'm inspired or motivated or when I really push myself. Reviews motivate me, though, and let me know that you guys are still interested in this story, so drop me a line if you're so inclined. As always, thanks for reading.
Stopped at a red light, Quinn pulled her cell from her purse and dialed Sam. It rang twice before his familiar voice came on and said, "Kaltxì lor. Fyape nga?" If she'd been where he could see her, she might have arched a questioning eyebrow and stared at him. That usually got him to stop speaking Na'vi. Instead, she rolled her eyes and smiled at his sweet idiocy.
"I have no idea what that means, Sam," she said, not letting the humor into her voice. She didn't want to encourage him, even if it was kind of endearing. Other people thought it was nerdy, and Quinn couldn't have her boyfriend being a loser. Not when they were both lower than they should have been from being in Glee Club in the first place. "How is it you're failing Spanish but manage to speak that silly made-up language?"
Quinn knew she had probably hurt his feelings, but she wouldn't let herself feel bad about it. Instead she listened to his sigh through the phone as he changed his greeting to "Hey, beautiful. What's up?"
"Well, I was hoping you weren't busy tonight," she said, her voice now all honey and satin. "I thought maybe you could buy me dinner and I could try to apologize for blowing you off Saturday night." She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was significantly quieter. "And for basically ignoring you since then."
"It's cool, it's cool," Sam said, somewhat seriously for him. "I get that you've been busy, you know… with Rachel." Then that ridiculously large smile was in his voice again. "And how could I ever pass up a dinner invite from one of my favorite girls?"
"One of?" Quinn asked, trying to sound playful rather than jealous. She was working on that. It was difficult after last year, with the whole Finn and Rachel thing, but… "Shouldn't that be singular?"
"Well," Sam said, chuckling, "I'd love to say favorite, but Stacey might get mad."
"Sam," Quinn said, unable to keep the smile at bay. "Your sister doesn't count."
"You try telling her that," Sam said as Quinn pulled into her driveway.
She sat in her car, not wanting to get out. It wasn't like she didn't want to be alone in that empty house while her mother was at work. Sometimes, as much as her mother was trying to smother her and make up for years of mistakes, she even preferred it. It was just the whole Rachel thing. It was invading her head and she didn't want to think about it right now. An empty house all alone on a Tuesday afternoon with her mom at work until that evening was nothing but free time to think about… everything, really. She needed a distraction.
"Sam," Quinn said, quietly interrupting whatever he was talking about and commanding his attention. "I hate that I've ignored you for the last few days, especially since I've been wearing your ring. I want to make it up to you. You should come over to my house."
"What?" Sam asked, slightly confused. "I thought your mom was working today. And didn't she say that I wasn't allowed over there when—"
"Don't worry about her," Quinn said simply. "She's going to be at work until six, so that gives us at least a couple hours to… catch up." She breathed the last two words into the phone and could hear the smile drop off Sam's face as his breathing picked up steadily.
"By 'catch up'…," Sam started hopefully as Quinn could hear him lick his suddenly dry, over-sized lips. "If that means what I've been hoping it means—"
"It can mean whatever you want it to mean," Quinn said, both husky and coy. "Come over as soon as you can. …Just don't drive too fast getting over here," she added with a seductive chuckle. Can a chuckle be seductive? Oh well. It was funny, she thought, imagining a horny Sam running stop signs and red lights to get to her house in record time.
Quinn was about to end the call. She didn't need to hear him agree because she knew before she even said it that he would. She pulled the phone from her ear, her thumb nearing the button when she saw it.
"Love you, Quinn," Sam called through the phone line, but it barely registered.
The phone hung limply in her hand as she stared at it, the picture of her and Sam he had taken at Sectionals staring up at her. She used it as his contact icon that she'd see whenever he called. After their Sectionals win, they were back in the green room and Sam had snatched her phone away from her as Quinn was taking pictures of everyone. It was amazing that just an hour before it seemed that everyone had hated each other, and yet, after the win, they were all smiling and happy and congratulatory. She and Sam's duet had been amazing. Everyone could feel it. It was part of the reason they won. Tied. Whatever. They were so happy in that picture, at that moment. So what was bugging her?
"Quinn?"
