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I
“Eywa ngahu.”
It takes him by surprise when she says it. For a second she’s scared she’s messed up the pronunciation and stumbles to find a way to explain what she was trying to do.
“It means –”
“Goodbye, I know.” Sam’s incredulous smile makes the time she has spent online searching dictionaries on weird Avatar blogs so worth it. “Since when do you know Na’Vi?”
It is a fair question. When he talks that strange made up nerd language Quinn thinks it’s adorable but it’s way too apparent she’s clueless about what he is actually saying. She assumes it’s mostly nice things like “I love you” or “you look pretty today” but she’s never entirely sure. Well, at least up until last night. She still doesn’t exactly know how she had ended up typing Na’Vi easy dictionary in her laptop after finishing her homework. Maybe she was curious to understand Sam better, or maybe she just wanted to impress him. Either way, it made an alarm go off in her head: why was she so eager to do this for a guy she wasn’t even sure she really loved?
After hours of scrolling through endless rants about how Avatars had sex or why they were that shade of blue, she had finally found a pretty good basic dictionary.
“I’m full of surprises,” Quinn says satisfied, looking up at his pleased expression. Sam’s grip on her lower back tightens, pulling her closer to him. He kisses her slow and she lets him. It feels so right: just the two of them, standing on her front porch, holding each other. When he leans back, Quinn fixes his blond hair and lets her long fingers rest on his cheeks. She wants to tell him another sentence she has learnt last night.
Nga yawne lu oer
It means I love you, or as she had found out you beloved are to me, which doesn’t really make any sense in English but so does Quinn’s hesitation in telling him. It should be simple: she likes him, she likes kissing him, she likes how his hand fits into hers, how awful his impressions are, and how he’s the only one who truly makes her feel like she’s worthy to be loved.
But she can’t. Not yet. Her walls are still high and she’s not ready to throw them down for him.
So she pulls back, letting her arm fall back to her side, and smiles as she watches Sam walk to his red pick-up truck. He leans out of the window when the engine starts and shouts something that makes Quinn’s heart flip just as the first time he had said it.
“I love you,”
She doesn’t say it back.
II
Quinn’s sitting in the back of the choir room, pretending to listen to whatever Santana is bitching to her and Brittany about while Mr. Schue is trying to convince them to do another Journey song (again) and Rachel is arguing about getting the solo (again). In this afternoon monotony, Quinn finds herself looking at her now official boyfriend, sitting right beside her.
She twists the ring on her finger (a habit she’s developed in the last couple of weeks) wondering what he’s thinking about. She notices the comic Sam has hidden in his lap. His face is all scrunched up like when he’s really concentrating on something and her cheeks turn bright red when he looks up at her and smiles, catching her by surprise. She returns it and he casually lets his right arm wrap around her shoulder.
Their sweet exchange is suddenly interrupted by a fake barf.
“Keep it in your pants Fabray,” Santana teases her, earning a furious glance from Quinn and a ‘shut up’ through gritted teeth. Sam doesn’t seem to notice, too caught up in whatever superhero he’s obsessed with this month.
The bell rings after two agonizing minutes of Finn and Rachel singing yet another sappy duet and Quinn gets up, taking Sam’s hand to lead him out of the classroom.
He walks her back to her locker to put down a few books before heading home. “I was thinking we could do something tonight,” he says leaning on it, “My parents are taking my siblings camping for the long weekend but I’m staying here because of the game.”
“Sure. What did you have in mind?” Quinn replies with her heart beating fast in her chest. He hesitates for a second, probably pondering the options in his head. Their make out sessions have been getting pretty intense lately but she has no intention of making that mistake again. She’s positive most of the guys who ask her to come over just want to get in her pants.
But Sam isn’t most guys, “How about dinner at Breadstix? Then we can watch a movie at my house and if you want you can stay over, or I can just drive you home.” He gives her a kind smile, “No pressure.”
Quinn closes her locker before sinking into his arms. “Okay. But we’re not watching Avatar again,” she requests against his chest. Sam’s laugh vibrates in her ear. “Deal,” he promises.
“Evans!” a guy from his football team calls him on the other side of the hallway, “You coming or what?”
