How You Came to Leave (Part X)
Part I: An' Another Thing
Part II: Last to Know
Part III: Wicked Game
Part IV: Talking to the Moon
Part V: Look What You've Done
Part VI: Knife Going In
Part VII: I'm Not Calling You a Liar
Part VIII: Told You So
Part IX: I Gave You All
Part X: I Adore You
And you should know I’m thinking about what you said while you held my hand (Melpo Mene- I Adore You)
It is the little things that bring you comfort.
It’s the sound of the rain falling onto the pavement, the rhythm of the waves crashing onto the beach at night, the smell of coffee in the morning, the fact you can’t see the stars from the office.
Comfort, especially in something like music, can be in as much in the presence as it can be in the absence of something. It can be in what is said or what is left unsaid, in actions taken or in moves not made.
And so how is it that something as trivial as a song on the radio can hold so much meaning? In the long run a song really doesn’t -in fact, you will probably go on to forget the lyrics in the hours, days that follow- but in the here and now, it’s all that matters. It is all that holds you together.
And it is dangerous, screen writers have said, how tempting it is to let the audience believe that a moment matters more than they originally intended. Sometimes a simple line is written as a filler, as a transition point, but somehow -whether through the actors or directors or a simple combination of both - it becomes something greater than the creators of the show anticipated. It was just one line, they argue, it didn’t mean anything, the characters didn’t even say that much to begin with…
And yet, and yet… Sometimes through silence, you are still saying something. You are saying that you care too much, or perhaps not enough, and is there really any difference? You are saying you chose the person in front of you, or maybe, the other option, that you are choosing someone else, you just can’t bring yourself to say the words out loud. And in those situations, the song on the radio tells you it’s going to be ok, that even though it feels like your world is ending; it is precisely that-a feeling-and feelings, just like moments, they eventually end.
But it is dangerous, too, to turn to a stranger’s voice on the radio and seek reassurance that everything will turn out the way you want it to. Even the most personal song was written with another person, another context, in mind and although you can associate with it, you still don’t know just what the artist really meant when they wrote that song. You want to believe it is about discovering that a broken heart can mend, and there’s a sense of disappoint when you find out he wrote the song about a relationship he had only heard about but never experienced.
Because you know. You have seen first hand what could happen if you give a song too much meaning, if only because you have been there before. You were there when a brisk September evening, you stood on Rachel Berry’s doorstep and told her it was okay with you if she didn’t want to define your relationship because you were happy wondering what her silence could mean.
“I heard a song on the radio.”
It’s not the best greeting you’ve ever come up with, and from the amused smile Rachel gives you, she probably feels the same. But she’s glad you’re here, and you’re happy to see her, so you suppose you’re forgiven for your lack of eloquence.
“Have you now,” she drawls, a smirk playing at the corner of her mouth. “That’s such a novel concept. I didn’t realize radio stations still did that nowadays.”
“Yeah,” you nod, pressing your lips briefly to hers, the intimacy of the moment making you shiver slightly. You feel her lips curve into a smile. “It reminded me of us,” you add.
“So we have a song now?” Rachel asks, still sounding amused. “Which one is it? Will you sing it for me?”
“Not that song,” you answer. “It was really dark and depressing, and, well, I don’t want us to be that way.”
“How do you want us to be, then?” She asks. Her voice is a little lower. A little huskier than usual, suggesting she’s not talking so much about a song as she is about your relationship.
“Whatever you want us to be,” you tell her. “I guess that’s what I want, I want us to be whatever you want us to be.”
You’re not being completely honest with her, because if truth be told, you do know. You know exactly what you want out of this relationship with Rachel, but the problem is, you also don’t know where you stand in her eyes. Are you just a passing fling, or do you mean something else? Is Rachel simply playing along, humoring you, or does she actually care about you? Does she love you?
You want this relationship to last. There are dreams of a life together scribbled in the margins of an old notebook, hints that you have given this relationship thought, that you have taken the time to figure how to make it work in the long run. You have dreams, aspirations, and lately they have started to include Rachel.
“I don’t know what we are,” Rachel says quietly, so softly in fact you’re not entirely convinced you were supposed to hear it. “I’m sorry, I really am, but it’s complicated, you do understand that, don’t you?”
“It’s ok,” you whisper. “Really, it’s ok, you don’t have to define us, not if you don’t want to. We don’t have to be anything specific if you don’t want us to be.”
The truth is, you’ll settle for anything if it means being with Rachel. You will settle for stolen moments that don’t really belong to you in the first place simply because it beats the alternative - moments where you’ll be without her. You’ve become increasingly dependent on her being in your life, and whilst you’re not entirely sure Rachel will always want you in hers, you want her around.
You find yourself feeling torn because on the other hand you want to know - you want to know how much she cares, if she really loves you, if there’s an old notebook hidden in her desk drawer with thoughts of you written all over it. You want to know your place in her life, or if you even have to begin with.
