Fic: Kiss Me Goodbye (I'm Defying Gravity), for milk_and_glass
Title: Kiss Me Goodbye (I'm Defying Gravity)
Author: narceus
Recipient: milk_and_glass
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5400
Warnings: None
Summary: A tale of two cities. And two women, two lifetimes, and two cups of coffee.
Author's Note: My prompt was Shelby/Rachel - “I wish I could take care of you.” milk_and_glass also mentioned hugging and crying and h/c, and, um...well, we've got some hugging in here.
This was actually a really interesting prompt for me to deal with. Rachel's always been a difficult character for me, and the Rachel-Shelby relationship in particular, but 'I Am Unicorn' gave me the window I needed to start getting it. If I had this fic to write all over again, it would be three times as long, involve a lot more Jesse St. James and some Shelby/April, and include actual dialogue, but overall I'm happy with how it turned out. I hope you are too!
Title, obviously, comes from 'Defying Gravity' from Wicked, sung by Rachel and Kurt in Season 1 and foreshadowing their whole friendship to come, originally performed, of course, by none other than Idina Menzel. A thousand beta thanks to needsmoregreen for grammar and language, and to crown_of_weeds for making sure everything made sense.
This goes AU before S3, so Shelby never came back to McKinley to lead the Troubletones.
It starts like this:
There's an ad in the paper. Three lines, less than a hundred and sixty characters. If it were sixteen years later, it would fit into a single text.
That's how it starts, if by 'it' you mean the brief and entirely passionless relationship between Shelby Corcoran and the Misters Hiram and Leroy Berry. There's an ad in the paper, in the middle of listings selling litters of puppies and looking for lightly-used stereos, and Shelby Corcoran sold her stereo last week.
It starts with three lines typed on a page of newsprint on the morning after the coldest night in Lima's entire history. It ends exactly eleven months later, in the middle of the night in the middle of December with Christmas lights strung from every tree and lamp post like stars hanging in midair. It ends with just another couple of lines on paper, this time scrawled in blue pen, a little wobbly from the painkillers.
Yes, if by 'it' you still mean the relationship between Shelby and the good Misters Berry, that's how it all ends.
The last time goes like this:
There's a theater in New York City where a Tony-winning play has finally closed down in disgrace. There are racks of costumes that need to be inventoried and dealt with and props to be returned to wherever they were rented from or otherwise got rid of. There is a tray holding two half-cold, half-empty coffees in their paper sleeves. There's a toddler sleeping on a broken-down old couch.
This is the end of everything that began with that one little ad in the paper, if by 'everything' you mean nothing at all. Nothing ever really ends. They're standing in the middle of a theater, after all. Every time the curtain goes down, there's only so long before it rises back up again.
Right here, right now, this thing between them may be ending for good, but it's more probably destined for some kind of low-budget Midwestern community theater revival performance sooner or later. Maybe even in an actual community theater in some Midwestern town, though Shelby hopes not. At least one of them will hopefully never be playing those shows again.
What's ending here didn't begin with a classified ad, or a contract, or a turkey baster in a hotel room. It began twenty one years ago, almost to the day, in the early parts of an August so hot that Shelby could barely stand to move. That hadn't stilled the thing inside of her-the person inside of her, she'd realized for the first time, after she felt the baby kick. Before that, she was just renting out space.
That was the first time that Shelby Corcoran thought about the tiny, squirming little bundle still all curled up inside of her, and thought of herself as a mother.
New York is like this:
Tall tall tall height like nothing Ohio has ever seen, surrounding (choking) enfolding her like a long-needed embrace.
Noise everywhere, a constant symphony backdrop to every single day, clanging and dissonant, harsh like the band hasn't bothered to tune up, out of tempo more often than not, demanding that she find her own melody and join in.
The force of people on all sides, all of them surging forward to their own beat, rushing, reaching, wanting with every waking breath, constantly moving forward towards their own wants and needs, urging her forwards towards her own in the press of the crowd.
New York is like singing so hard that you'd be gasping for air if you weren't too much of a professional to ever let your deep, perfectly-timed breathing ever slip out of your control.
Rachel's mornings begin at 6 AM with vocal warm-ups that aways become a duet by 6:15. She makes the coffee while Kurt coaxes the blender, the refrigerator, and the tiny stove into churning out breakfast. She's showered, dressed, and out the door by 7:45 for class at nine.
She sings until she's exhausted, studies techniques to learn the finer points of acting, takes notes in her other classes like a machine with excellent handwriting. On her lunch breaks, her afternoons, her weekends, she goes to auditions, and rehearses until she's nearly-but never actually-hoarse, and later than that, waits tables with the friendliest smile, by that point in the day, that she can muster.
She and Kurt live on leftovers and takeout, on vegan casseroles made once a week and frozen in single-serving chunks to be thawed out in the microwave at eight or nine or ten at night. They see each other in bits and in passing. Every so often they collapse onto the lumpy futon in front of the TV and slump together until their shoulders touch, blinking blearily at some old movie they can both recite the lines to in their sleep. Whoever wakes up first is responsible for making sure the other one gets in to bed.
She has a minor lead in the school's spring production this year, and promises of more to come. April had offered her a role in CrossRhodes, but it would have conflicted. With everything.
Shelby's mornings begin by 6:15, before Beth can decide she's done with bed for the night and make her escape. She pours Beth's cereal and peels a banana with one hand and jiggles Beth on her hip with the other, hits 'brew' on the coffee maker with the back of her knuckles and hopes she remembered to set up the grounds last night.
On weekends they go to the park in the morning, if it's warm, to the library or a museum or just stay home if it's not. Around eleven, Beth naps and Shelby tries to. The circles under her eyes are getting darker. It's a good thing actors are so used to thick-caked makeup that they don't even notice it any more.
On weekdays, it's daycare playgroup at the JCC for Beth, and off to the theater for Shelby by ten to ride herd on a chorus that her old pack of Ohio high school students could put to shame. Shelby's sat in on playgroup a few times, when she actually dared take a morning off at the theater, but she doesn't dare do it often. The four-year-olds are better behaved.
April is legitimately insane, or maybe that's just the alcohol talking, but she's also the only showrunner on Broadway who'd let a toddler backstage during a sold out Saturday night just because that toddler's mother knew Will Schuester for a little while. Shelby misses iron precision, perfect lock-step unison, slavish dedication. Here the director hates the head costumer and the lighting crew can't have a civil conversation with the stage manager, and Shelby's chorus has spent too many years thinking of themselves as individuals to ever make a real unit. This show tumbles a little more into chaos every night.