Sam throws a quick goodbye at Quinn before heading toward him but she stops him and grabs his arm. “I think you forgot something,” she complains latching both hands behind his neck. He looks at her confused. “How do you say ‘give me a kiss’ in Na’Vi?” she asks standing on her toes.
A wide smile stretches on his mouth, “Kä me pom.”
“Then,” Quinn says leaning closer, “Kä me pom.”
Their lips meet for an instant, both of them smiling into the kiss. “I’ll pick you up at seven.” Sam pledges before sprinting to the group of football players heading to the gym.
III
“C’mon Sam, we’ve been walking for like fifteen minutes! Where are you taking me?”
She can hear him laugh in her ear as he makes her turn yet another corner. His hands are still firmly set on her eyes and she can’t see anything. “Just a couple more steps and we’re there, don’t worry.” Quinn huffs in annoyance but deep down she’s really excited: today is her birthday, and even though she usually doesn’t like to celebrate it, she can’t wait to see what Sam has planned for her. She feels like a little kid on Christmas, waiting to sprint down the stairs to see if Santa has left presents under the tree.
Sam suddenly slows down, guiding her to what she feels like is the center of the room. Judging by the sound of their feet on the ground, they must be in the auditorium
Quinn smiles when Sam stops, “Please tell me you didn’t drag me all the way here just to sing a song.”
He chuckles and lets his hands slide off her face, revealing a picnic blanket and a huge sign that reads “Happy Birthday Quinn!” in different colors. Her mouth opens a little bit, staring at the sight before her. No one has ever done anything like this for her before.
“Stacy and Stevie helped me with it,” he says pointing to the sign, “They even checked my spelling errors.” Quinn can’t help but laugh and take the hand he is offering her, sitting down on the blanket.
There’s this warm feeling in her chest, the one she has only felt with Finn before him. She finds it difficult to explain, it just feels like he’s safe. Sam is her safe place. “My mom made the cake,” he explains all excited, “I wanted to help but I figured she’d do a better job if I just stayed out of the kitchen anyw–” Quinn kisses him and the rest of his words die in his throat. She kisses him because she wants to, because it’s the only thing that makes sense right now. She kisses him because she loves him.
And so she tells him, “I love you.”
She wouldn’t have guessed Sam’s reaction in a million years: he blinks slowly and actually pinches himself. “I’m sorry,” he says still looking extremely caught off guard, “Did you just say you love me?”
Quinn bites her lower lip and shrugs. “Guess I did.”
“I thought it was supposed to be your birthday not mine,”
She rolls her eyes at him, pretending to be annoyed, but the smile plastered on her face tells a whole other story. He delicately runs his thumb over her cheek, “I love you too. Ftxozäri aylrrtok ngaru.”
Quinn lifts her gaze up to meet his, confused about what he just said to her. She guesses it’s Na’Vi but she is still struggling with ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ and that seems way too complicated to be either of those things. Sam blushes and apologizes, “Oh yeah sorry, when I get excited my Na’Vi just comes out. It means happy birthday.” Then he leans down to kiss her again before offering her a piece of cake.
“A very happy birthday indeed,” Quinn says taking the first bite and looking at Sam.
IV
It’s late, almost two o’clock according to her phone. Quinn sighs while scrolling through another crappy online translator. She types fast, her heart hurting with every word she writes down.
I’m sorry I cheated on you with Finn. I love you. Please forgive me.
While she waits for the website to load the translation, a million images come to her mind. Memories of afternoons in her bedroom and dinners at Breadstix, of football games and kisses under mistletoe, of promise rings and astronomy rooms. She thinks about the way he picked her up after Cheerios’ practice, with his bike helmet under his arm and his stupid Star Wars shirts. The one he had bought her for her seventeenth birthday with Han Solo saying “I know” sits at the back of her closet. She wonders if he’ll ever wear the matching one with Princess Leia saying “I love you” again.
Her phone loads the new page and Quinn waits, trying to swallow the knot in her throat. She moves her hand to play with her ring like she has done a thousand times before but finds her finger is empty. The realization hits her back all at once. Right, she thinks holding back the tears she knows will come anyway, he took it back.
As she had expected, the crappy translator is indeed crappy. The only thing that translates it’s the very last part. “Oeru txoa livu. Forgive me.” She reads carefully.