She heard him call out again, tearing her from her thoughts. Right, right, he'd said he loved her. Again. Ugh. She put the phone back to her ear. "Yeah, I'm here. You, too, Sam. See you soon." She disconnected the call, and looked blankly out the window.
God, she felt like such a liar, but it was something a person got used to, eventually. She was born from a family of liars. Keep that perfect family image. Never let it falter. Happy perfect family. Loving wife, two perfect Christian daughters. Someone gets pregnant, remove them from the picture. That had been her father's lies. Quinn's were more self-oriented.
Be the perfect cheerleader Christian future prom queen. Never let them know that she was just a fat nerdy girl with acne and glasses. There never was a Lucy Fabray. She'd always been Quinn, the pretty popular cheerleader that everybody loved and respected and feared. Lucy was a ghost of an idea. Gone. Erased. Covered up by a cheerleader uniform and a frigid bitch attitude.
Lucy had been weak. She had loved, but it had never been returned. Quinn Fabray didn't love people; she slipped on relationships like clothes. She surrounded herself with friends, with Cheerios and with the Glee Club, because that's what pretty popular head cheerleaders had. Quinn Fabray had a boyfriend that she made out with and would have sex with eventually. Possibly today. Quinn Fabray had boys fighting over her. Quinn Fabray didn't need people. And she damn sure didn't help people.
Then what the hell was this whole Rachel thing about?
Quinn got out of her car, lost in her thoughts. There was something about the picture of her and Sam or something about the Sectionals pictures or… something. She couldn't remember. It was on the tip of her tongue, a faded memory, but of what she couldn't decide.
Before she knew it, Quinn was in front of her computer, staring at the wallpaper of her desktop. It was a picture taken after their Sectionals win the year before. They were all standing in the choir room with the Sectionals trophy. Mr. Schue was kneeling down in front with the trophy, the Glee club clustered behind him. Quinn had somehow been moved to the far left of the group beside Kurt. She couldn't remember which of them had suggested it, but she knew it had something to do with being as far away from Finn as possible. The baby drama was still too fresh for them to be near each other. At least she was able to hide her baby bump in the picture.
Moving down the line from Quinn was Kurt, and then to the left of him was Rachel. God, she looked so happy then. All bright eyes and beautiful smile, still energized from their impromptu performance for Mr. Schue, and… wow, had she actually grabbed Santana's hand in that picture? That was ballsy, even for Rachel. And yet, that would explain the full body check into the lockers Santana had given Rachel later that afternoon. Hmm…
Opening up files on her computer, Quinn found the pictures of this year's Sectionals win. She started with the group photo of them after the competition. Rachel seemed to have the same smile on her face as the previous year. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Knowing that it was only a month ago, though, she had to wonder if it was an act, or if it was genuine. Was that Rachel's last happy moment, winning Sectionals?
Clicking through pictures, she found the original of Sam's pic on her cell phone. She'd had to crop it to make it fit proportionally for her phone, and there had been a couple of people in the background cut out. Glancing closer at it now, though, she saw that it was Finn and Rachel. Finn looked to be mid sentence, but Rachel was facing away from him, almost looking into Quinn's phone. It was then that the pieces clicked into place.
Exiting out of that folder, she pulled up her C drive, opened a seemingly random file, another one, another one, until she found what she was looking for. There, hidden away in a file for printer drivers where no one else could possibly find them, were all the pictures she had of her nonexistent previous life, one Miss Lucy Q. Fabray.
Glancing through the icons, Quinn found the picture she wanted and clicked on it, opening it up so she could stare at the girl on her monitor. It had been taken at Johnny Appleseed Metropolitan Park one random Saturday during the spring of her seventh grade year. She had been forced to go to another of her father's boring work events that was supposed to be for the kids but was really just a way for them to network outside of the office. All Lucy wanted to do was stay at home and read, but her mother ended up guilting her into going. She was the oldest of the children there and tried playing with the younger kids, but they all wanted to run around the park and Lucy was too fat to play for very long. They ended up calling her stupid, childish names like all the idiots in her middle school did.
Her mother found her sitting behind a tree with her arms wrapped around her knees, crying quietly to herself. When Judy happened upon her, she merely thought her daughter was playing hide and seek with the other children. Thinking it was cute that Lucy was getting along so well with the other kids, she decided to take a picture. She snapped the picture just as Lucy looked up. That had been when she noticed the tears running down her face.
