Rachel wrung her hands together nervously as she stood outside the chosen restaurant waiting for Shelby. After taking her shower earlier, she had called Shelby as soon as she got out of the shower before she lost her nerve. It had been a light and quick conversation, nothing more than just hashing out the details of where they should meet, Rachel really hoped tonight went well. Santana was at home working on a painting after Rachel had fixed her dinner. Of course, Santana had insisted that she could fix her own self dinner, but Rachel knew that she was tired and she was being more than supportive when it came to everything going on, so Rachel wanted to do something nice.
Glancing down at her watch, Rachel realized that she was actually super early. Apparently her nerves had turned on her over drive and now she still had at least ten minutes before she was even supposed to meet Shelby. Nerves and over drive must run in the family because when Rachel looked back up she noticed Shelby pulling into an empty parking space. Rachel smiled as Shelby turned off her Audi and climbed out.
"Hi." Rachel greeted as Shelby approached. The woman looked like she was about to go in for a hug, but stopped short. She shook off the disappointment, they could always hug later...maybe. "I forgot it was Thai night here, is this still okay or do you want to go somewhere else?" Rachel asked as she turned to look at the restaurant. She felt so silly for forgetting that Panda House covered all Asian cuisine and not just your standard Chinese food.
"This is fine, I love all food and I will try anything once." Shelby shrugged her shoulders. They needed to figure out how to get past this awkwardness quicker. There was no doubt it was going to be a rough road, there was so much time lost that needed to be made up for.
"Okay, well. Shall we go in?" Rachel turned to open the door, taking a deep breath to prepare herself for the evening ahead. She was unaware that Shelby was doing the exact same thing.
Santana was bored. Rachel had only been gone about an hour and Santana had already finished her dinner and done the dishes. She had decided earlier while working as Rachel was cooking that she had made enough progress on her painting that she could stop for the evening. Also, she needed a break anyway before she started to lose focus on the end goal of what she would like the painting to look like. Stuff like that tended to be an issue a lot of the time when it came to painting, you had this beautiful end goal of what you wanted in your head, but for some reason you hit a lot of road blocks on the path to get there. It was a true artistic struggle that not a lot of people could really understand.
Deciding that she would see if there was anything new about Jasper, Santana ran up to the loft and grabbed her laptop before coming back down to the kitchen and sitting down at the island. She looked across the island at the baskets of vegetables that she had picked today from her garden, she could always get started on canning but she had promised Rachel that she would let her help. That was an idea that they could do tomorrow or they could ride out to the fields and pick some berries, eh, they could always decide what to do in the morning.
Santana sighed as her laptop loaded up, she kept thinking about the video she had watched earlier. She couldn't tell what Jasper was saying, the distance mixed with the wind had muffled practically everything except a few various words here or there. If asked she wasn't going to deny that she had contemplated bugging Jasper's apartment, but to her that was definitely going too far considering she didn't want to be that invasive. She just wanted to know what he was up to, there was a feeling in her gut that he was planning something on his own and that the way he had been acting lately was just that, an act.
At least Santana had been able to find out some stuff on Charles and Ronald. Charles Porter was still sitting in jail in California with Ronald Adkins, at the moment he had had one court date where he had obviously plead not guilty to all charges. He wasn't going to go down without a fight, however, the DA was slowly gathering evidence or what they thought was evidence, against him. The way Sue spoke they had found credit card statements where Charles had the water and electricity turned back on at the beach house. That could be discredited as him turning the utilities back on for his own eventual use, since they knew he never used the house full time. His large purchases at clothing stores wasn't out landish either, considering they match up with other previous purchases. Charles was just a big spender. The only solid evidence that they had, that would actually stand up in court at the moment was phone calls made by Charles to the beach house, he was obviously talking to someone in there. It was only a matter of time before they set bail and chances are Charles was going to come after them all before anything else could fall apart. Santana had never had more reason than now to be on top of her game.
Rachel sighed as she pushed her food around on her plate. The conversation between mother and daughter had hit another low note. It wasn't as if Rachel had no idea what to talk about, she had plenty to say, but what she had to say probably wasn't best to be said in a restaurant. Shelby watched Rachel for a moment, it felt so surreal to finally be having a dinner with her daughter again, this was a thousand times more than what she initially expected, but she was thankful none the less that coffee had turned into a dinner instead.
"So...you're working on a new album? How's that going?" Shelby asked.
"We haven't actually started working on the new album yet. We have been recording songs that the writing interns done. Puck wants to release those to introduce me back into the music scene." Rachel took a bite of her food, she was glad they had decided to stay here instead of going somewhere else. The food was divine.
"Are you planning on doing any more movies?"
Rachel shook her head before she responded. "Not right now. I want to focus on my music and staying close to home with the wedding coming up in a few months. We still haven't chosen a date yet, but we are looking at maybe December twentieth."
"Any particular reason you chose that date?"
"Winter is just a special time for me and Santana." Rachel shrugged her shoulders and rolled her neck trying to relieve some of the tension that was trying to set it. "It's when we first met." She spoke quietly.