In the next ten minutes she opens her chat with Sam five times and closes it another five. The last message he has sent glows in the dark of her room. It’s something cute, about a song that made him think of her. Quinn looks at the picture of his contact: it’s the two of them in front of the cinema, where they had their first kiss after seeing some kind of superhero movie. She still remembers the way he had smiled the whole walk home, holding her hand tight, like she could slip away at any second.
She rolls on the other side of the bed and decides it doesn’t matter if she’ll make a fool of herself. So she presses send and waits. Those weird words she has just written stare back at her for an awfully long time before some dots appear on the phone’s screen. Quinn sits up, her heart thumping loudly in her chest. The bubbles disappear and appear again several times before delivering a message.
Go to bed Quinn
Then he’s gone and she falls back on her pillow, burying her face in it. When the tears come, she lets them. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself, I didn’t even love him anyway.
V
The pile stacked on her desk seems endless as Quinn signs yet another paper before turning her attention to the doorframe, where her husband is gently leaning on.
“They are finally sleeping,” Sam says with a tired expression on his face. Being parents isn’t quite like how they had planned: for one, they had expected one baby and they had gotten two instead. Quinn still remembers the fear in her heart when the doctor had told her she was pregnant with twins. That night she had turned to Sam with tears in her eyes, “I don’t think I can be a good mother to one baby, how am I supposed to manage with two?” He had held her and they had talked until Quinn had realized that, no matter what, Sam was always going to be there for her.
She stretches in her chair and yawns, “Thank you. I promise you by the end of the week I will be done with this house and then I can put them to sleep for a change.” She’s been working so much lately, trying to sell a house Downtown to a middle aged couple who is very demanding and draining all the energies she has left. Sam shakes his head and just smiles at her. Quinn knows he understands her need to get back to work after staying with them for almost three straight months.
He extends a hand to her and she gets up to take it. It still makes her feel like a teenager whenever they walk around holding hands.
“Santana called about brunch for Saturday and she told me Rachel’s going to be there too,” Sam absently says as he leads her to the couch in the living room. Quinn settles curled up next to him, picks up the remote and starts scrolling through Netflix, “Oh, I thought she was still out of town at that Broadway retreat with Jesse.” They were a rather odd couple in her opinion but she loved Rachel, and if he made her happy then she could manage to sit through their monthly musical dinners complete with singing waiters.
“I think they got back yester–” Sam suddenly stops and points at the TV excitedly, “They added Avatar!” he turns to his wife, pleading like a little child, “Can we please watch it? Please?” Quinn’s mouth curves up a bit and she lets out a laugh: he sounds exactly like little Evan whenever he wants something from her, he even has the same look in his blue eyes. She finds it a bit ironic that he’s still obsessed with Avatar after all these years but she gives up easily, too exhausted to force him to watch yet another episode of How to Get Away with Murder.
“Fine,” she replies, “It is kind of our movie after all.” It’s true, she can still remember their first conversation in that dirty school bathroom when he had tried to impress her with his Na’Vi.
“Yeah, I guess so. Do you recall what I said to you while you cleaned red slushie from my hair?”
Quinn looks up at him amused, “That I had pretty eyes.” She battles her eyelashes and he bends down laughing to press a gentle kiss on her lips. She enjoys the comfort that comes with it and lets her hands find his cheeks. When they part, Sam smiles back at her and tells her again like many years ago: “Lor menari.”
She’s about to kiss him again when a familiar cry erupts from the first room down the hallway. Quinn sighs before standing up from the couch, “I’ll get her.” Their daughter has been having a hard time falling asleep lately unless she’s in the presence of both her parents. As soon as she gets to her room, Drizzle quiets down. Quinn picks her up like she’s done a million times before and brings her back to the living room. She sits back into Sam’s arms and starts singing softly. Finn’s blanket is wrapped around her tiny hands, offering her something to hold on to as her mother slowly rocks her back to sleep.
Soon enough, Sam is sleeping too, snoring soundly beside her. Quinn’s lips stretch into a smile as she closes her eyes. She would have never thought a stupid movie about blue aliens would end up bringing so much happiness in her life.