Lima, Ohio is like this:
Vast and flat and wide endless sprawl of houses with yards big enough to play catch in and street after street after strip mall after street, with nothing to block the blue of the sky but trees.
The hum of cicadas in summer, the whir of the lawnmower, the snowblower, the fifteen-year-old car trundling down the street with the broken muffler. The sound of her own footsteps on the sidewalk, following her wherever she goes.
The same people at the same coffee shops and Wal-marts and bowling alleys and Breadstix. The same eyes that meet, across counters and dashboards and school desks, holding whole familiar conversations in the arch of an eyebrow and the nod of a head, moving on to see each other again tomorrow, or next week, or the day after that.
Lima is like an old battered recliner or a sofa with a groove worn into the seat, molded perfectly to your butt to settle you in comfortably, just broken-down enough to give you a backache if you sit for too long.
When Shelby was thirty-two, she won her first Nationals trophy. She came home and used the money from her booster club bonuses to remodel her kitchen. The contractor claimed it would be six weeks; Shelby spent a dozen mornings tracking down parts and materials herself, and most of her afternoons supervising personally with a combination of hefty cash prizes and the same discipline that had carried her students all the way past every other high school show choir in the country. It took four.
She gave her choir kids those four weeks off, as a reward for a job well done, then spent the rest of the summer in seventeen-hour rehearsals to make up for it.
They held freshman tryouts the weekend of the fourth of July. Anyone who wasn't willing to miss a few barbecues and fireworks to audition didn't belong anywhere near VA in the first place.
Jesse was a skinny kid with big eyes and a huge voice, and an even bigger ego. It took him two and a half years to earn a solo. Shelby made sure he earned it, even if he was her favorite from the beginning. Jesse didn't think he needed anyone or anything, but he latched on to her every thought or command as quick as it took to blink.
Shelby didn't do mommy for those kids. She did drill sergeant. It wasn't her job to cosset and pet and turn them into healthy, well-adjusted little adults. It was her job to turn them into a well-oiled machine that spit fire and flame and bled perfection. She didn't dry tears or hold hands or give kisses and hugs. She gave orders, and the occasional sparing compliment only when she couldn't possibly avoid it.
Jesse didn't expect anything else, and he certainly never offered her anything beyond utmost respect and blind obedience in return. She could put up with him, for that.
When Rachel was fourteen, she lost her first solo in a dance recital. She came home in tears, while Papa patted her on the shoulder and refilled her glass of water, and Daddy raged over biased instructors deliberately disadvantaging their students to further their own political agendas. The girl who'd taken the place that should be Rachel's was four inches taller, with blue eyes and a perfect nose, and a mom who spent five or ten minutes chatting with the instructor every week after practice when she came to pick her daughter up.
Two days later, Daddy called the dance school and informed them that Rachel was dropping out of the recital entirely. Papa stood at his elbow with one hand on his shoulder, squeezing every time his voice hardened too much.
There was another dance studio in Westerville, and Rachel's new high school offered dance as an elective anyway. Lima was a small-minded town full of small-minded people, and nobody minded driving the extra distance to get Rachel a teacher who was willing to recognize her talent.
She needed the extra boost, truth be told. High school was harder than Rachel had been led to expect. Of course, her dads always said, it would always be hard for the people around her to accept her when her magnificence challenged their insecurities. Bullying is the clearest sign of jealousy. Every person at McKinley High must be ragingly jealous of Rachel, by that token. Stars aren't meant to walk among the people. Rachel just had to reapply herself to shining even brighter, until she burned so fiercely nobody could look away.
She brought home her first C that year, on a Chemistry test the same week as her vocal showcase with her voice instructor. She brought it to the dinner table the night her teacher passed the tests back, hesitant and worried, and burst out with it over the tofu red curry.
“I thought you were taking Biology this year,” Daddy said.
“Do better for next time,” Papa said, and Rachel hunched inward under the tone of his disapproval. “Now, what are we doing about those tickets for Gypsy in Cincinnati next month? I can get time off on the twenty-seventh if you can handle a Thursday show, so Rachel can still make her tap lessons on Saturday afternoon.”
Shelby turned down the offer to go back and work in Lima, during Rachel's senior year. She'd found a niche here, a job doing something so very nearly the job she loves, a handful of friends even crazier than she must be, a theater that ran with more choppy confusion when Beth wasn't backstage at least twice a week. It didn't matter. They would have met up again anyway.
It didn't happen Rachel and Kurt's very first week in town, when Will encouraged them to look April up and let her show them around. It might have, but Beth had the sniffles so Shelby traded off with the head choreographer for who had 'drag April home drunk' duty that night. It didn't happen when Shelby ducked out of rehearsals for an afternoon here or there for an audition she'd never mention to anyone back at the theater, just to see if she still had it at all. Shelby didn't think too hard about Rachel making it to New York, the year she knew it would happen. Rachel didn't think about Shelby very much at all.
They ran into each other in the middle of a coffee shop three blocks off Time Square, but it would have happened sooner or later. Jesse St. James would have come out to harass Shelby for a job and spent half the time following Rachel with his big eyes and big talent. Rachel would have been dashing into the Manhattan JCC to drop off a towering plate of cookies for a bake sale just as Shelby was leaving from dropping off Beth. Kurt would have been reading up on CrossRhodes out of pure, morbid curiosity, or Rachel would have decided to suck it up and go in for an audition at the one show where personal connections might do her some good, if April was sober enough to remember who she was.
It doesn't matter how that part happened. It wasn't a start or an end or even a real middle, just a pause button bumped into restarting old action that had never actually finished itself.
Here are two things you didn't know about Rachel Berry's life:
She's had a recurring nightmare since her first bout of tonsillitis, when she was eleven years old, that she loses her voice. She stands on a street corner in the middle of New York City trying to get anybody to listen to her, anyone at all, but as hard as she tries to shout, her throat won't make a single noise. She waves her arms frantically, desperately, but people just keep walking past.
Sooner or later, people she knows always show up-her dads, her friends, Mr. Schuester. Sometimes Miss Pillsberry or Principal Figgins show up. Once, it was Josh Groban and Olivia Newton-John. It always makes Rachel try to scream even louder. She never runs after them-it's dream logic, it never even occurs to her. She's rooted to the spot. Sometimes they even look right at her, but they just keep walking by.