You want to know, but you’re afraid to ask. You’re afraid of the possible answers - that this is just a fling, that someone else has already caught her eye, that she’s with you because she hasn’t found a way to let you down gently. You’re terrified of the implications, and so you don’t pressure her into giving you an answer.
“You have to tell me,” you say suddenly, and Rachel looks up at you, taken back by the sudden change in your tone. “Not right now, but a night in the blue, tell me. Tell me if my feelings are wasted on you or if you think we could be something epic.”
“It doesn’t have to be today,” you continue, rushing your speech a little. “Just, one day, okay? You don’t have to define us today, but one day… For now it’s okay. The silence is fine, you know, it really is. I’m okay with trying to figure out what I mean to you without you saying anything, right now that’s perfectly fine, too.”
She doesn’t say anything, not at first, but you know from the way she’s looking at you that the odds of this relationship working out just swung in your favor.
Sometimes, the best thing about silence is the fact it is so often open to interpretation. Silence can mean whatever you want it to mean, and you are holding onto that right now.
It doesn’t always mean you don’t care; sometimes it just means you assume you care enough that you don’t have to justify it. Some things do go without explanation, and what if your feelings are one of them? What if you don’t tell someone what you feel for them because there’s a part of you that just assumes they know? Do you really have to justify your every emotion? Do you really have to say to someone, ‘I love you the most’ if you’ve told that you’ve never loved anyone else the way you love them?
Sometimes, you don’t have to say anything at all because they do know, and it’s less about the how and more about the why. It is the knowledge of those intimate details that can define a relationship rather than the most eloquent of love declarations. It is knowing, not just how you drink your coffee, but rather the reasons why you take it a certain way.
You knew more about Rachel than she did-does?-about you, or so you believed for the past five or six years. The manuscript of Rachel’s Broadway show throws you, because while you remember the speeches you made-you were the one talking, after all-Rachel was the one who listened to them, and there’s a considerable difference between the two.
There is also the implication that no matter what you believe now, Rachel really did love you then. It’s like Heather said: “you don’t write a musical about someone you want to forget”. But it leaves you with the eternal question why.
Why doesn’t she want to forget you? Why, if she’s moved on with Finn like she claims she has, why is she writing about all these intimate moments for the whole world to witness? If she really wanted to forget, she would pretend your words were never spoken. Memories can be tarnished, forgotten in the silence, and yet she’s speaking them out loud.
She’s telling the world she remembers every detail of the first kiss, or how she stayed up all night after you two argued over something completely trivial. She’s telling the world the significance of a color people see everyday, and how a song on the radio changed both of your lives.
She’s telling the world she remembers everything, and now you are the villain in the story, trying to forget those moments ever happened.
Your actions are not selfish, you reason to yourself, so much as they are basic survival instincts.
You aren’t doing anything wrong. You’re not really hurting anyone, except maybe yourself just a little. In the long run, you will survive this, but for right now, it just feels like your memories are your death sentence. You do remember. You remember everything, and that is precisely the problem. You remember everything and no matter how hard you try to forget, the memories still linger at the brink of your subconscious, and you can no longer escape.
Those memories of your time with Rachel are an ever-present reminder of what you left behind, of what you had to give up to get away from Lima, Ohio. They are evidence that you were once a teenage girl, that you had mistakes-mistakes that in some ways you are still trying to redeem yourself for-and right now, you just need to believe you are invincible. You need to convince yourself that you cannot be broken, because there is a part of you that feels if you do crack, then this is it. You will not be able to put yourself back together.
You need to believe you have overcome your weakness, but the problem is, your weakness is Rachel. You want to forget her, you want to let her go, but there’s a darkness inside of you that keeps her around in your memories, too. You’re not entirely sure what that says about your subconscious: the one responsible for all your memories is the one you’re trying to force out of your mind.
You haven’t forgotten.
You haven’t forgotten the way you felt when your fingers slipped between hers, or the smell of her perfume on your pillow, or how sometimes, you would fall asleep listening to her heart beating, and that was the sweetest lullaby you’ve ever heard.
You never really told Rachel those moments were the ones you cherished the most, mainly because how trivial they appear to be in hindsight. Holding someone’s hand is such a simple gesture, you reason, and so what does it matter to the outside world if that was one of the most comforting parts of your relationship?
Does it matter to anyone else if the smell of her on your pillow was your favorite part of your nightly routine? Or how sometimes you had trouble falling asleep if for some reason the smell had faded-those three weeks Rachel spent in Cincinnati were easily the worst part of junior year… It was in the simplicity of the gesture: you just liked knowing she had been there. It didn’t really matter what you did together when she was in your bed, but rather how the night always ended, with Rachel lying next to you, her body pressed against yours, sharing the same pillow.
There is too much caffeine and adrenaline for you to be asleep right now. Rachel fell asleep an hour or so ago, leaving you alone with your thoughts and a heart that is racing too fast to be considered normal. She still managed to somehow drape herself across you, and now your legs are intertwined and her arm has slipped across your lower abdomen.
You’ve never been in more in love with her than you are right now.