That look on her— on Lucy's face, was the same expression Rachel wore in the picture of Quinn and Sam. How had she not seen it before? That was the look of someone that hated their life. Someone that said "I can't go on living this way". For Quinn, it had been the start of a year that included a major diet change, a nose job, and a new bitchy attitude. For Rachel it had been something worse.
The sudden sounding of the doorbell throughout the house brought Quinn from her thoughts. She looked over at the clock, thinking that surely Sam couldn't be there already, but, it must have been wrong or… God, have I really been staring at these pictures for twenty minutes?
She hopped up from her desk and went downstairs to the door, finding a nervously excited Sam Evans standing there. "Sam," she said, the barest hint of flirtatiousness in her voice. A smile graced her lips, and she did her best to push the thoughts of the pictures upstairs out of her head. "So glad you could find it in your busy schedule to come over."
"I wasn't actually that—" he started to say before Quinn's lips cut him off. She pulled him close, losing herself in the kiss. Moving her lips against his, she had a sharp gasp of pain when he hit her busted lip, but Sam seemed to take it in stride and took the opportunity to shove his tongue into her mouth. In her head she counted to ten, getting over the pain and the fact that he was so boldly trying to take command of this moment. Wasn't that the point, though? Wasn't Sam's purpose here to be a distraction? Someone to stop her worried mind from running on and on; thinking about Lucy, thinking about Rachel?
Lucy would have been in love with Rachel, there was no doubt about it. If for nothing else, Rachel was breathtaking, despite what Quinn and the rest of the Cheerios had told her. Her smile was beautiful; she hadn't been lying about that. Her hair was long and luxurious and she just wanted to run her hands through it, and God… those legs she showed off in those sinfully short skirts… Lucy would have worn a constant blush around her all the time.
It wasn't just the physical that Lucy would have been interested in, though. Rachel's smile wasn't just stunning, it was warm and inviting and Lucy had needed that. They both needed that; the acceptance, the friendship. Lucy also would have been intrigued with Rachel for the ways they were different. Where Rachel's knowledge of music and Broadway was probably encyclopedic, Lucy had been more into sci-fi, fantasy, comic books, and video games. Truthfully, the same things Quinn liked about Sam (though no one could ever find out) were the things she hated about Lucy. Lucy was such a nerd, but at least she was friendly. Rachel would have loved her. Middle school Rachel and Quinn would have been so cute together…
"Quinn?" Sam asked, pulling back from the kiss. "Are you okay?"
"What?"
"Are you…" he sounded worried, slightly unsure. "Are you, like, bored or…?"
"What? No. Why would you even ask that?" What the hell? Was he questioning her kissing ability? She arched an eyebrow at him and fixed a glare on him, impatiently waiting for his answer.
"Well, it's just that you weren't really, umm…" He looked nervous. "You just seemed distracted."
"Oh." Damn it. She guessed that was fair. She had been just thinking about Rachel and Lucy instead of focusing on her boyfriend and his amazingly soft, overly large lips. And, Jesus, he tasted like cherry. How much Chapstick did this boy use, anyway? "Sorry."
"It's okay, I just wanted—" But whatever he wanted was lost in Quinn mouth again as she brought him in for another kiss. This time she made sure to focus on Sam, because, again, this was her boyfriend. She shouldn't be anywhere else besides with him at the moment. Lucy is long gone, anyway, Quinn thought with an internal sigh.
Lucy had been a silly little girl with silly little girl crushes that were just… gross. And wrong. And another reason people would have laughed at her if they'd ever found out. Quinn had a boyfriend. A cute, sweet boyfriend who had amazing abs and shaggy hair and the nicest lips she'd ever kissed. Quinn was a woman in love, and Lucy had no idea what that word even meant.
'At least Lucy was honest with herself', Quinn imagined Rachel's voice telling her. Okay, so that was a new one. A not altogether unpleasant internal voice, until she factored in what her inner-Rachel was saying. 'Lucy would have admitted that the reason you're trying to help me now is the same reason you were so mean to me in the past. It has nothing to do with being compelled by God or atoning for what you feel bad about. It's about making it up to me.'
Not everything's about you, Berry, Quinn told her inner Rachel.
