Chapter Four

I woke up sprawled out on my belly, with my hair in my face, surrounded by pillows. I couldn't remember at first whose bed I was in, and there was nobody in it next to me to help me figure it out.

Then I glanced at the dresser next to me and saw Berry's damn ladybug pajamas folded into a neat little square. I rolled onto my back and lifted up the comforter. Yep, naked. It was coming back to me now. Wine coolers. Puck's car. Lots of crying. Lots of. . . Rachel's legs wrapped around my neck. I smirked and then winced as I made my way up to a sitting position. My body did not enjoy moving right now.

I scanned the floor to see where I had thrown my clothes, only to find them folded neatly on the nightstand next to me - beside a robe, a glass of water, a bottle of aspirin, and what I could only assume was the bathroom wastebasket.

Much as I didn't want to encourage Berry's apparent obsessive-compulsive-drunken-hookup-hostess disorder, my head didn't feel the greatest, so I downed two aspirin and the glass of water.

I unfolded the robe. It was light pink, with ruffles on the sleeves and around the bottom hem. I crumpled it into a ball and set it back on the nightstand, grabbed my dress from last night, and staggered into the bathroom.

I used Berry's toothpaste on my finger in place of a toothbrush, and sort made an attempt to calm my hair, although it still looked like the morning after someone's hands had been all through it. Which is fine, because let's be honest, I kind of rock that look.

Now I needed to find the fastest way out of here.

When I came out of the bathroom, Berry was standing in her doorway, holding a small plate with a toasted bagel in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other.

"Hi," she said timidly.

Damn it. "Hi," I rasped, my voice not cleared of morning frogginess yet.

"How are you feeling?"

"Well, my mouth feels a little like sandpaper but I'm not going to ralph, okay, if that's what you're worried about," I said, glancing at the strategically-placed wastebasket. "It was just a few wine coolers. I know I have a track record and everything, but normal people don't mix together six different kinds of liquor, Robitussin, and sandwich cookies, then serve it to a bunch of people who are about to go jump around onstage."

"Noted," she said. "You should eat, then."

"Thanks, um. . . I'm not hungry, though. Those poodles on your knee socks are kind of killing my appetite." I started to head toward the door. "I'm just going to go. I'll call my dad from your driveway."

She shifted in front of me to block my path to the door.

"Oh," I said, remembering her dads. "Did you want me to go out the window? It's cool, that's what I normally do."

"No, that won't be necessary. My dads are at the Saturday morning Farmer's Market in Lima Square. They'll be bickering over which type of summer squash to buy for the next two hours or so."

"So many jokes to make and such a bad headache. It just isn't fair," I muttered. I fished my phone out of my purse and fired off a quick text to my dad.

She was just standing there, looking at me expectantly. "You seriously don't have to wait around," I said, shifting my weight back and forth. "Just go do whatever Berry things you do to fill up the hours until your next rehearsal for something."

Berry rolled her eyes.

"Just sit down, Santana. Have breakfast. The only thing you've put in your body in the last twelve hours is carbonated alcoholic sugar water."

I sat on her bed and she shoved the bagel into my hand. I glared at her and took a bite.

God, I was trapped at Rachel Berry's house. This was like a nightmare I had once, only without the killer piranhas or Coach Sylvester in a sequined gown.

She sat next to me, setting her hands awkwardly in her lap. All I could hear was my own chewing.

"So, any weekend plans?" she asked cheerfully.

By the sweet mercy of Jesus, my phone buzzed before I had to try to actually engage in this conversation.

Golfing till 3. Mom's with client. Call ur friend B?

"Ugh. People over 25 should not be allowed to use texting slang." I turned to Berry. "I'm stuck here. I'm going to have to call Puck."

She scrunched up her face. "I'd really rather he didn't show up on this doorstep again for a while, especially not with you here. His lewd advances are growing tiresome."

"Yeah, you know, normally I wouldn't think twice about him trying to get in my pants, but something lately is just wrong. I think it's the Zizes. But what do you suggest I do, then? And if you tell me to take the bus I will be using that wastebasket after all."

"Why don't you just wait until my dads get home, and then they can drive you? We can say you got a flat tire in the neighborhood this morning, or something."

"You want me to stay here for the next two hours?" I looked at her in horror. "No, I'll just steal a car - are any of your neighbors old and frail?"

"Don't be silly, this will be fun!" she said, turning to face me, sitting Indian-style on the bed and taking my hands in hers. "We can have our first real conversation!"