You feel like you’re stealing Time, cheating moments, other metaphors that Shakespeare and other great writers would probably roll their eyes at, but you feel it’s the only way to describe this romance of yours. Rachel gives you the kind of feelings people end up writing novels about, the kind of feelings a poet writes sonnets about a rainy day in Paris, and you want to say, this is Love with a capital letter.
If Glee is the best part of Santana’s day, then lying in bed with Rachel is the best part of your night. Because right now, the here and now is all that matters, and nothing bad in your life has happened yet. If society has taught you to separate good from bad, right from wrong, something less from something more, then you’re sure, you’re sure religion and God and everyone else, if they could see this moment, they’d understand.
They’d understand it’s just about being around someone who makes you feel like the world isn’t such a scary place, after all. They make you feel like the rain falling against your window isn’t always a bad thing ¬- “one day the rhythm of the rain will inspire a musical, Quinn, just you wait,” Rachel once promised you - or how the faintest hum of the traffic in the distance can actually be the most romantic soundtrack you’ve ever heard - “One day, Quinn, we’ll do just like the song says, we’ll waste time chasing cars.”
The fragments all occurred when Rachel was lying next to you, and gradually, the smell of her shampoo would take over your pillow. Those stolen moments, you would tell yourself long after Rachel has fallen asleep, those are the ones that the greatest love story are based on. Not the most star-struck lovers in the most beautiful tragedies but everyday moments that the everyday person can relate to.
Those are the moments that people look back on when they describe their first love to their grandchildren and they say, with an almost nostalgic look in their eyes, “that is what love should be about, really. It should be about falling in love with the smallest of moments and understanding what they mean in the grand scheme of things.”
You still remember the first time Rachel held your hand.
You were in the library studying for something - AP Chem, you think, but you’re really not sure, it’s one of the few details that has faded over time… You were just sitting there next to her, going over your notes, trying to remember the equations, and you guess she could tell you were stressing out over the upcoming exam because without really looking at you, Rachel simply reached over and slipped her fingers between yours.
The moment lasted for two seconds, three at the absolute most, before Rachel took her hand back to focus on her own work. Although her actions soothed you, and you did go back to focusing on the equations you had scribbled in the margins, there was a part of you that wanted to hold Rachel’s hand again.
You wanted to feel her fingers between yours because it meant that Rachel, in that moment, saw the two of you in the same light as you: steady, constant, reliable, eternal. In that moment, when she held your hand, you had the type of romance that could last forever. You had the type of romance that the songs on the radio were about, the one people roll their eyes at but still wait until the end before changing the station.
Real life isn’t so simple for you. You can’t change a station when you hear a song that reminds you of Rachel because you can identify with almost every song, but you still listen to the music because the alternative, the complete silence in your car, has gotten to be almost unbearable. You’ve become afraid of your memories taking over, and you need the distraction because you’re so close to breaking down and picking up the phone, so close to calling Rachel and begging for forgiveness for a crime that had nothing to do with you.
“Pick me,” you want to beg, “you have to pick me, don’t you understand that? This is how the story goes, this is how it always ends. You have to pick me because you and I, we could be epic, don’t you remember telling me that? You have to pick me…”
The songs on the radio stop any phone call from happening, because not every song has a happily-ever-after. Sometimes the artist only realizes their mistake too late, and the girl has already moved on, much like Rachel did with Finn. It’s too late, really, to call Rachel and say she should pick you because she made it clear to you that early morning in Lima that she would always pick Finn over you.
Rationally, you know that Rachel chose Finn because he was the safe choice, the reliable one. He never left, Finn had claimed when he came to see you in Los Angeles, and you always made a point of not being there. And, as he reminded you, you were the one that left in the end, not him.
Yet you were also the one that came back. You were the one standing on her doorstep saying the Ancient Greeks were the ones who got it wrong, that you believe Love never loses its meaning. You did, still do in fact, believe there are certain types of love that can be epic, and you want to believe what you shared with Rachel would qualify.
But the problem is you’re alone in your illusion of grandeur.
Rachel may have written a musical about your relationship, but now she’s become someone who believes love is just a fleeting emotion, that it too will pass. Love can become a matter of convenience, and it irks you because there was a time when Rachel’s definition of love was something that could last forever, not because she didn’t want it to end, but rather because she knew she would never feel the same if it did.
You can’t actually remember what the argument was about, except that it was something completely trivial. On most days, it wouldn’t have bothered either of you, but with midterms and sectionals coming up and extra Cheerios practice, you are running on too much adrenaline and not enough sleep.
And so when you see Rachel laughing and smiling with Finn, you snap.
It’s the adrenaline, you reason, it’s the adrenaline that makes you slam your body into Rachel’s during choreography practice. It has the desired effect, and Rachel stumbles slightly, the momentum throwing her off balance.
“Watch it, Berry!” You snap.
Next to you, Brittany hesitates, torn between falling in line behind you and wanting to defend Rachel. Your eyes flashing with anger, you stare down at Rachel.
“Knock it off, Quinn,” she sighs, moving back into position. You grind your teeth. You hate being ignored, you hate this fierce jealousy that’s taking over your system, you hate how possessive you have become, you hate how desperately you want her to look at you instead of looking at Finn.