'No, but this definitely is. You focused on me way more than anyone else when you were bullying people. Did you used to go around and pull the other girls' pigtails when you were little, too?' And in her mind, Rachel was wearing that infuriating smirk of superiority like she knew she wasn't just right but always right.
I do not have a crush on you, Berry, Quinn thought. She was being stupid, she knew that. Having conversations with herself, especially in other peoples' voices, wasn't exactly what someone would call "normal" or "healthy" or "sane", but Quinn had always done it. She felt it was probably some combination of reading too much when she was little and no longer writing. Writing stories was something nerds did, so Quinn had to give that up, even if she'd enjoyed it. So now, instead of putting dialogues down on a page, she had them in her head. I'm currently making out with my boyfriend and not thinking about you, so shut it.
'You're making out with your boyfriend while thinking about me,' inner-Rachel said. 'And you don't see the connection? Lucy would punch you… if she wasn't so scared of you.'
I said NOT thinking about you, and there is no connection. …And Lucy would thank me, Quinn thought. She had everything that Lucy always wanted. Popularity, friends, a boyfriend on the football team. Well, okay, Lucy had never wanted that last one, but it was part of the Good-Christian-Head-Cheerleader-Fabray-Daughter package that Lucy had signed up for in becoming Quinn. She'd given up so many things from her previous life to model herself after her sister Frannie. Growing up, Lucy had, more than anything, wanted Frannie's life.
It had all come so effortlessly to the elder Fabray daughter. She was naturally thin and pretty with the perfect eyesight, the perfect boyfriend, the perfect life. She was the head cheerleader, the Chastity Ball Princess, the college graduate with the perfect husband. She was everything Russell Fabray had wanted out of a daughter. Everything that he wanted Quinn to be. Instead, for his second daughter, he'd gotten a chubby glasses-wearing nerd.
'At least she was honest,' inner Rachel fought back. 'Isn't that what you said you'd be with me? Honest? How can you be honest with me if you're not even honest with yourself? If I asked you what it was like growing up for you, what would you tell me?'
Just, shut up, Berry, Quinn thought, now pleading to get her thoughts under control. Why was it so hard now? Why couldn't she lose herself in kissing Sam like she had all those other times? She just wanted Rachel out of her head for now, for tonight. Let her lose herself in the physical so she wouldn't have to focus on the mental, the emotional.
Sam's hand glided across the smooth expanse of her abs under her shirt- holy hell, when did we lay down on the couch?- moving brazenly upwards, grazing the underside of her breasts. When Quinn didn't immediately remove his hand as she had a dozen times before, he boldly sent it higher until he was cupping a breast over her bra. The contact sent a pleasant shiver through her as she sucked on his tongue. The feeling intensified as his thumb grazed a nipple, and she had to bite back a moan that may or may not have sounded like a certain brunette diva's name.
God, what is wrong with me? Why can't I just think about Sam, focus on Sam? Instead, she went through a subconsciously kept trove of mental images starring one Rachel Berry: the short skirts she wore to school; the way her ass looked whenever their costumes in Glee called for jeans; the makeover Kurt had given her last year; the… God, the Britney Spears outfit. Her mind played through the forbidden images as her body pulsed and hummed underneath Sam's amazingly talented hands.
'You know I don't actually look like that, though, right?' inner-Rachel asked. 'Not right now, anyway. And that smile you're picturing hasn't been there in months.'
She had a very sudden, very real image of Rachel lying alone in her hospital bed, how small and broken Rachel looked wrapped in a sheet in that room, eyes red and puffy from crying. She was so raw and angry and it was all Quinn could do not to hold her and whisper to her that everything was going to be okay… if, y'know, she was the type of person that did stuff like that.
But… what if everything wasn't going to be okay? What if Quinn couldn't make it okay for her? What if, no matter what Quinn did, Rachel still ended up doing it again? The doubts slammed back into her, and she started panicking. She pictured Rachel lying in the bathtub, covered in blood but, this time, without Quinn's timely intervention.
"I can't," Quinn said, hands on Sam's shoulders pushing him away from her. He pulled a hand from her jeans, and she barely registered the elastic snap of the waistband of her panties. "I can't do this. I can't. I'm sorry, I just… I can't."
