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You don't live in the nice part of Brooklyn. You don't live in the bad part of Brooklyn either, but you figure it's important to point out that your apartment is not the nicest. Your job is not the nicest. Your attitude is not the nicest.
You're walking beside Santana, on your way home after a double shift at the diner. You're exhausted, she's exhausted, so you don't talk to each other. These days, you only have a limited amount of energy. There's no time or money for energy anymore. There's no time for smiles or cheer or good attitudes when you're trying to make a living.
Your head is tilted down as you walk. It's important not to look anyone in the eye. Like you said before; you don't live in the nice part of Brooklyn.
Unlike you, Santana looks every single person she passes straight in the eye. You don't know whether she's stupidly brave or bravely stupid. Either or, she's got more guts than you, which you suppose is why she has somebody in her life and you don't.
You've forgotten how to trust over the years. Unrequited love can do that to a person. You used to believe you were immune to all of that heart break stuff. Sure, you were upset for about a month after Finn broke up with you, but that was before you looked into those hazel eyes you've seen so many times before, except this time it was different.
--
It started with a laugh. All she did was laugh at one of your jokes, and it was all over. The way her jaw clenched, the way her eyes brightened, the way her lips curled, the way she threw her head back and snorted through her nose; it released something in your chest, and it made you realize that maybe that something might've actually always been there.
"I never knew you were so funny, Rachel," she'd laugh, and of course she didn't know. The two of you, all throughout high school, had been mortal enemies, all because of this need to be superior.
In the end, it wasn't even about Finn anymore. It might not have ever been about Finn, if you're completely honest with yourself. It was about one-upping the other, getting the other's attention, even if that meant kissing someone you didn't want to kiss; holding someone's hand you didn't want to hold.
At the end of senior year, Quinn had offered you friendship. The proposal had come out of nowhere, but once this idea settled into your mind, you couldn't think of anything else. You knew she was going to Yale, and she knew you were going to New York. You both knew it wouldn't be an easy friendship to keep up, but somehow you both felt enabled to keep some sort of contact.
After all, Quinn was the main reason you'd worked so hard to defeat the odds back in high school, and vice versa. She stayed connected to you, guilty of how she treated you for almost three years straight. And you remained connected to her, ashamed of almost getting her killed just because you couldn't wait a little while longer to get married.
Eventually, this shame and guilt turned into friendship, and you both tried your very hardest to never look back.
You'd visit her, she'd visit you. But whenever she was too busy to come to New York on some weekends, you'd oddly feel yourself missing her. Instead of sulking in your bedroom, Santana would take you on a night out in the city, sneak you into nightclubs, buy you drinks with her fake ID, and do her absolute best to get your mind off of that girl only a few hours away in Connecticut.
Quinn knew how you felt about her, because you made it apparent. You looked at her with that something in your eyes on purpose, and you made sure she knew it. You didn't hide your infatuation, your unbridled passion, because you had made that mistake many times before in the past.
So, you never told her exactly how you felt, but you knew that she knew, and that was enough for you.
Friendship remained a glaring barrier. You wanted to be her lover, not her buddy. You wanted to kiss her passionately whenever she was upset, not just squeeze her hand in a lacking form of comfort. You wanted to be that person she comes home to at night and makes sweet love to, not the person she calls up in the afternoon to gossip about some cute guy who's been flirting with her in her Psychology class.
His name was Clark, and he was slowly taking her away from you. He was at Yale with Quinn when you weren't. He was there to wipe away her tears, hold her hand, take her out to lunch, and help her with her homework, while you were stuck in New York, hopelessly waiting for a text message, a phone call.
But when that didn’t come, you’d lay awake and think about her for hours on end.
You could feel her slipping through your fingertips. It wasn't even push and pull. You'd tug as hard as possible, but all Clark had to do was flash those pearly whites in Quinn's direction, and she was gone. It was as simple as that, when she walked out of your life. You took it harder than expected, but you guess Santana expected it all along.