The bitterness and jealousy stays in your system long after you get home, and they’re still swirling inside of you when the doorbell rings a couple of hours later. You hesitate a little as you head downstairs, unsure of who it is, of what they could possibly want from you. It’s a pleasant surprise, seeing Rachel on your front porch, even though after the stunt you pulled in Glee you’re not sure if you deserve it.
“Have you calmed down yet?” Rachel asks as you step aside to let her in.
“I’m sorry,” you say truthfully, “I really am. It was dumb and immature, I don’t know what I was thinking…”
She rolls her eyes at you, but there’s a flicker of amusement, of affection, lingering beneath it all.
“I love you,” she says quietly. “I know sometimes you question that, but I do love you, I swear. So you don’t have to get jealous if I’m talking to Finn or Puck or anyone else, because we’re just talking, you know? At the end of the day, I’m still here, I’m still with you.”
“You make me feel so insecure,” you confess.
“What?” Rachel stutters, taken back. “How on Earth do I make you feel insecure? You’re Quinn Fabray. You can do anything you want, have anyone you want. What is there to feel insecure about?”
“Because I want you,” you tell her. “You’re the thing that I want more anything else in my life.”
Rachel stares at you.
“I have this… fear, I guess, that one morning you’re going to wake up and you’re going to realize what a huge mistake you’re making, and then you’re going to end this relationship, and I’m telling you, I’m not entirely sure I could survive that. I’m not sure I could take you smiling at someone else the way you smile at me.”
You’re rambling again, stumbling over the words, and the lack of eloquence isn’t your fault, not really. You’re just trying to explain that there’s a part of you that’s trying to push Rachel away because maybe if you keep her at a distance, it won’t hurt as much if she leaves.
“I like having you in my life,” you confess to her. “I like how you know how I take my coffee and the way my pillow always ends up smelling of your shampoo and I like the way you hold my hand sometimes when we’re studying.”
“I like having you in my life because you make me better,” you whisper as you pull her towards you. “And that’s actually terrifying, because the flip side of that argument is I’m not as good when you aren’t around.”
“I make you better?” Rachel repeats.
“Actually,” you say against her lips, and you feel her smile into the kiss, “you saved my life, too.”
“Well that’s good to hear,” she tells you, “because you kind of saved mine, too.”
Is it possible for a song to save someone’s life? Is it really possible for a complete stranger, someone you have never met and maybe never will, to sing words that can affect you enough to change your plans? Can a song really have that much impact on a rational human being, or is it one of those situations where emotions over-rule everything else?
A song can do so many things. It can make your day better just by hearing it, it can remind you that someone else-a stranger, but another human being nonetheless-sympathizes with you, understands the emotions taking over you, and maybe, just maybe, they can put into words what you can’t. They can say to someone, ‘I love you the most’, or maybe, they understand your plea that you just need some time, but that you really do care.
You do want to be around Rachel, but right now, there’s a multitude of reasons why it’s better for you to stay away, the main one being the musical. You’re hesitant, not quite sure what to say or even do were you to be in contact with Rachel, because you’re not sure where you stand. You want to trust her, you want to hear her voice, you want to believe she cares as much as she probably wants you to believe.
But you learnt long ago about what happens to blind faith: it gets broken.
The people you need in your life, they don’t always stay, they don’t always need you as much as you need them. Where does that leave you? What is supposed to happen to you if someone decides you’re not the savior they thought you were, and you end losing your salvation as a consequence?
You want to believe in Rachel, but you don’t know what that entails anymore. What side of you should you believe in, the one who wrote a musical about you, or the one who chose Finn over you? Should you believe in the girl who told you she would always be by your side or the one who didn’t fight for your relationship? Do you put your faith in the singer, or the writer? One is more honest than the other, but isn’t truth subjective at best?
Your office phone rings, but this time you take the time you check the caller ID before you snarl at Santana. You freeze, because Rachel’s number is lighting up the screen, and just like that, every doubt and insecurity you’ve been feeling for the past four years come rushing back. You don’t know what to do, instead, stare at the phone as if it holds all the answers. It rings two, three, four times. Eventually, on the fifth ring, you pick up.
For a second, two at the absolute most, there is complete silence on either end of the line, and all you can hear is the faintest melody of a song playing on the radio, as a guitarist confesses how much he cares for a girl. Neither of you say anything. Eventually, though, Rachel sighs, very softly.
“I love you,” she breathes quietly. “I don’t know what else to say to you except I love you… Please say you love me, too?”
Not stealing if you acknowledge it:
- Living in London would be less expensive if I owned Glee
- special thanks to Erika who put me with me killing her inbox and for looking it over
- the title is based on the song "I Adore You" by Melpo Mene
- the song Quinn is referring to at the end of the chapter is "What do you want from me" by Adam Lambert
Part XI: Love Is No Big Truth
Part XII: Escape
Part XIII: No Longer What You Require
Part XIV: This Will All Make Perfect Sense Someday
Part XV: Our Love
Part II: Last to Know
Part III: Wicked Game
Part IV: Talking to the Moon
Part V: Look What You've Done
Part VI: Knife Going In
Part VII: I'm Not Calling You a Liar
Part VIII: Told You So
Part IX: I Gave You All
Part X: I Adore You
And you should know I’m thinking about what you said while you held my hand (Melpo Mene- I Adore You)
It is the little things that bring you comfort.