Shelby shows up in the dream sometimes, but Rachel doesn't have it as much any more. At some point during junior year, halfway through the dream, 'Barbra Streisand' started playing and all of imaginary Time Square started dancing, and Rachel was too busy trying to keep up with the steps she hadn't learned to worry about her voice any more. A while after that, she stood in imaginary Central Park trying to shout after Finn and Quinn, when it occurred to her that Finn and Quinn hadn't dated in over a year. And neither one of them would ever just walk right by her, even if she and Finn broke up again and Quinn went back to being her arch-nemesis who only stopped to tell Rachel to go jump into an active volcano.
The second thing is that, despite being vegan, she makes the best chicken soup either of her roommates have ever tasted. She only makes it when one of them is sick, but it turns out that an offer of Rachel's chicken soup is one of only three things in the world that will get Blaine to admit he is sick, so it's well worth it.
When Rachel gets sick, Kurt boils down his own vegetable stock and makes her something with carrots and saffron and toast. It's nothing like the canned minestrone her fathers always made, but she eats the whole bowl every time.
Here are two things you didn't know about Shelby Corcoran's life:
When she was coaching Vocal Adrenaline, she lived for two years off of power bars, smoothies, and the occasional rice cake. After all the hard work paid off and she finally got them the Nationals trophy, she figured she'd change things, at least a little. The new kitchen came complete with a top of the line stainless steel fridge, one with a massive freezer she promptly filled with frozen pizza and Lean Cuisine. After that, she even turned her oven on once or twice, for the frozen pizzas.
There wasn't time for anything more. There wasn't any point, anyway; in New York it had been nothing but peanut butter, ramen, and the caloric content of diet energy drinks. The smoothies were a step up. It wasn't like Shelby needed any four-course gourmet dinners or fancy eggs and toast for breakfast. It wasn't like she was cooking for anyone else, anyway.
There were two months after Beth was born, between Regionals and Nationals, where Shelby spiked every smoothie she made with caffeine powder and ginseng, put Jesse in charge of nearly every rehearsal, and became a gourmet buyer and preparator of baby formula more or less overnight. Things calmed down by summer. Shelby broke in her kitchen by learning to make baby food in her smoothie blender.
The second thing about Shelby is, when she was a little girl, her parents never came to a single concert or recital in her entire life. She left for New York right after high school and never meant to come back.
It took two or three times living in New York before Shelby came to terms with the idea that she would never make it as an actress herself. She has to pull her heart out from her chest and let it go walking around in her students, her choir-her daughter-to get any part of herself out under that spotlight.
There are only two cities in the world, for them. Oh, there are side stops and suburbs. Carmel is in Akron and Rachel was born in a hospital in Toledo. Shelby came inches from buying a small three-bedroom house in north Jersey, a few years before Rachel will find herself on stage in a small theater in Philadelphia for a two-season run. But Lima, Ohio and New York, New York sit like two poles of a magnet, opposite ends of a string tied to each of them, pulling one way and then the other without cease.
New York is the fire and the fight and the hope, Lima the earth and the hearth and the home. Lima is the roots, New York the sky.
They are each other, in so many ways, Shelby Corcoran and Rachel Berry. Rachel understands that now. They can know each other in ways that no friend or lover will ever quite manage to do.
They'll meet each other again. When there are only two towns in all the world, it's inevitable.
This is how Shelby Corcoran and Rachel Berry navigate around each other for a year and a half, while Rachel struggles her way through one of the most exclusive musical theater programs on the planet and Shelby struggles just to keep her musical afloat.
They have coffee, sometimes, maybe once a month. Shelby usually brings Beth, and Beth is four and doesn't sit still for much, so their talks never last all that long. They make plans at least twice as often as they actually keep them, but something is always coming up. Shelby has to get in an extra rehearsal with one of the understudies because the actor playing Stanly Glover fell off the stage and won't be walking for a week. Rachel has a final the next day. Beth has a cold. Finn is in town.
Shelby shows up for some of Rachel's performances through the school. She can't make all of them. Rachel doesn't even invite her, not really.
It starts with two pairs of same-colored eyes that meet across a crowded Starbucks, a start, and an “Oh!”
“Shelby,” says Rachel, cautious, cordial, and,
“Hi,” says Shelby, tugging Beth a little closer to her side. “Rachel. It's good to see you. How have you been?”
“I've been very good, actually,” says Rachel, and means without you. “I didn't realize you were in New York.”
“Yeah,” says Shelby. “Since a few months after Beth was born, actually. We're doing pretty well, too,” and tries to mean the without you at least half as hard as Rachel does.
Beth has nightmares sometimes, like any four-year-old does, and Shelby is always up and down the hall in an instant to turn on the light and let her cry. Shelby doesn't really sleep much anyway.
Rachel calls her dads twice a week like clockwork and tells them about every rehearsal she's had. She and Quinn email links to current news articles and funny stories about their classmates whenever they get the chance.
CrossRhodes closes down in a catastrophe of mismanaged funding the summer before Rachel's third year in New York. Nobody wants to be responsible for going back to the theater and breaking down the set, but what can you do.
Shelby ends up toting Beth along and working there at night, cataloging props and examining costumes for tears. She sings while she works. There's nobody else around, or there shouldn't be, and at this point, Beth can sleep through any amount of music so long as it's in key.
“Too late for second-guessing,” she sings. “Too late to go back to sleep. It's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes-”
“And leap,” comes from behind her. Shelby stops, a rueful little smile spreading across her lips. Rachel hits the notes like she was born for them.
“How'd you get in?” Shelby asks, turning around. Rachel's got two cups from Starbucks on a tray, a tentative look on her face.
“The security guy recognized me,” she says, a little sheepish. “I think they got tired of me sneaking in.”
“Probably,” Shelby agrees. “One of those for me?”
They sit on upturned crates, careful not to spill on any of the fabric strewn across the room, voices kept just a little low so as not to wake Beth.
“So you're going again,” Rachel says. She's always been blunt. Or, well-she's been blunt as long as Shelby's known her, which is barely any time at all, really.
“Not necessarily,” Shelby says. “We could stay. Beth'll be in kindergarten soon, I'll have more time, I've been developing contacts, I could find another job, at an actual respectable production this time. This doesn't have to be--”
“Please don't say you'll stay for me,” says Rachel. “Please.”