Shelby mentally kicked herself, she should have known that. Rachel showed up on Santana's door step in January but it was still very much winter if the snow that Rachel had trekked through was any indication. "Rachel...I am so sor-"
"No..let's not do this here. It's been three years, there's no need to hash out all the things that happened when Santana found me. Or well, when I found her."
"Okay." Shelby put her hands up in surrender before she went back to eating her food. "How is Santana?" Shelby wasn't going to mention Cassie running into Santana at the vet because she wasn't sure if Rachel knew.
Rachel couldn't stop the smile that came across her face. "She's good. She is supposed to be working right now, but I honestly doubt she is. Her website is still doing fantastic and there's a couple of art galleries and some production company that want to show some of her newer work. She hasn't done a show in a while."
"I would love to come to a show, Cassie acts like she despises art, but she really is a fanatic about it. Don't tell Santana, but Cassie is a huge fan."
Rachel chuckled as she took a sip of her water. "I remember their banter from last time...it would inflate Santana's ego to new heights and Cassie would probably die of embarrassment."
Shelby chuckled as she looked down at her plate, she couldn't help the flood of emotions that came rushing back when Rachel mentioned the few times all four women had spent together before she left. "Last time...Rachel I know you said let's not do this here, but I need to explain things to you. I need to fix this before we can try and move on." Shelby sighed heavily as she looked at Rachel pleadingly.
Rachel nodded her head. She had a few things she needed to say too. "Let's pay and then take a walk down to the park that's close by. We can talk there."
Shelby sat down on a bench after she and Rachel had made their second loop around the park walking track. It was barely dusk out, children were still playing on the large play ground. Shelby couldn't help but smile at the little boy who apparently had just completed the monkey bars for the first time. For a moment Shelby envisioned what her life would have been like had she not been a surrogate and kept her baby girl. Her life would definitely be vastly different in a lot of ways.
"Why did you come back?" Rachel spoke, looking across the park at nothing in particular. She knew this conversation had to start somewhere and what better place to start than to ask out right why Shelby came back.
Shelby looked down at her folded hands. "I've made a lot of mistakes Rachel and it's high time I make amends. Life is short, too short and I can't keep expecting something I truly want to just fall into my lap."
"But you had it in your lap, twice. Are you saying that both times before you never truly wanted a relationship with me?" Rachel narrowed her eyes, but she still refused to look at Shelby.
"I messed up. I've always wanted a relationship with you, but I got scared. Scared that you would question why I agreed to be a surrogate, question how as a mother I could just give you up like that. I wasn't ready to deal with the reality of giving you up the first time we met. Then everything happened and I couldn't stay away anymore, so I came to see you. I let the fear of work and distance drive me into breaking the relationship we had started. I couldn't deal with the pain of losing you again."
"You know that's the most shit excuse I have ever heard before. You destroyed our relationship because you were worried it was going to end anyway? I told you I would come see you and I called over and over again, but you ignored me." Rachel said as her eyes misted over with tears. "How do you think that made me feel? You didn't want me the first time around because I wasn't the baby you gave up anymore. What really happened the second time around? Huh, was I too messed up for you to deal with? Santana was the only person I truly had during that time. I was still learning to trust Dad and I needed someone. Santana is only one woman, but she stuck by me through it all. When I woke up from a nightmare, she was right there. When I started having panic attacks because I thought I saw one of the Porter's in the damn store, Santana was right there. She never left me, but you did because you couldn't handle it, you couldn't handle my issues." The tears were pouring down both women's faces now, they needed to rein it in as people were already starting to look at them strange.
"Rachel, I didn't know how to help you." Shelby cried as she reached out to grab Rachel's hand, surprised that Rachel didn't pull away.
"Just being there would have helped." Rachel shook her head as she crossed her arm over her chest while the other remained in Shelby's grasp.
"I see that now. I can't take back what I done and I can't take back not being there, but I am here now and I swear I am not leaving this time. No matter what happens."
Rachel looked up at her mother with red rimmed eyes. "I can't put that much trust in you right now. I want to, but I just can't."
"I swear, I will earn your trust back. I know we still have tons to talk about and I know we aren't going to have the best of days, but I'm tired of running. I'm not getting any younger, I want to be here. Cassie wants to be here, I'm not going anywhere." Shelby squeezed Rachel's hand, when she didn't receive any sort of response she began to panic and then everything changed in an instant when she felt Rachel squeeze back. They weren't going to be were she wanted them to be overnight, but this was a good start.
Everything that is going on with Jasper, Charles and Ronald will soon come to a head. This story was always intended to be about Rachel and Santana's life together and in order to get the story truly moving again, Jasper has to go. There's a few other characters I want to phase out to just name mentions so that I can introduce the final arch (for now) in Rachel and Santana's main plot line for this story. And I know, "ugghhh" more characters, but I promise I really think you are going to like these new people and what or more so who they bring to the story.
I'm not going to lie, I worry sometimes I have too much going on in this story. Sometimes I have to go and read it myself to keep everything in line because I didn't do an outline. With that said, even without an outline I know where this story is going to end and it's still a long ways off. For now the main focus is figuring out Jasper and his plan, rekindling Shelby and Rachel's relationship and Rachel's proposal to Santana.
Thank you for the continued support on this story. I appreciate the views, reviews, favorites and follows.