It’s the sound of the rain falling onto the pavement, the rhythm of the waves crashing onto the beach at night, the smell of coffee in the morning, the fact you can’t see the stars from the office.
Comfort, especially in something like music, can be in as much in the presence as it can be in the absence of something. It can be in what is said or what is left unsaid, in actions taken or in moves not made.
And so how is it that something as trivial as a song on the radio can hold so much meaning? In the long run a song really doesn’t -in fact, you will probably go on to forget the lyrics in the hours, days that follow- but in the here and now, it’s all that matters. It is all that holds you together.
And it is dangerous, screen writers have said, how tempting it is to let the audience believe that a moment matters more than they originally intended. Sometimes a simple line is written as a filler, as a transition point, but somehow -whether through the actors or directors or a simple combination of both - it becomes something greater than the creators of the show anticipated. It was just one line, they argue, it didn’t mean anything, the characters didn’t even say that much to begin with…
And yet, and yet… Sometimes through silence, you are still saying something. You are saying that you care too much, or perhaps not enough, and is there really any difference? You are saying you chose the person in front of you, or maybe, the other option, that you are choosing someone else, you just can’t bring yourself to say the words out loud. And in those situations, the song on the radio tells you it’s going to be ok, that even though it feels like your world is ending; it is precisely that-a feeling-and feelings, just like moments, they eventually end.
But it is dangerous, too, to turn to a stranger’s voice on the radio and seek reassurance that everything will turn out the way you want it to. Even the most personal song was written with another person, another context, in mind and although you can associate with it, you still don’t know just what the artist really meant when they wrote that song. You want to believe it is about discovering that a broken heart can mend, and there’s a sense of disappoint when you find out he wrote the song about a relationship he had only heard about but never experienced.
Because you know. You have seen first hand what could happen if you give a song too much meaning, if only because you have been there before. You were there when a brisk September evening, you stood on Rachel Berry’s doorstep and told her it was okay with you if she didn’t want to define your relationship because you were happy wondering what her silence could mean.
“I heard a song on the radio.”
It’s not the best greeting you’ve ever come up with, and from the amused smile Rachel gives you, she probably feels the same. But she’s glad you’re here, and you’re happy to see her, so you suppose you’re forgiven for your lack of eloquence.
“Have you now,” she drawls, a smirk playing at the corner of her mouth. “That’s such a novel concept. I didn’t realize radio stations still did that nowadays.”
“Yeah,” you nod, pressing your lips briefly to hers, the intimacy of the moment making you shiver slightly. You feel her lips curve into a smile. “It reminded me of us,” you add.
“So we have a song now?” Rachel asks, still sounding amused. “Which one is it? Will you sing it for me?”
“Not that song,” you answer. “It was really dark and depressing, and, well, I don’t want us to be that way.”
“How do you want us to be, then?” She asks. Her voice is a little lower. A little huskier than usual, suggesting she’s not talking so much about a song as she is about your relationship.
“Whatever you want us to be,” you tell her. “I guess that’s what I want, I want us to be whatever you want us to be.”
You’re not being completely honest with her, because if truth be told, you do know. You know exactly what you want out of this relationship with Rachel, but the problem is, you also don’t know where you stand in her eyes. Are you just a passing fling, or do you mean something else? Is Rachel simply playing along, humoring you, or does she actually care about you? Does she love you?
You want this relationship to last. There are dreams of a life together scribbled in the margins of an old notebook, hints that you have given this relationship thought, that you have taken the time to figure how to make it work in the long run. You have dreams, aspirations, and lately they have started to include Rachel.
“I don’t know what we are,” Rachel says quietly, so softly in fact you’re not entirely convinced you were supposed to hear it. “I’m sorry, I really am, but it’s complicated, you do understand that, don’t you?”
“It’s ok,” you whisper. “Really, it’s ok, you don’t have to define us, not if you don’t want to. We don’t have to be anything specific if you don’t want us to be.”
The truth is, you’ll settle for anything if it means being with Rachel. You will settle for stolen moments that don’t really belong to you in the first place simply because it beats the alternative - moments where you’ll be without her. You’ve become increasingly dependent on her being in your life, and whilst you’re not entirely sure Rachel will always want you in hers, you want her around.
You find yourself feeling torn because on the other hand you want to know - you want to know how much she cares, if she really loves you, if there’s an old notebook hidden in her desk drawer with thoughts of you written all over it. You want to know your place in her life, or if you even have to begin with.
You want to know, but you’re afraid to ask. You’re afraid of the possible answers - that this is just a fling, that someone else has already caught her eye, that she’s with you because she hasn’t found a way to let you down gently. You’re terrified of the implications, and so you don’t pressure her into giving you an answer.