“I thought we could spend more time together, now that I'm not working. You could finally teach me to make that chicken soup you were talking about. I could hook you up with a couple of casting directors I know, we could-”
“Look, Shelby,” Rachel says. “I wish I could take care of you, but I can't. I've got my hands full just trying to take care of my friends and my dads and myself.”
“I thought that was supposed to be my job,” says Shelby. “I'm the parent, right?”
“Then you should have thought of that when I actually needed you,” Rachel snaps. “When I was nine, and I was so lonely I would have done anything in the world for a little brother or even a hamster, and my dads just put me in another ballet class, or when I was eleven and I needed a mom to explain about periods, and bras, and everything that a mom is supposed to know about.”
“Honey, you know why I couldn't be there. I wanted to, I just wasn't allowed,” Shelby says.
“How about when I was fifteen and my boyfriend threw eggs at my face,” Rachel says, “and I was still convinced that the only thing in the world that anybody could ever love me for was my voice?”
“Rachel,” Shelby says, reaching out to take one of her hands. “I'm sorry. I was scared. Leaving then was the wrong choice, I know that. But I'm here now.”
“When I was sixteen I almost got a nose job,” Rachel says, apropos of nothing.
“I don't understand,” says Shelby.
“My dad was all for it if I thought it would help me get more roles later on, and my other dad would have paid for anything to make me happy if he wouldn't have to clean up afterwards,” Rachel says. “Now I know it would have been a huge mistake, but it took some of my friends and my ex-boyfriend just to convince me not to do it.”
“You've got smart friends,” Shelby says. She's heard about some of them, Kurt who always bitches about dirty dishes and Blaine who always leaves his shoes in the middle of the living room, a couple of others. Rachel nods, looks down at her hands.
“Half of the people I graduated with never call their parents unless they absolutely have to,” she says. “Quinn's family kicked her out before her mom took her back, Santana's parents didn't really talk to her when she lived at home, Blaine's dad still hasn't forgiven him for being gay. I got lucky, I guess. My dads really do love me even though they're not perfect.”
“Being a parent is a hard job,” says Shelby, glancing instinctively over to make sure Beth's still napping peaceably on the couch. “I know a lot more about it now than I did five years ago.”
“And I know a lot more about how to get by without one,” says Rachel. “I wanted a mom for such a long time. I thought you'd be able to do everything my fathers couldn't. And then I found you, and you went away again, and I realized I had to learn to do all of those things my parents couldn't do on my own.”
“Rachel...” Shelby tries, and Rachel shakes her head.
“I don't need you to take care of me,” she says. “I can take care of myself. I learned how to grow up without you, and you have to go and be a mom and figure out how to live with yourself without me.”
“Hey, I've been taking care of myself for more than forty years, here,” Shelby says.
“When was the last time you had a good night's sleep?” asks Rachel.
“Nineteen ninety-three,” Shelby admits.
“You should take Beth back to Ohio,” Rachel says. “If you want to be somebody's mom so much, be hers. You don't have to turn your glee club into heartless, mindless robots like-”
“Like me?” Shelby asks, and Rachel looks taken aback for just a second.
“I don't think you're heartless,” Rachel says. “You love Beth. You just can't...”
“I want to try,” says Shelby, and Rachel bites her lip and looks away.
“I hope you're happy,” Shelby sings softly. “Now that you're choosing this.”
“Me, too,” interjects Rachel, just as incapable of resisting a clear opening as Shelby always has been.
“I hope it brings you bliss, I really hope you get it, and you don't live to regret it.”
And then it breaks down, hesitantly, neither of them quite willing to take the Elphaba part to its full conclusion.
“Everyone deserves a chance to fly,” Rachel says gently. “Both of us, without each other.”
Shelby smiles, a little bitter, but better than tears. “You're going to soar, you know. And I don't care what you say, I'm buying front row seats for your Broadway debut.”
“Next time you coach a choir that makes it to Nationals, I'll drag both my roommates with me,” Rachel promises.
Beth makes a little noise, on the couch, that means she's starting to wake up from her nap. Shelby looks over reflexively, and Rachel puts down her coffee and stands up.
“I should go,” Rachel says. “I promised Mercedes we'd Skype tonight.”
“Okay,” says Shelby, standing with her, and suddenly their arms are awkward, half-reaching, half hesitating, unsure.
Finally Rachel steps forward, taking Shelby into a tight hug. “Take care of yourself,” she says over Shelby's shoulder.
“You, too,” says Shelby, and hugs back.
This is how it continues: Rachel dashes the tears away when she gets out on the sidewalk in front of the theater, then heads briskly towards the subway. She gets back to her apartment to find her roommates making out against the kitchen counter and nothing started for dinner, the whole place so full of August heat you could steam vegetables just by leaving them to sit out. They end up ordering from the Thai place down the street, and Rachel spends half of dinner laughing too hard to chew as Blaine regales them with stories from his summer job.
Shelby clears up just the pile she'd been working on, sweeps Beth up into her arms just as Beth starts fussing with hunger. Somebody else will finish it, or Shelby will come back in tomorrow, but for tonight she's going home. There's a premade whole wheat pizza crust in the fridge, and she lets Beth get up on a stool next to the kitchen island to help spread the tomato sauce and sprinkle on the cheese. They get up on the couch to eat tonight. Shelby puts on The Wizard of Oz. It's one of Beth's favorites.
It continues with a single plane ride and an endless string of subway trips, with auditions and job applications. It continues with stages and singing, with the occasional date that comes out of nowhere and ends better than it could be hoped. It continues with the Lima sidewalks and the New York City skyline.
It doesn't end. Things like this don't end. They don't begin, not with a baby's kick on a hot summer day or a newspaper ad on the coldest morning of winter, not with a line of failed auditions or a father who cares too much or not enough or a girl who stands at the edge of a stage and lifts her arms and refuses to let anything in the world rain on my parade. They grow, and change, and move apart and come back together, sooner or later.
Someday the choreographer from CrossRhodes will be opening a new show and call Shelby up specifically with a job offer, and it will be back to New York yet another time; or, someday Rachel will come bare inches from finally marrying Finn Hudson and settling in to try raising a family in a town that was, after all, good enough for every one of her parents; or, Beth will insist on moving back to the place she spent her first few years for college and take it upon herself to track Rachel down; or, two pairs of oh-so-similar eyes will meet across a crowded room at another national show choir competition.
Someday Rachel will rest a palm on her own pregnant belly and feel some tiny little person-to-be squirm and kick under her hand. She'll think of Shelby then, for a moment, and then go on.
