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Santana has the most vicious tongue Mandy’s ever heard for someone who never uses strong swears. Her insults are poetically cruel twists of words, exploiting her victims’ insecurities in a precise fashion. All the fucks and bitches Mandy’s surrounded with at home seem absolutely mundane in comparison.
Whether Santana’s insults are directed at reality show failures, classmates on her wrong side, or idiot drunk frat boys trying to get handsy, they never stop thrilling Mandy. She smirks and admires silently, mostly. It’s a dark thing to build a friendship on.
Santana never talks that way to Mandy.
…
They meet at the university after Mandy making an ill-fated attempt to visit Lip. Mandy’s chain smoking on a park bench lining one of the sidewalks and this Latina chick is sitting on a bench down a stretch. She’s wearing a cheerleading outfit that’s showed too much skin for them still being in the cold half of spring. She’s just lounging there, this Latina chick, like she doesn’t feel the cold and doesn’t mind the gawking. Maybe she wants the gawking
…
“I saw you staring at me,” the chick says, standing there, arms akimbo.
Mandy takes a drag on her cigarette and releases a stream of smoke between her teeth.
“So, does it mean you’re a psycho, or do you think I’m hot?” The chick tosses her hair over her shoulder. “It’s okay. Everyone thinks I’m hot.”
“Are all the cheerleaders here so fucking conceited?” Mandy says with a sneer.
The chick smirks. “You’ve never met a cheerleader like me before.”
…
Her name is Santana Lopez. She’s originally from Ohio. She’s here on a cheerleading scholarship. And somehow Mandy finds herself going along with her to a low key, college get together in some nerd’s dorm room, and there’s pretty of free booze to drown her sorrows.
…
They’re both getting over broken hearts. Mandy has Lip, who she sometimes catches site of when hanging out on campus with Santana. Santana has a girl back in Ohio she's pining over. It gives Mandy a pause the first times he sees the photo of the blonde on Santana’s phone – a selfie with Santana’s face pressed intimately close to this girl’s as they beam – when Santana says it’s her ex.
“I’m a lesbian,” Santana says, shoulders going stiff like preparing for war. “Problem with that?”
Mandy just hadn’t expected it of this fashionable cheerleader, but maybe she is just stuck with stereotypes. Santana is turning into the best female friend she’s ever had.
“No.”
…
She shows up on a Thursday night with a bruise under her eye and Santana says, “I’ll kill him.”
Santana doesn’t kill him though, doesn’t leave the room. She gets Mandy an ice packs and sits next to her on the thin mattress of the dorm bed, gripping her hand.
After a few sitcom reruns, Mandy puts down the ice pack, and says, “I show go.” She starts to stands, but Santana doesn’t let go of her hand.
“Don’t. Don’t go back there.”
“Where else am I supposed to go?” Mandy says, hating herself for the way her voice pitches up, panicked and desperate. She once had a place she could go so she didn’t have to go home, but she was never really wanted there. There are certain rejections no one likes to repeat.
“Stay here,” Santana says. “At least for the night.”
Mandy sits back down. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
The TV plays through to the next commercial break. Santana turns Mandy’s head towards her. She brushes her thumb over the bruise, aligned almost perfect over her cheek bone.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not much,” Mandy says.
Santana leans in, kisses the bruise with her soft lips.
Mandy stares at her wide-eyed when she pulls back. Santana’s vicious to just about everyone, but no one’s even been this soft with Mandy before.
Mandy leans in and kisses Santana’s lips. It’s reciprocated in an instant, Santana’s arms wrapping around Mandy, holding her up and holding her close.
…
They fall asleep with their clothes on. Neither wants to get up or get on with their day when morning comes, but Santana has class and Mandy has work, and they can’t hide in this box of a dorm room forever.
“Whatever this was,” Santana says, all dressed, before she opens the door unto the hallway, unto the world. “Whether you’re just experimenting, or just needed comfort, or…” Santana shifts weight between her feet, hugging her purse close to her with one arm. “Or you want something more… I’m okay with it.”
“I don’t know what I want,” Mandy says, instead of, ‘I can never have what I want.’
…
“I’m tired of this gay panic shit,” slurs Santana in a drunken voicemail after two weekends of Mandy turning down ever text message invite.
Here’s the thing, though, Mandy’s not so bothered with making out with another woman part. What she is bothered with is that she felt something. See, there are some types of rejections people don’t like to deal with twice.
…
Mandy never expects for Santana to come find her in the Southside, until she does, because then it makes complete sense. Santana storming down the sidewalk at her is like a mirage in Mandy’s humdrum life.
Mandy catches her arm when she gets to her. “This isn’t a safe neighborhood.”
“I didn’t grow up in a safe neighborhood, chica,” Santana says back. She eyes Mandy critically. “Glad to see you’re not dead.”
“You thought I was dead?”
“You stopped talking to me,” Santana says, “And you have a boyfriend who beats you up. There’s two and two…”
Mandy crosses her arms. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?” Santana dares, raising her eyebrows. “Like the truth.”
Mandy grits her teeth. “It’s not that simple.”
Santana releases a sigh through her nostrils; if she was a dragon, she’d be breathing fire. “Look… I’m getting my own apartment here in Chicago, for summer. If you ever need somewhere to go. For a night, or longer…”
“Sure.”
“I’ll text you the address.”
“Cool.”
“I’ll go now.”
Santana gets three struts away in her heels when Mandy calls after her.
“Wait, San…”
Santana stops, turns, crosses her arms over her stomach. Mandy licks her lips because they feel chapped. “It’s not,” Mandy says, “It’s not, y’know, fucking panic, okay. It’s me. I’m no good.” She shrugs. She wants to laugh, wants to cry. “My life’s fucked up.”
Santana raises an eyebrow. “You think I’m scared of fucked up?”
…
It takes two months for anything to happen, and then Mandy’s knocking at a door with a duffle bag over her shoulder.
Santana opens that door, leans against the frame, looks fucking happy to see Mandy.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
Mandy bites her bottom lip, then gives in, just smiles. “Still have room?”
Santana pushes the door open wide. “For you, Mandy Milkovich, always.”