“You have to tell me,” you say suddenly, and Rachel looks up at you, taken back by the sudden change in your tone. “Not right now, but a night in the blue, tell me. Tell me if my feelings are wasted on you or if you think we could be something epic.”
“It doesn’t have to be today,” you continue, rushing your speech a little. “Just, one day, okay? You don’t have to define us today, but one day… For now it’s okay. The silence is fine, you know, it really is. I’m okay with trying to figure out what I mean to you without you saying anything, right now that’s perfectly fine, too.”
She doesn’t say anything, not at first, but you know from the way she’s looking at you that the odds of this relationship working out just swung in your favor.
Sometimes, the best thing about silence is the fact it is so often open to interpretation. Silence can mean whatever you want it to mean, and you are holding onto that right now.
It doesn’t always mean you don’t care; sometimes it just means you assume you care enough that you don’t have to justify it. Some things do go without explanation, and what if your feelings are one of them? What if you don’t tell someone what you feel for them because there’s a part of you that just assumes they know? Do you really have to justify your every emotion? Do you really have to say to someone, ‘I love you the most’ if you’ve told that you’ve never loved anyone else the way you love them?
Sometimes, you don’t have to say anything at all because they do know, and it’s less about the how and more about the why. It is the knowledge of those intimate details that can define a relationship rather than the most eloquent of love declarations. It is knowing, not just how you drink your coffee, but rather the reasons why you take it a certain way.
You knew more about Rachel than she did-does?-about you, or so you believed for the past five or six years. The manuscript of Rachel’s Broadway show throws you, because while you remember the speeches you made-you were the one talking, after all-Rachel was the one who listened to them, and there’s a considerable difference between the two.
There is also the implication that no matter what you believe now, Rachel really did love you then. It’s like Heather said: “you don’t write a musical about someone you want to forget”. But it leaves you with the eternal question why.
Why doesn’t she want to forget you? Why, if she’s moved on with Finn like she claims she has, why is she writing about all these intimate moments for the whole world to witness? If she really wanted to forget, she would pretend your words were never spoken. Memories can be tarnished, forgotten in the silence, and yet she’s speaking them out loud.
She’s telling the world she remembers every detail of the first kiss, or how she stayed up all night after you two argued over something completely trivial. She’s telling the world the significance of a color people see everyday, and how a song on the radio changed both of your lives.
She’s telling the world she remembers everything, and now you are the villain in the story, trying to forget those moments ever happened.
Your actions are not selfish, you reason to yourself, so much as they are basic survival instincts.
You aren’t doing anything wrong. You’re not really hurting anyone, except maybe yourself just a little. In the long run, you will survive this, but for right now, it just feels like your memories are your death sentence. You do remember. You remember everything, and that is precisely the problem. You remember everything and no matter how hard you try to forget, the memories still linger at the brink of your subconscious, and you can no longer escape.
Those memories of your time with Rachel are an ever-present reminder of what you left behind, of what you had to give up to get away from Lima, Ohio. They are evidence that you were once a teenage girl, that you had mistakes-mistakes that in some ways you are still trying to redeem yourself for-and right now, you just need to believe you are invincible. You need to convince yourself that you cannot be broken, because there is a part of you that feels if you do crack, then this is it. You will not be able to put yourself back together.
You need to believe you have overcome your weakness, but the problem is, your weakness is Rachel. You want to forget her, you want to let her go, but there’s a darkness inside of you that keeps her around in your memories, too. You’re not entirely sure what that says about your subconscious: the one responsible for all your memories is the one you’re trying to force out of your mind.
You haven’t forgotten.
You haven’t forgotten the way you felt when your fingers slipped between hers, or the smell of her perfume on your pillow, or how sometimes, you would fall asleep listening to her heart beating, and that was the sweetest lullaby you’ve ever heard.
You never really told Rachel those moments were the ones you cherished the most, mainly because how trivial they appear to be in hindsight. Holding someone’s hand is such a simple gesture, you reason, and so what does it matter to the outside world if that was one of the most comforting parts of your relationship?
Does it matter to anyone else if the smell of her on your pillow was your favorite part of your nightly routine? Or how sometimes you had trouble falling asleep if for some reason the smell had faded-those three weeks Rachel spent in Cincinnati were easily the worst part of junior year… It was in the simplicity of the gesture: you just liked knowing she had been there. It didn’t really matter what you did together when she was in your bed, but rather how the night always ended, with Rachel lying next to you, her body pressed against yours, sharing the same pillow.
There is too much caffeine and adrenaline for you to be asleep right now. Rachel fell asleep an hour or so ago, leaving you alone with your thoughts and a heart that is racing too fast to be considered normal. She still managed to somehow drape herself across you, and now your legs are intertwined and her arm has slipped across your lower abdomen.
You’ve never been in more in love with her than you are right now.