Author: narceus
Recipient: milk_and_glass
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5400
Warnings: None
Summary: A tale of two cities. And two women, two lifetimes, and two cups of coffee.
Author's Note: My prompt was Shelby/Rachel - “I wish I could take care of you.” milk_and_glass also mentioned hugging and crying and h/c, and, um...well, we've got some hugging in here.
This was actually a really interesting prompt for me to deal with. Rachel's always been a difficult character for me, and the Rachel-Shelby relationship in particular, but 'I Am Unicorn' gave me the window I needed to start getting it. If I had this fic to write all over again, it would be three times as long, involve a lot more Jesse St. James and some Shelby/April, and include actual dialogue, but overall I'm happy with how it turned out. I hope you are too!
Title, obviously, comes from 'Defying Gravity' from Wicked, sung by Rachel and Kurt in Season 1 and foreshadowing their whole friendship to come, originally performed, of course, by none other than Idina Menzel. A thousand beta thanks to needsmoregreen for grammar and language, and to crown_of_weeds for making sure everything made sense.
This goes AU before S3, so Shelby never came back to McKinley to lead the Troubletones.
It starts like this:
There's an ad in the paper. Three lines, less than a hundred and sixty characters. If it were sixteen years later, it would fit into a single text.
That's how it starts, if by 'it' you mean the brief and entirely passionless relationship between Shelby Corcoran and the Misters Hiram and Leroy Berry. There's an ad in the paper, in the middle of listings selling litters of puppies and looking for lightly-used stereos, and Shelby Corcoran sold her stereo last week.
It starts with three lines typed on a page of newsprint on the morning after the coldest night in Lima's entire history. It ends exactly eleven months later, in the middle of the night in the middle of December with Christmas lights strung from every tree and lamp post like stars hanging in midair. It ends with just another couple of lines on paper, this time scrawled in blue pen, a little wobbly from the painkillers.
Yes, if by 'it' you still mean the relationship between Shelby and the good Misters Berry, that's how it all ends.
The last time goes like this:
There's a theater in New York City where a Tony-winning play has finally closed down in disgrace. There are racks of costumes that need to be inventoried and dealt with and props to be returned to wherever they were rented from or otherwise got rid of. There is a tray holding two half-cold, half-empty coffees in their paper sleeves. There's a toddler sleeping on a broken-down old couch.
This is the end of everything that began with that one little ad in the paper, if by 'everything' you mean nothing at all. Nothing ever really ends. They're standing in the middle of a theater, after all. Every time the curtain goes down, there's only so long before it rises back up again.
Right here, right now, this thing between them may be ending for good, but it's more probably destined for some kind of low-budget Midwestern community theater revival performance sooner or later. Maybe even in an actual community theater in some Midwestern town, though Shelby hopes not. At least one of them will hopefully never be playing those shows again.
What's ending here didn't begin with a classified ad, or a contract, or a turkey baster in a hotel room. It began twenty one years ago, almost to the day, in the early parts of an August so hot that Shelby could barely stand to move. That hadn't stilled the thing inside of her-the person inside of her, she'd realized for the first time, after she felt the baby kick. Before that, she was just renting out space.
That was the first time that Shelby Corcoran thought about the tiny, squirming little bundle still all curled up inside of her, and thought of herself as a mother.
New York is like this:
Tall tall tall height like nothing Ohio has ever seen, surrounding (choking) enfolding her like a long-needed embrace.
Noise everywhere, a constant symphony backdrop to every single day, clanging and dissonant, harsh like the band hasn't bothered to tune up, out of tempo more often than not, demanding that she find her own melody and join in.
The force of people on all sides, all of them surging forward to their own beat, rushing, reaching, wanting with every waking breath, constantly moving forward towards their own wants and needs, urging her forwards towards her own in the press of the crowd.
New York is like singing so hard that you'd be gasping for air if you weren't too much of a professional to ever let your deep, perfectly-timed breathing ever slip out of your control.
Rachel's mornings begin at 6 AM with vocal warm-ups that aways become a duet by 6:15. She makes the coffee while Kurt coaxes the blender, the refrigerator, and the tiny stove into churning out breakfast. She's showered, dressed, and out the door by 7:45 for class at nine.
She sings until she's exhausted, studies techniques to learn the finer points of acting, takes notes in her other classes like a machine with excellent handwriting. On her lunch breaks, her afternoons, her weekends, she goes to auditions, and rehearses until she's nearly-but never actually-hoarse, and later than that, waits tables with the friendliest smile, by that point in the day, that she can muster.
She and Kurt live on leftovers and takeout, on vegan casseroles made once a week and frozen in single-serving chunks to be thawed out in the microwave at eight or nine or ten at night. They see each other in bits and in passing. Every so often they collapse onto the lumpy futon in front of the TV and slump together until their shoulders touch, blinking blearily at some old movie they can both recite the lines to in their sleep. Whoever wakes up first is responsible for making sure the other one gets in to bed.
She has a minor lead in the school's spring production this year, and promises of more to come. April had offered her a role in CrossRhodes, but it would have conflicted. With everything.
Shelby's mornings begin by 6:15, before Beth can decide she's done with bed for the night and make her escape. She pours Beth's cereal and peels a banana with one hand and jiggles Beth on her hip with the other, hits 'brew' on the coffee maker with the back of her knuckles and hopes she remembered to set up the grounds last night.
On weekends they go to the park in the morning, if it's warm, to the library or a museum or just stay home if it's not. Around eleven, Beth naps and Shelby tries to. The circles under her eyes are getting darker. It's a good thing actors are so used to thick-caked makeup that they don't even notice it any more.
On weekdays, it's daycare playgroup at the JCC for Beth, and off to the theater for Shelby by ten to ride herd on a chorus that her old pack of Ohio high school students could put to shame. Shelby's sat in on playgroup a few times, when she actually dared take a morning off at the theater, but she doesn't dare do it often. The four-year-olds are better behaved.
April is legitimately insane, or maybe that's just the alcohol talking, but she's also the only showrunner on Broadway who'd let a toddler backstage during a sold out Saturday night just because that toddler's mother knew Will Schuester for a little while. Shelby misses iron precision, perfect lock-step unison, slavish dedication. Here the director hates the head costumer and the lighting crew can't have a civil conversation with the stage manager, and Shelby's chorus has spent too many years thinking of themselves as individuals to ever make a real unit. This show tumbles a little more into chaos every night.