"Um, can't we just watch TV like normal people? I think there's a Real Housewives of New Jersey marathon on today."

"I'd rather have girl talk. I mean, I can learn so much from you, and let's face it I can use all the advice I can get. Tell me about your first time - with a boy, I mean. Was it romantic?"

"Uhh, it was in the boys' locker room at St. Teresa's Middle School. So no, not really."

She frowned.

"Look, Berry," I said, taking my hands from hers and standing up. "I'm not really feeling this, if you know what I'm saying. I, like, thought we were on the same page, here. We enjoy each others' company for a very specific set of activities, and then we go our separate ways. I don't want to have girl talk with you, or whatever, I just want to get through this so I can go home and sweat out my hangover in my mom's new tanning bed. Maybe these little meetings of ours were a bad idea."

She flinched and looked up at me like a kicked puppy.

I thought she was about to start the full-on waterworks, but instead she brushed her eyelashes with her hand and looked back up at me with her eyes big and flashing.

"You know, Santana, I get it. Rejecting other people makes you feel powerful. And you're trying to get me to be angry with you so I'll give up, and leave you alone. But you know what? This hot and cold act? It's getting old. And if I'm tired of it, I can only imagine how. . . those who have had to deal with it longer must feel.

But I have news for you. It does not make me hate you and want to leave you alone; it makes me feel sorry for you. And this is not something about which I can hold my tongue any more. So you know what? Sit back down."

I rolled my eyes, but I was trapped here. And I was sort of embarrassed about crying all over her last night and I sort of regretted almost making her cry just now. So I sat back down on the bed.

"Fine," I said.

She raised her left index finger and pointed at me dramatically.

"I have spent a lot of time in my life trying to understand you, Santana. First it was why you felt the need to always make me a target, then it was why you felt the need to pick fights in the hallways or screw up relationships among our group of misfit comrades. Then it was why you wanted to be with me.

I always found a way to understand. It usually wasn't that hard, in fact. But there's something now that has me utterly stymied, so I have a question that, while it may seem rhetorical, actually demands a satisfactory reply."

Christ, someone needed to make syllable limits into a law or something.

She continued, "Are you completely unaware of your own needs, or are you enlightened but simply too repressed or insecure to act on them?

Because, let me tell you what I see, looking at you now. And what I hear, when you sit here and tell me not in so many words to stop expecting interaction of any kind except for sex."

She lowered her voice so that it was barely above a whisper and leaned in toward me.

"What I see is a girl who does her best to push people away in the light of day, but practically bleeds she's so raw when you get her into intimate circumstances."

I see a girl who publicly revels in her casual conquests, but in bed with a woman she begs to be kissed while she's coming. A girl who pleads to be watched while I'm fucking her, because she wants to be seen by someone at her most vulnerable. I see a girl who is crying out for intimacy, for emotional connection, but who won't admit it, probably even to herself. Because deep down she knows that if she admits who she wants it from, and that she wants it to last longer than the length of a random sexual encounter, her life is going to have to change, and she just cannot handle that."

My cheeks burned hot with anger, with embarrassment. Tears started to sting the backs of my eyes. Who the fuck did she think she was?

"Santana," she continued, with the same quiet intensity. "Have you ever thought about why it is that you cry hysterically every time you drink? About what you must be working so hard to hold back all the time, that it bursts out the moment intoxication forces you to loosen your grip on the reins? Have you ever wondered why you feel the need to misrepresent your upbringing to make people think you're dangerous? Or why for as beautiful as you already were, you felt like you needed to resort to plastic surgery to get people to like you?"

She looked down at my hands in my lap and reached out to take them into hers. I stared beyond my feet hanging from the side of her bed at a patch of carpeting, trying to let her words run over me without seeping in the cracks, not sure if I was about to cry or reach across and slap her.

"I know this isn't easy to hear, but someone has to say it to you. Because I see a girl who is sabotaging herself, too afraid to go after what - or whom - she really wants."

My head and my heart were pounding. I had to get out of here, away from her.

I lifted her hands from my lap and looked her in the eye while I threw them back at her, walked to the bathroom with as much composure as I could, and slammed the door, locking myself inside.

I sat on the side of the bathtub and tried to make sure the tears came out as silently as possible. I guess this is what they mean by karma. I just had to go after Rachel, to make it into a game. Well, she sure came after me. It kept running through my head that I never would have expected how mean she could be. I tried to hate her, but it was like my body didn't have the will. I mostly just felt exhausted.

