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Rachel has worked really hard for a long time to get to where she is now. She is just now startin her 3rd year, she is a pre-law student at NYU and she will be taking her first LSAT in a year, afterwards she will go on to Harvard Law, just like her father. She has already started practicing for the LSAT. It’s a bit early, since she won’t be taking her first LSAT until her final year but she needs the practice. She’s a perfectionist who doesn’t test well. It’s a not good combination, she knows. That’s why she needs to practice for a long time. She has certain life goals, and a timetable, and she doesn’t want her shortcoming to get in the way.
It hasn’t left her much time for relationships. She’s mostly fine with that. Her mother understands and luckily doesn’t pester her about it. College and the pre-law program are good excuses.
But one day, at the library while Rachel is studying, someone sits at the other side of her table. Rachel looks up. It’s another student from her pre-law program, although she can’t quite remember her name. Mia, maybe? The woman is smiling at Rachel.
“Hi. I’m Maia, Matthews," she says quietly in a library voice, holding out her hand. Rachel smiles at her a little awkwardly but takes her hand.
“I’m Rachel, Zane,” she replies.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve seen you around. Studying for the LSAT already?”
Rachel thinks she might be blushing a little. She knows she has a reputation as a bookworm, but she has to practice more for her tests. And some parts of college life really aren’t for her. She’s not quite sure to react to this situation.
“Are you taking it already? Aren’t you a 3rd year, like me?”
“I… No, I mean, yeah. I’m third year and I’m actually taking it next year but I, want to start studying early. I’m not really good at tests.”
Maia looks surprised. “Really? I thought you were really smart.”
Rachel gives Maia a strained smile, “Being smart and being good at taking tests are not the same thing.”
Maia looks sheepish at that and gives a little embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. This isn’t really going the way I was hoping it would.”
Rachel is even more confused about what is going on now.
“I’ve seen you around a lot, and I know you’re really studious, but I kinda wanted to know whether you’d like to hang out with me. Studying and what not.”
“Oh. I mean, sure, why not.”
“Great!” Maia tells her and gets up from her side of the table to sit next to Rachel, who is a bit surprised about it, but just goes with.
**
They end up studying together a lot and getting to know each other. Turns out, they have a lot in common. They’re both biracial (Rachel’s mixed black and White while Maia is Indian and Polish) only children of powerful lawyers. They both dream of Harvard and successful legal careers.
They want a lot of the same things in life and their relationship quite naturally develops into a romance. Rachel has developes crushes on her friends, boys and girls both, before (she doesn't really know of other ways attraction happens although people keep telling her it does), so she's not too suprised when it happens.
After they kiss for the first time, Maia tells her she's had a crush on her for ages before she ended up having the nerve to come up to talk to her. Rachel doesn't quite understand that, but she doesn't tell Maia that. It doesn't matter anyway. She's happy.
***
Their relationship is mostly happy for quite a while. Rachel isn't out to her parents as bi yet and Maia understands that. So during holiday visits to the Zanes, Maia is her close friend. She thinks her mother might suspect something because while Maia is there, she doesn't talks so much about her dating life. Once she has other aspects of her life in order, graduating; LSAT; getting into Harvard; and once she sees whether she and Maia's relationship has longetivity, then she will come out. College relationships don't always last. But she does like the idea of staying with Maia, going to Harvard together. They just need to survive the LSATs first.
Maia thinks she's being a bit too practical and should live in the now more, but she does understand Rachel's reasoning, at least for the most part. She does like to plan out their possible life togetherm She also knows how to distract Rachel's thoughts when necessary.
***
Over her 3rd year, Rachel never really abandons studying for the LSATs. She hopes if she studies enough, she can get over her test taking issues and perfectionist tendences. Maia tries her best to help her with it, but Maia is one of those people for whom tests are easy. They will take the LSATs at the same time during their last year and Maia feels no need yet to study the material.
***
They end up mostly spending their summer separate. They both end up with different summer jobs. So, when they reunite in the fall, it's very passionate. They have decided to be roommates for their last year. Rachel can be very neat and she likes her stuff just-so, while Maia is not as particular about all that, so sometimes they end up bickering about things like that. But mostly their lives together go well. For the first semester.
During their final semester they both end up super busy, so much so that they barely even have time to lament their lack of quality time together. They try to study together, but their different studying needs and habits make it so they end up finding it better to do it separately. Rachel spends most days at the library, coming home late at night. If nothing else, they end up spending their nights together and that's better than nothing.
***
When there is only 2 weeks left until they LSAT date, Rachel has a small breakdown. They are doing a little quiz at their room. Maia is asking Rachel a bunch of questions she heard was in the most recent LSAT. Maia feels more comfortable about her chances, and she tries her best to help Rachel test better. It's not really working.
After she gets her 5th question wrong in a row, Rachel bursts ro tears. She *needs* to get a high score to get to Harvard. She needs to show her father that she can do this, that she can be as good as him, or even better. But she is just so scared of the trick questions, of failing. She gets so worried about getting anything wrong that she doesn't trust herself, her gut feelings, and she ends up picking the wrong answers, even when she actually knew the answer.
Maia tries her best to help her calm down, and holds her as she cries. She also gives her some platitudes about how it will all go well. She talks more of their plans for Boston, and the future. It finally helps Rachel calm down. They spend the rest of the evening watching a cooking show marathon, to just relax and not think about the test for a few hours. Maia strokes Rachel's hair while Rachel is cuddled to her side. Part of Rachel can't let it go, however.