Lima, Ohio is like this:
Vast and flat and wide endless sprawl of houses with yards big enough to play catch in and street after street after strip mall after street, with nothing to block the blue of the sky but trees.
The hum of cicadas in summer, the whir of the lawnmower, the snowblower, the fifteen-year-old car trundling down the street with the broken muffler. The sound of her own footsteps on the sidewalk, following her wherever she goes.
The same people at the same coffee shops and Wal-marts and bowling alleys and Breadstix. The same eyes that meet, across counters and dashboards and school desks, holding whole familiar conversations in the arch of an eyebrow and the nod of a head, moving on to see each other again tomorrow, or next week, or the day after that.
Lima is like an old battered recliner or a sofa with a groove worn into the seat, molded perfectly to your butt to settle you in comfortably, just broken-down enough to give you a backache if you sit for too long.
When Shelby was thirty-two, she won her first Nationals trophy. She came home and used the money from her booster club bonuses to remodel her kitchen. The contractor claimed it would be six weeks; Shelby spent a dozen mornings tracking down parts and materials herself, and most of her afternoons supervising personally with a combination of hefty cash prizes and the same discipline that had carried her students all the way past every other high school show choir in the country. It took four.
She gave her choir kids those four weeks off, as a reward for a job well done, then spent the rest of the summer in seventeen-hour rehearsals to make up for it.
They held freshman tryouts the weekend of the fourth of July. Anyone who wasn't willing to miss a few barbecues and fireworks to audition didn't belong anywhere near VA in the first place.
Jesse was a skinny kid with big eyes and a huge voice, and an even bigger ego. It took him two and a half years to earn a solo. Shelby made sure he earned it, even if he was her favorite from the beginning. Jesse didn't think he needed anyone or anything, but he latched on to her every thought or command as quick as it took to blink.
Shelby didn't do mommy for those kids. She did drill sergeant. It wasn't her job to cosset and pet and turn them into healthy, well-adjusted little adults. It was her job to turn them into a well-oiled machine that spit fire and flame and bled perfection. She didn't dry tears or hold hands or give kisses and hugs. She gave orders, and the occasional sparing compliment only when she couldn't possibly avoid it.
Jesse didn't expect anything else, and he certainly never offered her anything beyond utmost respect and blind obedience in return. She could put up with him, for that.
When Rachel was fourteen, she lost her first solo in a dance recital. She came home in tears, while Papa patted her on the shoulder and refilled her glass of water, and Daddy raged over biased instructors deliberately disadvantaging their students to further their own political agendas. The girl who'd taken the place that should be Rachel's was four inches taller, with blue eyes and a perfect nose, and a mom who spent five or ten minutes chatting with the instructor every week after practice when she came to pick her daughter up.
Two days later, Daddy called the dance school and informed them that Rachel was dropping out of the recital entirely. Papa stood at his elbow with one hand on his shoulder, squeezing every time his voice hardened too much.
There was another dance studio in Westerville, and Rachel's new high school offered dance as an elective anyway. Lima was a small-minded town full of small-minded people, and nobody minded driving the extra distance to get Rachel a teacher who was willing to recognize her talent.
She needed the extra boost, truth be told. High school was harder than Rachel had been led to expect. Of course, her dads always said, it would always be hard for the people around her to accept her when her magnificence challenged their insecurities. Bullying is the clearest sign of jealousy. Every person at McKinley High must be ragingly jealous of Rachel, by that token. Stars aren't meant to walk among the people. Rachel just had to reapply herself to shining even brighter, until she burned so fiercely nobody could look away.
She brought home her first C that year, on a Chemistry test the same week as her vocal showcase with her voice instructor. She brought it to the dinner table the night her teacher passed the tests back, hesitant and worried, and burst out with it over the tofu red curry.
“I thought you were taking Biology this year,” Daddy said.
“Do better for next time,” Papa said, and Rachel hunched inward under the tone of his disapproval. “Now, what are we doing about those tickets for Gypsy in Cincinnati next month? I can get time off on the twenty-seventh if you can handle a Thursday show, so Rachel can still make her tap lessons on Saturday afternoon.”
Shelby turned down the offer to go back and work in Lima, during Rachel's senior year. She'd found a niche here, a job doing something so very nearly the job she loves, a handful of friends even crazier than she must be, a theater that ran with more choppy confusion when Beth wasn't backstage at least twice a week. It didn't matter. They would have met up again anyway.
It didn't happen Rachel and Kurt's very first week in town, when Will encouraged them to look April up and let her show them around. It might have, but Beth had the sniffles so Shelby traded off with the head choreographer for who had 'drag April home drunk' duty that night. It didn't happen when Shelby ducked out of rehearsals for an afternoon here or there for an audition she'd never mention to anyone back at the theater, just to see if she still had it at all. Shelby didn't think too hard about Rachel making it to New York, the year she knew it would happen. Rachel didn't think about Shelby very much at all.
They ran into each other in the middle of a coffee shop three blocks off Time Square, but it would have happened sooner or later. Jesse St. James would have come out to harass Shelby for a job and spent half the time following Rachel with his big eyes and big talent. Rachel would have been dashing into the Manhattan JCC to drop off a towering plate of cookies for a bake sale just as Shelby was leaving from dropping off Beth. Kurt would have been reading up on CrossRhodes out of pure, morbid curiosity, or Rachel would have decided to suck it up and go in for an audition at the one show where personal connections might do her some good, if April was sober enough to remember who she was.
It doesn't matter how that part happened. It wasn't a start or an end or even a real middle, just a pause button bumped into restarting old action that had never actually finished itself.
Here are two things you didn't know about Rachel Berry's life:
She's had a recurring nightmare since her first bout of tonsillitis, when she was eleven years old, that she loses her voice. She stands on a street corner in the middle of New York City trying to get anybody to listen to her, anyone at all, but as hard as she tries to shout, her throat won't make a single noise. She waves her arms frantically, desperately, but people just keep walking past.
Sooner or later, people she knows always show up-her dads, her friends, Mr. Schuester. Sometimes Miss Pillsberry or Principal Figgins show up. Once, it was Josh Groban and Olivia Newton-John. It always makes Rachel try to scream even louder. She never runs after them-it's dream logic, it never even occurs to her. She's rooted to the spot. Sometimes they even look right at her, but they just keep walking by.