"What, why?" Sam asked, sitting up, a little angry, a little disappointed. "Are you okay? I didn't mean to… okay, well, I did, but I thought you were cool with that. Isn't that why I'm here?"
"I can't stop thinking about her," Quinn said, ignoring whatever Sam was rambling about. "I thought this would get her out of my head, but I close my eyes and I see here there in the hospital and I just can't stop worrying about her. What if she tries it again? I know she said that she wouldn't but… but what if she does?"
"Rachel?" Sam asked, a little angrier now, finally getting what she was talking about. He tried not to let his hurt pride show, but apparently his skills at making out weren't enough to take her mind off of Rachel Berry. "You were thinking about Rachel while we were making out?"
Okay, when he says it out loud, it sounds a lot worse than it really is. It's not like she was actually thinking about making out with Rachel… except now that image was in her head, and wow, that seems really— No. Just stop it, brain. You are not actually thinking about that. Answer his question… "I'm just really worried about her. After what happened Saturday, I just—"
"What happened Saturday?" Sam asked, any traces of anger being replaced by curiosity. "I've heard all these rumors, but I haven't heard what really happened."
"Do you believe in God?" Quinn asked, sitting across the table from Sam while he chewed on a breadstick. After Quinn had put an end to their "activities", she'd decided to go back to her original plan and have him take her out to Breadstix. Quinn didn't want her mom to find him at their house, and she felt sitting in the darkening house with a frustrated Sam was a little more of a tease than he deserved.
Out in the light of day (and significantly less horny), Sam had finally noticed Quinn's injuries. Makeup mostly covered the bruise around her eye, but nothing could be done for her busted lip. Sam had been worried when he'd seen it, but Quinn had assured him that she'd given better than she'd gotten. After he was placated, he'd smiled and said it was hot, mimicking her words about his black eye from Karofsky. Sam had a way of doing that, of making her smile when she wasn't sure she could. If she had to be dating any of the football players, she was glad it was him.
Sam immediately choked on his breadstick, both coughing and trying to swallow. Okay, so maybe the question wasn't appropriately timed because, sure, they'd been sitting there in a comfortable silence (well, at least Quinn was comfortable with the silence) for a minute while he digested everything she'd told him about Rachel and what happened Saturday night. And, okay, maybe asking him such a deep question while he ate without any warning was a little much. She just needed to talk to someone about what she was thinking, and, thankfully, her boyfriend went to her church. Who better to talk about this with? But, wow, did he really need to make that big a scene of choking and gagging?
"I'm sorry?" Sam said, taking a sip of water and looking at her. "Do I believe—"
"Do you believe in God?" Quinn asked again, quieter. "Like really believe that there's a God and that He's around us doing stuff and all that?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess," he said. "Where is this coming from?"
"I wasn't always sure I did," Quinn said. "I mean, I was raised Catholic and grew up in a family that's Christian, but then… I look at my father, and I see that some people just want to use Christianity as a weapon, you know?"
"Your father…?" Quinn hadn't been very specific in her details of the previous year to Sam. He knew from other members of the Glee Club that she'd been kicked out when her parents found out she was pregnant, and she'd been allowed to come back when her mom found out her dad was having an affair and threw him out. Other than that, Quinn wasn't exactly an open book with her past.
"That's not the point," Quinn said, waving a dismissive hand to dispel his unasked question. "I just… I've always believed there might be a God. And, when I had the baby and was able to give her to someone that I felt sure would be a good mother, I felt like there was probably a God." Again Sam stared at her. If Quinn rarely mentioned her father, she never mentioned the baby. "But this, with Rachel… I feel like God was guiding me that night. I hadn't looked at one of Rachel's videos in months, but I just happened to think about watching one minutes after she posted her… her last one? I mean, if I hadn't gotten there when I did, it might've… might've been too late, you know?"
"You saved her life," Sam said, reaching across the table for her hand. Quinn let him take it for a minute and give it a reassuring squeeze before she pulled back. He was being so kind and understanding, and she was rambling like Rachel usually would.
"I'm not so sure I saved her life," Quinn said, trying to shake that unnerving thought away. "Maybe I just prolonged it."