You feel like you’re stealing Time, cheating moments, other metaphors that Shakespeare and other great writers would probably roll their eyes at, but you feel it’s the only way to describe this romance of yours. Rachel gives you the kind of feelings people end up writing novels about, the kind of feelings a poet writes sonnets about a rainy day in Paris, and you want to say, this is Love with a capital letter.
If Glee is the best part of Santana’s day, then lying in bed with Rachel is the best part of your night. Because right now, the here and now is all that matters, and nothing bad in your life has happened yet. If society has taught you to separate good from bad, right from wrong, something less from something more, then you’re sure, you’re sure religion and God and everyone else, if they could see this moment, they’d understand.
They’d understand it’s just about being around someone who makes you feel like the world isn’t such a scary place, after all. They make you feel like the rain falling against your window isn’t always a bad thing ¬- “one day the rhythm of the rain will inspire a musical, Quinn, just you wait,” Rachel once promised you - or how the faintest hum of the traffic in the distance can actually be the most romantic soundtrack you’ve ever heard - “One day, Quinn, we’ll do just like the song says, we’ll waste time chasing cars.”
The fragments all occurred when Rachel was lying next to you, and gradually, the smell of her shampoo would take over your pillow. Those stolen moments, you would tell yourself long after Rachel has fallen asleep, those are the ones that the greatest love story are based on. Not the most star-struck lovers in the most beautiful tragedies but everyday moments that the everyday person can relate to.
Those are the moments that people look back on when they describe their first love to their grandchildren and they say, with an almost nostalgic look in their eyes, “that is what love should be about, really. It should be about falling in love with the smallest of moments and understanding what they mean in the grand scheme of things.”
You still remember the first time Rachel held your hand.
You were in the library studying for something - AP Chem, you think, but you’re really not sure, it’s one of the few details that has faded over time… You were just sitting there next to her, going over your notes, trying to remember the equations, and you guess she could tell you were stressing out over the upcoming exam because without really looking at you, Rachel simply reached over and slipped her fingers between yours.
The moment lasted for two seconds, three at the absolute most, before Rachel took her hand back to focus on her own work. Although her actions soothed you, and you did go back to focusing on the equations you had scribbled in the margins, there was a part of you that wanted to hold Rachel’s hand again.
You wanted to feel her fingers between yours because it meant that Rachel, in that moment, saw the two of you in the same light as you: steady, constant, reliable, eternal. In that moment, when she held your hand, you had the type of romance that could last forever. You had the type of romance that the songs on the radio were about, the one people roll their eyes at but still wait until the end before changing the station.
Real life isn’t so simple for you. You can’t change a station when you hear a song that reminds you of Rachel because you can identify with almost every song, but you still listen to the music because the alternative, the complete silence in your car, has gotten to be almost unbearable. You’ve become afraid of your memories taking over, and you need the distraction because you’re so close to breaking down and picking up the phone, so close to calling Rachel and begging for forgiveness for a crime that had nothing to do with you.
“Pick me,” you want to beg, “you have to pick me, don’t you understand that? This is how the story goes, this is how it always ends. You have to pick me because you and I, we could be epic, don’t you remember telling me that? You have to pick me…”
The songs on the radio stop any phone call from happening, because not every song has a happily-ever-after. Sometimes the artist only realizes their mistake too late, and the girl has already moved on, much like Rachel did with Finn. It’s too late, really, to call Rachel and say she should pick you because she made it clear to you that early morning in Lima that she would always pick Finn over you.
Rationally, you know that Rachel chose Finn because he was the safe choice, the reliable one. He never left, Finn had claimed when he came to see you in Los Angeles, and you always made a point of not being there. And, as he reminded you, you were the one that left in the end, not him.
Yet you were also the one that came back. You were the one standing on her doorstep saying the Ancient Greeks were the ones who got it wrong, that you believe Love never loses its meaning. You did, still do in fact, believe there are certain types of love that can be epic, and you want to believe what you shared with Rachel would qualify.
But the problem is you’re alone in your illusion of grandeur.
Rachel may have written a musical about your relationship, but now she’s become someone who believes love is just a fleeting emotion, that it too will pass. Love can become a matter of convenience, and it irks you because there was a time when Rachel’s definition of love was something that could last forever, not because she didn’t want it to end, but rather because she knew she would never feel the same if it did.
You can’t actually remember what the argument was about, except that it was something completely trivial. On most days, it wouldn’t have bothered either of you, but with midterms and sectionals coming up and extra Cheerios practice, you are running on too much adrenaline and not enough sleep.
And so when you see Rachel laughing and smiling with Finn, you snap.
It’s the adrenaline, you reason, it’s the adrenaline that makes you slam your body into Rachel’s during choreography practice. It has the desired effect, and Rachel stumbles slightly, the momentum throwing her off balance.
“Watch it, Berry!” You snap.
Next to you, Brittany hesitates, torn between falling in line behind you and wanting to defend Rachel. Your eyes flashing with anger, you stare down at Rachel.
“Knock it off, Quinn,” she sighs, moving back into position. You grind your teeth. You hate being ignored, you hate this fierce jealousy that’s taking over your system, you hate how possessive you have become, you hate how desperately you want her to look at you instead of looking at Finn.