Shelby shows up in the dream sometimes, but Rachel doesn't have it as much any more. At some point during junior year, halfway through the dream, 'Barbra Streisand' started playing and all of imaginary Time Square started dancing, and Rachel was too busy trying to keep up with the steps she hadn't learned to worry about her voice any more. A while after that, she stood in imaginary Central Park trying to shout after Finn and Quinn, when it occurred to her that Finn and Quinn hadn't dated in over a year. And neither one of them would ever just walk right by her, even if she and Finn broke up again and Quinn went back to being her arch-nemesis who only stopped to tell Rachel to go jump into an active volcano.
The second thing is that, despite being vegan, she makes the best chicken soup either of her roommates have ever tasted. She only makes it when one of them is sick, but it turns out that an offer of Rachel's chicken soup is one of only three things in the world that will get Blaine to admit he is sick, so it's well worth it.
When Rachel gets sick, Kurt boils down his own vegetable stock and makes her something with carrots and saffron and toast. It's nothing like the canned minestrone her fathers always made, but she eats the whole bowl every time.
Here are two things you didn't know about Shelby Corcoran's life:
When she was coaching Vocal Adrenaline, she lived for two years off of power bars, smoothies, and the occasional rice cake. After all the hard work paid off and she finally got them the Nationals trophy, she figured she'd change things, at least a little. The new kitchen came complete with a top of the line stainless steel fridge, one with a massive freezer she promptly filled with frozen pizza and Lean Cuisine. After that, she even turned her oven on once or twice, for the frozen pizzas.
There wasn't time for anything more. There wasn't any point, anyway; in New York it had been nothing but peanut butter, ramen, and the caloric content of diet energy drinks. The smoothies were a step up. It wasn't like Shelby needed any four-course gourmet dinners or fancy eggs and toast for breakfast. It wasn't like she was cooking for anyone else, anyway.
There were two months after Beth was born, between Regionals and Nationals, where Shelby spiked every smoothie she made with caffeine powder and ginseng, put Jesse in charge of nearly every rehearsal, and became a gourmet buyer and preparator of baby formula more or less overnight. Things calmed down by summer. Shelby broke in her kitchen by learning to make baby food in her smoothie blender.
The second thing about Shelby is, when she was a little girl, her parents never came to a single concert or recital in her entire life. She left for New York right after high school and never meant to come back.
It took two or three times living in New York before Shelby came to terms with the idea that she would never make it as an actress herself. She has to pull her heart out from her chest and let it go walking around in her students, her choir-her daughter-to get any part of herself out under that spotlight.
There are only two cities in the world, for them. Oh, there are side stops and suburbs. Carmel is in Akron and Rachel was born in a hospital in Toledo. Shelby came inches from buying a small three-bedroom house in north Jersey, a few years before Rachel will find herself on stage in a small theater in Philadelphia for a two-season run. But Lima, Ohio and New York, New York sit like two poles of a magnet, opposite ends of a string tied to each of them, pulling one way and then the other without cease.
New York is the fire and the fight and the hope, Lima the earth and the hearth and the home. Lima is the roots, New York the sky.
They are each other, in so many ways, Shelby Corcoran and Rachel Berry. Rachel understands that now. They can know each other in ways that no friend or lover will ever quite manage to do.
They'll meet each other again. When there are only two towns in all the world, it's inevitable.
This is how Shelby Corcoran and Rachel Berry navigate around each other for a year and a half, while Rachel struggles her way through one of the most exclusive musical theater programs on the planet and Shelby struggles just to keep her musical afloat.
They have coffee, sometimes, maybe once a month. Shelby usually brings Beth, and Beth is four and doesn't sit still for much, so their talks never last all that long. They make plans at least twice as often as they actually keep them, but something is always coming up. Shelby has to get in an extra rehearsal with one of the understudies because the actor playing Stanly Glover fell off the stage and won't be walking for a week. Rachel has a final the next day. Beth has a cold. Finn is in town.
Shelby shows up for some of Rachel's performances through the school. She can't make all of them. Rachel doesn't even invite her, not really.
It starts with two pairs of same-colored eyes that meet across a crowded Starbucks, a start, and an “Oh!”
“Shelby,” says Rachel, cautious, cordial, and,
“Hi,” says Shelby, tugging Beth a little closer to her side. “Rachel. It's good to see you. How have you been?”
“I've been very good, actually,” says Rachel, and means without you. “I didn't realize you were in New York.”
“Yeah,” says Shelby. “Since a few months after Beth was born, actually. We're doing pretty well, too,” and tries to mean the without you at least half as hard as Rachel does.
Beth has nightmares sometimes, like any four-year-old does, and Shelby is always up and down the hall in an instant to turn on the light and let her cry. Shelby doesn't really sleep much anyway.
Rachel calls her dads twice a week like clockwork and tells them about every rehearsal she's had. She and Quinn email links to current news articles and funny stories about their classmates whenever they get the chance.
CrossRhodes closes down in a catastrophe of mismanaged funding the summer before Rachel's third year in New York. Nobody wants to be responsible for going back to the theater and breaking down the set, but what can you do.
Shelby ends up toting Beth along and working there at night, cataloging props and examining costumes for tears. She sings while she works. There's nobody else around, or there shouldn't be, and at this point, Beth can sleep through any amount of music so long as it's in key.
“Too late for second-guessing,” she sings. “Too late to go back to sleep. It's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes-”
“And leap,” comes from behind her. Shelby stops, a rueful little smile spreading across her lips. Rachel hits the notes like she was born for them.
“How'd you get in?” Shelby asks, turning around. Rachel's got two cups from Starbucks on a tray, a tentative look on her face.
“The security guy recognized me,” she says, a little sheepish. “I think they got tired of me sneaking in.”
“Probably,” Shelby agrees. “One of those for me?”
They sit on upturned crates, careful not to spill on any of the fabric strewn across the room, voices kept just a little low so as not to wake Beth.
“So you're going again,” Rachel says. She's always been blunt. Or, well-she's been blunt as long as Shelby's known her, which is barely any time at all, really.
“Not necessarily,” Shelby says. “We could stay. Beth'll be in kindergarten soon, I'll have more time, I've been developing contacts, I could find another job, at an actual respectable production this time. This doesn't have to be--”
“Please don't say you'll stay for me,” says Rachel. “Please.”