Sam looked confused, and this wasn't Finn's general look of 'I don't understand', but more of a 'That doesn't make sense' look. "That doesn't make sense," Sam said, and Quinn inwardly smiled at his predictability. Boys were easy. "Isn't that the same thing?"
"Not really." Quinn picked up a breadstick and started twirling it between her fingers. "If she doesn't want to live, then I'm not so sure I did a good thing."
"Then she needs something to live for, right?" Sam asked. "Something to look forward to, or something to enjoy, so that she doesn't feel like killing herself again." The casual way he said the words 'killing herself' had Quinn momentarily panicking, looking around the restaurant before shooting him a how-dare-you-say-that glare. Thankfully Sam was turned away at the time and didn't notice which was nice, because she was acting like a crazy person. If the Cheerios knew about Rachel, then the whole town knew.
Once Quinn was over her panic, though, the rest of Sam's words hit her, and she was remembering her idea from the day before. "I…" she started, looking down at the table and running a finger over the patterns on the tablecloth. "I did have an idea of something kind of like that. Something to make her want to… to live, I guess. I think it might be stupid, though."
Quinn raised her eyes to him, and he offered her a smile. "If you came up with it, I'm sure it's not stupid." Why'd he have to be so sweet about everything, damn it? Why couldn't he have been as obtuse and insensitive as Finn? Then she wouldn't have felt nearly as bad for using him, because she'd know, on some level, that he deserved it. And maybe Sam did deserve it. She knew that he was using her to be popular, at least a little. Why else date the head cheerleader if you weren't trying to be popular? It's not like she had anything else to offer.
So she told Sam about her plan for Rachel. It was simple, really. Just a couple of Christmas presents that she hoped would inspire Rachel to want to do more with her life than throw it away. Something to make her focus on the future rather than the past.
Rachel had always been focused and determined on her future. She was going to get out of this town and go be a Tony award winning Broadway star by the time she was twenty-five. See. Quinn really did listen to the diva, even if what she was saying made her want to punch her in the face sometimes… okay, most of the time. But that was the old Rachel, and Quinn wasn't exactly sure when that Rachel had changed into this current one. Had it really been since last year with the baby and Rachel's mom? Had she considered her life worthless then? Or maybe it had been more recent. Maybe it had only been in the last month, since Finn had broken up with her. Surely that wasn't a big loss. Finn was an idiot. A well-intentioned idiot most of the time, but still an idiot. Losing him couldn't have been what made her want to-
"Quinn?" Sam asked, breaking her away from her Rachel-centric thoughts. Again.
"Sorry," Quinn said, shaking her head. "I must have zoned out for a second."
"It's okay," Sam said, smiling. She could see that the smile didn't quite reach his eyes, and his voice didn't sound quite as genuine as usual. She wasn't usually this distracted. She usually listened to every word he said, no matter how idiotic they might sometimes be, because that's what good girlfriends did. "I was just saying that that sounds like a really cool idea. I'm sure Rachel will love it."
They were silent for a few moments before Quinn asked, "Why do you think this happened?"
"I don't know," Sam said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Maybe she was depressed… though I guess she didn't really seem like it. A little down since breaking up with Finn, but she didn't seem—"
"No," Quinn interrupted, partially to keep him from calling her crazy. She felt the need to jab a butter knife into his chest if he said that, and that was probably one of the best ways to quickly ruin their date. "Why do you think this happened to me?" Wow, way to make this about yourself, Fabray. "I mean, why do you think I was the one that found her?"
"I don't know," he said again, chewing on a breadstick. "Maybe…" Sam drew out the word, thinking. "Maybe it's part of the whole God-works-in-mysterious-ways thing. Like he knew that you kind of owed her, so he had you be the one to find her."
Quinn arched an eyebrow, pointing an icy glare at him. "And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?"
Sam was taken aback by her sudden change in demeanor. "N-nothing," he spluttered out around the breadstick in his mouth. He took the half eaten breadstick out of his mouth and laid it on the table slowly, all movements suddenly cautious. "I just meant that, you know, after all the stuff you did to her that—"
"What do you know about that?" she asked, eyes narrowing. Quinn knew she shouldn't be this mad. It wasn't exactly a secret that she'd been horrible to Rachel. For Sam to confront her with it, though, to say that she 'owed' Rachel? Sure it was the same things she was thinking, but he wasn't allowed to say it. No one was allowed to say it.