***
After the LSAT day finally comes and goes, Rachel and Maia can finally start to relax more together. Rachel hopes she managed to do well enough that she at least passed. If her score isn't high enough, that is at least a better starting point for her, hopefully not needed, next attempt: 'not good enough' is better than 'failure'.
***
When the test results finally arrive, Rachel is really nervous. She hopes she did well. She doesn’t want to wait for the next part of her life to start. If she can do that with Maia, all the better.
Both of them open their respective envelopes excitedly in their room, on their bed. Maia soon lets out a ‘whoop’ of success, but Rachel can barely hear here. She did terribly. All her worries, all her fears, they have become a reality. She puts her hand over her mouth, the results paper falls to the ground and she tries to hold back a sob. She failed. But she doesn’t want to start crying, not here and now. She wants to be happy for Maia, to celebrate her girlfriend’s success and not dwell on her own failure. She lets a few tears fall before wiping them away and looking at Maia. She gives a teary smile to Maia, who looks at Rachel with pity and hugs her.
“It’s OK. I’ll try again in 3 months. I’m sure I will figure this out by then.”
“I’m sure you will.”
Rachel puts on a semi-happy smile, "OK, show me your score. I wanna know what we're celebrating today."
"You don't have to see it, Rachel."
"I want to. I love you, and I'm happy for you."
Maia shows her results to Rachel. Over 170.
"Wow. You might really get to Harvard with this score," Rachel tells Maia, genuinely happy for her. She knows what this all means. So does Maia.
"Yeah, about that. We need to start discussing some stuff relating to that."
Rachel moves to sit by Maia on the bed, pulls her face closer to hers, "Not right now. Please."
They kiss and make love and later that night they go out with their friends and they ignore what is about to happen, to them.
***
The next morning, Rachel wakes up alone. Maia is sitting by their kitchen table, writing furiously. Rachel walks up to her. She sees that she is writing a to do list. The LSAT is just one part of the Harvard Law application process, and Maia is already making sure she has everything else covered. They talked about this morning sometimes, wistfully, about how they would do this together. But they can't. Because Rachel is not good enough.
Rachel sits down by the table. For a few moments, they just look at each other, neither knowing how to proceed.
"Good morning," Rachel decides to start.
Maia gives her a small smile, leans towards Rachel and gives her a good morning kiss. "Good morning."
But soon it becomes clear that they morning is not good at all. For either of them.
"We both kinda knew this might happen," Maia starts. Rachel gets up from the table, doing what she should have done already and gets herself a cup of coffee. She will need all the coffee to deal with this discussion. Maia continues talking to Rachel's back, "I mean, isn't part of the reason you didn't tell your parents about us, because this might happen. That, we ended up only being together here and..."
Rachel turns abruptly at that. She knows Maia is being rational and pragmatic, but Rachel doesn't wanna be those things now.
"This doesn't have to mean that we break up right away!"
Maia looks at Rachel with pity in her eyes again. Rachel looks down at her coffee cup. She really doesn't wanna hear what's coming next.
"You have to wait to retake the LSAT. I need to apply for law schools now. There's not telling which law school I might end up in, and you might..." Rachel looks up at Maia again, who stopped her sentence short.
"I might end up blowing the LSAT again, you mean?" Rachel finishes her sentence angrily.
Maia averts her eyes now, "Yeah." She shrugs a little and looks up at Rachel with a determined look. "That's a strong possibility. I need to think about my future."
"Maybe I could come to Boston with you," Rachel says, but they can both hear her uncertainty and a lack of conviction.
"Your family is in New York. And you wouldn't be happy there. Seeing my in law school, while you're not. You know it would only make you bitter and resent me. Especially if it does take you a while. And I know Harvard is your dream. Both because that's where your Dad went and because you want to work in that law firm that also hires from Harvard." Maia takes a moment to sigh. "But I'm not even sure Harvard is my dream. I'll apply there and hope I'll get in, but I might go with a different choice. I don't know yet. I need to explore my options. But they probably won't be in New York, anyway. Our lives are going to change now. We can't just ignore that because we want to."
Rachel bites her lip and tries not to start crying. "So, is this it? Are we just over now?" Maia walks to Rachel and they hug. "No. Not yet. We'll graduate and then see if maybe we can make it work. But there is a possibility that we can't."
***
By the time Rachel retakes the LSAT, they’ve broken up. They stayed together until graduation, but afterwards they both realized their lives were leading them to different places. Maia ended up going to Stanford, on the other side of the country. That certainly was a drastic change.
She still sometimes misses Maia, but she hasn’t really had time for anything but studying since the LSAT. She failed once, she doesn’t want to fail again. She’s not sure what she’ll do if that happens.
***
She does a little better with the retake, but it’s still not good. She’s still not good enough.
She’s struggling with figuring out what she should do next, when she finds out that Pearson/Hardman is looking for a paralegal. To work for Jessica Pearson would be amazing. Pearson/Hardman is where she eventually wants to work anyway, so it seems like a great opportunity. She’ll just work as a paralegal for a while, retake the LSAT (again) soon. Go to law school. She will achieve her dream. Eventually. Once she feels properly ready to take the LSAT again.