“I thought we could spend more time together, now that I'm not working. You could finally teach me to make that chicken soup you were talking about. I could hook you up with a couple of casting directors I know, we could-”
“Look, Shelby,” Rachel says. “I wish I could take care of you, but I can't. I've got my hands full just trying to take care of my friends and my dads and myself.”
“I thought that was supposed to be my job,” says Shelby. “I'm the parent, right?”
“Then you should have thought of that when I actually needed you,” Rachel snaps. “When I was nine, and I was so lonely I would have done anything in the world for a little brother or even a hamster, and my dads just put me in another ballet class, or when I was eleven and I needed a mom to explain about periods, and bras, and everything that a mom is supposed to know about.”
“Honey, you know why I couldn't be there. I wanted to, I just wasn't allowed,” Shelby says.
“How about when I was fifteen and my boyfriend threw eggs at my face,” Rachel says, “and I was still convinced that the only thing in the world that anybody could ever love me for was my voice?”
“Rachel,” Shelby says, reaching out to take one of her hands. “I'm sorry. I was scared. Leaving then was the wrong choice, I know that. But I'm here now.”
“When I was sixteen I almost got a nose job,” Rachel says, apropos of nothing.
“I don't understand,” says Shelby.
“My dad was all for it if I thought it would help me get more roles later on, and my other dad would have paid for anything to make me happy if he wouldn't have to clean up afterwards,” Rachel says. “Now I know it would have been a huge mistake, but it took some of my friends and my ex-boyfriend just to convince me not to do it.”
“You've got smart friends,” Shelby says. She's heard about some of them, Kurt who always bitches about dirty dishes and Blaine who always leaves his shoes in the middle of the living room, a couple of others. Rachel nods, looks down at her hands.
“Half of the people I graduated with never call their parents unless they absolutely have to,” she says. “Quinn's family kicked her out before her mom took her back, Santana's parents didn't really talk to her when she lived at home, Blaine's dad still hasn't forgiven him for being gay. I got lucky, I guess. My dads really do love me even though they're not perfect.”
“Being a parent is a hard job,” says Shelby, glancing instinctively over to make sure Beth's still napping peaceably on the couch. “I know a lot more about it now than I did five years ago.”
“And I know a lot more about how to get by without one,” says Rachel. “I wanted a mom for such a long time. I thought you'd be able to do everything my fathers couldn't. And then I found you, and you went away again, and I realized I had to learn to do all of those things my parents couldn't do on my own.”
“Rachel...” Shelby tries, and Rachel shakes her head.
“I don't need you to take care of me,” she says. “I can take care of myself. I learned how to grow up without you, and you have to go and be a mom and figure out how to live with yourself without me.”
“Hey, I've been taking care of myself for more than forty years, here,” Shelby says.
“When was the last time you had a good night's sleep?” asks Rachel.
“Nineteen ninety-three,” Shelby admits.
“You should take Beth back to Ohio,” Rachel says. “If you want to be somebody's mom so much, be hers. You don't have to turn your glee club into heartless, mindless robots like-”
“Like me?” Shelby asks, and Rachel looks taken aback for just a second.
“I don't think you're heartless,” Rachel says. “You love Beth. You just can't...”
“I want to try,” says Shelby, and Rachel bites her lip and looks away.
“I hope you're happy,” Shelby sings softly. “Now that you're choosing this.”
“Me, too,” interjects Rachel, just as incapable of resisting a clear opening as Shelby always has been.
“I hope it brings you bliss, I really hope you get it, and you don't live to regret it.”
And then it breaks down, hesitantly, neither of them quite willing to take the Elphaba part to its full conclusion.
“Everyone deserves a chance to fly,” Rachel says gently. “Both of us, without each other.”
Shelby smiles, a little bitter, but better than tears. “You're going to soar, you know. And I don't care what you say, I'm buying front row seats for your Broadway debut.”
“Next time you coach a choir that makes it to Nationals, I'll drag both my roommates with me,” Rachel promises.
Beth makes a little noise, on the couch, that means she's starting to wake up from her nap. Shelby looks over reflexively, and Rachel puts down her coffee and stands up.
“I should go,” Rachel says. “I promised Mercedes we'd Skype tonight.”
“Okay,” says Shelby, standing with her, and suddenly their arms are awkward, half-reaching, half hesitating, unsure.
Finally Rachel steps forward, taking Shelby into a tight hug. “Take care of yourself,” she says over Shelby's shoulder.
“You, too,” says Shelby, and hugs back.
This is how it continues: Rachel dashes the tears away when she gets out on the sidewalk in front of the theater, then heads briskly towards the subway. She gets back to her apartment to find her roommates making out against the kitchen counter and nothing started for dinner, the whole place so full of August heat you could steam vegetables just by leaving them to sit out. They end up ordering from the Thai place down the street, and Rachel spends half of dinner laughing too hard to chew as Blaine regales them with stories from his summer job.
Shelby clears up just the pile she'd been working on, sweeps Beth up into her arms just as Beth starts fussing with hunger. Somebody else will finish it, or Shelby will come back in tomorrow, but for tonight she's going home. There's a premade whole wheat pizza crust in the fridge, and she lets Beth get up on a stool next to the kitchen island to help spread the tomato sauce and sprinkle on the cheese. They get up on the couch to eat tonight. Shelby puts on The Wizard of Oz. It's one of Beth's favorites.
It continues with a single plane ride and an endless string of subway trips, with auditions and job applications. It continues with stages and singing, with the occasional date that comes out of nowhere and ends better than it could be hoped. It continues with the Lima sidewalks and the New York City skyline.
It doesn't end. Things like this don't end. They don't begin, not with a baby's kick on a hot summer day or a newspaper ad on the coldest morning of winter, not with a line of failed auditions or a father who cares too much or not enough or a girl who stands at the edge of a stage and lifts her arms and refuses to let anything in the world rain on my parade. They grow, and change, and move apart and come back together, sooner or later.
Someday the choreographer from CrossRhodes will be opening a new show and call Shelby up specifically with a job offer, and it will be back to New York yet another time; or, someday Rachel will come bare inches from finally marrying Finn Hudson and settling in to try raising a family in a town that was, after all, good enough for every one of her parents; or, Beth will insist on moving back to the place she spent her first few years for college and take it upon herself to track Rachel down; or, two pairs of oh-so-similar eyes will meet across a crowded room at another national show choir competition.
Someday Rachel will rest a palm on her own pregnant belly and feel some tiny little person-to-be squirm and kick under her hand. She'll think of Shelby then, for a moment, and then go on.