The text arrives on a chilly winter morning, right before her first class of the day.
I’m breaking up with you
At first, the words don’t even register, preoccupied as she is by his ability to, for once, form a complete sentence in text.
But then she reads the message again, and again, and the words finally sink in.
He’s breaking up with her. Again.
Her first urge is to cry or to scream or something in between, but the classroom is slowly starting to fill up with students, so she controls herself.
Rachel Berry doesn’t allow anyone to see her cry, and most of all, cry for a boy.
When they talk later that evening, Finn sounds sad for about five seconds, before he starts blaming everything on her.
It’s New York, he says. The city has changed her completely, she’s not the same girl he fell in love with in high school. She never has time for him anymore, and she never comes to Lima, and…
Well, he thinks he’s in love with someone else.
Rachel hangs up on him before he even has the chance to say anything else.
She deletes his number from her contacts a second later and decides that this is the end of her and Finn.
For good.
***
She can finally wear flats again, she decides the next day, without the fear of having to crane her neck up to kiss Finn.
It’s not much, but it’s enough to make her smile.
***
Kurt is surprisingly supportive and sweet through this, but he’s still Kurt, and she decides, just a couple of months later, that she needs to breathe in a place that doesn’t remind her of Lima or Ohio or Finn in any way.
***
The answer proves to be surprisingly close to home.
Just around the corner from her apartment there’s this small coffee shop she’s never visited before - Finn never got her obsession with coffee, and there’s a Starbucks next to NYADA - but this place feels different, in a way that she can’t really pinpoint.
Just… new.
She walks in with the Barbra Streisand biography in hand.
***
The first feeling she gets is that this is cozy, in a way that she never felt anywhere else. Warm colors adorn the walls - red and brown - and small tables are scattered here and there, occupied only by a handful of patrons who seem to not pay attention to her.
She likes this, she likes the atmosphere, she likes how there are people laughing and reading and smiling.
She loves the smells and the sight of coffee.
She decides, right there and then, that this will become her new favorite place in New York.
***
She makes a point to visit her coffee shop at least once a week.
Finn makes attempts to get back in touch with her, but they’re all in vain.
***
She slowly gets to know all the regulars of the shop.
There’s the group of teenagers that visit the coffee shop and make too much noise, but they’re sweet and fun and kind of remind her of her own friends - Mike, Tina, Mercedes, Puck.
Then there’s the painter, the one who sits by the window every day, with a pencil and an eraser, and draws lines and circles that turn into masterpieces in only a few minutes.
There’s the old couple in the back - two gay men that remind her of her own parents so much, and it makes her smile whenever they hold hands.
And then… then there’s her. The girl in the back with the blond hair and the hazel eyes; the girl that seems to live on books.
Every week, Rachel has noticed, it’s a different book and a different genre, and there’s something about this girl - so hauntingly beautiful, as she spends her time reading and taking notes - that fascinates her.
Absolutely mesmerizes her.
***
Finn is nothing but a stray thought in the back of her mind.
***
Her name is Quinn.
Rachel finds out when a book falls from her table, just as she passes right next to it, and she picks it up.
The girl smiles up at her, thanks her kindly, and introduces herself.
Quinn.
It suits her, Rachel thinks. Regal. Fitting, considering Quinn looks like a Disney princess.
It’s a silly thought, she knows, but Quinn is smiling at her again and tells her that she’s seen her in the coffee shop many times and maybe one day they could drink their coffee together, and Rachel feels like she has every right to be silly.
***
Coffee is just the beginning.
***
It happens fast, she knows, but it feels almost natural.
They start sharing more than just coffee - silly movie nights, walks in Central Park, and Broadway plays - and there’s this faint feeling that something larger is brewing underneath the pretense of friendship, but Rachel will never admit it.
She wonders if Quinn feels it too.
***
Quinn never makes fun of her aspirations or dreams and actually believes in her in a way that only her parents ever did.
It makes her want to hug Quinn and never let go.
***
It happens on a Wednesday, in their little coffee shop, just around the corner from Rachel’s apartment.
Quinn is reading again, one hand playing on the page of the book and the other laying palm up on the table, and Rachel - Rachel is biting her lower lip, because she stayed up all night, trying to find the best way to explain to Quinn what she’s feeling, and she came up empty.
How, how… how can she -
And then it dawns on her.
She brings her hand up on the table, slowly, as if afraid that a wrong move will completely shatter everything she’s built with Quinn, every little moment they’ve shared over these past few months. She slides it along the table, and then, softly, takes Quinn’s hands in hers.
Hazel eyes rise from reading the adventures of Alice and look straight into Rachel’s brown ones, and there is something there, something written so clearly, so beautifully, that makes her gulp.
Quinn tightens her hand around Rachel’s and doesn’t let go.
***
But on a Wednesday, in a cafe, I watched it begin again…
Summary: Rachel has always been told by people that she is too uptight and that she needed to go out and live a little. They would never have guessed that her idea of "living a little" involved, well, someone who wasn't alive.
State of Grace:So you were never a saintAnd I’ve loved in shades of wrongHoly Ground:Back to a first-glance feeling on New York time.Back when you fit in my poems like a perfect rhyme.