I ignored her knocking on the door. Christ, drunken hookups were just not the same with girls. It's like you have to pay for every orgasm with twenty minutes of relentless emotional pain.

After the third or fourth time she knocked and called my name, I heard the scraping of metal against metal in the bathroom doorknob, and a few seconds later the door creaked open. I stood up as Berry peeked her head in the room, straightened paper clip in hand.

"What the hell?" I said, wiping my cheeks with the backs of my hands.

"We're all a little dramatic in this household," she said, sort of apologetically. "If we didn't have such cheap locking mechanisms on all of our doors, our problems would probably never be resolved."

I tried to push past her to get out of the bathroom, but she blocked my path and stood against the door.
"I'm sorry," she said, trying to take my wrists in her hands. "I've been told I'm sometimes overly blunt. You hurt my feelings and I lost my aptitude for tact."

I pulled my hands away from her yet again. "Yeah, well. It's so easy for you, isn't it, Rachel? You can sit there and list off everything wrong with me. And maybe I deserve that from you. But you don't get to judge how hard this is for me, or what it takes to confront it."

"I know. I mean, you're right, I don't know. But Santana. . . " her voice broke and trailed off, tears welling up in her eyes. "I promise, I'm not judging you. I am so happy that you're admitting there's even something to confront. Because as much as I enjoy our activities, as you put it, I would like it even more if I could help you be happy."

I scoffed. "You can't help me, Rachel. You may not be with who you want, but at least nobody is judging you for who that is. Nobody is laughing at your broken heart because who you are is a fucking punchline to them."

She nodded and bit her bottom lip. "You're right, I can't fix that. But I think if you take a look around you that you might realize I am the one person who is asking to listen to you."

I felt a fresh set of tears slide down my cheeks. This time when she tried to take my hands I let her. "I can't do this," I whispered, shaking my head.

She pulled me against her and I bent to rest my head on her shoulder. She put one hand on the back of my neck and the other held me firmly at the small of my back.

"Yes, you can. And I can help you, if you let me. What was it you told me?" She pulled back to smile at me. "You likes what you likes? You just have to act like you mean that."

I gave her a small sigh and looked up at the ceiling. "It's not liking things that's the problem."

"I know," she nodded. "You love who you love."

I breathed in sharply and a sob caught in my throat. Damn her.

I put my head back down on her shoulder. My body felt heavy, and the pit of my stomach was doing flip-flops. "I love her," I whispered into Rachel's neck.

She squeezed my body against her. "I know," she whispered back. She put a hand on either side of my face and brought her lips gently to mine. "I'm here for you. Okay? Whenever you're ready to take the next step. I'm here. You don't even have to be nice to me in school, or anything."

"Good thing," I said, with a half-laugh, half-sob.

I held onto her for a minute, resting against her and letting her hold up some of my weight, because it felt good. It felt like relief. And if I could do this. . . well, then maybe this whole fucking situation wasn't as hopeless as it seemed.

"You know, Berry," I said between sniffles, "I would say you should become a therapist, but I don't think they let you berate people into opening up to you."

"Well, I don't know about that," she said, reaching to the counter behind me to grab a tissue and then dabbing at my face. "But I do know that we spend entirely too much time against bathroom doors together."

"I've never heard you complaining. Moaning, maybe, but not complaining."

"Yes, well, nonetheless."

She brushed my hair out of my face and gave me this little smile. I tried, but I couldn't think of one single insult to break the silence. I worried that she might have ruined me forever, but then I glanced down at her poodle socks, and knew I would be just fine.

"Do you want to go sit on the couch and watch TV, like normal people?" she asked.

"Can we watch Real Housewives and not, like, PBS's Broadway Hits of the 1940's?"

"Sure," she said, guiding me out of the bathroom with a hand on my back. "You know, I've been meaning to do more research into reality television. As you know, I won't rule out any pathway to stardom, even if it is initially lowbrow and demeaning."

"Oh bet on it, Berry, I fully intend to be one of the Real Housewives someday. It's part of my ten-year plan."

"That's perfect!" she exclaimed, as we headed down the stairs. "They're so much more likely to cast us together if we have a lesbian affair in our past. I mean, what an opportunity for drama!"

"As if you need opportunities to be dramatic."

"You're one to talk. Santana, I have to say, I think our future is incredibly bright."

"Plans for world domination aside, I'm going to need less talking while my show is on, Berry."

She smiled at me wide-eyed as we reached the bottom of the stairs and took my hand, leading me into her living room.

fin