"Well, one of the first things you said to me was that you needed to find 'new ways to torture Rachel'," Sam said. "So I asked around and some of the guys in Glee said you were kind of horrible to Rachel the last—"
"And which of our fellow teammates told you that?" Quinn asked. She needed to know who to punish for running their mouths about her.
"Umm… Kurt, Mercedes, Santana, Artie, Puck… pretty much everyone." Sam said. God, how was he still talking? Did he not have even the smallest sense of self-preservation it should take to just stop talking? "But-but they also said that you haven't been as bad to her this year. That you haven't had her slushied or called her names or anything."
Quinn stared at him. Glared, really. She was getting angrier the longer she sat there, glaring at him. How dare he go behind her back and ask those gossipy little idiots anything about her.
Never taking her eyes off of him, Quinn took the napkin from her lap, wiped her mouth once, then covered her half-eaten lasagna. "I think you should take me home now," she said quietly.
"What? Quinn, I didn't mean to—"
Quinn held up a hand, a finger, really, and silenced him. "I can't have this conversation with you right now. Please, take me home."
One ice-queen-head-bitch-death-stare from Quinn quickly got the waitress over, and Sam soon paid for the dinner and they were out the door. The ride back to her house was a silent, awkward affair.
Once they were parked in front of Quinn's house, Sam finally turned fully in his seat to look at her. "I didn't mean to piss you off. I'm sorry."
She was a silent for a long minute, hand on the door handle. Quinn stared out the window towards the front door of her house. There were lights on, so clearly her mother was already home. She just wanted to go inside, but if she left the car like this, that would just lead to Sam blowing up her phone with apology texts and voice mails. She needed to handle this now. "If you wanted to know something about my past, you could have just asked."
"I have. Repeatedly. You don't tell me anything," Sam said, trying to defend himself. "I've heard of people not being an open book, but… Jesus, Quinn. You're like a safe with a broken knob or something."
"Maybe there are things I don't want you to know," Quinn said, finally turning to face him. "Things I'm not proud of or things that are too sensitive to talk about. Did you stop to consider that?"
"No, not really," Sam admitted sheepishly. "But it's not like any of it was private information. I mean, it's stuff the guys in Glee know about. I'll hear them talking about how you were kicked out, or I'll hear Puck talking about Beth…" And for a second, Quinn had that familiar urge from earlier to jab a butter knife in his chest. "… and I'd feel like I was missing out on all this stuff about you. I'm your boyfriend. I should know as much as people at school."
"I'm wearing your ring," Quinn said, holding up her right hand and showing him the promise ring he'd given her. "Isn't that enough?" When Sam didn't answer, she added, "I don't know what you want me to do, what you want from me."
"Honesty," he said.
"I have been honest with you."
"Yeah, but you haven't been open," Sam said, rubbing the back of his neck. "It's like you lie by omission, which is just as bad as not being honest." The words hung in the air for a second, before he added. "I just wanted to get to know you better."
"And if I can't do that?" she asked before she could stop herself. This was like a continuation of her conversations from earlier with Rachel, and it was the same question she'd had then, too. "If I can't or won't tell you everything?"
God, why did everyone suddenly want her to start being honest? Her family had taught her for sixteen years how to lie and lie well, and now… now everyone wanted her to start being some kind of open, honest, over-sharing Rachel Berry? Except, as it turns out, not even Rachel Berry was a Rachel Berry. She kept her secrets, too, just like everyone else. Quinn had offered her honesty to Rachel because she needed it, and she'd truly wanted to help the girl. Now it seemed that Sam needed it too.
"If you can't be honest with me, then," Sam paused, shrugging and shaking his head. "…then I don't see how this relationship is going to work out."
Quinn looked up at Sam and their eyes met in the darkness of the car, holding each other's for a long time. Slowly, she slipped off the promise ring, going by feel as she didn't want to miss anything his eyes might say. She hoped he'd take the ultimatum back, but when it was clear he wasn't going to, Quinn took his hand and curled it around the promise ring he'd given her just a couple of months before.
"Then I guess we both need some time to think about things, then," Quinn said. She let go of his hands and left the car, striding towards her front door and letting herself in. She didn't look back to see if Sam had left. She didn't want to know.