Before you could even blink a tear, she was already at your door with a bag of Milky Way chocolates, a DVD of your favorite movie, and a full box of tissues. You hadn't yet cried, but after seeing that sympathetic look on Santana's face as she entered your apartment, you completely lost it, in more ways than one.
Santana moved in after that. She said it was because her landlord kept shutting off her heat in the middle of the night, but secretly you knew it was because she was concerned for you.
For the longest time, you stopped caring about everything. Your confidence was shot. Your feelings were hurt. Your heart was broken.
But eventually you got over Quinn; faster than you thought you would, actually. Not as quickly as it was with Finn, but pretty fast considering your meltdown.
Six months to a year is fast, right?
Right?
Nevertheless, you got back out there, but all the same you could slowly feel yourself changing.
--
You're easily pissed off, annoyed, and frustrated. Your attitude has become a problem at work, but since your boss already knows you, knows this isn't the girl he hired months ago, he continues to give you chance after chance.
Over time, you've learned to focus your anger on other things, like kickboxing and running. Santana goes with you sometimes and even suggests more mundane activities, like painting and yoga for the days when running just takes up way too much energy.
You're grateful now, because life is finally getting back to normal. You haven't seen Quinn, or even heard from Quinn in almost a year. In her absence, you've begun to heal. You don't know if Santana's been in contact with her over the last several months, and you don't really care to find out.
You're not mad at Quinn. You don't blame her for going after the guy. It appears she loved him more than she could ever love you, and you'd be a horrible person to blame her for that. What kind of friend cuts ties just because they can't deal with moving on, keeping away, distancing themselves?
You've never been that type of person, so you did try your best to make it work in the beginning, until Quinn stopped calling, stopped visiting, stopped sending you daily text messages about her long days and tiring classes and that cute guy in her Psychology class.
She didn't stop being your friend out of hate or spite or awkwardness. It just sort of happened, slowly, all on its own. Quinn's one of those girls who gets a boyfriend and then drops off the face of the earth. If the guy she's dating is good enough to keep her occupied, she'll put her all into him, leaving everyone else behind. Santana already knew that, so it seems you had to learn it too, and very quickly.
--
You're not mad at Quinn, can never be mad at her, yet something that feels a lot like anger boils up in your chest when you see her sitting on the bottom step of your stoop.
Santana sees her first, while your head is still bowed. You feel an arm holding you back, stiff against your stomach. Santana's in front of you now, protective and unrelenting, and you kind of don't mind.
But when your eyes first meet hazel, you're not sure how to feel. Of course you're angry and hurt. Of course you once told yourself you never wanted to see her stupidly magnificent face ever again, but that was before your broken heart was healed.
You're supposed to be better now. You’re supposed be forgiving, but it doesn't take less than a second before you're looking away from those eyes you used to love so much, still love even though you haven't looked into them for quite some time now.
She stands, hesitant, when she sees you and Santana watching from afar. Her hands are in her pockets as she leans against the stone banister. She looks nervous; really, really nervous. You want to know why she's here, and why she's nervous, so you look at Santana and nod, signaling that you'll be okay.
Santana lifts an eyebrow to make sure you'll be okay. She's been protective of you ever since Quinn broke your heart, but you nod again, assuring her everything will be fine before stepping around her and sending her inside.
Setting Quinn with a harsh glare, Santana steps past her, whispering, "You better not fuck her up again," as she keys her way into the apartment building.
Quinn stares right back at Santana until she disappears through the heavy wooden door. All is silent after that, other than the noisy streets, police sirens, barking dogs. But Quinn's used to these sounds from the many times she would visit you in the past, before she dropped off the face of the earth.
Even though it seems Quinn is back, for now at least, you still don't have the nicest attitude, so you hang your head, cross your arms over your chest, and you wait for her to say something. Hell if you're going to initiate the conversation. Not when she's the one who just popped up out of nowhere for reasons still unknown.
"Rach, I—" She cuts herself off before you can, clears her throat, and says, "I don't know what to say."