The bitterness and jealousy stays in your system long after you get home, and they’re still swirling inside of you when the doorbell rings a couple of hours later. You hesitate a little as you head downstairs, unsure of who it is, of what they could possibly want from you. It’s a pleasant surprise, seeing Rachel on your front porch, even though after the stunt you pulled in Glee you’re not sure if you deserve it.
“Have you calmed down yet?” Rachel asks as you step aside to let her in.
“I’m sorry,” you say truthfully, “I really am. It was dumb and immature, I don’t know what I was thinking…”
She rolls her eyes at you, but there’s a flicker of amusement, of affection, lingering beneath it all.
“I love you,” she says quietly. “I know sometimes you question that, but I do love you, I swear. So you don’t have to get jealous if I’m talking to Finn or Puck or anyone else, because we’re just talking, you know? At the end of the day, I’m still here, I’m still with you.”
“You make me feel so insecure,” you confess.
“What?” Rachel stutters, taken back. “How on Earth do I make you feel insecure? You’re Quinn Fabray. You can do anything you want, have anyone you want. What is there to feel insecure about?”
“Because I want you,” you tell her. “You’re the thing that I want more anything else in my life.”
Rachel stares at you.
“I have this… fear, I guess, that one morning you’re going to wake up and you’re going to realize what a huge mistake you’re making, and then you’re going to end this relationship, and I’m telling you, I’m not entirely sure I could survive that. I’m not sure I could take you smiling at someone else the way you smile at me.”
You’re rambling again, stumbling over the words, and the lack of eloquence isn’t your fault, not really. You’re just trying to explain that there’s a part of you that’s trying to push Rachel away because maybe if you keep her at a distance, it won’t hurt as much if she leaves.
“I like having you in my life,” you confess to her. “I like how you know how I take my coffee and the way my pillow always ends up smelling of your shampoo and I like the way you hold my hand sometimes when we’re studying.”
“I like having you in my life because you make me better,” you whisper as you pull her towards you. “And that’s actually terrifying, because the flip side of that argument is I’m not as good when you aren’t around.”
“I make you better?” Rachel repeats.
“Actually,” you say against her lips, and you feel her smile into the kiss, “you saved my life, too.”
“Well that’s good to hear,” she tells you, “because you kind of saved mine, too.”
Is it possible for a song to save someone’s life? Is it really possible for a complete stranger, someone you have never met and maybe never will, to sing words that can affect you enough to change your plans? Can a song really have that much impact on a rational human being, or is it one of those situations where emotions over-rule everything else?
A song can do so many things. It can make your day better just by hearing it, it can remind you that someone else-a stranger, but another human being nonetheless-sympathizes with you, understands the emotions taking over you, and maybe, just maybe, they can put into words what you can’t. They can say to someone, ‘I love you the most’, or maybe, they understand your plea that you just need some time, but that you really do care.
You do want to be around Rachel, but right now, there’s a multitude of reasons why it’s better for you to stay away, the main one being the musical. You’re hesitant, not quite sure what to say or even do were you to be in contact with Rachel, because you’re not sure where you stand. You want to trust her, you want to hear her voice, you want to believe she cares as much as she probably wants you to believe.
But you learnt long ago about what happens to blind faith: it gets broken.
The people you need in your life, they don’t always stay, they don’t always need you as much as you need them. Where does that leave you? What is supposed to happen to you if someone decides you’re not the savior they thought you were, and you end losing your salvation as a consequence?
You want to believe in Rachel, but you don’t know what that entails anymore. What side of you should you believe in, the one who wrote a musical about you, or the one who chose Finn over you? Should you believe in the girl who told you she would always be by your side or the one who didn’t fight for your relationship? Do you put your faith in the singer, or the writer? One is more honest than the other, but isn’t truth subjective at best?
Your office phone rings, but this time you take the time you check the caller ID before you snarl at Santana. You freeze, because Rachel’s number is lighting up the screen, and just like that, every doubt and insecurity you’ve been feeling for the past four years come rushing back. You don’t know what to do, instead, stare at the phone as if it holds all the answers. It rings two, three, four times. Eventually, on the fifth ring, you pick up.
For a second, two at the absolute most, there is complete silence on either end of the line, and all you can hear is the faintest melody of a song playing on the radio, as a guitarist confesses how much he cares for a girl. Neither of you say anything. Eventually, though, Rachel sighs, very softly.
“I love you,” she breathes quietly. “I don’t know what else to say to you except I love you… Please say you love me, too?”
Not stealing if you acknowledge it:
- Living in London would be less expensive if I owned Glee
- special thanks to Erika who put me with me killing her inbox and for looking it over
- the title is based on the song "I Adore You" by Melpo Mene
- the song Quinn is referring to at the end of the chapter is "What do you want from me" by Adam Lambert
Part XI: Love Is No Big Truth
Part XII: Escape
Part XIII: No Longer What You Require
Part XIV: This Will All Make Perfect Sense Someday
Part XV: Our Love