You don’t utter a word, because obviously she has something to say if she came all this way in the first place. So you wait, watch as Quinn's hazel eyes bounce back and forth from the ground back to your face.
Biting her lower lip, Quinn doesn't say anything for the longest time, just stands there in silence. You're quickly getting impatient and antsy with all of this waiting, while all Quinn's doing is scraping the sole of her sneakers against the rigged concrete.
You rub your hands together in the briskness of dawn. "Do you wanna come up?" you hear yourself saying, but then you immediately wish you can take it back as soon as the words leave your parted lips.
But Quinn says, "No, thank you," anyway, so you let out a breath of relief, and hope she can't tell how nervous you are as well.
You tuck your hands into your pockets, mirroring her position as you lean against the stone banister. "Do you wanna go somewhere else?" you offer, trying your best to fill in the awkward silences. "To talk or…something?"
Quinn shakes her head as she sits on a step, looks down at her hands with a grimace. "Um, no," she says, mostly to herself. "I just...can we talk here?"
Tired from standing all day, you shrug as you take a seat next to her. The stone is cold against your thin skirt, and you shiver in the September breeze. Quinn looks at you from out the corner of her eye, smiles, and then takes her coat off. You don't ask what she's doing, because you already know her intentions as she drapes her coat over your shoulders.
Now that she is uncovered, your eyes immediately dart to the sparkling diamond lying flat against her collarbone. The streetlight overhead enlightens the necklace around her neck, as well as the precious ring hanging from it.
You try your hardest not to stare at it, but you know Quinn catches you by the look on her face when you drag your eyes back up.
She's engaged. She came back, after all this time, only to tell you that she's getting married to some guy who will never be able to love her the way you do. She's wormed her way into another's heart. She's charmed the pants off some loser and even gotten him to propose.
This is the Quinn you've known since high school. This is the dependent Quinn you thought had changed after junior year. Here she is, the same old Quinn, engaged before even graduating college. The Quinn from your senior year would have snickered at the thought of giving up her youth, experience, curiosity, for some guy she's only known for a year. That Quinn would have slapped this Quinn in the face for relying so heavily on the idea of needing a man to survive.
"Rachel," she starts, clearing her throat. "I know that this —"
"It's been a year. We stopped talking a year ago," you whisper, crushing your bottom lip between your teeth. "Did you think coming back was really the right thing to do?"
"I'm sorry," Quinn breathes out, remorsefully. "It's just that...Clark and I—"
"Yeah," you cut her off again, because you don't want to hear that name.
You don't want to know about Clark or Justin or Kyle, or whoever it is she's with now. If she came here to update you on her relationship status, she's in for a rude awakening. You can't be that kind of friend to her anymore, especially after the way she's ignored you for the better part of a year.
"He and I…" she starts again, picking up on the fact that you don't want to hear that name anymore. She takes a moment to fiddle with the ring tied around her neck, and it kind of feels like a stab in the chest mixed with a punch in the gut, until she whispers, "It...didn't work out between us."
Your heart tells you to jump for joy and shout hallelujah, but your mind tells you to stay seated and shut the hell up, because if that ring isn't from Clark, it has to be from someone else, like Justin or William or Daniel; some guy with an elite, Yale worthy name, plus a surname like Worthington or Fillmore or Middleton.
Quinn Middleton?
Eh.
"You know, it's funny," you chuckle humorlessly, shaking your head. "I always had this feeling you liked me back, but I guess it really was all just in my head, huh?"
Quinn smiles at this; actually smiles, and now you feel the urge to call Santana down here, just so she can tell her off, but then Quinn says, "You're so full of doubt, Rachel." You look back down at your feet and pull Quinn's coat further over your shoulders when a breeze hits. "Tell me, when did you stop being optimistic?"
"Optimism is a load of bullshit," you say, and this, your language, must catch Quinn off guard, for she gasps low under her breath and shoots you an incredulous look. Rolling your eyes, you continue with, "Why be hopeful when I can be sure about things? I used to be so sure about us, as friends, you know, until you started seeing Clark. And I was fine with that too, but then—""
"Then I left," Quinn finishes, guiltily. "I vanished into thin air. I cut off all contacts. I disappeared. I didn't call, text, email, write. I left." She sounds upset with herself, even more that you did a moment ago, and as she speaks, berates herself for her ignorance and mistakes, she tugs harder and harder on that ring around her neck until the whole necklace breaks off.
She looks at the ring with sad eyes, watches as it sparkles between her fingers, and you do the same, silently hoping and praying she's been wearing it around her neck as a sign of uncertainty.
"Rachel," she whispers, still staring at the ring, holding onto it for dear life. "You weren't wrong about my feelings. And it's not funny, thinking it was all just in your head, because I purposefully made you think that."
"What are you talking about?" you ask, squinting your eyes through the darkness. You are tired of trying to interpret her thoughts, decode her mind games, understand her facial expressions. You've played this game for more than two years with Quinn, so instead of trying to guess whatever it is she's talking about, you settle for just waiting.
"I'm talking about love, Rach," she says, finally looking your way. Her eyes are soft, hopeful, as she glances back and forth from you to the diamond ring, and back again. She looks unsure and anxious and sad and happy all at the same time, and now your stomach is starting to turn on you, this sickening feeling slowly warping into a steady beat.
You can feel your heart thumping throughout your entire body, as Quinn takes your left hand and places the ring at the tip of your finger. "What are you doing?" you ask, wonder in your voice, because Quinn Fabray is sliding an engagement ring onto your finger; an engagement ring you originally thought was for her.
"With this ring, I am asking you to forgive me for being an oblivious bitch," she answers, laughing softly at the terrified look on your face. "With this ring, I am asking you to give me another chance to prove myself to you. I am asking you to love me again, the way I've always loved you. Rachel, I'm asking you to keep this ring on forever and maybe even marry me one day."
You don't realize you're tearing up until the dampness on your cheeks start to feel cold from the chill in the air. You wipe at your tears and cough out a laugh at what's happening. Quinn's sitting next to you, in the middle of the night, after not being next to you for almost a year, offering you a ring. Not friendship, but a fucking ring.
You spin the oversized ring around your finger and stare at it in wonder. You smile, because this ring is from Quinn, because Quinn broke up with Clark, because Quinn is sitting on your stoop and just asked you to marry her.
You don't answer her, because you know it shouldn't be this easy for her. She can't just come back with a charming smile and some fancy jewelry, so you don't verbally accept her proposal.
Instead you look her in the eyes, for the first time in a long time, and you lean in. Quinn closes her eyes, meets you halfway, but you keep your eyes open the whole time, just to make sure that this is real.
Her lips are cold and chapped; nothing like you imagined they would feel. You smile into the kiss, because this is better than what you imagined. These are Quinn's lips you're touching with your own, kissing her soundly, nervously, for the first time and hopefully not the last.
When you separate, Quinn's wearing this look, a mixture between goo goo and gaga. Her cheeks are rosy red, but you're not sure if it's because of the cold or not, so you reach up to touch her cheek. She sighs into the touch as you lean in to peck her on the jaw.
You're wearing her ring as you stand up and enter your apartment building. Quinn watches silently as you ascend the steps before calling out to you. "Rachel?" she says questioningly, waiting for a response to her proposal.
You look over your shoulder, turn the ring around and around your finger, and you give her a smile. Quinn smiles back, hesitant and unsure. "Good night, Quinn," you say.
"Wait," she says, pinching her eyebrows together in confusion as she shoots up from the steps. "Was that a yes?" You know she's referring to the kiss by the way she bashfully bows her head and licks her lips.
"It's not a no," you reassure her, smiling. "Keep in touch this time around, and maybe you'll find out."
You fully enter your apartment building without looking back this time, and you smile when you hear a sigh of relief behind you.